Rep Keith Ellison at Homeland Security Committee Meeting

Rep Keith Ellison lays out why Rep Peter King’s hearing is a travesty…

 

In the End, For Conservatives – It’s Always About Their Racism

Here’s the core of the arguments against Atty General Holder’s DOJ. And up until the last paragraph, the author makes a reasonable case of why is the DOJ involved in such minor things that should be handled within the purview of the local school administration or at worst – State Courts.

‘Civil Rights’ Gone Wild
To the Civil Rights Division, pilgrimages and stiletto heels matter more than actual violations of the Civil Rights Act.

The Author  points out several cases where Federal involvement seems a bit on the overkill side such as –

In the latest outrage, the Civil Rights Division is suing the board of education in the leafy Chicago suburb of Berkeley, Ill. The board’s offense? It would not allow a middle-school computer-math-lab teacher to take off three weeks during December’s crucial end-of-semester course reviews and final exams in order to make a pilgrimage to Mecca…In 1977, in TWA v. Hardison, the Supreme Court held that it is an “undue hardship” if the employer has to “bear more than a de minimis cost” in order to provide the accommodation.

The author hints at going off the rails here with:

Extremists in the Civil Rights Division are pouncing on other school policies as well. When it was first formed in the 1960s, the division pursued cases of real discrimination — cases where, for example, black students were harassed or intimidated or provided with intentionally inferior education.

Why? Because one of the problems with the Bushit Administration’s DOJ was a complete ignoring of Minority Civil Rights for a all hands on deck, fruitless search for the Holy Grail of conservative bigots – cases of reverse discrimination.

They managed to actually find and prosecute 1 case in 8 years, despite 12,000-16,000 cases of discrimination against minorities being referred to the DOJ by local authorities a year… Which they ignored. So when the author is referring to “Extremists”… The Bushit Administration perversion of the Civil Rights Division resulted in filling the Division with…what? Good Ol’ Boys?

The current cases involve two schools in upstate New York that supposedly discriminated against one male student who wore a pink wig and makeup and another male student who wore a wig and stiletto heels and wanted to be able to “dress like a woman.” These students had violated the schools’ common-sense dress codes and were told to change clothes and remove the makeup. That prompted the Civil Rights Division to come knocking. The boys were being treated “differently” from female students, and such differential treatment, the division asserted, “implicate[s] the civil rights laws that we enforce.”

Sounds reasonable. The local school system should have the ability to define a dress code for all students as far as I can see. One of my personal heroes is the principal in memphis who has developed “The Urkel” System –

But then the author goes and quotes these scumbags –

As Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity observes: “The Obama administration apparently believes that it is unconstitutional for high schools to have a dress code that makes distinctions between what is appropriate dress for males and what is appropriate dress for females.” Clegg also points out that the division’s attempt to equate “sexual-orientation discrimination” with sex discrimination, by asserting that the use of sexual “stereotypes” is an instance of the latter, is nothing but naked bootstrapping (if you will pardon the expression). But legal justification or not, in the eyes of the warped and silly (but dangerous) lawyers inhabiting the division, barring boys from wearing stiletto heels is a serious civil-rights violation.

For those not familiar with right-wing racist code language, “The Center for Equal Opportunity” is one of the KKK organizations in suits that occupies the right, whose sole purpose is to re-segregate schools fully with the financial and legal support of the so called “Federalist Society” made up of right wing, and racist lawyers little better than the Council of Conservative Citizen scum they shill for.

So our writer isn’t really pissed about th DOJ’s intrusion  into local decision making, as much as he is pissed that such intrusion isn’t on behalf of re-segregation, and the re-institution of Jim Crow.

The proof?

Oddly, one of those views is that discrimination by some racial groups is perfectly acceptable. This explains why the Justice Department dismissed the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case it had already won. It is why this administration is studiously not pursuing cases like the one filed against Southern Illinois University in 2006 for maintaining a paid fellowship program that categorically excluded white males from applying. It was the Bush administration’s race-neutral enforcement policy in such cases that enraged the radical civil-rights organizations that dominate Washington and formed the basis for much of the unfair and misleading criticism of that administration’s enforcement of civil-rights laws.

The “author” in this case, was one of the racist scumbags illegitimately placed in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division during the Bushit Administration, who now works at one of the right wing’s premier racist “think tanks”…

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department.

Methinks this conehead sheet wearer…

Has a problem.

If the best the right can do is to complain that Atty General Holder is a “bad man” because he won’t let them be bigots-in- charge anymore.

They have a weaker case than even I thought, and I already had them as the “bargain brand” in those toilet tissue commercials where one drop of water cases where you wouldn’t want to set the good china on the cheap stuff…

 

The New Jim Crow – Why the US Justices System is an Injustice

Hat Tip to Truthout for this marvelous analysis and dissection of Justice in America.

The New Jim Crow, Just Like The Old Jim Crow - Just Fashionable

Fourteen Examples of Systemic Racism in the US Criminal Justice System

The biggest crime in the US criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.

Saying the US criminal system is racist may be politically controversial in some circles. But the facts are overwhelming. No real debate about that. Below, I set out numerous examples of these facts.

The question is – are these facts the mistakes of an otherwise good system, or are they evidence that the racist criminal justice system is working exactly as intended? Is the US criminal justice system operated to marginalize and control millions of African-Americans?

Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system – from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting out on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole and freedom. Look what these facts show.

One. The US has seen a surge in arrests and putting people in jail over the last four decades. Most of the reason is the war on drugs. Yet, whites and blacks engage in drug offenses, possession and sales at roughly comparable rates – according to a report on race and drug enforcement published by Human Rights Watch in May 2008. While African-Americans comprise 13 percent of the US population and 14 percent of monthly drug users, they are 37 percent of the people arrested for drug offenses – according to 2009 Congressional testimony by Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project.

 

The New Jim Crow – Racial Jury Exclusion

Guilty!!!!!!!

Study: Blacks Routinely Excluded From Juries

Twenty-five years ago, Earl Jerome McGahee was charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend.

McGahee, an African-American, was tried by an all-white jury in an Alabama county that was more than 55 percent black.

The district attorney dismissed every one of the 24 blacks who qualified to serve on the jury, including Edith Ferguson, who had worked for the Selma, Ala., Police Department for many years. The reason cited for striking Ferguson from being a juror: “low intelligence.”

Bryan Stevenson of the nonprofit group Equal Justice Initiative tells NPR’s Guy Raz that assertions about intelligence are “one of the most troubling but persistent reasons” given to dismiss potential jurors who are black. Many of those potential jurors are college graduates, Stevenson says.

Last year, McGahee was granted a new trial because of the racially discriminatory jury selection in his original case. But many defendants are not so lucky.

Study Documents ‘Widespread Discrimination’

In a new study, Stevenson’s group details “widespread discrimination” in the selection of jurors across the Deep South.

 

The Small Business President vs. The New Jim Crow

One of the reasons the right wing despises Obama so much is his focus on small business. Which is the same reason they despised Bill Clinton. Follow my logic here –

After the Civil War, the majority of skilled artisans in the South were black. The people who built wagons, coopers, dressmakers, furniture makers  – and many of the skilled labor jobs prior to the industrial revolution were done by either slave, or free black labor. By 1860, there were more free blacks in Virginia than black folks slave or free in most of the northern states.

What Jim Crow really was about was stopping these people’s economic progress, such as to preserve white supremacy. Ergo though the destruction of the black artisan class businesses, Southern whites prevented the emergence of a new, black merchant class – who by nature of existing skills was in position to dominate certain industries when freed from the “Black Codes”. A merchant class, who would have followed the logical progression of gaining a piece of political power through wealth.

In America today, according to Forbes Magazine and numerous other sources, black folks a 3 times more likely to start a business than their white counterparts. And despite receiving only .3% of the Venture Investment in this country, are – according to the same studies 8 times more likely to succeed when they do get Venture financing. Only in America does that not translate into quickly shifting 30% of the investment money into more successful enterprise.

Indeed, the Bushit Administration was quite possibly the most hostile administration in history to small business, and was especially toxic to Minority owned business, as I have documented in previous articles, in reducing the quantity of SBA Loan Grantees to black owned business by 60% over 8 years, while holding it the same or increasing it to non-Minorities. The Bushit administration was also adamantly pro BIG business. So much so as to flat-line R&D and emerging technologies in a number of previously competitive industries like Telecom and Energy.

So why don’t Republicans want small business to succeed? Because the wrong color folks just might make a success at it, and in doing so threaten the old-boy power structure.

The New Jim Crow… Not much different from the old.

Jim Crow in Alaska

Obama pushes for Hill passage of small business agenda

President Barack Obama turned the spotlight to his small business agenda Friday, urging congressional passage of legislation meant to boost federal assistance to a key segment of the economy.

Among the proposals highlighted by the administration is a $30 billion government lending program offering capital to community banks that boost their small-business lending. Banks with assets worth less than $10 billion would be able to borrow money from the Treasury at a dividend rate as low as 1 percent provided they use the cash to make more small-business loans this year than they did in 2009.

Other proposals being pushed by the president include an elimination of capital gains taxes on certain small business investments.

“Ensuring that small businesses can thrive is about more than our economic success,” Obama said at the White House after a meeting with small business leaders. “It’s about who we are as a people. It’s about a nation where anybody with a good idea and a willingness to work can succeed. That’s the promise of America.”

Legislation enacted in March included new business tax credits for hiring additional workers, as well as a measure allowing companies to write off, instead of depreciate, new equipment.

Many small businesses, however, are still struggling to regain their footing in the wake of the recent recession. The Commerce Department reported Friday that retail sales fell for the first time in eight months in May, widely missing analyst expectations.

Total retail sales fell 1.2 percent to $362.5 billion last month, compared with April’s upwardly revised 0.6 percent increase. It was first decline since last September, when retail sales fell 2.3 percent.

Data from the Small Business Administration (SBA) show that small companies have generated 64 percent of the net new jobs every year over the past 15 years. Those businesses, however, were particularly hard hit by the economic downturn. A Senate report last year found that American businesses with fewer than 20 employees have suffered steeper job losses than larger companies.

 

Va Republican Governor Brings Back Jim Crow…

A little History here of how Poll Taxes and Literacy tests were utilized during Jim Crow to disenfranchise black people –

Va Republican Governor McDonnell, AG Cuccinelli, and Lt. Gov Bolliing Pray to Restore Jim Crow

In 1890, Southern states began to adopt explicit literacy tests to disenfranchise voters. This had a large differential racial impact, since 40-60% of blacks were illiterate, compared to 8-18% of whites. Poor, illiterate whites opposed the tests, realizing that they too would be disenfranchised. To placate them, Southern states adopted an “understanding clause” or a “grandfather clause,” which entitled voters who could not pass the literacy test to vote, provided they could demonstrate their understanding of the meaning of a passage in the constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar, or were or were descended from someone eligible to vote in 1867, the year before blacks attained the franchise. Discriminatory administration ensured that blacks would not be eligible to vote through the understanding clause.

Georgia initiated the poll tax in 1871, and made it cumulative in 1877 (requiring citizens to pay all back taxes before being permitted to vote). Every former confederate state followed its lead by 1904. Although these taxes of $1-$2 per year may seem small, it was beyond the reach of many poor black and white sharecroppers, who rarely dealt in cash. The Georgia poll tax probably reduced overall turnout by 16-28%, and black turnout in half (Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, 67-8). The purpose of the tax was plainly to disenfranchise, not to collect revenue, since no state brought prosecutions against any individual for failure to pay the tax.

Racially disparate charging and sentencing has had the effect of disenfranchising millions of black people – enabling Republicans to remove millions of Democrat voters from the roles. It would seem that the new Governor of Virginia wants to keep them from voting…

VA Gov McDonnell Institutes Writing Test For Felons Seeking Voting Rights

Virginia’s slide toward extreme conservative governance under Gov. Bob McDonnell continues.

McDonnell wants to change the process by which non-violent felons apply to have their voting rights restored, the Washington Post reported over the weekend. Whereas before, applicants had had to fill out a one-page form, making the process almost automatic, they now will have to submit an essay outlining their contributions to society since their release.

 

The New Jim Crow – Racial Disparities in Sentencing Rise

Racial Disparities in Sentencing Rise After Guidelines Loosened

Washington – Black and Hispanic men are more likely to receive longer prison sentences than their white counterparts since the Supreme Court loosened federal sentencing rules, a government study has concluded.

The study by the U.S. Sentencing Commission reignited a long-running debate about whether federal judges need to be held to mandatory guidelines in order to stamp out what might appear to be inherent biases and dramatically disparate sentences.

The report analyzed sentences meted out since the January 2005 U.S. v. Booker decision gave federal judges much more sentencing discretion.

For years, legal experts have argued over the disparity in sentencing between black and white men. The commission found that the difference peaked in 1999 with blacks receiving 14 percent longer sentences. By 2002, however, the commission found no statistical difference.

 

Jim Crow in Silicon Valley – Worth a Read!

Great article by blksista! Here is the intro -you will have to visit her site to read it all. Those of you who are “tekkies” might want to add this, along with Subrealism to your list of black engineer’s blogs to check in on.

Dr. Frank Greene, who died suddenly December 26, and Dr. Roy Clay were feted in early January 2009 as two of the 50 most influential black technologists in Silicon Valley (Courtesy: San Francisco BayView)

There’s Jim Crow in Silicon Valley

A couple of decades back, in the late Seventies and mid Eighties when I was living in Silicon Valley, there had been a couple of discrimination suits involving tech companies that I had been following. The black engineers involved also claimed they had the perception that blacks (or Latinos) entering or employed in this industry would be horning into what I would call the last bailiwick of white male endeavor in the United States. Therefore, the atmosphere or environment there could be stiffly hospitable to hostile. (During one economic downturn, one company had decided to let go of more white senior and intermediate, than minority, newly-trained junior engineers so as not to piss off the Feds; when this leaked out it caused even more division and animosity among hard-pressed employees.)

I do not recall off-hand the names involved and the dates or whether these suits had concluded in favor of the black engineers or the companies or a whether it resulted in a split decision; that is, a settlement for the engineers instead of rehire. I recall more the engineers’ contention of a hostile environment with white engineers who were jealously trying to hold on their jobs, seniority–and privilege.

I don’t think that this has changed in some twenty years.

Silicon Valley isn’t exactly becoming whiter – but it is becoming less black and Hispanic. Part of it has to do with Prop 209 limiting, and largely eliminating homegrown talent who might stay in the area to work. The second has to do with the environment, blacks are actively fleeing the San Francisco and Bay area as the established black communities are destroyed. Another is the penchant of some of the companies to hire cheap foreign labor under worker Visas, instead of developing the American native pool, or paying American Engineers of which there is no shortage. The VC community also hasn’t been overly friendly to black owned start ups, meaning there isn’t much of a base of black owned companies to coalesce and develop talent. Lastly for outside talent from other places –  with traffic, the astronomical cost of housing, and the less than warm educational environment for your children – a job in the Sun Belt looks a lot more attractive to black Engineers and scientists.

 

The New Jim Crow – Locking Minorities Out at Law Schools

One of the ongoing efforts by conservatives in this country has been to reestablish Jim Crow though a series of legislative and legal moves. Conservatives were stung badly during the 50’s and 60’s by a series of legal decisions which overturned most of the Old Jim Legislation and penalized many Jim Crow practices. Recognizing that in any fair court of law they could not win – conservatives put a 30 year full court press on the Judiciary, and formed legal associations like the Federalist Society to attack advancements in Civil Rights, and get “their” Judges appointed at the Federal Level who would rule in support of their platform – regardless of the Constitutionality or legality of the issue. These attacks culminated in the current 5-4 conservative majority in the Supreme Court – fully supporting the establishment of the New Jim Crow.

The Difference Between the New Jim Crow and the Old Jim Crow is in how it is implemented - not their objectives.

We see the result of that effort to seed the courts in the volatile judicial appointment battles during the Clinton and Bushit Administrations, and the steady attacks upon Affirmative Action by misnomered organizations supported by the Federalist Society such as the Center for Equal Opportunity,  The Center for Individual Freedom , and the National Association of Scholars which functionally have replaced the old White Citizen’s Councils in suing and legally blackmailing schools and Universities into racially segregating policies.

And, of course at least one “black” organization headed by the usual suspects to add a racial defense in terms of the short lived Center for New Black leadership, created solely to provide cover for the right’s offensive against Affirmative Action (equal opportunity) – whose leadership consisting of Peter Kirsanow, Gerald  Reynolds, and Brian Jones were all appointed to high level positions within the Bushit Administration as a reward for their Tomming in the University of Michigan Case (Grutter v Bollinger). The CNBL was set up by Federalist Society Lawyer Mitchell Pearlstien, and funded by the “Foundations” which fund many of the racist, and white supremacist organizations on the right – the JM Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Donner Foundation.

 

Jiminez Crow in Red – Cuba and the Vestiges of Colonial Racism

African-American group challenges Cuba on race

A group of prominent African Americans, traditionally sympathetic to the Cuban revolution, have for the first time condemned Cuba, demanding Havana stop its “callous disregard” for black Cubans and declaring that “racism in Cuba . . . must be confronted.”

School Children in Santiago, Cuba

“We know first-hand the experiences and consequences of denying civil freedoms on the basis of race,” the group declared in a statement. “For that reason, we are even more obligated to voice our opinion on what is happening to our Cuban brethren.”

Among the 60 signers were Princeton professor Cornel West, actress Ruby Dee Davis, film director Melvin Van Peebles, former South Florida congresswoman Carrie Meek, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of President Barack Obama’s church in Chicago, and Susan Taylor, former editor in chief of Essence magazine.

NEW VOICES

The declaration, issued Monday, adds powerful new voices to the chorus pushing for change on the island, where Afro-Cubans make up at least 62 percent of the 11.4 million people yet are only thinly represented in the top leadership, scientific, academic and other ranks.

“This is historic,” said Enrique Patterson, an Afro-Cuban Miami author. Although predominantly white Cuban exiles “tried to approach these people before, they lacked credibility. Now [African Americans] are listening.”

A news release accompanying the statement acknowledged that “traditionally African Americans have sided with the Castro regime and condemned the United States’ policies, which explicitly work to topple the Cuban government.”

But more African Americans traveling to Cuba have been able “to see the situation for themselves,” said David Covin, one of the statement’s organizers and former president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.

The growing number of Afro-Cuban activists complaining about racial discrimination and casting their struggle as an issue of “civil rights,” rather than “human rights,” has helped to draw the attention of African Americans, said Victoria Ruiz-Labrit, Miami spokesperson for the Cuba-based Citizens’ Committee for Racial Integration.

“The human rights issue did not make a point of the race issue, and now we have an evolution,” she added.

“Cuban blacks moved closer to the term `civil rights’ because those are the rights that the movement here in the U.S. made a point of — the race issues.”

Alberto González, spokesman for Cuba’s diplomatic mission in Washington, said it was “absurd” to accuse of racism a Cuban government that “has done more for black Cubans than any other in all areas, including health, education and welfare.”

The African Americans’ statement was “part of a campaign of subversion against Cuba,” he added, designed to impact the administration of the first African-American president of the United States.

To understand what is going on in Cuba – a bit of History. Slavery wasn’t officially ended in Cuba until 1886. Despite the fact, a number of key figures in Cuban History(Antonio Maceo), and their long fight to be independent of Spain were Afro-Cuban – as the site HistoryofCuba.com documents –

At the time of emancipation, most slaves were employed on plantations, and most free black Cubans were women who lived in the cities. Cuban society didn’t exactly welcome the free slaves with open arms. For example:

• In 1887, only 11% of Afro-Cubans of all ages could read and write (compared with 33% of whites).
• Spanish officials regularly removed the Don and Doña titles from official documents and identity cards issued to Afro-Cubans. In 1893 these titles were returned, according to an article in La Igualdad on December 16, 1893.
• Afro-Cubans were excluded from seats in theatres (except in the gallery), and many hotels and restaurants refused them service.
• The Union of railroad drivers banned Afro-Cubans from the profession altogether, and many job ads specified a race requirement.
• Official government and cultural influence promoted the racial fears that existed in white society to lock out blacks from society.

After 1898, according to Aline Helg in Our Rightful Share, “Only a few outstanding Afro-Cubans who distinguished themselves by very exceptional military abilities or Western educational standards had access to white privileged circles.”

Another bit of interesting history is that of Narciso Lopez, who acted as a puppet dictator for Southern (to become confederate) slave holding States in an attempt to annex Cuba in the 1850’s as a slave holding state like Texas.

Key people in Cuban History and the fight against racism in the country included – Juan Gualberto Gómez, and Martin Morua Delgado – the important point being the Cuban Revolution led by Castro and Guevara didn’t resolve the country’s long standing racial divisions.

 

The New Jim Crow – Excluding Black Owned Businesses

Now… You KNOW things are truly screwed up when the National Black Chamber of Commerce, a black front organization on the level of Project 21 for conservatives and Republicans needing to rent a Kneegrow to say the “right things” – AKA racism cover – is griping about the pitiful state of contracts being awarded to minority owned firms.

Have Black contractors been driven off the road?

The National Black Chamber of Commerce, Inc. has recently received contracting data from the U.S. Department of Transportation concerning federally funded highway projects. Nationally, Black contractors only participate in 1.1 percent of the total federal dollars allotted through state departments of transportation.

There are twelve states (Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Ver­mont and Wyoming) that do no business with Black contractors at all. California, New York, Texas and Florida don’t do much better. “California, which is 54 percent minority, is indeed the poster child of this disparate impact,” says NBCC President/CEO Harry C. Alford. “They get $2 billion annually and do their best not to include minority business in their business activity, particularly Black businesses. The state does 0.1 percent (one-tenth of one percent) with Black contractors and they wear this bigotry with pride. Caltrans (California Department of Transportation) and the local chapters of the Associated General Contractors organization stand vigilant to make sure no Blacks are allowed,” according to Alford.

No surprise here about – Alaska (22k – 3.4%), Arizona (158k -3%), Hawaii (22k – 1.8%), Idaho (5.5k – 0.4%), Montana (2.7k – 0.3%), Nevada (135k – 6.2%), New Mexico (34k – 1.9%), North Dakota (3.9k – 0.6%), Oregon (56k – 1.6%), Puerto Rico, Ver­mont (3k – 0.5%) and Wyoming (3.7k – 0.8%). The non-Hispanic black population of these states sans Arizona and Nevada  probably couldn’t fill a professional sized football stadium (105k)… Added together. The real question then is California – which BTW has a Republican Governor (the Terminator).

 

Tim Wise… Yeah, It IS About Race and Racism

Tim Wise, as usual – nails it.

The vehemence and vitrol of the anti-Health Care Reformers has nothing to do with the issue on the table.

It is all about race, racism,  fear on the part of the white middle class, and outright pandering to racism on the part of their leaders.

 

The New Jim Crow – At Least It Wasn’t Coors…

At the White House Beer/Love Fest last night –

Gates was the only one who drank a fully American beer, opting for a Sam Adams light. Obama drank Bud Lite, made by a Belgian company(Anheuser-Busch InBev), Biden had nonalcoholic Buckler (made by Heineken), brewed by Dutch Heineken, and Crowley chose Blue Moon, from Canadian Molson.

Well…at least one guy (Gates) was drinking a real American beer.

Expensive... But worth it!

And I gotta believe the guys over at Anheuser-Busch InBev, are licking their chops at this one. Interesting fodder for the Bud-Lite/Miller Lite advertising battle.

Why not Coors?

 

Joan Walsh and Kweisi Mfume Discuss Beck’s Racism

Joan Walsh lays out racism as a tool of  conservatives fighting against progress for the past 230 years.

 

A Bit More of the Post-Racialism in America

Our Hispanic brothers and sisters recieve a bit of the “love”…

While it is certainly within this woman’s right to display such a sign on her own home, one needs question the mental acuity of such an individual.

Apparently, BTX3’s blog is getting enough traffic now to gather a few of the same type of weeds, which is OK – because the discussion here can get very…

Darwinian.

Especially if you can’t defend your point.