ataxiwardance

thenewrepublic:

What do you think about Elizabeth Warren’s claim that she is Native American?

“In truth, given what we know about Warren, we should not be shocked by the revelation. Warren has come to be cherished for her passionate liberalism and even refreshing hipness— occasionally identifying as a Cherokee is very much part of the package here. It also fits in with the culture in which she was raised, and which is still formative today. After all, we all live in an America in which white people are fond of dismissing things and people as “too white” (a remark that 50 years ago would have been completely opaque to liberal cosmopolitans.)”

John McWhorter, Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Native American’ Status and a Bygone Era of Affirmative Action

(Photo courtesy of theatlantic.com)

Excellent article on an important topic and an incredible woman.

“Generally, modern Americans can be almost strangely flexible on setting boundaries to what a culture even is. On separate occasions, I have been criticized for describing black culture as including soul food, a particular kind of humor, and a way of speaking. As such, Elizabeth Warren’s notion of herself as Cherokee—as well as Harvard’s touting her hiring as the inclusion of a “minority” on their faculty—should be understood as simply a sign of the times.

But all of these painfully subtle and protean notions of identity are increasingly showing signs of strain in society. A certain degree of cognitive dissonance was present, of course, from the very beginning of affirmative action programs”

theatlantic:

New Racism Museum Reveals the Ugly Truth Behind Aunt Jemima

David Pilgrim was 12 years old when he bought his first racist object at a flea market: a saltshaker in the shape of a mammy. As a young black boy growing up in Mobile, Alabama, he’d seen similar knick-knacks in the homes of friends and neighbors, and he instinctively hated them. As soon as he handed over his money, he threw his purchase to the ground and shattered it into pieces.

Pilgrim’s story brings to mind the young biblical Abraham, smashing idols in his father’s shop. But that mammy was the only racist icon Pilgrim ever destroyed. Today he owns thousands of them: cereal boxes, statuettes, whites-only signs, and postcards of black men being whipped and hung. The public will soon be able to see his entire collection and more at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which opens April 26 at Ferris University in Michigan where Pilgrim spent years as a sociology professor.

The museum is divided into sections, each reflecting a different distorted vision of black people in America. One features Uncle Toms: cheerful, servile black men like Uncle Ben or the chef on the Cream of Wheat box. Another showcases “brutes”: muscular ogres who lurk in dark alleys and ravish white women. Most of the objects predate civil rights, but there’s a section devoted to modern racism: It includes dozens of caricatures of President Barack Obama as a monkey, a terrorist, and a watermelon-eating “coon.”

Read more. [Images: Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia]

FOLU! The internet has been reading our minds.

spiffingtea:

President Obama sits on the bus where Rosa Parks’ protest began the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott. Photo via African Americans for Obama.

This picture is so powerful. Unbelievable.

My quotidian disgust and exasperation with the Obama presidency should not surprise any of my followers but even my cold cold heart is not immune to the symbolic and historical gravity of his / our country’s achievements.

horcrvx:

The Trayvon Martin story remains in national headlines this week, but little media attention has been paid to a similarly troubling case: that of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr., a 68-year-old Marine vet killed in his home last November by police officers in White Plains, NY.

The officers were responding to a false alarm accidentally triggered by Chamberlain’s medical alert pendant while he slept. Instead of helping the man, who had a heart condition, they broke down his front door, tasered him, reportedly called him the “n-word” and mocked him, then shot him dead.

Audio throughout the incident was recorded by his medical alert device.

Read the rest

Disgusted but not even remotely surprised.

I don’t even know what to say right now. 

I am aghast.

I am enraged.

i12bent:

Tonight’s OF spotlight falls on this controversial figure who had a distinct impact on US political culture in the ’60s and ’70s:

Huey P. Newton (Feb. 17, 1942 - 1989, homicide) - co-founder (1966) and leader of the Black Panther Party, and one of the important African-American activists in the struggle for civil rights and the ability for Blacks to practice self-defense.

Despite many attempts by authorities and racially biased police to discredit Newton as a common criminal and a murderer, he consistently proved himself as an intellectual and an organizer and a writer…

“The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.” — H.P.N.

Photo: Huey P. Newton handling Highway 61 Revisited - Stephen Shames, 1970

We read People v. Newton as an example of unconsciousness as excuse for criminal liability in my Criminal Law class earlier this semester. Professor Bridges asked the class of ~70 students if anyone knew who Huey Newton was. I have to imagine other people knew who the man was but I was the only one who raised their hand.

…In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the case of Richard Perry Loving, who was white, and his wife, Mildred Loving, of African American and Native American descent.

The case changed history - and was captured on film by LIFE photographer Grey Villet, whose black-and-white photographs are now set to go on display at the International Center of Photography.

In 2007, 32 years after her husband died, Mrs Loving - who herself passed away the following year - released a statement in support of same-sex marriage. She said: ‘Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.’

Photographs of the Loving’s interracial marriage at a time when it was banned in 16 states

Mildred Delores Jeter Loving and her husband Richard Perry Loving were plaintiffs in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia (1967).

The Lovings were an interracial married couple who were criminally charged under a Virginia statute banning such marriages. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Lovings filed suit seeking to overturn the law. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, striking down the Virginia statute and all state anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional violations of the Fourteenth Amendment.

manicchill:

Lawyer Defending South Carolina’s Voter ID Law Thinks the Department of Justice is Biased Against White People | TPM Muckraker

South Carolina officials plan to file suit against the federal government because the Justice Department stopped the state from implementing a voter ID law that the state’s own statistics showed would have a disparate impact on non-white voters. Fighting on their behalf will be a former DOJ official who claimed that the Civil Rights Division is opposed to protecting the civil rights of whites and who defended the Bush-era politicalization of the division by Bradley Schlozman as an effort to “diversify.”

South Carolina has hired former Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates, who defied DOJ’s instructions and testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights during the Republican-led probe into the infamous New Black Panther Party case, a spokesman for the South Carolina attorney general’s office told The State newspaper.

Former colleagues said that Coates had an ideological conversion after an African-American woman was chosen over him as deputy section chief in July of 2000.

Read More

(image courtesy of Main Justice)

I know this might not get the blood boiling as much as other electoral issues but voter suppression is something that has always driven me insane with rage. Unfortunately, voter suppression is also something with a long and proud history in these United States. It doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere either. Just changing forms. Read this brief overview from the Brennan Center for Justice (like Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr.) on how over five million voters will find exercising their fundamental democratic right either more difficult or impossible in 2012. And yes, to the surprise of no one, these voters will be disproportional minority and impoverished populations.

Judge Rules That Alabama Republicans Acted With Racist Intent to Suppress Voter Turnout

A federal judge accused two state Republicans, called by federal prosecutors in a massive Alabama corruption case, of cooperating with the feds because of their “ulterior motives rooted in naked political ambition and pure racial bias.”

State Sen. Scott Beason and former Rep. Benjamin Lewis, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson wrote, “lack credibility for two reasons.”

“First, their motive for cooperating with F.B.I. investigators was not to clean up corruption but to increase Republican political fortunes by reducing African-American voter turnout. Second, they lack credibility because the record establishes their purposeful, racist intent,” Thompson wrote.

The judge’s order, first reported by Birmingham News, continued:

Beason, Lewis, and their political allies sought to defeat SB380 partly because they believed the absence of the referendum on the ballot would lower African-American voter turnout during the 2010 elections. One of the government’s recordings captured Beason and Lewis discussing political strategy with other influential Republican legislative allies. A confederate warned: “Just keep in mind if [a pro-gambling] bill passes and we have a referendum in November, every black in this state will be bused to the polls. And that ain’t gonna help.”

Thompson also brought up Beason’s reference, while wearing an FBI wire, to African-Americans as “aborigines” (a comment he later apologized for).

“The court finds that Beason and Lewis cooperated with the F.B.I. in order to secure political advantage. The evidence at trial showed that black communities in Alabama tend to support electronic bingo. The evidence further demonstrated that black voters tend to be Democrats,” Thompson said. “Indeed, Beason’s and Lewis’s scheme was predicated on their belief that blacks supported electronic bingo and Democratic candidates.”

Thompson continued: “It is, perhaps, unsurprising that politicians have political motives to disrupt and defeat legislation advanced by opponents. But Beason, Lewis, and other influential Republican politicians did not target Democrats generally in their opposition to SB380; they plainly singled out African-Americans for mockery and racist abuse.”

“Beason’s and Lewis’s statements demonstrate a deepseated racial animus and a desire to suppress black votes by manipulating what issues appeared on the 2010 ballot,” Thompson said. “Lawmakers who harbor such sentiments lack the integrity expected from elected officials.”

Thompson also dismissed the Justice Department’s contention that “the issue of racism is irrelevant to the crimes alleged in the indictment” because Thompson said “the issues of motive and bias are directly relevant to evaluating the credibility of the government’s cooperating witnesses.”

There is “no indication whatsoever that the prosecutors in this case condoned or shared any of the biases of their cooperating witnesses,” Thompson said. “But eliminating bribery will treat only one symptom of political corruption in this State. To cure the larger disease, it is essential to address with equal force the politics of racial prejudice and exclusion.”

Despite all of his criticism, Thompson ruled in favor the federal prosecutors, finding that statements of alleged co-conspirators could be admitted at an upcoming trial.

Reached by TPM, a Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment because the case is pending.