Bring It On! National News

This special issue of “DUUUHHH!!!” has TWO cover stories. First: Traffic is getting worse. Hold the phone! Who knew??? They had to do a study to find this out? Christ, all they had to do was get behind the wheel and try to go somewhere.

And the other earthshaking revelation is: Republicans might be losing support among Hispanic voters. [Gasp!] Say it isn’t so! Nobody was more shocked by this possibility than Tom “Kill-All-The-Mud-Races” Tancredo (R-Wingnut).

Yes, illegal immigration is a serious issue with no simple solutions. Bring on the demagogues. The outcry against illegal immigrants is sort of like the fury against school busing in the 1960s and ‘70s (speeding up integration by busing students away from their own neighborhoods and into other school districts). A lot of the resentment was legitimate and not based on racism. But the George Wallaces of the day sure got lots of political mileage out of it. They could whip millions of rednecks into a frenzy just by going on and on about “that #!$#%$#$!! busing.”

Unlike today’s Republicans, George Wallace didn’t act puzzled when Blacks didn’t vote for him.

The most rightwing elements of the Republican Party are trying to get the same political mileage out of illegal immigration. They don’t need to spew out stereotypes and racial slurs. All they have to do is keep hammering away at “them” and “illegals” and “guarding our border,” and millions of voters go into a white-hot fury. Like with school busing, a lot of this fury is legitimate and not based on racism.

But the Republicans are purposely using this issue to fan the flames and court every single-digit-IQ sister-humping mouthbreathing xenophobe in the country. And then they wonder why they’re losing Hispanic voters.

Jena, population roughly 3000, isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s historically accurate for the Deep South to exhibit this type of racism; after all, they have been doing it for over 200 years. 12% of the population, or 310 individuals are African American in Jena. Jena is also the site of the infamous Juvenile Correctional Center for Youth that was forced to close its doors in 2000, only two years after opening, due to widespread brutality and racism including the choking of juveniles by guards after the youth met with a lawyer. The U.S. Department of Justice sued the private prison amid complaints that guards paid inmates to fight each other and laughed when teens tried to commit suicide.

What bothers me is the state and federal court systems above the local level will be reviewing all these cases if the Jena D.A. doesn’t get his head out of his ass and reduce the charges and move on. George Bush has stacked the living bejesus out of the federal courts. But the southern ‘gentleman’ that occupies the D.A. office in Jena, Reed Walters, is nothing if not stubborn. He told the black students–I can change your life with the stroke of my pen.

The whole lot of ‘em are uppidity white men. A patriarchy don’t you know? Should we be shocked that an entire city, regardless of size, still practices racism?

No, but we should be outraged. We need to look them straight in the eye and tell them they are horrible people..the court system has to do that as well. We can not change the hearts and minds of those stalwart practitioners of racism..but we can stand in their streets and call them what they are; racist bastards. After all was said and done, a white resident of Jena was quoted as saying to the press;

“We don’t have many problems with our blacks.”

That this story was publicized in Europe before our own traditional media addressed it is another rub. The European press jumped on this issue 9 months before the U.S. media did.

Yesterday, America gave the white residents of Jena something to think about. Thousands of American’s of all colors descended upon Jena to tell them to their faces what a bunch of racists they are, and that it’s no longer acceptable to judge people by the color of their skin. It’s also not acceptable to load the prisons with individuals of color. That sadly, is another symptom of the disease my dear reader. From a Nation.com article on the Jena 6:

“There are several issues in this case,” says Bob Noel, one of five attorneys who signed on as Bell’s new counsel after the trial. “One of the biggest is disproportionate treatment. People may think of a similarly situated kid, maybe middle-class, maybe white, and they think, Oh, let’s give him another chance. When he’s poor and black, it’s not necessarily the case. Another is funding for indigent defense: If there’s no money to adequately pay lawyers, to have support staff for them and resources they can use, they’re always at a major disadvantage. And the other is the issue of race in America.”

“Throughout the summer, as the media glare intensified and a muscular team of attorneys assembled on the side of the defendants, Judge J.P. Mauffray and Walters dug in their heels. James Rucker, who sat in on some of Bell’s motion hearings during the appeal, was shocked to see the LaSalle Parish brand of justice at work. “You’d watch this judge grill the defense attorney. It felt like he was trying to trick him,” Rucker says. “And then he would set up the DA, so that all he had to do was say yes to a question. It was like they were a team.”

The sunlight of truth must stay bright in Jena and all other places in our country where brown and black people are trampled on because of the color of their skin. We must force the judicial appeals system to do the job the local DA refused to do, that of fairness and the rule of law imposed equally. Because if we don’t, lead counsel Louis Scott’s word’s might horribly ring true as he recalls the Little Rock 9:

“Immediately after the facts were explained, I can remember thinking, Wow, this is a 1957 case that jumped into 2007,” he says. “This is my second reaction, that the tree symbolized America. And the question was, Can all Americans share the shade of the system that we operate under? But the next thing that happened was the most frightening thing of all: They cut the tree down. I was hoping that didn’t symbolize the attitude of America, that before we allow some Americans to share the same rights, the same privileges and the same responsibilities, we’ll just get rid of the whole thing. It seemed to me that that was the message to be conveyed.” If Americans allowed this to occur, Scott believes, “that would be the first step toward unraveling the civil rights gains of the last fifty years.”

District Attorney Reed Walters is a bigot and Judge J.P. Mauffray is one as well..or at the very least he enables Walters to practice his bigotry in a court of law. We need to address the disparity of blacks and browns in prisons here in the U.S. To use numbers from a DoJ report in 2003;

About 10.4% of the entire African-American male population in the United States aged 25 to 29 was incarcerated, by far the largest racial or ethnic group—by comparison, 2.4% of Hispanic men and 1.2% of white men in that same age group were incarcerated. According to a report by the Justice Policy Institute in 2002, the number of black men in prison has grown to five times the rate it was twenty years ago. Today, more African-American men are in jail than in college. In 2000 there were 791,600 black men in prison and 603,032 enrolled in college. In 1980, there were 143,000 black men in prison and 463,700 enrolled in college.

We must keep up the pressure for justice in these cases by keeping these issues at the forefront. We can’t afford not to. The disease of racism must be wiped out if we are to succeed as a nation.

Tags

Jena 6, racism

Black and white…white and black. America has struggled with these two words for decades. No doubt race is the first thought which comes to mind when one mentions black and white…but the issue is much broader than skin color…it encompasses a way of thinking that struggles to see the many shades of gray which occupy the space between two extremes.

Hence, my thoughts on the subject were triggered by four items in the news…all seemingly unrelated though clearly conjoined by the presence of a simmering sickness…one which has at its core a pitiful propensity to view the world and its inhabitants with the forceful, though false safety found in the embracing of extremes.

For most of my life, I’ve been a doodler…writing and drawing in school notebooks or in any other blank space I could find on an otherwise white piece of paper. By and large, my doodles were mindless acts intended to fill space…both the space on a piece of paper and the empty mental space that often accompanied my own boredom.

However, not long ago, I stopped to think about my doodling and realized that one particular pattern existed…one that was evidenced by years of writing words that are opposites…most frequently the words “sooner” and “later”…all words that are akin to the concept of black and white.

At the same time, my life has been characterized by an effort to see the many shades of gray that one must navigate in order to move from one extreme to the other…so much so that I’ve often angered individuals on both ends of the philosophical and political spectrums. I view my choice to do so as a decision to remain conflicted…the place from which I’ve always sought and found my most significant moments of awareness and insight.

Truth be told, choosing to reside in such a state creates anxiety and frustration…but the payoff has always exceeded the cost…payoff that comes in what I’ve called my periods of hyper-reality. During those intervals, long standing mental logjams are broken and a comforting clarity suddenly emerges in a cascade of cognition. It’s as if pieces of a puzzle fall effortlessly into place to reveal a much needed image.

I make mention of my personal experience because I believe it a worthwhile contemplative construct…one that has the potential to move beyond the banality of black and white…and therefore past the animosity which seems to typify our adoption of an architecture of antagonism.

With that contextual background, let’s look at the specific news items. First, the observations of Stanley Kurtz on a Salon.com article titled, So Long, White Boy, in which he points to a new book about the Duke lacrosse rape case, Until Proven Innocent, specifically citing this quote from the book, “Duke’s politically-correct faculty…produced a mirror image of the worst racism of the South in the 1950s….”. Kurtz raises the prospect that the Duke case and the university response may provide evidence that reverse discrimination is the ultimate product of affirmative action. He concludes with the following.

First the Democrats alienated many white men by supporting discriminatory preferential treatment policies. When these men refused to accept this discrimination, many of them left the Democratic Party. This, in turn, enraged many Democrats, who began to think “invidiously” about white men. So it would appear that racial discrimination in law and policy breeds racial discrimination in culture. If the Democrats lose a large chunk of the “NASCAR Dad” vote in the upcoming elections, it might have something to do with the fact that the Dems richly deserve to lose it.

The second item is the “censoring” of Sally Fields remarks during the Emmy Awards. While accepting her award, Fields, who plays a mother on the television program “Brothers & Sisters”, dedicated her award to all of the mothers in the world and stated, “May they be seen; may their work be valued and raised and especially for the mothers who stand with open hearts and wait. Wait for their children to come home from danger and harm’s way and war”. As she closed her remarks, Fox cut out the following statement.

From The National Post on Canada.com:

“If mothers ruled the ruled the world, there would be no…”

Snip to wide shot.

What was cut (some people saw it live) from the broadcast: “god-damned wars in the first place”

The blogosphere is abuzz with commentary on Field’s remarks and the decision by Fox to edit the latter portion. The situation is being characterized differently by those on opposite sides of the political spectrum. One side suggests it is an issue of censorship by right leaning Fox Network and the other side argues that Field’s was simply using the Emmy’s as a platform for an anti-war tirade.

Consistent with the argument I intend to make, I choose to focus on the dialogue rather than the merits of either position. The following are some of the comments found on the internet.

someone should’ve thrown her off the stage, forget using a cane.

G*****n you, Rupert Murdoch! All Sally was doing was trying to offer the progressive counterpoint to that war-glorifying, Bush-loving, neoconservative medley of talk show one-liners earlier in the broadcast.

Well, if mothers ruled the world in the way Sally meant (i.e. mothers wouldn’t send their own or other people’s children to die in wars, so there wouldn’t be any wars)–what would happen in reality is that a great many Western mothers would indeed keep their children from fighting. However, the Islamist moms around the world would be busily strapping bombs to their babies themselves and shoving them out the door to kill Jews and Americans. Result? We’d lose our culture and our lives. Miserably and quickly.

As any straight man can attest, if women ruled the world there’d still be plenty of wars. They’d just cease to be for discernible reasons. I’ll go hide now.

Confirms that the right-wing corporate establishment cannot survive without war. A threat to war is a threat to their very existence. Manifestly, the anti-war movement is their biggest fear, greater even than an adverse puritanical FCC ruling. Shocking (but predictable).

The third item involves Chris Crocker, the gay man who defended Britney Spears in a tearful YouTube video. Crocker has become the latest celeb of the moment and as so often happens, he has become the focus of mean spirited and malicious comments…comments which clearly seek to use the Crocker situation to push a variety of ideological beliefs.

Most recently, Crocker took issue with a Fox News segment…one which he felt was nothing more than a personal attack by the group of reporters. There are those who defend Fox News, stating that Crocker sought the attention and therefore needs to deal with the consequences…and there are those who feel the Fox segment was homophobic. The following are an example of some of the most heinous comments in response to this latest Crocker video clip.

Clearly ur the most gay and stupid person in the world, why do u wear make-up? Are u a guy who think he’s a girl, Or are just a dumb dumb, + UR SO F****D UP! Put a dildo in ur ass a gun in ur mouth and shoot urself!

what a friggin weirdo! I swear if i ever see this person face to face i will kick his/her ass!

hahaha your are sick!!! please do us a favor die soon before someone kill you for good!!!

BTW, If you WERE MORE A WOMAN you wouldnt cry like the little bitch that you are. people get made fun of, deal with it, thats what drives the world.

The final item involves the immigration debate and the belief that the GOP stands to see the gains they made with Hispanic voters under George Bush evaporate in response to perceived prejudice against Mexicans. The two poles of the immigration argument are miles apart. On the one hand, there are those who favor the deportation of all illegal’s and the sealing of our border with Mexico. Then there are those who take the opposite view…the one which views the issue as a matter of basic rights and proposes that all illegal’s be granted amnesty and that the U.S. make it much easier for Mexicans to immigrate.

Sept. 24, 2007 issue - Lionel Sosa has long been one of the Republicans’ most potent weapons come election time. A Hispanic marketing guru, he’s crafted successful ad campaigns for presidential candidates from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush aimed at drawing more Latinos into the GOP fold.

But Sosa, who last worked for Bush in 2004, has also been dismayed by the way many GOP candidates have handled the illegal-immigration issue, advocating policies like building a border wall and employing rhetoric that he says is venomous and xenophobic: “It’s just an exaggerated, unfriendly position that needlessly turns away Latinos.”

Unlike the Democrats, all the Republican presidential candidates, except Sen. John McCain, declined to participate in a debate on the Spanish-language channel Univision, possibly to avoid hostile immigration questioning (the network says it’s trying to reschedule). They also ditched conventions earlier this year held by high-profile groups like the National Council of La Raza and NALEO.

Among Latino evangelicals, the portrait’s just as bleak. They make up a growing portion of the Hispanic electorate and are twice as likely as Latino Catholics to identify with the GOP, according to Pew Research Center surveys. Yet “right now, the nativist and xenophobic constituency is in charge of the Republican Party,” says the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the evangelical National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “That’s a party the Hispanic-American voter cannot support.”

Quite frankly, all of these stories are related…related in their evidence of a growing climate of black and white…the need to view all situations and issues with a certainty which cannot be justified or sustained…a certainty born of bias but doggedly disguised as unencumbered erudition.

It’s a need to determine which race has suffered more from discrimination such that we seemingly need to conclude whether one race has been more aggrieved. What can be achieved in arguing that the white male is the new black male? What is the goal and where and when does it end?

It’s the need to prove that the war in Iraq is about the freedom and liberty promised by democracy such that success must and will include the transformation of the world into an image of our liking.

It’s the need to characterize civility and a commitment to peace as a gender driven dynamic such that the world cannot function appropriately if one gender holds more power than the other.

It’s the need to refute the potential of women of Islam as advocates for peace by defining their religion as evil and thereby associating them with acts of terrorism…all designed to lead one to the tortured conclusion that their annihilation may well be justified.

It’s the need to report the news through ideological filters such that news is little more than packaged rhetoric meant to bolster network ratings and define reality. Its a public which seems all too receptive to believing that the news is either black or white…happily stepping over our own responsibility to demand that all news be factual…and doing so with an ill-conceived notion that all will be well if we can only succeed in painting a map of the United States red or blue.

It’s the need to identify sexual orientation as the defining moral issue confronting the nation such that individuals like Chris Crocker become lightning rods for the bias and prejudice which seeks to unleash its ugliness by finding its way to the much sought after path of least resistance.

It’s the need to vilify Mexicans as a force for the undermining of our cultural identity…all the while ignoring our history as an agglomeration of countless cultural influences…influences which were once thought to be a noble trait and a defining part of our charmed legacy.

It’s the willingness of politicians to close their eyes to those walking in the back door because they long ago opened the front door to all those willing to foster and fund their political aspirations.

It’s embracing all that is wrong with the construct which posits that the absence of love must be accompanied by the emergence of hate…both in our personal lives and universally in all things that we deem to defy the lazy and illogical labels of black or white.

In a world where proponents of a higher being…a divine creator…prevail…and willfully espouse the inability of science to extricate the intricacies of god’s grand design…we willingly bear witness to the audacity which so arrogantly and arbitrarily seeks to attach our own vituperate views to that which we deem to be unacceptably different.

Either we accept the infinite grayness that permeates our perceptive proclivities or we continue down the path of painting ourselves into the dark corners and blinding back rooms which come with an insistence upon the advancement of ideation that is little more than two dimensional delusion.

Unless the battle for black and white gives way to judicious gradations, the red blood which gives each of us life will undoubtedly be the last vague vestige upon the canvas which was intended to represent the enduring achievements of our shared humanity. That’s a legacy we can preclude…that’s a legacy to lament.

Cross-posted at Thought Theater

Hot Damn! From CNN: A Louisiana appeals court Friday vacated the remaining conviction of a teenager accused in a violent, racially charged incident in Jena, Louisiana, his attorney said.

Bob Noel said the 3rd District Court of Appeals in Lake Charles threw out the conviction for second degree battery against Mychal Bell, saying the charges should have been brought in juvenile court.

The future of the case against Bell is up to the district attorney, who must decide whether to refile the charges in juvenile court, Noel said.

Bell, who is now 17, was 16 at the time of the fight in December 2006.

Earlier this month, a district court judge vacated a conviction for conspiracy to commit second degree battery, saying that charge should have been brought in juvenile court.

He left standing the second degree battery conviction, however.

Bell’s defense team would be filing a motion to get him out of prison, where he has been since his arrest in December, Noel said.

(more…)