Dean's World

Several people in the last thread and via (thoughtful) email pointed me in the direction of more information regarding the Jena 6, which have served to substantially cool my earlier anger about the issue. The most relevant item is this opinion piece by sports columnist Jason Whitlock (whom as everyone noted, irrelevantly, is also African-American). What is notable is that Whitlock takes a very Cosby-esque turn of analysis:

The fact that we waited to love Mychal Bell until after he’d thrown away a Division I football scholarship and nine months of his life is just as heinous as the grossly excessive attempted-murder charges that originally landed him in jail.

Reed Walters, the Jena district attorney, is being accused of racism because he didn’t show Bell compassion when the teenager was brought before the court for the third time on assault charges in a two-year span.

Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble? [...] Here is another undeniable, statistical fact: The best way for a black (or white) father to ensure that his son doesn’t fall victim to a racist prosecutor is by participating in his son’s life on a daily basis.

That fact needed to be shared Thursday in Jena. The constant preaching of that message would short-circuit more potential "Jena Six" cases than attributing random acts of six-on-one violence to three-month-old nooses.

And I am in no way excusing the nooses. The responsible kids should’ve been expelled. A few years after I’d graduated, a similar incident happened at my high school involving our best football player, a future NFL tight end. He was expelled.

The Jena school board foolishly overruled its principal and suspended the kids for three days.

But the kids responsible for Barker’s beating deserve to be punished. The prosecutor needed to be challenged on his excessive charges. And we as black folks need to question ourselves about why too many of us can only get energized to help our young people once they’re in harm’s way.

That's a subtle, but critical point that I think gets lost in the larger drama of racial tension.

As for the original context and accusation of racism, it's worth noting that Whitlock concurs that while the six assailants should be punished, the charges against Bell were grossly excessive. But the bottom line remains: The best way for a black (or white) father to ensure that his son doesn’t fall victim to a racist prosecutor is by participating in his son’s life on a daily basis.

Today is the 50th anniversary of Little Rock. Above is the famous photo by Will Counts (above), the caption to which reads:

Elizabeth Eckford, followed and taunted by an angry crowd after she was denied entrance to Little Rock Central High School, September 4, 1957. The girl in the light dress behind her is Hazel Bryan. Will Counts/Arkansas History Commission.

Vanity Fair has an indepth article on the lives of those two women, which makes for a fascinating tale of racism and redemption in its own right. And yet, the story doesn't quite have a happy ending:

Central High School looks as imposing as ever, but over the past 50 years, its innards have changed unimaginably: the school is now more than half black. It's all misleading, of course, because Central is really two different schools, separate and unequal, under one roof. The blacks go to different classes, sit on separate sides of the cafeteria, have different, and far lower, levels of performance and expectations.

There's a long way to go before the Cosby Show/Different World reality becomes mainstream.

I knew nothing - absolutely nothing - about this story until I listened to this report on NPR.

So a bunch of black ruffians beat a white kid nearly to death? No, actually the victim had superficial injuries and went to a party later that evening.

The black students were unprovoked and this was out of the blue? No, actually it was the culmination of a year of racial tension that began when white students hung nooses on a tree to intimdate black students.

HUNG. NOOSES. FROM. TREES.

And loony lefty liberals are making a false analogy to the days of Jim Crow? No,

The first to go to court was Mychal Bell, the team's star running and defensive back. Bell's court-appointed lawyer refused to mount any defense at all, instead resting his case immediately after two days of government presentation. An all-white jury found Bell guilty.

A talented athlete, Bell had a real shot at a Division I football scholarship. He now faces up to 22 years in prison. The other five black students await trial on attempted murder charges.

Why is Jena important? Why make such a big deal out of it? The New York Times piece on Jena says it all:

"I think a lot of people recognize that the criminal justice system grinds down people of color every day," said J. Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the civil rights group based in Montgomery, Ala. "Oftentimes, it's nameless, it's faceless. We know the story in a generic way but not specifically. People see Jena as the tip of the iceberg and ask, 'What lies beneath?' "

I think in the case of Jena, it's pretty obvious. And anyone who says otherwise is either willfully underinformed, or simply in denial.

What ever is it about sex and, at least to some degree, race when it comes to some of these southern prosecutors?

Thank God we're rid of the wicked Mr. Nifong. But the Nimrod who's in charge of the Genarlow Wilson keeps heading for that same cliff. Here's the latest:

David McDade has handed out some 35 copies of a video of teenagers having sex at a party.

McDade is no porno kingpin, but a district attorney. And he says Georgia's open-records law leaves him no choice but to release the footage because it was evidence in one of the state's most turbulent cases — that of Genarlow Wilson, a young man serving 10 years in prison for having oral sex with a girl when they were teenagers.

McDade's actions have opened him up to accusations that he is vindictively misusing his authority to keep Wilson behind bars — and worse, distributing child pornography.

"This has been a ferocious, vindictive prosecution of Genarlow Wilson," said state Sen. Vincent Fort, an Atlanta Democrat. "What is going on is a vendetta."

What on earth is going on here?!

UPDATE: Ripped off again! And just because he used more words.

So I'm doing my usual browsing of the internets, and the Dean's World commenters are doing their usual business of challenging my perspective (God bless them for that). Suddenly I encounter this phrase I've never heard before: "the magic negro."

That made me laugh. I got it immediately: "the benevolent black person who has all the answers." That's a pretty good observation. Hollywood loves to portray a saintly black person. They've been doing it for decades, ever since Sidney Poitier.

Then I read this essay in the Los Angeles Times about Barak Obama. And pretty much every paragraph in it contains something that I find painful and wrong.

Seriously: I read that essay and every paragraph of it offends me. I work every day with black people. I've trusted black people with my life. If my son were to come home with a black girl and tell me he was going to marry her, my only thoughts would be "Is she funny? Is she smart? Is she responsible?" Which is exactly what I'd ask about any girl he wanted to marry.

I'm so frickin' sick of the subject of my supposed unconscious racism. How hard do you have to beat me over the head with it before I cry "mercy?!?"

I've had just about enough of it, dammit. I'm down with humorous jokes, but god damn it I'm tired of the endless psychoanalysis to tell me of how I'm unconsciously racist. It makes me crazy.

As a black man that has worked since 1997 protesting the CONSISTENTLY sexist lyrics in "gangsta rap", I'm not upset that Don Imus was fired. I'm STILL upset that many punk black male rappers STILL talk that "ho" crap. YET:

I disagree 110% with Dean's thoughts against the Rutgers coach and women's basketball team. I've coached high school girls' basketball (black, white, and Latino players). The amount of scorn that was directed at them was unbelievable. They were goddesses of the basketball court yet slugs in high school society. Especially the taller girls. Teenaged boys shied away from them citing with "lovely" reasoning such as: The ho's too tall! The basketball bitches are too big! Those chicks are some sweaty ho's!

Etc... Etc... This was from boys of all colors. Women athletes period (especially basketball and softball players) get "hated" on routinely in high school. Collegiate women's basketball coaches routinely have to build self-esteem as well as coach. You can talk all the "they're not tough enough" jive all you want but you get beat up on everyday, it just isn't THAT easy to shuck off the remarks.

The Rutgers women are some tough chicks. I've watched them all year. Imus' (and his equally boneheaded producer's) remarks probably brought up some nasty feelings. Some things just cut to the core. My own wife, who use to play high school basketball, is a bad mutha. One tough lady. But even she got rankled when she heard Imus and Co. remarks. Her exacts word: I heard that crap in high school and college. Now this prune-faced bastard wants to pile on? I should kick him down some stairs and take his job.

She wasn't jumping for joy when Imus got fired but she was pleased. Feelings surfaced and my wife reacted. That's not a sign of weakness. It's part of being human. We never really know when a word or phrase is just going to get under our skins. "Ho" gets under my skin. Off-handedly calling a woman a "whore" (which is what "ho" is short for those not in the know) is just bad in my opinion.

Last time I checked, women outnumbered real female prostitutes 1,000,000 to 1.

It's a standing joke: there are a ton of Jewish lawyers. Which is inarguably true to anyone who's not just stupid.

Indeed, it's such a standing joke that I actually know anti-semites who say they want "a good Jew lawyer" when they're in trouble.

Arrogance says that it's because Jews are so smart.

Another argument would be that history forced them into the role. Which is probably more correct. They weren't allowed by the Christians to own land or to be members of the nobility, so what would they gravitate towards besides being merchants, or toward professions such as law, accounting, science, or entertainment?

But another argument: if you grow up studying Talmud, you grow up studying how to argue. A career in Law is almost natural as a result.

Discuss.

(And yes, I await the inevitable criticisms that I'm an anti-semite who's "stereotyping." Whatever. Discuss the question on its own merits, please.)

Jill at Feministe and Jeff at Protein Wisdom have an interesting discussion of race and identity politics. Here's my biggest problem with Jill's arguments:

but the fact will remain that those people who are identified/identify themselves as “black” tend to be poorer, less educated, less respected, and holding of less prestigious positions than those who are identified/identify themselves as “white.”

But that all falls apart when we look at certain races (or, more correctly, identity groups): while blacks and latinos may fit the above model, Jews, Arabs, and asians do not. The latter three groups all generally enjoy higher incomes and higher status than whites in America, which presumably they would not if America was the giant racist construct intended to keep whites on top that Jill seems to be arguing it is.

The fact is, America is a meritocracy. Culture creates individual character, and some cultures (not races, not identity groups) are better suited to creating individuals that can succeed, and anyone can decide tomorrow to change their character and join a different culture. Black, hispanic, Jew, asian or white, anyone can decide to study and work hard or to live “ghetto” or anything in between. That’s hardly a decision to follow a racial ideal, and in fact we see people of all races making decisions all along that spectrum.

In fact, I would argue identitarians are actually hurting minorities by perpetuating failed cultures in the defensive guise of racial identities (the only way the otherwise indefensible can be defended). Instead of being able to say “Hey, maybe I should work hard, stay out of trouble, and succeed” poor blacks are often told they cannot succeed because of who they are — and they better not even try, because to do so would be unblack of them. The pariah effect is so common Chris Rock and other black comedians have mentioned it often for years now: succeeding by working hard, studying, and staying out of trouble is perceived as “acting white” (and is thus a betrayal of one’s race), when in fact it is, objectively and without regard to race or identity group, simply a better way to live.

Thomas Sowell opines about school desegregation cases before the U.S. Supreme Court:

"Those of us old enough to remember the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education will see a painful irony now, since that case began because a black girl was not allowed to go to a school near where she lived but was instead assigned to a different school far away, because of the prevailing racial dogmas of that day. The racial dogmas have changed since 1954 but they are still dogmas. And flesh-and-blood children are still being sacrificed on the altar to those dogmas. Some of the learned justices are pondering whether there is a 'compelling' government interest in creating the educational and social benefits of racial "diversity." If so, then supposedly it is OK to do to white kids today what the Supreme Court back in 1954 said could not be done to black kids -- namely, assign children to schools according to their race. What are those 'compelling' benefits of 'diversity'? They are as invisible as the proverbial emperor's new clothes. Yet everyone has to pretend to believe in those benefits, as they pretended to admire the naked emperor's wardrobe. Not only is there no hard evidence that mixing and matching black and white kids in school produces either educational or social benefits, there have been a number of studies of all-black schools whose educational performances equal or exceed the national average, even though most black schools fall far below the average."

My response: I mostly agree with Mr. Sowell. His commentary would have more force had he added that government-instituted school desegregation rests on the notion of white supremacy and black inferiority: i.e., that black children magically cannot succeed unless they are around white children). Of course, this notion ignores the number of talented black folks who have come out of all-black educational settings. The focus should be on (1) more black parents building up the educational potential of their children at home, and (2) pushing for school vouchers which enable black folks to create the sort of neighborhood schools that may work best for black children (e.g., schools with high discipline, a strong religious-based curriculum since polls show that 80%+ of black parents would like such educational instruction in schools, more focus on black contributions to various disciplines, etc.)

As soon as you read that headline you got an adrenaline rush. You were jolted, you were angry, and you were a little ashamed.

Moreover, you were mad at me. You weren't entirely sure why, but you were definitely mad at me.

You were not wrong to have any of those feelings. But objectively it's kind of silly:

"nih"

"guhr."

It's just sounds. Why should you get upset over sounds?

I'll tell you why: because sounds can hurt.

On the other hand, I am reminded of a white woman I knew some years ago. She'd done something wonderful: she made a baby with her husband. By happenstance, her husband was a black man. So the child was a beautiful cocoa-colored kid with softly-curled hair.

But he came home one day from school and told his mom that someone called him a nigger. He didn't know what to think.

His mom responded: "Nigger nigger nigger. Nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger. Nigger nigger. Nigger!"

He looked at her, baffled. She then asked: "Did that hurt?"

"No."

"It shouldn't."

I found that incredibly wise.

I'm actually glad that our society has decided to reject this word. I think it says something very good about us as a people that we call it "the N-word." We do not consider this a word that should be uttered in polite company. Why? Because it reminds us of a part of our past that we're not proud of--and that we shouldn't be proud of. Although we should be proud that we eventually made it right, because many other societies to this day have still not made it right.

By the way, this is good reading.

Also by the way: don't black people annoy you sometimes? :-)

Today two black moderate bloggers square off about the implications of News Corp.'s decision to cancel the FOX interview with O.J. Simpson and the associated HarperCollins book release of If I Did It, billed as a hypothetical take on the murders.

Angela Winters is glad that the media gurus listened to public outcry: "They just thought somehow they would get away with it and [it] wins November sweeps. Even more than the interview, I'm glad the book isn't going to come out because although I know a lot of people would be too embar[r]assed to buy it in the stores, they would be curious enough to buy it online and it would sicken me to see that book move up the bestseller list. People always think about the saliciousness of a situation and don't really realize what they are supporting. Look at this picture. This is what really happened and there are two children whose continued harm makes this apology after the damage is done, ring weak."

However, Dell Gines asserts that the free market should have determined the success or failure of the book, arguing that everyone else has pimped the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and it is hypocritical for Americans - more specifically, white Americans - to only have an outcry against Simpson: "Since that time [of the criminal trial], OJ and the murder has been the source of probably hundreds if not thousands of books, television reports and exposes and the like. The public has eaten it up from the beginning. Now, as the man who has right or wrongly been the source of the profiteering of the news media (obviously the covered the case in concentration because of ratings and ratings equals profits) the pundits and participants (Mark Furhman bullied his way onto MSNBC, Marsha Clark as a news commentator, Darden a book Deal, Kato a book deal) and more seeks to profit off his own pariah status HIT THE BREAKS! This my friends is the hypocrisy of America. When a brutal murder is exploited by the news media for big ratings and profits it is ok. When active and passive participants write books and participate in 'special reports' for thousands and dollars the exploiting of the deaths are no problem. When the man who most people is guilty attempts to profit off the infamy the public gave him, hell no. It is obvious to me the American public is less interested about respecting the dead in Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldmen and more interested in hating OJ. If it was about reverence from the dead then this outrage should have occurred from the beginning by the moralistic public. Instead they gobbled up the media and infotainment on the deaths from every source. To me that is not only hypocrisy, but also a sad testament to our society."

My argument: Dell is correct that a ton of other folks have pimped these deaths. However, I disagree with the argument that the (alleged) killer himself should profit - especially when he lost a civil suit and should be paying money to the families anyway. One could also argue that the free market has spoken here. Apparently so many folks - and potential advertisers, in the case of FOX - did an outcry that FOX and HarperCollins evaluated how it could affect their bottom line.

Mr. Parker responds to a black male friend who was withholding judgment on whether football star Terrell Owens recently tried to commit suicide with pills, but his friend commented that black American men don't commit suicide: "An attempt to recall any black men in my past who had taken their own lives produced only one recollection. Other than Bernard, a young black kid who lived a few houses down during my teen years -- he hung himself atop the family pool table -- no other personal recollection of African American suicide exists. A notion that white people kill themselves and black people only kill each other could not be further from the truth. As with most other U.S. social diseases, African Americans, especially teens and young adults, have witnessed an increase in suicides. Statistics show that the suicide rate among black men has doubled since 1980. In 2003, 1,955 African Americans completed suicide. Males (1,597) made up 82 percent of those fatalities. Suicide ranks as the third leading cause of death for black men between the ages of 15 and 24. 'It’s been a misperception that black people don’t commit suicide,’ said Harvard Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Alvin Poussaint. Poussaint did acknowledge that this sudden rise in African American suicides deserves attention by the medical field. 'Suicide was a stigma in the black community. Historically, killing yourself meant that you didn’t go to heaven. A black person taking their own life was taboo,’ he said. Poussaint said that blacks learned to live with depression, embraced music like the Blues and suffering as part of their life circumstance. Basically, we could sing about our lot in life but never shed tears about our position or status. We rarely did then or even now find psychological intervention. 'Blacks are more accustomed to psychiatry now but I think fear still exists about what (therapy) might do,' Poussaint said.....While suicide ramps up in African American communities, Poussaint stated that other forms of what he termed 'slow suicide' exist. 'Alcoholism, drug addiction, high-risk sexual behavior, these are all forms of dying slowly, all instances where life is devalued,’' Poussaint said. Poussaint debunked the notion that Owens had $25 million reasons to not take his own life. 'Money does not buy mental happiness. It might cushion you but money is no absolute protection for depression and suicide,' he said."

My response: I am not yet convinced that T.O. didn't try to commit suicide. And while black Americans certainly do commit suicide, it should be noted that our rate remains significantly below the national average. Compared to other groups, it is typically just not black Americans' style to kill ourselves. This is due to cultural and religious views regarding suicide mentioned in the piece. I also take issue with the cited suicide stats. The suicide rate of black men may have doubled since 1980, but the overall black male population has also grown (perhaps even doubled?) over those 26 years as well.

Here's an amazing NPR story about a Native American principal who turned around a charter school in Oakland by (surprise) emphasizing academic performance and discipline instead of "traditional" music and art and feel-good ego-building exercises. Dr. Chavis blasts multiculturalism and says the philosophy is destroying minorities' ability to succeed in America.

Rather than trying to make the students feel good about being minorities, he demands they work hard and explains in no uncertain terms what will happen if they fail. His results seem to prove the prevailing philospohy is badly misguided: shame and fear can serve a purpose, and self-esteem is a means, not an end.

(via Ace)

I was born in 1966. I'll be 40 years old this year. I came up hard in a hard-scrabble life. I'll spare you the excruciating details; I'll just say when I was born I was my 16 year old mama's second child, and my daddy was 17 and working as a mail clerk. They split barely before I was out of diapers, and to make a long story short I left home at the age of 15 and have made my own way ever since, and have had to deal my whole life with people not respecting me. I got nothing but respect for those who come up from nothing and make something of themselves, and I have sympathy for those who are struggling but not quite making it. They don't deserve pity but they do deserve maybe a little sympathy and maybe occasionally a hand up--or a kick in the ass, depending. You know what I'm saying.

Also, I grew up among working class people both in El Paso, Texas, and also on the south side of Chicago. I saw lots and lots of racism up close and personal. There were lots of people I knew as a kid who didn't like Mexicans in Texas, and lots of people I knew as a kid who didn't like blacks in Chicago. Hell the Neo-Nazi Party of Illinois had its headquarters about three blocks from my house in Chicago. There were race-riots, more than one, in Marquette Park where I lived. Dr. King staged at least one protest there before he died. Jesse Jackson was a local boy we all knew before he made it big nationally.

I've also had the unfortunate experience of black and hispanic people not liking me because I was white. My lovely wife, born in Detroit in 1968 as the daughter of Polish immigrants during the worst race riots of that city's history, saw even more. She went to a mostly-black High School, and got her ass beat at least once for being white and the "descendants of slave owners," never mind the fact that her family were from solid peasant stock and escaped Communist oppression and came to this country barely speaking the language and being the subject of countless Polish jokes and all kinds of contempt. Her dad at points was collecting tin cans off the streets of Detroit to find money to feed his wife and kids.

Sometimes people wonder what my wife and I have in common. On the surface, we are very very different people. But at a fundamental level, we both understand certain things, and understand and respect each other. Would that all couples had that. Regardless, I can tell you one thing neither of us has a lot of respect for: whining and paranoia. (Mind you, maybe sometimes I whine more than she does. But that's a discussion for another day.)

I recently was forwarded the following email from a good and dear friend. At first I was taken aback. Maybe you've even seen it. It looks like this:

Voting Rights Act-Expires for blacks in 2007

Below you will find a speech that Bill Cosby's wife gave at a function. Everyone please read this and pass it on to as many African Americans you come in contact with.

Camille Cosby just made a reference about the Voting Rights Act in her most recent open letter on racism. This is extremely important.

We are in the 21st Century and we were wondering, and when I say 'we', I mean others of us out there who wonder if everyone else out there knows what the significance of the year 2007 is to Black America?

Did you know that our right to VOTE will expire in the year 2007? Seriously! The Voters Rights Act signed in 1965 by Lyndon B. Johnson was just an ACT. It was not made a law.

In 1982, Ronald Reagan amended the Voters Rights Act for another 25 years. Which means that in the year 2007 we could lose the Right to vote!

Does anyone realize that African Americans are the only group of people who require PERMISSION under the United States Constitution to vote! In the year 2007, Congress will once again convene to decide whether or not Blacks should retain the rights to vote (crazy but true).

In order for this to be passed, 38 states will have to approve an extension. This is ludicrous! Not only should the extension be approved, but also the ACT must be made a law. Our right to vote should no longer be up for discussion, review and/or evaluation.

We must contact our Congress-persons, Senators, Alderpersons, etc., to put a stop to this! As bona fide Citizens of the United States, we cannot "drop the ball" on this one! We have come too far to let government make us take such a huge step backward. So please, let us push forward to continue to build the momentum towards gaining equality.

Please pass this onto others, as we are sure that many more individuals are not aware of this. I urge all of you that are able, to contact those in government that have your vote and make them aware of our combined concern for this issue.

One voice!...... One Vote! You cannot complain, if you do not participate.....local, State, & national.....

When I received this one I had no choice but to pass it on. Please do the same.

When I first got this I tried to be very rational about it. Especially because it came from a friend who I respect very much, who is nearing 70 and who remembers the days of Bull Connor and George Wallace and Dr. King and my soul-brother Malcolm X. So I get it. I get why people are worried about this.

But the truth is, from top to bottom, this email is a pack of lies. Vile, hurtful lies. Indeed, it is the worst sort of lie: half-truth that looks real because it's sort of based on some things that are almost true. One thing that's entirely true is that President Reagan did sign a 25 year extension of the Voting Rights Act, and that does expire in 2007 if it's not extended. That much is true. I'm not sure what the hell else to untangle from this racist pack of lies.

You know, a couple of a years ago a prominent black blogger publicly labelled me a racist. I won't give his name or grace him with a link, just because I don't want to reward his bigoted filth with recognition. My crime was I posted something that said, "hey, don't black people annoy you sometimes?" The whole purpose of that, as I explained at the time, was to confront people with their own prejudices, and to note something sad: white people in America today are often afraid (some might even say cowardly) to speak frankly about race issues. Almost on cue, this spoiled little twenty-something black brat, who's never seen a segregated lunch counter in his life, labelled me a racist. I still await the day that I meet this pampered and privileged little suburbanite in person and dare him to say that sh*t to my face.

Here's the blunt truth: the U.S. Constitution recognizes equal rights for all people, regardless of race, and has for some time. Indeed, the right of people to vote regardless of color has been part of the U.S. Constitution since 1870--for over 136 years, in other words. You can read about it here. It's a lie to say that black people need some special dispensation to vote.

What was true is that some states used to abuse that right by cloaking it in special requirements to vote. Some states used to have laws that made you recite parts of the Constitution by heart, or count the number of jellybeans in a jar, in order to be allowed to vote. And they would selectively make only blacks meet those requirements, rather than making them apply to everybody equally. And that's what the Voting Rights Act ended. Condi Rice's father went through that, because southern Democrats would pull that crap on him. That's why she and her father have been lifelong Republicans.

But you know what? It's 2006, not 1965. In the 40-plus years since the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights act were passed, there have been numerous court cases upholding the right of black people to vote and to have their full civil rights. Also numerous state laws have ended such practices. There are also numerous black elected officials all over the country.

No sane person wants to deny this to any of them. Even if the Voting Rights Act of 1965 expires--which it probably won't, since it will almost certainly be renewed--there's no way in Hell anyone is going to try to deny black people the vote in 2006 or 2007. It's not gonna happen. No freaking way.

Snopes has more to say on it that you should read, but I gotta say more. As a 40 year old white dude, I have a message:

Black people, I'm tired of apologizing to you, and I'm tired of being looked at by you with suspicion. Indeed, I'm gonna talk out of school and just say, I speak for the vast majority of White America here:

The vast majority of us do not hate you. We do not want to put you back on the plantation. We don't want to stop you from dating our daughters or our sons. We don't want to scare you away form the polling booths. We don't want your businesses to fail. We don't want to put your young men in jail. We don't even begrudge you your own music and your own slightly different dress or language. We recognize that you are Americans. Indeed, we recognize that you have made all sorts of amazing contributions to America, including the blues and jazz and Motown and the Harlem Rennaissance, Jimi Hendrix and Ray Charles and Muddy Waters and Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder and Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphie and Lena Horne and Muhammed Ali and Colin Powell and Condie Rice and Dr. King and Mahalia Jackson and and Oprah Winfrey and Malcom X and a whole bunch else besides I haven't even thought of.

Plus you're the only Northerners who still know what grits and and cornbread and collards are.

Enough God damn it. We don't hate you anymore. We love what you give America. I'm 40 years old and my sons don't even know what the Hell I'm talking about when I talk about racism.

Not long ago, a friend we love who is over 60, who remembers the Civil Rights Era very well, asked my wife, "what would you do if your son came home with a black girl?" My wife didn't say what her answer was, but she asked me what I thought. I said, "Hrrm, well, is she smart? Is she funny?" My wife grinned and said, "yeah that's what I said."

God damn it you guys, we love you. You're part of us, you're part of what makes us special. It's over, okay?

I get a lot of stuff forwarded to me in email that I assume to be nonsense. And while I've had my issues with them at times, I still find that Snopes is the most reliable source to go to first when you aren't sure about something. They're not always right, but they usually are. So, when I got the below rant in my email, I thought it was probably falsly attributed to Bill Cosby, because it's just a little too extreme-sounding even for him. But nope, they back it up as legit:

They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain't, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk.

Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.

People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around. The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. $500 sneakers for what? And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.

I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And where is the father? Or who is his father?

People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something? Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?

What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' — or men or whatever you call them now. We have millionaire football players who cannot read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.

We cannot blame the white people any longer.

The speech was given in 2004, at the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

You know, time was I would have loudly cheered for that. Now I still do cheer, a little, but not quite so loudly. I think he's right that there's not much left that white people can do for black people. In a way I'm glad of that. I'll be turning 40 years old this year, and I know the world is a much better place today in this regard than it was when I was born. But, on the other hand, I grew up pretty hard scrabble, with a lot stacked against me. Left home when I was 15 years old and never went back. Made my own way ever since.

I dunno, an angry rant like that from Cosby, maybe it serves a good purpose within the black community, and to a certain extent it's nobody else's business because it's about things that community has to deal with. But on the flip side of that, African Americans are Americans, and so what happens to them affects all of us.

And I have to say, a lot of the problems of entrenched poverty and poor education are not going to be fixed by kicking around lower class kids who have funny accents or ways of speaking, or yelling at them for doing poorly in schools that don't serve their needs well in the first place.

Something I've often wished most of my black friends would read (to date, none of them have that I know of) is The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats. While I don't always agree with everything in the book, one thing comes through crystal clear : if you look at the problems of poor rural and suburban whites (i.e. "hicks and white trash"), and the problems of poor urban blacks, they're virtually identical, and just as hard to break out of, especially for kids who've never grown up knowing anything different.

Yes, it is true that anyone in this country can succeed if they're smart and they do certain things. But I no longer believe it's as easy as yelling at people about it, or sneering at them.

Of course, I'm not sure of the exact solution. And since I'm one who usually says, "if you haven't got any proposed solutions, stop whining," maybe I should just shut up. But... I just don't think it's that simple. I don't think you can look at a kid who can barely read because he came out of a school that didn't teach him right, a kid who doesn't understand what being a good father means because he's never known one, and say he should just "straighten up and get a work ethic." Not when the only work ethic he's ever seen is demonstrated by hustlers and hookers and hoodlums.

So what's the real fix? Might part of it be that we stop saying these problems are black problems, or minority problems, and instead see them as American problems?

Here's the perfect article to make people angry on a Monday morning.

"We have 50 years of evidence that racial prejudice predicts voting. Republicans are supported by whites with prejudice against blacks."

These kinds of studies always make me wonder:

1) How much of what they term "bias" or "prejudice" is just a reflection of reality? I mean, every individual person should be judged based on their character not their race, but there's a valid, non-racist reason people prefer not to live in poor black/hispanic/[insert non-Asian minority here] neighborhoods: they have high violent crime rates. Which is why, I suppose, that even with their supposed lack of bias, we don't see a lot of rich white liberals moving to those neighborhoods.

I should point out again that that it's not only racist but somewhat stupid to assign race as a cause of crime, as though some races have a "violent crime gene." Culture is the issue. The correlation to race exists only because culture is taught by parents to their children and thus tends to follow bloodlines, and obviously so does race. Adoption studies tend to prove that race has much less to do with crime and economic performance than culture.

Interestingly, it's not easy to find statistics on minority crime. This was all I could find in a quick google, and it seems to be by an overtly racist organization (although I do wonder how a white advocacy group is all that different from a minority advocacy group like, say, the NAACP). Are we really so afraid of the race issue that we're going to hide from unpleasant realities that really don't have much to do with race?

2) How many of those same biases exist among the people whom the bias is directed against?

3) What's the point of these studies, really? Shouldn't we be focusing on the real issue - culture - and not forever dwelling on a long-discredited theory of racial destiny that persists only because of a correlation to culture? Doesn't this just reinforce destructive identity politics?

What do you think?

Ed Driscoll has an interesting analysis of bigoted language, particularly the term "white trash."

It's a term I use myself, but usually sarcastically. Because it's simply true that if you're poor and uneducated in America, you are by far the most reviled class of humans in this country. Nobody cares about you, particularly the phony so-called "liberals."

I recommend that Ed (and pretty much everybody else, particularly my black friends) read The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies Hicks and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats. A lot of people howl with rage at the author, Jim Goad, and I don't endorse all his sentiments, but he's right more often than he's wrong.

Just so y'all know, we don't actually hold him against you. After all, we came up with this guy:

Asserts CaribPundit, a Caribbean conservative blogger: "Not one stinking red cent of American money, taken from a populace that is largely Christian and Jewish, should go to the racist, sadistic barbarians inhabiting the land of Egypt. Some things are too deep for tears. Nora Younis's narrative of the Egyptian brutalising of Sudanese refugees is one such. What it is to be black and Christian or black and Muslim in an Arab Muslim land. Have mercy, Jesus."

I opposed government foreign aid to Egypt long before this incident because (1) it saps the initiative of the giver and givee; and (2) Egypt is not a friend of America. This racist incident only adds to my opposition. The footage reminds me of Bull Conner and the water hoses put on black protesters in Birmingham, Ala. during the civil rights movement. Will America's black so-called leaders raise an outcry about how Arabs are mistreating black Sudanese folks over in Egypt? This incident of police brutality? Will Secretary Condi Rice cry foul? Or will they punk out, as usual?

Apparently, some people aren't black enough so they just don't matter.

It reminds me of Congressman Harold Ford Jr., the millionaire politician's son who went to the very best private schools in Washington D.C. and had his wealthy parents send him to the best schools in the country. Yet he had the audacity to say, without apology on national TV, "I personally benefitted from Affirmative Action."

Yeah. That's what the so-called "liberals" have to say about poverty and suffering: "If you're black, you're automatically a victim. Anyone else, you're just a rich b***ard and we don't give a damn about you."

Racist elitist scumbags and traitors to the whole idea of liberalism that they are.

(Hat tip: Seawitch.)

The new president of America's oldest and largest civil rights group crisscrossed four cities in California by jet yesterday in a crusade to keep Stanley Tookie Williams, a co-founder of the vicious Crips gang, from execution next week for four murders committed in 1979. The NAACP hopes to call more attention to what it calls Williams' help in rehabilitating gang members — and, critics say, trying to rejuvenate an aging group with its declining membership by linking it to a cause embraced by celebrities.

In his first public appearance in California since taking charge of the NAACP in August, Bruce Gordon urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to commute the death sentence to life in prison. In a news conference, Mr. Gordon said, "If we believe prison is intended for reform and we believe the criminal justice system makes mistakes," then Williams should be spared.

The cross-state trek has its critics. That kind of talk "irritates the hell out of me," said Joe Hicks, vice president of Community Advocate, former director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a black conservative. "There are lots of issues conflicting black people all over the country, and to have this be one of the first official acts of the NAACP's new president is frankly depressing," he said. "That this man chose to take up the cause of a thug who killed four people and then was found guilty by four courts is outrageous."

Mr. Gordon said of a meeting with the convict, "As I looked in Stan's eyes, I think I spoke to an honest man. Williams is our new partner. He is our secret weapon in the fight to help young African Americans reject gangs. Williams will have a powerful impact not just in Los Angeles, not just in California, but throughout the nation."

I'm 100% with Joe Hicks here. The NAACP merely exposes its moral bankruptcy. When has it ever done a tour on behalf of crime victims urging for stiffer penalties for crimes? Williams has not apologized for killing four people in cold blood, has sold few of his books so minimal reach. He has not repudiated his Crips ties, and refuses to help law enforcement officials root out the gang. Sparing this thug is more important than black crime victims and pushing to address the racial disparity of lesser jail time for people - regardless of race - who kill black people? I was a supporter of Mr. Gordon's ascension as NAACP head. I hoped that with his strong business background, that he would push the organization to focus more on economic empowerment. Shameful that the NAACP has become the National Association for the Advancement of Murderous Colored People. I'm hot right now.

There is a group in America that is:

1) Chronically lagging their peers in reading skills and grades in school, from primary grades all the way through college 2) Far more likely to flunk out or drop out of high school than their peers 3) Far more likely never to go to college at all, and more likely to drop out if they do go to college 4) Far more likely to wind up in jail than their peers 5) Far more likely to wind up substance addicted than their peers 6) Far more likely to be unemployed than their peers 7) Far more likely to commit suicide than their peers 8) Far more likely to suffer work-related fatality than their peers.

What group am I talking about? The poor? Minorities? Immigrants?

Nope. Details here. I suggest reading the whole thing, it challenges a lot of preconceptions.

One of the things that Cobb noted in his response to me the other day was this:

"The root of my problem devolves to one essential fact - whites are too popular. In short, no matter what you choose to make of it, there are white owned and operated blogs that will continue to be more effective in disseminating information about blackfolks and black culture than those which are black owned and operated. This unfortunate fact is not, however, racist."

Now this was in the context of Kanye West, but even in isolation this statement is very worth considering. It's brought up a lot of thoughts in me the last few days, and now I'm finally getting around to writing them down.

Honestly, I just don't know what the racial background of most of the bloggers I read is. For example, I don't know what Rusty Shackleford's racial background is. I do know Michelle Malkin's. I haven't the faintest idea what Michael Yon's is, although if I had to guess I'd assume he's some sort of southeast asian descent just because of his last name. At least two of the Dean's World current co-bloggers are "people of color" (I hate that term by the way, but that's a quixotic fight and I got better things to do), and another one comes from a thoroughly mixed-race family of adopted kids. Of the rest, I've never even seen photos.

That said, I've lived in mostly-black neighborhoods, and worked in mostly-black neighborhoods. I used to repo cars out of the city of Detroit, so I'm no fool: anyone who thinks there isn't a distinct and identifiable black culture thriving in the US is fooling himself. Nor, despite the stereotypes, is it a completely broken or dysfunctional culture, even if it's got some issues it's struggling with. The problem is that when you have a people who have their own language (and the existence and expressiveness of Black Vernacular English, aka "ebonics" is uncontroversial among linguists), modes of dress, music, and distinct cultural habits, you will always have people who tend to congregate together and to view the wider, more dominant culture with suspicion. That's not a strictly American phenomenon by any means; if you look at how the Scots were once in the United Kingdom, for example, you'll see the same thing. You saw it reach truly horrendous levels when the about a million Tutsis were murdered by the Hutu majority in Rwanda, which was primarily a cultural and religious massacre. But that is not to say that when two separate cultures rub against each other, they necessarily clash; India is a stable multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society--not without its problems of course, but by any measure it's a success as a nation. The Swiss manage to get by with four different official languages and even more ethnicities, and have for centuries.

Still, one of the politically incorrect things (among many) attributed to Malcolm X in his amazing autobiography was that even in areas of the world where you see lots of different racial and ethnic groups mix, people of the same ethnicity tended to congregate together. Even among muslims undergoing the Hajj, black tended to congregate with other blacks, arabs with arabs, white with white, and so on. The difference was that when things were healthy and functioning properly, people of various ethnicities weren't afraid of each other, would befriend each other, do business with each other, worship together, etc. But the urge to "be with people like yourself" is a simple human urge, and not by itself a bad thing.

Still, one of the causes of racial misunderstanding in America that the dominant culture--what some would call "white culture"--seeks to welcome new members into its club. However that comes at a price: speaking (and writing) mainstream English, dressing in certain ways, comporting oneself in certain ways. The dominant culture is happy to adopt some of the lingo and customs of newcomers, but feels spurned when some choose to live here and yet stay completely apart. Meanwhile, those of the non-mainstream cultures tend to view the mainstream culture with mistrust, as arrogant and pushy. They also tend to view those in their number who fully embrace the mainstream culture as sellouts and traitors.

Note again that nothing I've said here is unique to black vs. white relationships. I'm talking about things that happen in all societies with multiple ethnic groups that experience ongoing friction.

One of the more interesting observations I've seen about black people in America is that they today tend to most closely resemble an immigrant group that arrived here not hundreds of years ago, but rather, an immigrant group that arrived in the 1960s. Until then they were denied basic civil rights as Americans and were kept forcibly apart by segregation, almost a separate nation unto themselves. Once they were fully granted their proper rights, they suddenly began assimilating like other ethnic groups into the American melting pot. Typically, other major immigrant groups--italians, irish, asian, hispanic, etc.--have taken an average of three generations to fully integrate with the mainstream culture in the US. The first generation has the most difficulty, the second generation tends to go through an identity crisis, and the third generation usually finds a way to become fully mainstream. If that line of thinking is accurate, then America's probably got less than 20 years to go before viewing black folks as completely assimilated (we're almost there but still not quite).

Of course the word "assimilated" is a curse for some, who see it as a way of destroying what is unique and valuable about their own culture. The thing is that it doesn't have to be so--in many socities, distinct sub-cultures can exist for many centuries, still keeping their identity, and still be assimilated into a wider culture that they have contributed to. American mainstream culture would not, could not be what it is without the contributions of black Americans. Black people don't have to disappear completely into that mainstream culture (like I said, the Swiss are a great lesson in a functional multi-cultural society) but it does mean that there's a certain uncomfortable shifting that's still going on between both groups until finally everyone finds boundaries that work.

Most conservatives look with suspicion if not outright revulsion at the notion of multi-culturalism. For a while there I thought they were right, but now I think they're only half-right. "Multiculturalism" is wrong when it's a reactionary instinct, or when it excuses obscene behavior (witness the racist jerks over at Daily Kos who were recently trying to rationalize looting TVs and shooting at cops in New Orleans on racial grounds). But when it's a matter of simply respecting and appreciating the things that make us different as well as the things we have in common, it's a fine thing. America's got room for Texas cowboys, Louisiana Cajuns and coon-asses, Georgia belles, Bronx Italians and Manhattan Jews, Puerto Ricans, Miami Cubans, San Francisco artsy fartsy types, and black folks from the 'hood (or out of the 'hood and into the suburbs).

A complicating issue I have noticed in black-white relations in today's America is that white kids who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s — my generation — were taught a very specific set of racial values. We were taught that racism is bad, morally completely unacceptable, and that we should completely welcome black people into our midsts. We took that to heart--and then a lot of us were shocked (and sometimes angered) to realize that a goodly amount of black folks had no interest in that at all. What we didn't (and often still don't) understand is that this rejection is sometimes due to animosity, but much of it is simply a sense of identity threatened: a unique and valued culture and way of life looking like it's going to be absorbed by a big massive white obliterating blob. That's something that I find a lot of black people understand instinctively, and that a lot of white people are utterly baffled by because no one's explained it to them.

What's funny is that none of this is all that unusual, and none is impossible to overcome with a little more understanding on both sides.

So when you say that whites tend to disproportionately dominate the high-traffic blogs, I have to admit that you're right, they probably do. I can't prove it because so many bloggers are faceless, but it's obviously dominated by people who clearly write in standard, mainstream English by default, and express themselves in ways widely understood by the mainstream culture--"talking white," to be crass about it. Those bloggers who pepper in a lot of unfamiliar lingo and modes of expression are not going to not be read as much because people will find them harder to read.

To pick a recent post by T-Steele, he recently wrote:

"...we all took the sure shot to the ass for this one. SOOOOO... Time for fix'er, up'er talk. And since I own this piece of bling-bling blog real estate, that's all I'm going to allow in the comments..."

There is honestly not a thing wrong with that. He's one of my lovely wife's favorite bloggers too. Thing is, she grew up in Detroit, and went to High School as one of the only white kids there (got her ass beat for that more than once too, but that's another subject). So we both got it, and I'm gonna be runnin' around talking about my own bling bling blog for at least another week. (Though my blog don't bling so much as it blung, but what the hell.)

Only thing is, a lot of other people would read that, scratch their heads and concentrate, and figure it mostly out--but would feel uncomfortable because they weren't really sure they completely grasped it.

This is not a criticism. T-Steel should write like T-Steel. If people don't like it too damned bad. I merely make the observation: talk a certain way and some white folks just ain't gonna know what you're saying. Sometimes, that's part of the fun--but it does make some white people think you're making fun of them (which, let's face it, sometimes y'all are).

I have read many African American bloggers who pepper all sorts of soul talk into their writing. That's not wrong, but whether they're aware of it or not the more they do that, the more they send a signal to white readers: "you aren't really welcome 'less you're in the club."

I think the best example of a person who can handle both that I've ever seen is Oprah Winfrey. She speaks absolutely perfect mainstream midwestern English. Some call it "talkin' white" but it's not, it's just the mainstream tongue most universally understood by all groups. In fact it's a pretty cool lingo that's picked up many things from many other languages. But Oprah, she can turn and talk like a sistah on a dime--she been had that always. She's also the wealthiest and best-loved woman in America. She's our real First Lady, not Laura Bush. People don't love her because she's black, nor do they love her in spite of it. They love her because she connects with them, and part of the reason for that is she knows how to speak in a way most of them understand. It's not pandering, it's not parroting, it's just knowing how to be understood.

So, I seem to have wandered far afield. But my original point was that while you can't prove it--too many bloggers have no photo online--it is probably safe to assume that white bloggers dominate even in excess of their numbers in the general population. But I believe that what really dominates is well-written mainstream English. If you add that in with the normal intercultural mistrust and misunderstandings--black mistrust of whites, whites being completely baffled by certain black attitudes--and it should not be surprising that a lot of black bloggers link each other and sort of form their own little club in the blogosphere and don't break out of it much. A thing to realize is that that's a choice--conscious or unconscious, it is one.

Am I making sense or am I just rambling here?