America's Persistent Racism--And Just Two of Its Effects

Two quick statistics, out today in the Sunday New York Times, from two separate articles:

--In the early 1950s, the median income of Chicago's public housing residents was nearly two-thirds of the citywide average. By 1970, it was barely one-third that.

--And today, Black mothers--and babies, both--in the United States are dying at more than double the rate of white mothers and babies.

But, sure, someone ask why they don't "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps."

We segregate, separate, large numbers of fellow Americans, by color, for God's sake, away from us but also away from jobs, certainly away from the better paying jobs, too, give them an inferior education then are surprised they're on welfare. Then, when they can and do get some measly help, that welfare, we insist they work for it, as though it's easy for them to have a car. Keeping in mind, we also don't want there to be mass transit so maybe they can get around our cities, to and from those jobs, quickly, easily and at low cost.

Freaking brilliant.

And then it's done by the wealthy of our society, people who were born to and given large amounts of money, from birth, like our own current President, and too many of the rest of us go along with this ugliness and insanity.

It's a great thing we're a "Christian nation", isn't it?
Links:

Why America's Black Mothers and Babies 

Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis 

Mass incarceration of African Americans 

affects the racial achievement 

Black Americans incarcerated five times 

more than white people

Why We Have Black History Month

What it's like to be Black in America.

How segregated school districts 

keep black children in poverty

How Home Ownership Keeps 

Blacks Poorer Than Whites - Forbes

Black People More Likely to Be Stopped 

by Cops, Study Finds

Blacks Are Most Likely To Be 

Arrested By Police

Black people twice as likely to be charged with drugs

Black people six times more likely to face drug arrest

Study: Whites More Likely to Abuse Drugs Than Blacks

Whites deal more drugs, but 

blacks get arrested more often

Black People Are Way More Likely To Be Killed By Police Than Their White Peers: Study

Black Americans incarcerated five times 

more than white people

Nonwhites Are 2/3 of US Prisoners

Kristof: U.S. imprisons blacks at rates higher 

than South Africa

U.S. Imprisons More Blacks Than Apartheid South Africa

What part or parts of any of this seems remotely fair or just or right?

Keep in mind, too, this is just a small portion of all the many, many statistics on America, Americans and how Blacks are treated in our nation and have been since the nation's inception.

This isn't "Black History" so much as what has been going on for the past 300 years and what's still going on and why we need to change it. Why we need to change all of it.

Links:

Slavery by Another Name

From Slavery to Mass Incarceration, the Role of Prisons

'13TH' Argues Mass Incarceration Is An Extension Of Slavery

The Case for Reparations - The Atlantic

Separate, Unequal, and Ignored

KCPT: Minorities Don't Matter In Kansas City?

Once again, our local PBS TV station, KCPT had a full one half hour discussing local issues and once again, one more time, they chose to make it an entire half hour, an entire show, all participants, the whole panel full of white people.

Only white people.

The closest they got to a minority was having a white woman on the show.

Otherwise?

All middle-aged or senior, white men.

Check it out.

The show began with an interview with one Wendell Cox, Principal of Demographia. Then it went to a panel discussion, mostly on the just-passed election with the following panel members:

--Jason Grill, media/public affairs consultant, 

--Mike Sanders, Attorney with Humphrey, Farrington and McClain

--Crosby Kemper III, Executive Director of the Kansas City Public Library and 

--Annie Presley, Author

All white.

Every. Single. One.

In the longest segment, they discussed the recently-executed 2016 presidential election. You would think that would include some input from, oh, I don't know, some Black Americans? Some Hispanic Americans? Mexican-Americans? Any other groups?

Nah.

Just the white folks. Not so much as even one "token", to be crude.

You would think there weren't any Black or Hispanic or any other minority people in this entire city, watching this show, most weeks and that the election didn't effect them in any way whatever.

It apparently, really is a white man's world. At least in Kansas City.

Ironically and coincidentally (hypocritically?), the program was followed by two ads promoting inclusion and helping young minority youth in the city.   I nearly choked.

To be clear here, however, they will accept monetary contributions from minorities, rest assured.

Link: Ruckus | KCPT

Yet Another Killing of An Innocent American

Last evening, in Minnesota.

"Qui tacet consentit."

Maxim of the law. 

"Silence gives consent."

Inventions by Black Americans, Part I

What Is It That's Different About This President, Anyway?

Last week, this took place:

GOP Congress Breaks With History For First Time In 41 Years 

GOP Denies Hearings for Obama's Unseen Budget

Congress Declines to Hear Obama's Budget Proposal in Person

Then, this, yesterday.

Agencies of the U.S. government make regulations to implement acts of Congress – such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation limiting carbon emissions from power plants, under the Clean Air Act. Sometimes plaintiffs challenge the legality of such a regulation, arguing the agency exceeded what Congress intended – as plaintiffs have done in this case. Occasionally, plaintiffs ask the courts to put the regulation on hold until the courts have fully considered their lawsuit – arguing they’ll otherwise suffer irreparable harm while awaiting a ruling. Often, as in this case, the lower court refuses. But never before in history has the Supreme Court overruled a lower court that refused such a stay, and decided itself to put a regulation on hold. Yet that’s what the five Republican appointees on the Court did yesterday evening -- blocking the Environmental Protection Agency’s landmark regulation. They gave no reasons.

The result is to freeze the heart of Obama’s climate policy until the courts have fully considered its legality. When might that be? The D.C. Circuit’s Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments for July 2, so a ruling from that court could be early next fall. The Supreme Court might then hear an appeal in late 2017 and decide by 2018. Of course, the five Republican appointees might then decide the regulation is illegal, or by then a Republican president might simply refuse to put the rule into effect. (Several Republican candidates, including Marco Rubio, don’t believe carbon emissions are contributing to climate change.)

In this case, the five Republicans on the Court decided that the plaintiffs – coal companies, power plants, utilities – will suffer irreparable harm over the next two or three years if the regulation is put into effect. But what about the irreparable harm to the environment from two or three more years of gunk being spewed into the atmosphere? Why should harm to profits take precedence over harm to life on earth? What planet are the five Republicans on, anyway?         --Robert Reich

What is it?

I'm trying to think.

What is it about this President, this one President that's different that Congress treats him differently than any other.

Let me see...

Missouri's Going to Execute Again

With Missouri's last execution, of a 74 year old man who was missing part of his brain, literally, and so, had a low IQ, it seems certain Missouri will once again execute another inmate tomorrow:

Advocates for inmate ask Missouri governor to halt execution

It seems certain.

After all, he's black.

Forget that he was tried back in 1992 in St. Louis when blacks/African-Americans were excluded from juries in that area.

Forget that.

He's scheduled to be executed tomorrow, too. Precious little time to get anything done on this now, likely.

I wonder where the "pro-life" people are on this one? All the Catholics, all of them. Anyone screaming that "life is precious."

No, I thought not.

It doesn't look good.

We have to go through with that age-old "good idea" that killing people is a great idea, to show people shouldn't kill people.

Links: 

Congratulations, Missouri! You kill me!

• Shame on you, Missouri

What some---too many---in the Right Wing believe

A friend sent me an email a "friend" of ours had sent him. The original sender is a rabid Right Winger , racist and, by his own admission, an Obama hater. Here's a list--probably a short one--of just some of the things they believe about this president:

QUIT BASHING OBAMA

Quit trashing Obama's accomplishments. He has done more than any other President before him. Here is a list of his impressive accomplishments:

1. First President to be photographed smoking a joint. (Really?)

2. First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner. (He was born in Hawai'i).

3. First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in. (More of the birther nonsense)

4. First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States. (Which, actually, was the Republicans' doing because they wouldn't do their own job)

5. First President to violate the War Powers Act. (These people clearly don't know their own nation's history. He's no way the first president accused of this)

6. First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf
of Mexico. (Sometimes--and frequently--you can't even tell what they're referring to because naturally they reference nothing)

7. First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party. (Not acknowledging the requirement to purchase car insurance, etc., etc. and they put this on President Obama solely though it was passed by Congress. Adn thank goodness)

8. First President to spend a trillion dollars on "shovel-ready" jobs when there was no such thing as "shovel-ready" jobs. (Again, no reference from them)

9. First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters. (??  GM? Who knows?)

10. First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat. (Well, yes, no other president had a "Dream Act."  Okay)

11. First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal
immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions. (No reference)

12. First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees. (Wha?)

13. First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (Chrysler) to resign. (Well, let's see, the man's work was driving General Motors into financial ruin and the nation was going to bail them out with Federal moneys. He should be kept?)

14. First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space. (Blame the president for the progress of the nation's space program, over which he has no control. Okay. Sure. I guess)

15. First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation. (A blatant untruth. Google it)

16. First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present. (None other than President Harry Truman first used the autopen. They really want to go there?)

17. First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it. (??  Again, nothing. No reference. No specifics)

18. First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases. (Well, let's see, we have the most expensive health care system in the world, it's the number one reason for bankruptcy in the nation and we are to do nothing?)

19. First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate
a factory. (???)

20. First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH,
IN). (Actually, not the president but his administration and it was over civil rights, if I can figure out what they're referring to here)

21. First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago. (Again, no idea. What I do know is that these people LOVE the status quo and so, support staying on fossil fuels, no matter what)

22. First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal). (Again, another blatant untruth)

23. First President to fire an inspector general of AmeriCorps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.  (I had to research this one. There may or may not be merit here. Naturally, I hope there isn't. I'll have to research more. I would think that, if there were any truth to it, he would be eaten alive by the Republicans)

24. First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office. (Google this yourself. It's nonsense)

25. First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists. (That's one of my favorites--"radical left wing anachists." Wow).

26. First President to golf more than 150 separate times in his five years in office. (This in spite of all the data out there that proves Dubya' vacationed FAR more than no. 44).

27. First President to hide his birth, medical, educational and travel records. (Blatant silliness, if not absurdity)

28. First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it. (They gave him the Nobel Prize. It's his fault. Got it).

29. First President to go on multiple "global apology tours" and concurrent "insult our friends"
tours. (A claim of the most outrageous and silly)

30. First President to go on over 17 lavish vacations, in addition to date nights and Wednesday
evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayers. (Search this one for yourself, too. Dubya' went on far, far more vacations and Pres. Obama hasn't saddled us with a bunch of trips, all on our expense)

31. First President to have personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife. (One more time, search it for yourself. Ridiculous)

32. First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense. (Patent nonsense. Check it out for yourself. Somebody's smoking something)

33. First President to fly in a personal trainer from Chicago at least once a week at taxpayer expense. (They pay their trainer $60/hr)

34. First President to repeat the Quran and tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth. (If you Google this, it comes out this same way, word for word. They love calling Pres. Obama a liar, a Muslim, a Kenyan and/or a Communist)

35. First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the American 50 states (Mexico vs
Arizona). (I've no idea what the reference is hear)

36. First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they "volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences." (Probably often repeated by the Right Wing but again, patently untrue)

37. Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the last suggestion.  (???)
_____________________________________________

Who knows what else they believe---and want to believe---about this president? The only things you can count on is that they'll keep creating more and more, until he's out of office and theyl'l believe everyone of them.

Truths about race and race relations in America

From comedian now social commentator Chris Rock:

"Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people."

White Privilege, by the numbers

From the original post:

This Comic Strip Explains White Privilege Perfectly

Slavery. And America

Humans of New York

They take you from your family, your history. They make you work. They tell you when to mate. They chop off your foot if you try to run away. 

And I’m sorry to say this, but white people did that. 

And black people are still living with the remnants. For over 200 years, black people built this country and didn’t get a single dollar. And sure, it isn’t happening anymore, but we’re still living with the remnants. We don’t have the same connections, the same powerful friends, the same access to capital. I tell young African Americans that they’ll do just fine, but they’re going to have to work twice as hard. I tell them that they will need to go out of their way to search for their identity. 

They aren’t going to find much about their heritage in the history books. Even the constitution classifies black people as three-fifths of a man, and that was supposedly written by the most enlightened, glorified white people of that time. I tell young African Americans that they are going to have to dig hard to find out the giant contributions that Africa made to civilization, because they aren’t going to find it on the television. And I tell them that just because it’s a tough road does not excuse them from personal responsibility. I tell them that God put them on earth to build and not destroy. And I tell them that some opportunities cost money, but books are absolutely free.”

Links:  Slavery by Another Name

Watch the Film | Slavery by Another Name | PBS

On this day, American History

Happy Birthday, Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

The oldest of eight children, Ida B. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her parents, who were very active in the Republican Party during Reconstruction, died in a yellow fever epidemic in the late 1870s. Wells attended Rust College and then became a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee. Shortly after she arrived, Wells was involved in an altercation with a white conductor while riding the railroad. She had purchased a first-class ticket, and was seated in the ladies car when the conductor ordered her to sit in the Jim Crow (i.e. black) section, which did not offer first-class accommodations. She refused and when the conductor tried to remove her, she "fastened her teeth on the back of his hand." Wells was ejected from the train, and she sued. She won her case in a lower court, but the decision was reversed in an appeals court.

While living in Memphis, Wells became a co-owner and editor of a local black newspaper called THE FREE SPEECH AND HEADLIGHT. Writing her editorials under the pseudonym "Iola," she condemned violence against blacks, disfranchisement, poor schools, and the failure of black people to fight for their rights. She was fired from her teaching job and became a full-time journalist. In 1892, Tom Moss, a respected black store owner and friend of Barnett, was lynched, along with two of his friends, after defending his store against an attack by whites. Wells, outraged, attacked the evils of lynching in her newspaper; she also encouraged the black residents of Memphis to leave town. When Wells was out of town, her newspaper was destroyed by a mob and she was warned not to return to Memphis because her life was in danger. Wells took her anti-lynching campaign to England and was well received.

Wells wrote many pamphlets exposing white violence and lynching and defending black victims. In 1895 she married Ferdinand Barnett, a prominent Chicago attorney. The following year she helped organize the National Association of Colored Women. She was opposed to the policy of accommodation advocated by Booker T. Washington and had personal, if not ideological, difficulties with W.E.B. Du Bois. In 1909, she helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Wells-Barnett continued her fight for black civil and political rights and an end to lynching until shortly before she died.

She documented her anti-lynching work in Souther Horros and Other Writings available here: http://amzn.to/1mLr5DE

Must-see movie coming soon

Can hardly wait.

On this day...in nearby Oklahoma, 1921

From the  Zinn Education Project

In 1921, Greenwood (in Tulsa, Oklahoma) was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in the U.S. Serving over 8,000 residents, Greenwood’s commercial district was known nationally as the ‘Negro Wall Street’. The community boasted two newspapers, over a dozen churches, and hundreds of African-American-owned businesses. On the evening of May 31, 1921, Greenwood was ravaged by a white mob. By the conclusion of the riot at midday, June 1, virtually every building in a 42-square-block area of the community--homes, schools, churches, and businesses--was burned to the ground and thousands were left homeless. Over 1,200 homes were destroyed. Every church, school, and business in Greenwood was set on fire. Approximately 8,000 African-Americans were left homeless and penniless. (Continue reading here: http://bit.ly/1pGWfv5.)

(People) need to learn the hidden history of the 1921 Tulsa race riot (massacre) and how this links to racial wealth inequality today. Read "Burning Tulsa: The Legacy of Black Dispossession" by Linda Christensen of Rethinking Schools and see her classroom lesson: http://bit.ly/1fDOUvG


You can read and see more about that ugly, fateful day, here:

What happened to Black Wall Street on June 1, 1921?

Which brings up this article from this past week from The New Yorker:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Reparations

And it is based on this recent article from The Atlantic

The Case for Reparations

Most Americans likely don't know there were, in fact, some reparations paid for slavery just after the Civil War, as Ta-Nehisi Coates points out.  Trouble is, they were paid to slave owners.  How's that for irony?  And hypocrisy.

Food for thought.

Enjoy your Sunday, everyone.

Shootings in Kansas City

Three white people shot, he internets and media light up:

Shootings at Jewish centers in Kansas leave 3 dead

Mostly black people shot?  Not so much:

Homicide KC 

23 people have died in Kansas City-area homicides this year

Just sayin'.

Read more here: http://homicide.kansascity.com/#storylink=cpy

Senate Republicans turn American history on its head

I don't know if you were paying attention two days ago but, as the title above says, Senate Republicans just further turned American history on its head.

I think all of us were taught, in grade school and middle and high school, all, that America was about equality and fairness.

Right?

Well, nuts to all that, say those Senate Republicans, yet one more time with their vote Wednesday this week:

Senate Republicans unanimously reject equal pay bill

Despite weeks of heavy messaging, Democrats failed to get a single GOP vote as the third attempt in recent years to pass the wage equality legislation fell six votes short.

“The promise of equal pay for equal work should not be a partisan issue — it should be a matter of common sense and fairness, an essential step for the security of our families, the growth of our economy, and the strength of our middle class,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement after the vote.

“Unfortunately, Senate Republicans disagree,” she added.

I say again, why any woman--any woman--in this nation would vote Republican, for this political party or for anyone in it is beyond me.

Now that I'm at it, why would black Americans vote for them? Republicans have come out against renewing the Civil Rights Act. 

Gays? Republicans are famously, famously against equality here, too, for gay Americans.

The elderly? Unless their wealthy, of course?  Republicans are for dismantling Social Security.

Hispanics? Republicans are notoriously against immigration reform of virtually any sort.

It truly seems the only people left to vote Republican are white, wealthy men.

Well, and any middle- and lower-class American the Republicans are able to dupe.

Republicans against equal pay for women

With this result yesterday:

Senate Republicans unanimously reject equal pay bill

What woman, what working woman would vote Republican?

What woman, Hispanic, black, gay or elderly person would vote for this political party, for that matter?

I just don't get it.

Important article so few will read, let alone understaand

I ran across this article at Alternet just this morning:

White America Is Oblivious to the Truth About Black Poverty

It outlines a lot of what I've thought and believed and heck, even seen, for some time. That is, most white people don't understand even what black people have been through in this country, let alone the intransigent, deeply inset racism that not only shaped this country but that still exists today. Another way to put it: most of us don't understand we don't understand and further, much worse, we don't understand how mistaken we are, let alone how still very racist and destructive we are and so, our country is and how that keeps blacks down and from rising up financially, socially and economically.

Some of the best, most important parts of the article:

Conservatives and liberals alike prefer to focus on perceived deficits in black and brown people than on structural racism and the concepts of white supremacy that undergird it as the principal reasons for disparate conditions and outcomes for many blacks and Hispanics. White privilege means not having to think about the many ways the lives of those who are classified as white are enhanced and protected by the subjugation and exclusion of racial minorities. White privilege provides white ethnics escape from the stigma of poverty. As historian Nell Irvin Painter aptly distinguishes, “Not all black people are poor, but among the people in America defined by race, black people tend to be the poorest.”

Similarly, the link between poverty and criminality is dubious at best. The vast majority of poor people do not engage in criminal activity despite our tendency to label more and more things crimes. Lack of opportunity breeds disillusionment, which leads to disorder, a conclusion reached more than four decades ago by the  Kerner Commission charged with investigating the causes of urban rebellions in the summer of 1967:

Although Negro men worked as hard as the immigrants, they were unable to support their families. The entrepreneurial opportunities had vanished. As a result of slavery and long periods of unemployment, the Negro family structure had become matriarchal; the males played a secondary and marginal family role—one which offered little compensation for their hard and unrewarding labor. Above all, segregation denied Negroes access to good jobs and the opportunity to leave the ghetto. For them, the future seemed to lead only to a dead end.

 Today, whites tend to exaggerate how well and quickly they escaped from poverty. The fact is that immigrants who came from rural backgrounds, as many Negroes do, are only now, after three generations, finally beginning to move into the middle class.

By contrast, Negroes began concentrating in the city less than two generations ago, and under much less favorable conditions. Although some Negroes have escaped poverty, few have been able to escape the urban ghetto. Pervasive unemployment and underemployment are the most persistent and serious grievances in minority areas. They are inextricably linked to the problem of civil disorder.

What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.

What Chait’s liberal analysis of American racism fails to acknowledge is racism was created to achieve an economic purpose. Anglo-Americans didn’t start out as racists, they became racists in order to justify their chosen economic system, which relied on the exploitation of enslaved black labor. The principal motive for racism was and still is, profit.

One of the many things that infuriates black people, at least it does me, is the obliviousness of white Americans to the ways they project onto black people the pathological and violent behavior they have engaged in and seem to have collectively whitewashed from their memories. In the almost 400 years that African people have been in this country we’ve been subjected to continuous murder, rape, brutality, dehumanization and mob terror at the hands of whites (lynching ended a century ago only to be replaced by extra-judicial police killings) and yet the contemporary narrative is that whites are justified in their fear of blacks, especially black men. Seriously? Modern policing is based on this premise—one that whites rarely question and have trouble understanding as a source of black rage.

White privilege permits people to ignore the reflection of their own pathologies in others.

_________________________________

As I said, great, even important article.

Too bad few will read it.

And even less understand or accept it. And try to do anything about it.

On this day: American history

With acknowledgment and thanks to The New York Times:

ON THIS DAY

On Feb. 25, 1870, Hiram R. Revels, Republican of Mississippi, became the first black member of the United States Senate as he was sworn in to serve out the unexpired term of Jefferson Davis.

Links:  REVELS, Hiram Rhodes - Biographical Information

Hiram R. Revels Biography

Hiram Rhodes Revels - Wikipedia