Rev. William Barber II, the leader of the “Moral Monday” protests in North Carolina has been attacked viciously vocally by racist conservatives. Now, how exactly American Airlines even imagined it was justified in removing the Pastor after being verbally assaulted by a man sitting behind him on a recent flight. I certainly hope he sues, and some racist flight attendants lose their jobs. Yet another case of the Carolina bigots feeling empowered by Trump’s racism
The leader of North Carolina’s NAACP was removed from a flight over the weekend after he confronted another passenger who was insulting him — and the state’s Republican Party attacked him as a hypocrite.
The Rev. William Barber II, the founder of “Moral Monday” civil disobedience protests of GOP legislation, was removed from American Eagle Flight 5382 late Friday after flight attendants called him a “disruptive passenger,” reported the Charlotte Observer.
Barber purchased two seats on the flight so he could sit comfortably because he is disabled after undergoing bone-fusion surgery to treat his arthritis.
The civil rights leader said another man sitting behind him began loudly complaining about “those people” needing two seats and making other disparaging remarks about him and his disability.
The verbal abuse continued, even after Barber complained to a flight attendant, who asked the other man to “bring it down a little bit.”
“As I heard these things, I became more and more uncomfortable, especially since he was behind me,” Barber said in a statement. “The attitude with which he spoke, and my experiences with others who have directed similar harsh, sometimes threatening words, emails, and calls at me, came to my mind.”
Barber said he was unable to turn around to face the man because of his disability, so he stood up “to speak to him as one human being to another.”
“I asked him why he was saying such things, and I said he did not know me, my condition, and I added I would pray for him,” Barber said.
An airline official asked Barber to leave the plane at that point, before the crew had given safety instructions, and he was escorted off by police officers and airline employees — who he said treated him graciously.
Barber questions why he was removed for confronting a man who was attacking him, and he said he would speak with his attorneys about the incident.
Republicans, however, mocked the civil rights leader in a sarcastic statement questioning his character.
“I guess Rev. Barber thinks it’s ‘moral’ to inconvenience other passengers wanting to get home to see their families, because he once again thinks his ‘right’ to say and do whatever he wants is more important than other law abiding citizens who conduct themselves under society’s rules of civil behavior,” said Michele Nix, vice chair of the state GOP.
After an investigation, police found the man vandalized his own truck, in a bid to scam the public… He had raised $6000 on Go Fund Me, as well as garnered support from local repair shops and dealerships who volunteered to fix his truck for free. He really wasn’t after getting the truck fixed though…
Playing to right wing racist hate in this country has become a box office business.
After 50 years of being inundated with stories of white racism, and being taught in college that in this white-dominated society, only a white can be a racist, the American public has been properly brainwashed into accepting the otherwise incredible: A black man murdered eight white people at his place of work because they were white, and the media story is about the murderer’s alleged experiences of racism.
“50 years of stories of being inundated with stories of white racism”? Prager sets the stage right off here for two core conservative memes – “black people are whiners”, and “white people are victims”. Essentially without “victims” you cannot have modern conservatism. The etymology of such “victimhood” is disturbing, originating from the bowels of the white supremacist groups, who found “white victimology” as an effective recruiting tool – just as Hitler found German victimization by Jews prior to WWII fertile ground for Nazi recruitment. Thus you hav a core belief set which turns every shred of objective reality, whether scientific and social research, statistical data collected by dozens of governmental or commerical entities, and analysis…
Utterly and completely on it’s head. Truth here, even if buttressed on the foundation of science and mathematical certainty… Is irrelevant. Blame the victims, and claim vicitmology!
Here’s the Associated Press Report from Aug. 7, four days after the murders. It was reprinted in The Washington Post and throughout America:
“To those closest to him, Omar Thornton was caring, quiet and soft-spoken … But underneath, Thornton seethed with a sense of racial injustice for years that culminated in a shooting rampage Tuesday in which the Connecticut man killed eight and wounded two others at his job at Hartford Distributors in Manchester before killing himself.
“‘I know what pushed him over the edge was all the racial stuff that was happening at work,’ said his girlfriend, Kristi Hannah.
“‘He always felt like he was being discriminated (against) because he was black,’ said Jessica Anne Brocuglio, his former girlfriend. ‘Basically they wouldn’t give him pay raises. He never felt like they accepted him as a hard working person.’
“‘Thornton changed jobs a few times because he was not getting raises, Brocuglio said.”
The New York Times Aug. 3 headline read: “Troubles Preceded Connecticut Workplace Killing,” and in the second paragraph, the Times reported:
“He might also have had cause to be angry: he had complained to his girlfriend of being racially harassed at work, the woman’s mother said, and lamented that his grievances had gone unaddressed.”
On Aug. 7, 2010, The Washington Post headline read, “Beer warehouse shooter long complained of racism.”
Of course, Thornton was fired for stealing beer, and there was video proof of him doing so. But this fact — the one indisputable and most pertinent pre-murder fact — got lost within the larger context of Thornton’s claims of being a victim of whites.
Those preoccupied with Thornton’s charges of workplace racism might wish to reflect on this: Racist and other bigotry-based murderers always blame their victims. Medieval Christians who murdered Jews blamed the Jews for poisoning wells, baking Christian children’s blood in their matzo or some other terrible crime. Whites who lynched blacks blamed those blacks for rape or some other crime. Nothing is new about the Thornton racist murders except that the society in which in it occurred concentrated on the racist’s excuses rather than on his murders.
ONLY those folks who murder because of race? What about the guy down at Ft. Hood – who murdered because he was a whackjob who felt he was persecuted by Christians and Jews? Or – the Va Tech Killer, who murdered because he was a whackjob, and his motive… Well they’ve never figured out his motive, but from his self published manifesto we get – “”You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option…You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terror in my heart and ripping my soul all this time”.”
One of the popular screeds among a sect of the conservative hegemony, is that the name of the NAACP is at issue because of the “Colored Peoples”. One needs to ask if one is to use this literal saw, if the Daughters of the American Revolution, and Sons of Confederate Veterans might not also be misnomered. Since there quite simply aren’t any daughters of American Revolutionaries or sons of Confederates alive today. To be precise, might not that be the Great-Great-great-great-Gandaughters of the American Revolution, and Great-Great-Great-Grandsons of the Confederacy?
I mean, like the term x-American, “hyphenated Americans” only became an issue and distasteful AFTER black folks claimed the term African-American to conservatives. Nary a peep about the hundreds of German-American, Irish-American, Italian-American, Polish-American etc. organizations which span the country. But African-American? Wow – to a certain racially misguided sect of conservatives – “Dem’s fighting words!”
Amazing is Glenn beck’s “discovery” that there actually is a black history in America. I suppose he believed prior to that point A-A’s appeared magically sometime between the Brown decision, and King’s 1963 March on Washington. Yeah I know – the great alien “motherships” converged over every city in America, and unlike the Movie “Independence Day”…
Instead of raining sown destruction on every city and metropolis, rained down freshly minted black folks to destroy the picture perfect urban havens!
It would seem that the “Culture Wars” promulgated by social conservatives have devolved into the war on black folks (as well as Hispanics)…
By the not so social conservatives.
Next up is the use of “Avatars”, in this case black conservatives – in this case attacking “Lift Every Voice and Sing”
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is an uplifting spiritual, one that’s often heard in churches and popularly recognized as the black national anthem. Timothy Askew grew up with its rhythms, but now the song holds a contentious place in his mind.
“I love the song,” said Askew, an associate professor of English at Clark Atlanta University, a historically black college. “But it’s not the song that is the problem. It’s the label of the song as a ‘black national anthem’ that creates a lot of confusion and tension.”
The song and its message of struggle and hope have long been attached to the African-American community. It lives on as a religious hymn for several protestant and African-American denominations and was quoted by the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration.
After studying the music and lyrics of the song and its history for more than two decades, Askew decided the song was intentionally written with no specific reference to any race or ethnicity. Read the rest of this entry »
More on that Tea Bagger Racism storm caused by the NAACP identifying the problem –
After the NAACP criticized the Tea Party for tolerating racism, Tea Party spokesman Mark Williams said, “I am disinclined to take lectures on racial sensitivity from a group that insists on calling black people ‘Colored.’”
One of the continued bits of Tea Bagger racism is the identification of the NAACP as a “black” organization. While the NAACP was front and center in the century long fight for Civil Rights denied black folks by racism and Jim Crow Laws, their efforts also eliminated Jim Crow laws against Mexican-Americans and Hispanics, race based immigration prohibitions against non-whites including East and Pacific Asians, Jim Crow ordinances against Native Americans, and housing segregation against Jews. Ergo, America’s racial problem went a lot deeper than just white and black.
“Colored” People… Indeed.
The racism of the Tea Bagger movement, is they have bought into the white supremacist concept of white victimology – ergo that this was done at the expense of white Civil Rights. But what “Civil Rights” are they talking about? The right to be the societal and economic beneficiaries of legalized Jim Crow. The segregationalists of the 50’s and 60’s have morphed into the conservative political operators of today driving an agenda ever bit as noxious, but shielded in clever language and symbology. This is the exact same racism nurtured since the Southern takeover of the Republican Party, and called conservatism. It is the sort of racism that under George Bush’s Department of “Justice” ran rampant. with the entire apparatus of the Federal Government assigned to find cases of “reverse discrimination” against whites for 8 years – to find one case, while ignoring the more tha 9,000 complaints a year sent to DOJ for review.
Civil Rights Enforcement Under Bush First Term - Despite a constant 12,000 Referrals a Year, Enforcement Dropped
When compared with the Clinton administration, its findings show a significant drop in the enforcement of several major antidiscrimination and voting rights laws. For example, lawsuits brought by the division to enforce laws prohibiting race or sex discrimination in employment fell from about 11 per year under President Bill Clinton to about 6 per year under President George W. Bush.
The study also found a sharp decline in enforcement of a section of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits electoral rules with discriminatory effects, from more than four cases a year under Mr. Clinton to fewer than two cases a year under Mr. Bush.
So am I tarring the Tea Party movement with the criminal actions of the Bush Administration – “you betcha” – it’s all water, or in this case racist belief sets, from the same polluted well.
And as to the NAACP being a “black organization”, go back to some of those old newsreels from the Civil Rights era – and you find there have been moral white folks marching, putting their lives on the line (Philadelphia, Mississippi) right beside black folks, and involved with the NAACP since it’s inception.
With that, I am going to call out Cynthia Tucker, whose article in this morning Atlanta Journal, apologizes for Tea Party racism and chides the NAACP –
But as a child of the Deep South who grew up under the lash of Jim Crow, I learned to distinguish between well-meaning whites who weren’t quite ready for a black president of the local community college (black church members were OK) and actual racists.
The NAACP didn’t serve the cause of racial justice well when it further cheapened the word “racism”, along with its own mission.
A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
From the testimony of Thomas Perez, head of the Civil Rights Division, before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in May:
This means that the case was downgraded to a civil case 11 days before Obama was inaugurated, 26 days before Eric Holder became attorney general, and about nine months before Thomas Perez was confirmed as head of the Civil Rights Division.
2. Adams accuses two Obama period Justice Department appointees of killing the case and making a policy decision not to prosecute cases against black people –
Adams also said that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandesdeclared, “Never bring another lawsuit against a black or other national minority, apparently no matter what they do.” But according to the Raben Group, a progressive PR firm Fernades worked for prior to the Justice Department, she didn’t leave her job with them until June 22, 2009, more than six months after the criminal case against the NBPP members was dropped.
Further – As Media Matters demonstrated, Adams himself readily acknowledged that he was not present for the meetings and conversations that he pointed to as evidence supporting his allegations. More from Media Matters –
Adams is a long-time right-wing activist, who is known for filing an ethics complaint against Hugh Rodham that was subsequently dismissed, served as a Bush poll watcher in Florida 2004, and reportedly volunteered for a Republican group that trains lawyers to fight “racially tinged battles over voting rights”;
Adams was hired to the Justice Department in 2005 by Bradley Schlozman, who was found by the Department of Justice Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to have improperly considered political affiliation when hiring career attorneys — the former head of the DOJ voting rights section reportedly said that Adams was “exhibit A of the type of people hired by Schlozman”;
Adams has admitted that he does not have first-hand knowledge of the events, conversations, and decisions that he is citing to advance his accusations;
The Bush administration’s Justice Department — not the Obama administration — made the decision not to pursue criminal charges against members of the New Black Panther Party for alleged voter intimidation at a polling center in Philadelphia in 2008;
The Obama administration successfully obtained default judgment against Samir Shabazz, a member of the New Black Panther Party carrying a nightstick outside the Philadelphia polling center on Election Day 2008;
The Bush administration DOJ chose not to pursue similar charges against members of the Minutemen, one of whom allegedly carried a weapon while harassing Hispanic voters in Arizona in 2006;
No voters have come forward to claim that they were intimidated from voting on account of the New Black Panthers standing outside the polling center in 2008;
The Republican vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which is currently investigating the Justice Department’s decision, has called that investigation “very small potatoes” full of “overheated rhetoric filled with insinuations and unsubstantiated charges,” and said it has not “served the interests of the commission”; she further said that DOJ has given a “plausible argument” for not pursuing additional charges in the case.
Now, as to Megyn’s “discomfort”, she’s acting like a woman spurned – which brigs up the question as to whether she has some “personal” interest…
I mean, would the uhhhh… black Playa who just traded her in on a better model – please introduce her to somebody?
As pointed out in the previous post, the conservative right has adopted a tactic last seen utilized by white supremacist groups. That the white folks in this country are persecuted. Now the white supremacist variant of this was that white people were prevented from 1) getting a job, 2) going to college, or 3) wining a business contract because of 1) Civil Rights, or 2) Affirmative Action, or 3) the dumbing down of one or more institutions to make room for women, or minorities…
Damn the reality, damn the statistics – white folks is under attack, Ya’ll!
Not surprisingly in a political movement which perpetually and psychotically sees America under attack from everything from socialist peanuts to communist kumquats, fear is manufactured nightly by the avatars of white despondency with pepper fueled tears and a “News” organization in Faux whose carnal knowledge of the news is best compared to that of the boy’s lurid adventures told over beer to his peers…
While carrying the same rubber in his wallet he acquired in a pique of dare fueled courage in High School…
Through college.
That is, that if the news were sex, Faux’s association with it would make the Virgin Mary look like a Harlot.
Tim Wise hits another one out of the park with this one…
Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism.
Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad.
What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past?
Was it the research indicating that job applicants with white sounding names have a 50 percent better chance of being called back for an interview than their counterparts with black-sounding names, even when all qualifications are the same?
There is a full frontal attack on black Americans by the Glenn Beck Tea Bagger right. Been a while coming, but it looks like forces are aligning to step up and call what is going on for what it is.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will propose a resolution this week condemning racism within the tea party movement.
The resolution, scheduled for a vote as early as Tuesday by delegates attending the annual NAACP convention in Kansas City, calls upon “all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”
NAACP leaders said the resolution was necessary to make people aware of what they believe is a racist element within the tea party movement.
“I think a lot of people are not taking the tea party movement seriously, and we need to take it seriously,” said Anita Russell, head of the Kansas City chapter of the NAACP. “We need to realize it’s really not about limited government.”
Russell said she was “pretty certain” the resolution would pass.
Tea party leaders deny that the movement is racist and said the resolution is unfair.
“I just don’t see racism in the tea party movement,” said Brendan Steinhauser, director of campaigns for FreedomWorks, which organizes tea party groups. “Racism is something we’re absolutely opposed to.”
“The NAACP has more of a political agenda now, but I would hope that they would appreciate the fact that the tea party movement has a lot in common with the civil rights movement. I’m personally inspired by what the civil rights movement did, and I want them to know that.” Read the rest of this entry »
Faux News’ new darlings on the left are the New Black Panthers, who have morphed from a group of about 6 people into the newest Faux Threat to white people everywhere. This is indeed a reprise of the “Giant Negroes” who wandered the earth back in the early 20th century, ravishing white women, and taking dozens of white cops to capture and subdue…
This is a powerful analysis of the forces behind the “culture wars” and the desire to preserve Jim Crow as a functional entity by the right wing in America by Cary Fraser. Follow the link below to the original where support documentation is provided in the form of footnotes and links. As one example of this, work by Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness) has shown that during the height of Jim Crow, blacks went to prison at roughly four times the rate of whites; today the black imprisonment rate is seven times that of whites. (Another good reference in the prison industrial Jim Crow element of this is by Robert Perkinson – Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire.)
As I have reported here in The New Jim Crow series – the New Jim Crow impacts nearly every aspect of life for minorities in America, starting with access to education, credit, the ability to start business and conduct commerce, through access to jobs.
The New Jim Crow, Ubiquitous and Masked as "Culture Wars"
The recent decision by the Texas School Board of Education to revise the curriculum in the state to reflect a more “conservative” approach to social studies and history has highlighted the ongoing debate about the role of education in American society and culture. The explicit desire by the conservative majority on the Texas School Board to impose an ideological orientation in elementary and secondary education – including a shift of focus away from the civil rights movement and slavery, an emphasis upon ensuring that students be taught that the idea of the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution and promotion of the need to safeguard American sovereignty from threats posed by organizations such as the United Nations – is a barometer of the increasing uncertainty that has overtaken the conservative factions in American society. The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president, on the basis of a well-executed campaign that demonstrated the increasing electoral influence of multi-ethnic coalitions in American politics, has served as a catalyst for reactionaries of all stripes to seek ways to reverse the movement of American society toward a greater openness and engagement with the wider world, including the diverse communities of color within the country. A recent article in the Wall Street reports that recent statistics suggest that population growth among minority groups in the United States will exceed growth rates among whites in the near future.(1) If that demographic shift takes place, the United States will become a country where there is no single ethnic group or race that will constitute a majority within the population. The promise of greater cultural and ethnic diversity in the American population is a guarantee of the erosion of the white-supremacist ethos that has defined American society over the course of its history. Read the rest of this entry »
Interesting article on the history of anti-discrimination laws in NY, which preceded much of the rest of the country by 20 years. So much for Mr. Paul’s “pricerples” –
Rand Paul’s criticism of the federal civil rights legislation of the 1960s can be better evaluated by looking at the workings of similar legislation that appeared on the state level two decades before.
In 1945, New York became the first state since Reconstruction to pass anti-discrimination legislation. At the time, there was plenty of biased behavior in the state based on race, religion, and nationality. Naturally, members of New York’s diverse ethnic population—plus many liberals of all backgrounds—found these discriminatory practices deeply offensive. As a result, the new legislation banned discrimination in employment on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin and established a New York State Commission Against Discrimination to enforce this ban. In subsequent years, the law was expanded to cover discrimination in public accommodations, with gender discrimination added to the list of violations.
This law has a personal dimension for me. In 1946, my father, Jacob (“Jack”) Wittner, went to work as a field representative for the New York State Commission Against Discrimination. For nearly two decades, he took complaints of discrimination from aggrieved individuals, investigated these complaints, and wrote up determinations for the commissioners, who issued such determinations more or less as he wrote them. In the mid-1960s, he became director of investigations for the New York City Commission on Human Rights, and in later years worked for the federal government at enforcing its equal employment opportunity guidelines. Read the rest of this entry »
They have virtually no black folks in Arizona – so Hispanics are just going to have to do.
HB 2281 outlaws curriculum that is anti-American and that advocates the violent overthrow of the U.S. government (I imagine there is a Tea Bagger exemption?).
The bill creates a mechanism by which books will be judged to be in compliance. American Indian and African American classes are exempted. The clear target is the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies (MAS) program. The Arizona Department of Education has “has begun telling principals to remove teachers who speak English with an accent from classes with students who are still learning English.”
Arizona’s Superintendent for Public Instruction, Tom Horne is on record claiming that only things from Western Civilization (Greco-Roman) should be taught in Arizona schools. Pre- Colombian Indigenous knowledge from this continent – the foundation for the highly successful MAS program – is considered outside of Western Civilization.
Well, this should quiet down all the racial tension in Arizona: Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill designed to outlaw the Tucson school district’s ethnic studies program—just hours after UN human rights experts issued a report condemning that very law. The measure is the brainchild of Arizona schools chief Tom Horne, who believes that the Mexican-American studies classes taught in Tucson high schools teach Latino students to resent white people. “It’s just like the old South, and it’s long past time we prohibited it,” Horne, a Republican running for Attorney General, tells the AP.
He’s pushed for the law since 2006, when he heard that a Hispanic activist had told a class that “Republicans hate Latinos.” The law bans any classes designed to promote solidarity among a particular ethnic group. Tucson’s schools offer Mexican-American, African-American and Native-American studies programs, but district officials say they think all are in compliance with the law.
After making national headlines for a new law on illegal immigrants, the Arizona Legislature sent Gov. Jan Brewer a bill Thursday that would ban ethnic studies programs in the state that critics say currently advocate separatism and racial preferences.
After making national headlines for a new law on illegal immigrants, the Arizona Legislature passed a bill Thursday that would ban ethnic studies programs in the state that critics say currently advocate separatism and racial preferences.
New Arizona Welcome Sign
The bill, which passed 32-26 in the state House, had been approved by the Senate a day earlier. It now goes to Gov. Jan Brewer for her signature. Read the rest of this entry »
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