Racism In European Football Kicked Into Spotlight

The lid has come off of Euro-football after Italian fans insisted on making racist monkey gestures/sounds directed to AC Milan star-player, Kevin-Prince Boateng, in a 'friendly' game Jan 2 against team Pro Patria. (here)

It seems that the German-Ghanaian Boateng walked off the pitch (field) at the repeated actions of a group of Italian fans. His teammates followed, and the game ended. Boateng also received the support of his team president, Silvio Berlusconi. The former Italian prime minister, media mogul, and non-stranger to controversy said, "This is an uncivilised problem that needs to be stopped. I congratulated my players for their decision to leave the field during the friendly in Busto Arsizio." (here)

It is interesting watching Europeans and their authorities attempt to deal with such obvious racism in their most beloved sport. The more the authorities try to curb it, the more determined the fans seem to become, especially the Spanish and the Italians. Gone is the smug superiority the Europeans had when witnessing images of US racism, back int he 1960's, eh?

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Drive: Racism In European Football Kicked Into Spotlight, Kevin-Prince Boateng, AC Milan, Silvio Berlusconi, Monkey Chants, Acting White

White-on-White vs. Black-on-Black Violence

New Details Emerge in High School Basketball Game Fight in Baltimore: MyFoxDC.com

One of the most popular Google searches to this site are questions of Black violence. In this post, I grabbed the closest examples I could find showing that neither group holds a monopoly. It really depends on who is looking, and where they look. Interesting.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: White-on-White vs. Black-on-Black Violence, Basketball, Soccer, Thugs/Hooligans, Europe/USA, Acting White

Penn State Coach McQueary As Coward, Like Father Like Son

It is no surprise that Penn State Assistant Coach Mike McQueary is now double-talking that he contacted the police regarding his witnessing of the Sandusky rape of a 10-year old boy on campus in 2002. Only thing is that neither Penn State Police, or the campus police, have a record of McQueary saying peep to them, unequivocally. As well, McQueary's grand jury testimony makes no mention of contacting any authorities other than Head Coach Paterno, Athletic Director Curley, and University VP Schultz. Oh yeah, McQueary did first contact his own father (John J. McQueary), presumably the cowardly example-setter who reared his son onto the ill-fated, protect-your-own-ass, path upon which he nows finds himself.

I'm fortunate. My old man would have only had one question, if I had been in McQueary's shoes - can he touch the blunt object I used to smash Sandusky's degenerate scull? Any other question or response would have been unacceptable! Momma McQueary must feel pretty good right about now.

With nearly a decade of silence behind them, I pity the chip-off-the-old-bastard McQueary that he and his old man had no heart to help that poor boy or the other boys they should have imagined, from the clutches of a monster. However, it is the faded hope that had to be in the boy's eyes that night, as McQueary arrived and departed the rape scene never to be heard from, that breaks this father's/son's heart.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Penn State Coach McQueary As Coward, Like Father Like Son, Joe Paterno, John McQueary, Tim Curly, Gary Schultz, Acting White

Penn State Coach Sandusky Suspected Of Preying Upon Poor Black Boys

The case against Sandusky bears an uncanny resemblance to the one against former Boston Red Sox Club House Manager, Donald Fitzpatrick, who was convicted of sexually abusing poor black boys in Winter Haven FL, off-season training home of the baseball team (here). What people are not yet saying about Sandusky is the question, in addition, of if the eight victims were predominantly, if not all, poor and black - and there are at least ten more similar at-risk victims in the queue, if you believe Pennsylvania's Governor.

Why is this question/answer not in the MSM (main stream media), but rather I had to dig to find it? (here) and other out of the way places?

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Penn State Coach Sandusky Suspected Of Preying Upon Poor Black Boys, Joe Paterno, Sexual Predator, Tim Curly, Gary Schultz, Acting White

More Black-on-Black Violence At McDonald's

WARNING: EXTREME VIOLENCE



Some people (previous post here) accuse me of encouraging racism by posting black people behaving badly (to state it mildly). To the contrary, I think it should be mandatory that everyone see this behavior, so we can stop pretending that this country's faults arise from 'others'.

The McDonald's cashier clearly went beyond simply defending himself, and he will suffer for this. On the other hand these two females stepped over a line that justified the initial response (IMHO). No telling what kind of life-threatening beating they were prepared to give this working black man. This is the risk you take when you assault someone - they may have a metal rod handy and experience in using it.

FTR, I assume that anytime I pass a fifty (rarely), that it will be scrutinized in all high/low tech's of manner, in order to validate it's authenticity - including the risk that it may be both authentic and rejected.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: More Black-on-Black Violence At McDonald's, Rayon McIntosh, Ex-Convict Cashier, Two Black Girls Beat, Acting Black, Acting White

#17 Why Do Blacks Love Fried Chicken?

I see this question a lot. It is best answered with the form of another question, why do people from the southern US love fried foods? The Europeans that settled the south, prior to slavery, were largely Scottish, and they brought the well-established practice of frying food in animal fat, from Scotland. This penchant was unlike the English, who preferred boiling and baking their fowl.

This question gets black-focused airplay in the north and western US, while rarely heard of south of the Mason-Dixon, where asking it would signal unrestrained ignorance. Beyond the south, non-southern whites use the question to disparage geographically transplanted blacks, as though fried-chicken has some magical hold on black people. It does not. It is easily and economically prepared, and it taste good.

If the higher calorie and fat content of fried foods is well known, the better question is why higher educated and higher income Blacks continue behaviors, like eating fried-chicken (see study here), when the inevitable result is poorer health? In general, education, economics and social customs conspire to keep blacks tethered to the mind set where any tasty food is good for you, as long as there is plenty of it.

The study does not say, but it may be that better off blacks, who have assimilated certain key behaviors in order to advance (for example speech and dress) seek to experience nostalgia, or to ‘keep it real’ in one of the few places, the dinner event, that holds no immediate threat of disqualification.

Other ideas?

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: #17 Why Do Blacks Love Fried Chicken?, KFC, Southern Food, Scotland, Stereotypes, Acting White

Is Diversity Bake Sale Racism?

Just yesterday, the UC Berkeley College Republicans (UCBCR), with the support of fellow Republicans from nearby schools, and Prop. 209-advocate and former UC Regent Ward Connerly, conducted a satirical “increase diversity bake sale”, whereby white men were charged $2 for a cup cake, while Asian men paid $1.50, Latino men $1, and black men $.75. Women paid $.25 less than the comparable male price. Three-hundred cupcakes were sold (out). (here) The UCBCR was attempting to draw attention to SB 185, which they feel might water-down the earlier Prop 209, banning affirmative action in college admissions.

A friend who works near the campus responded, ‘that’s so racist’, wherein I said, ‘it’s not racist, just really stupid’. In fact, these bake-sale events are not new to campus Republicans, and seem a vital part of learning the art of not-persuading-anybody-about-anything, as practiced by the group’s leaders/mentors. I have yet to see mocking-your-adversary as an effective tool of argument/persuasion, but the Republicans keep sticking to it, all the way to DC.

The counter-response/protest, by the UC Student Association, was a ‘die-in’, where a bunch of non-sympathizing students wore black clothes and played-dead near the bake sale. This seems a little stupid, as well. Why not counter with a ‘Walgreens’ sale, wherein white males pay $.75, Asians $1, Latinos $1.50, and Blacks $2, for a tube of toothpaste, depending on their suburban/urban store location. Now debate them apples, kiddies!

UC Berkeley?, the number one public institution of higher learning in the US? Makes one wonder about admissions across-the-board, don’t it?

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Is Diversity Bake Sale Racism?, UC Berkeley Republicans, Ward Connerly, Prop 209, SB 185, Acting White

White-Looking Black New Englanders

When I lived in New England, first to attend Harvard, and then to work, I experienced my introduction to white-looking blacks, who were NOT passing for white. While they would certainly be mistaken for white by most blacks and whites, they made identification as black easy by their conspicuous attendance at all-black events, before you ever knew their history or heard them speak of it.

Unlike passing blacks, these white-skinned blacks, for lack of a better description, are very proud of their black history, some of which dates back even prior to the Mayflower. These ‘white-blacks’ clearly have predominantly Caucasian genetic background, but due to the laws of the day and circumstances, were classified as black and lived their lives as such. They worked as blacks, attended church and school as blacks, and were often (but not always) segregated from opportunities afforded whites. As you would expect, some white-blacks used their white-features to elevate themselves above pigmented blacks, but this author suspects that this elevation is a more common occurrence with traditional light-skinned blacks.

On one occasion, a dear Bostonian friend from a prominent Washington DC family invited me to accompany her on a visit with the grown daughters of a childhood friend. The home of one of the girls resembled typical collegial-Cambridge, white Cambridge that is. Blonde hair and blue eyes were everywhere, especially the children. But something did not seem ‘right’. Everyone was so at ease with my friend’s black-related activities, including the black stranger - me. In the car after we had departed my friend abruptly says, “I know what you are thinking, and the answer is yes, those people are black.” Wow! Did not see that one coming! (I secretly think this smart woman was purposely padding my worldly education, an activity she graciously has repeated to this day.)

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: White-Looking Black New Englanders, Race, Skin-Color, Black Blue-eyed Blonde, Ethnic Identity, Acting White

My Black Cousin Passing As White

Some thirty years ago, after high school, my late father and I took a road trip from Colorado up to Washington state and then to California to see the countryside and some of his relatives. The folks in the Great North looked like him, light-skinned, but definitely Black. I was probably the most dark relative they had ever seen, making me a bit of a novelty on a generally fun visit. When we arrived in California things were a bit different.

After visiting the relatives I recalled, my Dad said we were going to see a side of the family, in Oakland, I had curiously never met. The woman was actually my father’s first cousin and he had not seen her in twenty years, which placed their last visit in the late fifties. Before arriving at her house, he explained that I had never met her because she had been passing for white in her adult life, and he vowed not to see her again. It seems that the last time they met, she told him to keep his distance so as not to ‘mess-up’ her good thing. It was a rare occasion to consider that my Dad’s feelings could be hurt.

Fast-forward to the day we met her and her husband, and true to his word if I did not know better I would have believed they were white. The husband, in particular, had greenish-blueish eyes that definitely had me thinking 'what the hell'. At first I kept looking at her and my Dad, wondering how he got a white ‘lady’ in his family. As the visit wore on things changed, the more she spoke about our family the blacker and blacker she sounded, until I started to see other relatives in her mannerisms and tones. At this point I no longer perceived her to be white, despite her appearance. Both she an her husband seem to 'act more black' as the visit went on. At the end they promised to stay in touch, but my Dad later said that would not happen. In his eyes, they could not ignore family for the sake of a good living denied to their real kin, and then come back so easily. Curiosity did not change his mind.

Later, when I moved to California I never looked them up and Dad never asked about them. I have not seen nor heard of them them since that meeting. I have no doubt that there are white folks (second cousins in this case) today in the Bay Area to whom I was once related, and if they knew their family background (or cared to reveal it) they could claim their substantial black heritage.

Up Next: White-Looking Black New Englanders

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: My Black Cousin Passing As White, Race, Skin-Color, Toure, Ethnic Identity, Acting White

When Black People Pass As White, and Vice-Versa

A few weeks ago, a good friend sent me a NYTimes Magazine article by Toure (here), Preconceptions, which was really about race and identity, although the sub-text debated the pros and cons of corporal punishment. In that article, the black culturalist Toure confronted a white-looking woman on Martha’s Vineyard, who turned out, to his amazement, to be black. The woman’s sister, blonde with blue eyes, became indignant as well that Mr. Toure thought she was also white. White people who are black? Black people who look 100% white? Huh?

When I was a kid growing up in Denver, there was a family, call them the George’s, who began my education on how white people could be black. The parents had twin daughters my age who looked every bit as white as mom and dad, while also being black. Now my own father was very light, but I still had difficulty accepting what my brown-skinned mother said, that the ever-so-white-looking George’s were in fact black. There is a big difference between light-skinned blacks and white-skinned blacks. In the end, my child’s-mind concluded that the George’s were black as it suited them, and/or others. On one hand, black people seemed a lot more social (read fun to a kid) than whites, but this did not change the preference.

Later on, when I was in college, one of the George daughters was in a spectacular downhill skiing accident and nearly died. The news coverage of the day never mentioned that she was black, although stories back then invariably spoke of race if the incident was extraordinary involving a black. In those days, before political correctness, race always mattered and media coverage reflected this. (What was a black person doing trying to ski in the first place!) The bottom line is that people often let others believe what they want, as long as it is to their advantage to do so.

The white-looking black woman Toure wrote about on Martha’s Vineyard certainly benefited from her fair features, whether she would admit it or not. Blacks that ‘pass for white’, by letting others believe their eyes, benefit the most. Studies (one here) show whites, and blacks, continue to favor light-skinned blacks. Toure’s MV subject certainly benefited socially from black acceptance, merited or not. What she or her sister did not count on was Toure’s negative implication that they might be having it both ways.

UP NEXT: My Black Cousin Passing As White

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: When Black People Pass As White, and Vice-Versa, Race, Skin-Color, Toure, Ethnic Identity, Acting White

Yohann Gene: First Black In The Tour de France

"Yohann Gene of Guadeloupe has just become the first black cyclist in the Tour de France. The 30-year-old French professional road bicycle racer competes for the UCI Professional Continental team named Europcar.

Considered a role model for many bicycling athletes, Gene has been racing professionally since 2005. He became interested in bicycling at age 17 after moving to Europe. Upon his arrival, Gene entered a special high school course for athletically-gifted pupils..." Time Magazine

So, what's the big deal? Well, the big deal is simply that until whites, or blacks for that matter, see that the other is capable of competing in a particular activity, they have a nasty habit of subscribing all sorts of idiocy to the reason(s) why the activity is exclusive to a group. Too tall, too short, too big, too small, too much fast twitch, to much slow twitch, etc. It really comes down to who cares to devote themselves from an early age.

Notwithstanding all of this year's crashes, I love watching the TDF and cheering for whomever I like, regardless of nationality, or ethnicity. I cheered for that knucklehead Lance Armstrong, all those years, so you best believe I will be searching out Gene tonight on replay, as I catch today's race.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Yohann Gene: First Black In The Tour de France, Black Cycling, Racism, Lance Armstrong, Europcar France, Acting White

White Oakland Driver Flirts With Getting Nigga’d

First of all, I never knew that the N-word (which I detest) could be a verb, but I have been told that somewhere in the Oakland slang dictionary you will find a definition that goes something like:
“NIGGA’D, verb (used with object) 1. to deprive of life in any manner, by an individual who is often black and self-described as a “nigga”; cause the death for reasons deemed senseless and grossly out of proportion to any alledged offense or threat”.

Anyhow, as I was exiting the freeway this morning, a black guy in a busted-ass vehicle cut-off an older white man in a late model Infiniti FX SUV. The old white dude took offense and tried to go around N-man on the exit ramp, who was not having any of the displeasure. Meanwhile, I’m getting ready to speed-dial the paramedics, because I’m thinking that this could go very wrong for them and me, as a bystanding driver in the firing line.

Then the mess got hotter. Old white guy pulls along side, rolls down the window, and starts jawing with challenged N-man. Neither moves against the green light. I wait, ready to hit the floor mats. Nothing. I slide past white man quickly and with a very low profile. N-man then proceeds through light, while old white man turns left behind me.

At the next light I wanted to ask the old white man what was wrong with him challenging a brother with such obvious “unresolved economic and social issues”. He could have gotten himself killed over some stupid nothing. Was it worth the risk? Hell no. Long ago, in Boston, I learned that regardless of race, unless someone actually hits your car, keep the F-moving.

I’m no fan of the N-word or its derivations and wish the word would go away, but this does not change the accuracy of the urban defintion, or the warning it represents. Remember, everyone does not place the same value on human life, yours or their own. Word to the wise. Keep moving.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: White Oakland Driver Flirts With Getting Nigga’d, Road-Rage, Killing, Violence, Acting Black, Acting White

Seeing Patients:Unconscious Bias In Heath Care

There are few people I looked up to more, during my time at Harvard and living in Boston, than HMS Professor Augustus "Gus" White, MD, PhD. "Gus" holds many 'first' distinctions, including his tenure as the first black chief surgeon (orthopaedic) at a Harvard teaching hospital (Beth Israel).

When Gus speaks, smart people listen. He has written a book (pictured) on racial bias in medicine. The book is part autobiography, but in typical fashion it is also a challenge for change. He writes how minorities, particularly blacks, receive different treatment than whites, from pain medications to operations like lung cancer, hip replacements, angioplasty, and also recommended preventive treatments, including flu vaccines and colonoscopies. While never one to shy from controversy, Gus reveals how even the best-intentioned physicians in our society continue a bias that has them fail their oath to do no harm.

James C. Collier

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Dove/Unilever Team With Ogilvy & Mather On Racist Pitch

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but upon seeing this advertisement there is none. I also believe the racism accusation should be saved from use every time someone acknowledges difference. This is not one of those cases. This is some Madison Avenue racist bull-shit. I will avoid buying anything related to either of these companies in the future. I say boycott them bastards!

Where to start? Ad for soap, before and after, black to white, dirty to clean. Fat to thin. Dry to moist. Wrinkled to smooth. Sassy to demure. Ergo black is undesirable, white rocks the Casbah. And what’s with the skinny Latina? Pandering to up-swing minority at the expense of another. The only thing missing is a tattoo on the sister. I guess Dove cannot wash away ink, just yet.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Dove/Unilever Team With Ogilvy & Mather On Racist Pitch, Madison Avenue, MSM, Racism, Acting Black, Acting White

Abortion: Black Genocide vs. Performance Gap

There is a growing right-to-life strategy, in America, of labeling legal abortions as racism and genocide. Nothing could be further from the truth. The disproportion in black abortions reported is not due to a conspiracy of whites, in general, or Planned Parenthood specifically. Rather, it is the direct result of black women and men, together, shifting the responsibility of whether or not to potentially make a baby until after conception. I suggest that this is a performance gap (of responsibility).

According to the US Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), black women, as just over 12% of the US population, have 36% of the total abortions. Hispanic women in equal percentages have 25% of the abortions. White women, at 69% of the population have but 36% of all abortions. In all cases, these abortions are the choice of the mother, courtesy of Roe v. Wade and the right granted by the Supreme Court for women to control their own bodies.

In keeping with the disparity in baby decision-making between whites and blacks, white contraception usage in the US is 65%, versus 55% for blacks, and 59% for Hispanics, according to the US Census Bureau.

Beyond the evangelical hype, genocide is when one group of people goes about killing another group. In this case, black women are forcing themselves, at higher numbers, into an after-the-fact abortion decision, rather than a before-the-fact contraception decision with their sexual partner. This is not genocide, but rather it is a crude, emotional, and expensive form of birth-control.

Right-to-life organizations are certainly within their own rights to continue to wage their battle to overturn Rowe v. Wade on religious and moral grounds, but the manufacture of a race-card defense is neither moral nor religious. The accusation of whites, by whites or blacks, of purposely killing black babies for the purpose of extinguishing the group is wrong-headed and plays upon the blacks-as-forever-victims-of-the-white-man meme, even if by their own hands.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Abortion: Black Genocide vs. Performance Gap, Obama, Planned Parenthood, Racism, Acting Black, Acting White

Class Warfare: Jalen Rose-Grant Hill Controversy

With all the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear calamity going on in Japan, I nearly missed the face-off between the black social classes, as represented by professional basketball superstars, Jalen Rose, representing Michigan and the underprivileged, and Grant Hill, playing for team Duke and the bourgeois. Who would have thought there could still be such odds within the black community, but here it is.

It seems that Mr. Rose produced an ESPN documentary that included waxing on how he and other Michigan “Fab Five” players thought black players on rival Duke, including Mr. Hill, were ‘Uncle Toms’ and ‘bitches’. Mr. Rose is clear in saying he resented the middle-class, intact family origins of Hill and others, sought out by elite Duke, and Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski). I’m sure Jalen Rose was not the only black nineteen year old from the ghetto to ever harbor animosity toward those of greater privilege, and Mr. Hill should understand that the best defense to the accusation of 'elitism' is no defense. The NYTimes is not the medium to show that you missed the salient point, however poorly emphasized.

Jalen, for his part, still clearly has some growing up to do. His cinematic efforts leave murky his personal developments about blacks like Mr. Hill, rather than making it clear that what he thought at nineteen was then, and now he is a grown man who knows better. Weak attempts at apology and explanation, after the fact, cannot erase the sting that Mr. Hill felt through Rose’s on-screen denigrations.

More importantly, these highly-paid athletes serve up the rarely discussed issue of class, within race, in black America. These discussions are more typically punctuated with name-calling, minus any supporting discussion. I hope that some good will come of it, as both men seem to have positive contributions that extend beyond the basketball court.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Class Warfare: Jalen Rose-Grant Hill Controversy, Duke, Uncle Tom, Bitches, Acting Black, Acting White

Teaching Black Kids – The Uphill Battle

I just read a gripping (for me) article by a white teacher on the challenges of teaching black kids. I worked hard, emotionally, to get through the whole article (see link at the end of this post). My difficulty was two-fold. The author, speaking from his own experiences in the southeast US, largely failed to consider factors beyond the superficial. He spoke of behavior, not of what was underlying and driving it. However, I also realized that his job was to teach subject matter, not raise somebody else’s kids, or save a race. On the flip-side, so many of his words hit home, from my own classroom experiences and knowledge, that to stop reading would have denied the true depth and accuracy of the issues of the black classroom and community.

Last year I spent quite a bit of time in an all-black urban high school class, discussing current issues. In keeping with a nearly 60% drop-out rate for boys, my experiences were predominantly with junior/senior black girls. Like the author of the article, I found the students poor command of English grammar, spelling and structure as a big impediment to communicating and teaching them anything. Their conversation dynamic, loud and punctuated with interruption, precluded finding commonality. Simply stated, discussing high school-level/adult ideas through elementary-level dynamics results in elementary conclusions and learning.

Even more challenging is the simplistic and contorted view of racism and its contribution, where it has become the label for any idea, person, or event of which black kids wish to avoid – for whatever childish reason. Try to teach Newton’s laws of gravity and as soon as the kids find out that Isaac Newton was white, his contribution becomes racist and not worth their effort to learn. The kid who sees the value in separating race from subject matter runs the danger of getting Jones’d – verbally ridiculed – if not for ‘acting white’, at least for ‘accepting white’. These same kids, in fits of keepin’-it-real honesty, will tell you that without whites their world stops turning.

Oppositional culture has a headlock on a significant portion of black youth. The rap music industry, with the ghosts of rappers Biggie and Tupac (pictured), is the unofficial dissemination instrument and arbiter of this insidious unwavering dynamic. I take issue with a lot of what this teacher says on the surface (here), but I take almost no issue with the underlying vectors he opens onto black youth and oppositional culture. He suffers the superficial, but he is not blowing smoke. His fix as one person – to get out – is no fix for those kids he left behind, and I cannot fault him one bit. This is not what he signed up for, nor does there seem to be a plan for addressing it.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Teaching Black Kids – The Uphill Battle, Disparity, Dropouts, Christopher Jackson, Acting Black, Acting White

Omar Thornton: Mass Murderer

It never ceases to amaze me the myriad of agendas that surface and latch-on when some nut-job kills a bunch of people. If the killer is black, and victims’ white, he must have hated white people, or alternately, the victims must have done something racist to provoke the killer’s rampage, like called him the N-word.

While either or both of these accusations may be true, I submit that someone who goes on a killing spree, such as Omar Thornton’s, has major screws gone loose, well beyond being called names, or having a dislike of whites. Yes, Omar snapped, but the people who are jumping on the race bandwagon are off-base. You do not take off down Carnage Rd. ending with you putting a bullet in your scull because of racism. At least, not if you are a rational human being. Full state-of-mind should be the focus, before we jump to race, no matter what his girlfriend says or what the lunatic told his mother.

I suspected that Omar’s girlfriend of eight years, Kristi Hannah (pictured) was white, so I looked her up – yep, she is white. Now if black Omar simply hated white people, something in the puzzle is missing, as Ms. Hannah describes him as the kindest person on earth. If his workplace was a cesspool of racism, I doubt that all of his co-workers could/would conspire to keep it a secret. On the other hand, if Omar had undiagnosed mental problems, his killing spree behavior starts to paint a believable picture. I doubt that Omar's family is telling his whole story just yet.

In the coming weeks more will come out on Omar's history, his workplace, and his state of mind. There are other blacks at that workplace - what do they have to say about plant racism, and Omar? For now, people on all sides need to stop with how this proves their race theories, rather than what we know right now - that Omar lost his mind and a bunch of people who should be alive and well are dead.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Omar Thornton: Mass Murderer, Killing, Kristi Hannah, Baseball, Home Runs, Acting White

The Nigger Show

When racism masquerades as something else
Don't let the virulent hatred of Obama's presidency - veiled in "policy differences" - fool you. Just ask someone raised around bigotry.

'The nigger show."

I first heard this expression used to describe the Obama administration during a visit to my hometown in East Texas during the early summer of 2009. I understood what the epithet meant: Our minds are made up, the president lacks legitimacy, and there is nothing he can do that we will support. I was not surprised to hear such a phrase.

I grew up in the 1960s during the ragged end of the Jim Crow era, where many of the books in my school library were stamped Colored School, meaning they had been brought to the white school when the town was forced to integrate the public school system. I recall my parents had instructed me, before my first day of elementary school, not to sit in a chair where a black child had sat. And I remember my sister joked that her yearbook, when it appeared at the end of her first year of integrated high school, was in "black and white."

The outward signs of racism of my home state have now disappeared, but racial hatred remains. My father and his friends still use the word nigger to refer to all black people, and the people of my hometown don't hesitate to spout their racist rhetoric to my face, assuming I agree with them. I hold my tongue for the sake of having continued access to this kind of truth. I learned long ago how not to accept the hatred I was being taught and how to survive not having done so. More recently, I realized that I also learned another lesson: how to recognize racism when it masquerades as something else.

More than 40 years after my first experiences with racism, I am thousands of miles away in Rome, but surrounded by ghosts. Last year, I received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a community program called the Big Read, which sponsors activities to encourage communities to come together to read and discuss a single book. I chose Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, in part because I thought that some of the most salient issues in the novel - racism, classism, xenophobia, the Jim Crow era - were perhaps relevant to an increasingly diverse, contemporary Italy.

That there is racism in Italy is obvious to anyone who pays attention to current affairs. In fact, during the first week of the Big Read Rome, a story in one of Italy's national newspapers detailed the experience of a Nigerian woman being called sporca nera (essentially, dirty nigger) by two women she asked to stop smoking on a Roman bus.

But I never imagined that consideration of the novel would prove so relevant to a country that had just elected its first black president.

Ironically, until the election of Barack Obama, my discussions of racism in the United States seemed historical. I felt that with the passage of the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, the country had turned a corner, that the slow evaporation of overt racism was perhaps inevitable. Now, my personal experience of Southern racism feels current and all too familiar. A news story about the Big Read that appeared in La Repubblica on Sept. 20 (unaware that my grant was awarded during the Bush administration), presciently brought Rome, Obama, To Kill a Mockingbird, and racism together in its headline: "Obama brings antiracist book to Rome."

Jimmy Carter was lambasted for having recently explained that the vehemence with which many Americans resist Obama's presidency is an expression of racism. Carter was accused of fanning the flames of racial misunderstanding by labeling as "racist" what on the surface could be perceived as legitimate policy differences. Like Carter, as a white Southern man, I can see beyond the seemingly legitimate rhetoric to discern what is festering behind much of the opposition to Obama and to his administration's policy initiatives. I also have access, via the racist world from which I came, direct confirmation of the racial hatred toward Obama.

The veiled racism I sense in the United States today is couched, in public discourse at least, in terms that allow for plausible deniability of racist intent. And those who resist any policy initiative from the Obama administration engage in a scorched-earth policy that reminds me of the self-centered white flight, the abandonment of public schools, and the proliferation of private schools, that followed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate public schools. The very people, like my own rural, working-class family back in East Texas, who stand to gain from the efforts of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are, because of their racism, willing to oppose policies that would benefit them the most. Their racism outweighs their own self-interest.

Unfortunately, racists in the United States have learned one valuable lesson since the 1960s: They cannot express their racism directly. In public, they must veil their racial hatred behind policy differences. This obfuscation makes direct confrontation difficult. Anyone pointing out their racist motivations runs the risk of unfairly playing "the race card." But I know what members of my family mean when they say - as so many said during the town hall meetings in August - that they "want their country back." They want it back, safely, in the hands of someone like them, a white person. They feel that a black man has no right to be the president of their country.

During a phone conversation a few weeks after Obama's election, my father lamented that he and my mother might have to stop visiting the casinos in Shreveport, La.: Given Obama's election, "the niggers are already walking around like they own the place. They won't even give up their seats for white women anymore. I don't know what we're going to do with 'em."

My students often ask me how I managed to avoid accepting the lesson in racism offered by my family. From the time I was 4 or 5 years old - roughly the same age as Scout Finch, the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird - I recall knowing that I didn't agree with racism. More important, my paternal grandmother provided me with the encouragement that I could ignore what I was being taught. She provided me with the courage to resist.

My grandmother hoped that my father and his father represented the last generations of the type of Southern man that had shaped her life - virulently racist, prone to violence, proud of their ignorance, and self-defeatingly stubborn. It was a type of Southern man that she hoped and prayed I could avoid becoming.

However, my father and his father were not the last of their kind; their racial hatred has been passed on. My grandmother, if she were alive, would recognize the same tendencies among many of the people who shout down politicians and bring guns to public rallies. She would also see how the only change they have made is to replace overt racist epithets with more euphemistic language.

Rather than seeing my home state and its racist attitudes, slowly, over time, pulled in the direction of more acceptance, the country as a whole has become more like the South, the racial or cultural equivalent of what is called the Walmartization of American retail.

It might be easy to see literature as impotent in the face of the persistence and adaptability of racism. But I continue to believe in the transformative potential of literature and its ability to provide an alternative view of the world. And for children who are not lucky enough to have grandmothers like mine, I believe that books like To Kill a Mockingbird can provide inoculation against the virus that is racism.

by Carlos Dews, author, a professor of English literature, and chairman of the Department of English Language and Literature at John Cabot University in Rome.

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This article originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of Aspenia, the Italian journal published by the Aspen Foundation Italy.

James C. Collier

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Old White Man Whups Young Black On City Bus

WARNING: LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE



This happened yesterday here in Alameda County. Unbelievable! There is a whole lot going on in the video, but mostly a young Black man let's his mouth write a check that his behind returns, NSF. You don't really hear how the beef got started, something about shining shoes, but the White man retreated (wisely) to the front of the bus, with Black guy following. The girls near the Black guy, including the one with the camera, were clearly egging him on. Listening to them was a bad move for him. Black guy taps old White guy, who BTW is wearing an "I'm a M-F" t-shirt, and the rest is You Tube history.

So what do we think about this, and keep it clean please?

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Old White Guy Whups Young Black On City Bus, AC Transit, Oakland, Fight, Violence, Acting White