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Posts Tagged ‘United State’

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Ron Paul’s Racist Rants Repeatedly Resurface

In News on December 27, 2011 at 8:21 pm
English: Newt Gingrich at a political conferen...

Image via Wikipedia. Who's got the donuts?

Every dog has fleas, right?

Obama paints a beautiful picture of all the things we want done and once in office doesn’t do a single one. There’s nobody (at least not yet) in the Dem field to oppose him, and many people feel Hillary would just be

Ron Paul taking questions in Manchester, NH

Image via Wikipedia. Don't ask me, I'm just running for President.

more of the same old song and dance, a different personality and approach to doing the same things for the same elite people and corporations.

Republicans, the party that openly embraces corporate love and elite wealth (in my estimation) don’t have much to offer that would be different, with Romney being a handsome wind-up automaton, Gingrich being so egotistical and with such a rich history of ethics violations and affairs as not to be taken seriously by any of the power-brokers pulling the levers in the NWO, Rick Perry being a handsome and well-connected hydrocephalic, Bachmann being a gimlet-eyed incongruent anachronism better suited for the Dark Ages of anti-reason, and…that leaves….um….

What to make of Ron Paul?

Part of me likes his anti-establishment stance(s) of minimizing governmental powers and influence at a time when the US seems to be inching closer and closer each day toward some kind of Orwellian police state (complete with TSA microwave body scanning devices that other countries ban, internet monitoring, tracking devices put on cars for no reason, police departments across the country arming themselves like small militias, protestors getting the proverbial beat-down, on and on) and staying out of other countries’ affairs; while I know fully well he will never win the presidency regardless of how events may turn for the GOP field.

Another part of me is downright suspicious of Paul’s racist newsletter rants from (to be fair) more than 20 years ago. To his defense, Mr. Paul has admitted them and stated repeatedly that they weren’t written by him personally but by some kind of marketing staff hack and he doesn’t agree with them.

Here’s an interesting piece by Shikha Dalmia from Reason.com, expressing some increased insight into the pieces and why they might have been written in the first place and an informed opinion on how he should respond to the the rants being brought up again:

What do you think?

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Blacks Need to Reinvent Marriage

In Main Event, News, Opinion on December 24, 2011 at 5:50 pm
English: Iman and David Bowie at the 2009 Trib...

Image via Wikipedia. Does Iman know she's ain't supposed to be hanging with Bowie?

English: Robert De Niro and his wife Grace Hig...
Image via Wikipedia. What’s going on here with Bobby D?

According to Dalton Conley, a sociologist and dean of social sciences at New York University, author of “Elsewhere USA,” and writer/blogger for the great New York Times, black people in America need to “reinvent” the institution of marriage.

For many, Mr. Conley is merely stating the obvious, but as a credentialed and professional sociologist repeating what Ralph Richard Banks said in his bestseller “Is Marriage for White People?,” his opinion is just one more in a chorus of informed and educated professors stating that black women remain statistical outliers in terms of turning their backs on interracial marriage as a whole and as a practice while black men leave them en masse.

Of course it’s everyone’s individual right and choice to do with their lives as they please, and if black women in America as a whole wish to remain single that’s fine, as Tracee Ellis Ross said in a previous piece.

Anyway, here’s a direct link to that piece:

And here’s a brief redux of Ralph Richard Banks’ comments from his bestseller that’s ticked off so many people, but his comments nonetheless are fairly straightforward, factual, and devoid of opinion:

So, what is it that ticks off so many people? That Mr. Banks dares to state the obvious and thereby airs some kind of secret dirty laundry the masses shouldn’t talk about? Is it racism, stigma, or just resistance to logical suggestions at helpful change?

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Study/Shocker: Black Men More Likely to Date White Women Online

In News, Opinion on November 23, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Hopefully, you picked up on the slight tinge of sarcasm in my title there.

Look, although I’m a “white” man, I grew up surrounded by wonderful black people; including a biracial granny, a black best friend; the works. Never dated a white woman in my life, proudly married to a beautiful and intelligent and funny black woman.

But it does seem easier for black men to approach and date white women than it does for black women to even consider dating a non-black man, even after the “Is Marriage for White People?” book was released and soared to the top of most book sales lists. Some of this may be attributed just to the fact that it’s more socially acceptable (if not rewarded) for men of any ethnicity to be more assertive, aggressive, and “go getters” especially when it comes to dating and perceived “conquest.”

Amongst men, men period, a male who dates often and regularly is considered cool or admirable. A woman who dates often and regularly is not always seen in so positive a light. Certainly, there’s a dating double-standard going on.

There’s also tremendous, soul-crushing racial bias and discrimination at play throughout America to the point that I’d say racism is as American as apple pie and Uncle Sam and the whole Thanksgiving mythology. Men who are told it’s okay to be “go getters” are going to have an easier time “skiing the slopes” or adding “creme to the coffee” or whatever other metaphor you want to come up with than women who are not permitted to be as assertive.

Then you ad to that, the fact that black women are perceived to “owe” an allegiance to the perpetuation and continuation of the black “race” as a whole that their male counterparts do not have to swear to, and you’ve got some serious pressure.

Pointing at another person is aggressive and d...

Image via Wikipedia. I want YOU to date outside socially-acceptable norms!

If I look up “interracial couple” in Google images, I find mostly photos of black men with white women. There are not as many images of black women with white men on the whole. Google is a pretty popular search engine these days, so it’s a fair guess this image search would come up similarly if repeated in Yahoo or Bing. What’s my point? That “interracial dating” or “interracial couple” is largely a black man/white woman norm. And black women are either “sitting shiva,” dating with little statistical chance of marriage much less commitment (this ain’t just my observation but borne out over and over again through one news piece after another), or just living their lives.

At any rate, here’s a link to the original news story:

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More Black Men Now in Prison System than Enslaved in 1850

In News on November 10, 2011 at 3:04 am
Barbed tape at a prison

Image via Wikipedia.

While white people across the country apparently ponder why things are just so bad for them, and why they’re the ones suffering the most discrimination and the most oppressed, something anybody with a functioning brain has known for a looong time has now been unearthed by Ohio State law professor Michelle Alexander; that Jim Crow is alive and well, and kicking, and funding a gigantic prison-industrial complex.

Ms. Alexander, the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” stated in a recent lecture at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday, that “more African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began.”

Sadly, this statement is one I am ready to accept as fact, because it doesn’t surprise a whit, based on what I’ve seen growing up in the South, working as an educator, and probation officer. To say the prison-industrial complex is a huge source of revenue for so many millions of people (while victimizing so many disproportionately more) is akin to saying that Obama has been somewhat of a disappointment.

Here are the links to read more:

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Biography Revives Push to Reopen Malcolm X Case

In Main Event, News, Opinion on August 18, 2011 at 1:41 am
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X meet bef...

Image via Wikipedia. Malcolm X. One day the man will get the respect, understanding, justice, and movie, he deserves. But I ain't holding my breath. Read the biography review and let us know your take on it.

Brother Malcolm. Just to read those words brings a heaviness to my heart. He is and was and always will be one of the most misunderstood and much-maligned truly individualistic and idiosyncratic civil rights leaders to have fought during the tumultuous 60s.

To say that the Shabazz family has been through Purgatory and back is an understatement of a highest order, but they remain. And Brother Malcolm’s legacy and memory survive, despite (or because of, depending upon your perspective of diminutive film-financier Spike Lee) inaccurate and inflammatory mass media depictions.

In a piece in the great “New York Times” (one of the few newspapers still left standing, although its footing is slippery at best), dated July 22, 2011, Times writer Shaila Dewan carefully reviews a new biography of the great leader and ever-evolving soul Malcolm X.

If you haven’t already guessed, I’m somewhat of a “fan” of Malcolm X, and personally feel that he has yet to be given due respect; but that’s another story for another time.

Here’s a link to the biography review. Please read it and let us know what your thoughts and feelings are on the text:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/nyregion/biography-helps-renew-calls-to-investigate-malcolm-x-assassination.html

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