Senate Leader Harry Reid Confesses It Was Obama's Light Skin And "Non-Negro" Dialect That Won Him Over!

Dirty Harry Gets Put On Blast

Embattled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada apologized today for making stupid, idiotic remarks about Barack Obama during the presidential campaign. And you thought only Republicans say ignorant things.

Journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann reported the disparaging remarks in their new book "Game Change," which is scheduled to be in bookstores Tuesday.

The authors quote Reid as saying privately that Obama, as a black candidate, could be successful thanks, in part, to his "light-skinned" appearance and speaking patterns "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

"He [Reid] was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,' " Halperin and Heilemann say.

"Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama's race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination," they write.

In a statement to CNN, Reid said, "I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words."

"I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African Americans for my improper comments.

"I was a proud and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama during the campaign and have worked as hard as I can to advance President Obama's legislative agenda," the senator from Nevada said.

Reid pointed to his efforts to integrate the Las Vegas Strip and the gaming industry, among other legislation favored by African-American voters.

"I have worked hard to advance issues important to the African American community."

Reid, who waited to formally endorse Obama until after the tough presidential primary battle ended in 2008, is facing an uphill re-election fight this year in his home state.

Source

Harlem Becoming Less Black Every Day - You Got A Problem With That?

672 Whites in 1990. Today It's Almost 14,000

For nearly a century, Harlem has been synonymous with black urban America. Given its magnetic and growing appeal to younger black professionals and its historic residential enclaves and cultural institutions, the neighborhood’s reputation as the capital of black America seems unlikely to change soon. With that said...

But the neighborhood is in the midst of a profound and accelerating shift. In greater Harlem, which runs river to river, and from East 96th Street and West 106th Street to West 155th Street, blacks are no longer a majority of the population — a shift that actually occurred a decade ago, but was largely overlooked.

By 2008, their share had declined to 4 in 10 residents. Since 2000, Harlem’s population has already grown more than in any decade since the 1940s, to 126,000 from 109,000, but its black population — about 77,000 in central Harlem and about twice that in greater Harlem — is smaller than at any time since the 1920s.

In 2008, 22 percent of the white households in Harlem had moved to their present homes within the previous year. By comparison, only 7 percent of the black households had.

“It was a combination of location and affordability,” said Laura Murray, a 31-year-old graduate student in medical anthropology at Columbia, who moved to Sugar Hill near City College about a year ago. “I feel a community here that I don’t feel in other parts of the city.”

Change has been even more pronounced in the narrow north-south corridor defined as central Harlem, which planners roughly define as north of 110th Street between Fifth and St. Nicholas Avenues.

There, blacks account for 6 in 10 residents, but native-born African-Americans born in the United States make up barely half of all residents. Since 2000, the proportion of whites living there has more than doubled, to more than one in 10 residents — the highest since the 1940s.

The Hispanic population, which was concentrated in East Harlem, is now at an all-time high in central Harlem, up 27 percent since 2000.

Harlem, said Michael Henry Adams, a historian of the neighborhood and a local resident, “is poised again at a point of pivotal transition.”

Harlem is hardly the only ethnic neighborhoods to have metamorphosed because of inroads by housing pioneers seeking bargains and more space — Little Italy, for instance, has been largely gobbled up by immigrants expanding the boundaries of Chinatown and by creeping gentrification from SoHo.

But Harlem has evolved uniquely.

Because so much of the community was devastated by demolition for urban renewal, arson and abandonment beginning in the 1960s, many newcomers have not so much dislodged existing residents as succeeded them. In the 1970s alone, the black population of central Harlem declined by more than 30 percent.

“This place was vacated,” said Howard Dodson, director of Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. “Gentrification is about displacement.”
Meanwhile, the influx of non-Hispanic whites has escalated.

The 1990 census counted only 672 whites in central Harlem. By 2000, there were 2,200. The latest count, in 2008, recorded nearly 13,800.

“There’s a lot of new housing to allow people to come into the area without displacing people there,” said Joshua S. Bauchner, who moved to a Harlem town house in 2007 and is the only white member of Community Board 10 in central Harlem. “In Manhattan, there are only so many directions you can go. North to Harlem is one of the last options.”

In 1910, blacks constituted about 10 percent of central Harlem’s population. By 1930, the beginnings of the great migration from the South and the influx from downtown Manhattan neighborhoods where blacks were feeling less welcome transformed them into a 70 percent majority. Their share of the population (98 percent) and total numbers (233,000) peaked in 1950.

In 2008, according to the census, the 77,000 blacks in central Harlem amounted to 62 percent of the population.

In greater Harlem, the population peaked at 341,000 in 1950. The black share hit a high of 64 percent in 1970. In 2008, the comparable figures were 153,000 and 41 percent, respectively.
About 15 percent of Harlem’s black population is foreign-born, mostly from the Caribbean, with a growing proportion from Africa.

Some experts say the decline in the black population may be overstated because poorer people are typically undercounted by the census, and Harlem has a disproportionate number of poor people.

Others warn that proposed development and higher property values may force poor people out and say that when the city was the neighborhood’s leading landlord it should have increased ownership opportunities for Harlem residents .

“Gentrification — the buying up and rehabilitation of land and buildings, whether by families or developers, occupied or abandoned —means a rising rent tide for all, leading inevitably to displacement next door, down the block, or two streets away,” said Neil Smith, director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

The story continues...

Why It's So Hard To Be A Black Republican

What I Really Meant To Say Was...

Dale Robertson, a Tea Party activist who operates TeaParty.org, is getting rightfully slammed for this photo taken at the Feb. 27, 2009 Tea Party in Houston — in which he holds a sign that reads “Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar.”

Pop the hood for an update and a look at fool who sported this forward thinking apparel during the 2008 presidential election:

Josh Parker of the Houston Tea Party Society on record stating that Robertson was booted out of the event for this sign. This redneck is so stupid, he even spelled the offensive word wrong. IDIOT!!!


And of course, you could forget THIS!

To Hell With Boycotting Glen Beck, Show Black People The Money!

Apartheid Alive and Well on Madison Avenue

By Sanford Moore

During the time when America was segregated, the late, great Nat King Cole's groundbreaking television show was canceled because Madison Avenue and its clients would not sign on as sponsors. At the time he remarked, "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark." Not only was his comment painfully correct, but also eerily prophetic, given that 50 years later Madison Avenue is still discriminating against black Americans.

The streets of Madison Avenue are like the segregated graveyards of the past, filled with generations of unrecognized black contributions, talent and ambitions.

The New York City Commission on Human Rights, in successive investigations dating from 1968 to 2005, has documented the consistent pattern of racial discrimination enforced by the major ad agencies and their corporate holding companies. They control a constellation of marketing, media buying, communications, lobbying and PR firms in which there is also a dearth of African-American executives.

Now, it's time to get agencies where it counts -- their wallets. Recently, I appealed to Bill Thompson, the New York City comptroller -- who manages pension funds, which collectively own some $100 million of agency holding companies' stock and some $6 billion of 46 of their clients' stock -- to pressure the agency CEOs to end the illegal and discriminatory practices of their affiliates.

Like the fight to free the blacks of South Africa, which was aided by the divestiture movement led by the institutional investor community, we must now employ the same tactic in freeing black Americans from the insidious grip of the Mad Men.

Workforce statistics and documented discrimination fail to put this flagrant and purposeful discrimination in its proper economic and societal context. In 1968, the year of the first New York City Commission on Human Rights investigation, the seminal book, The $30 Billion Negro, was published.

This revealed for the first time the extent and existence of the black consumer market. In 1979, when the commission's follow-up report declared that a condition of "de facto segregation" existed for blacks on Madison Avenue, a sequel to the book, The $70 Billion Negro, was published. So while the Mad Men and their corporate clients had no aversion to reaping black dollars, they were averse to hiring black employees and executives.

The black consumer market has since grown exponentially and is currently worth almost $1 trillion to Madison Avenue's corporate clients, according to Target Market News. Yet, Madison Avenue continues to denigrate the importance of African Americans and their consumer dollars. Madison Avenue agencies are still "afraid of the dark."

This prejudice, this remnant of Jim Crow, not only discriminates against black employees, executives and vendors, but also is propagated on the greater American society. It is manifest in the paucity of black leads on network TV, and in the disproportionately low use of black models in television commercials and magazine ads.

It is reflected in the rate and revenue disparity Madison Avenue forces on black radio stations as documented by the Federal Communications Commission. In fact, Madison Avenue has created and perpetuated a "separate and unequal" marketing paradigm. It is evident in its advertising, workforce, executive ranks and allocation of client ad dollars.

As reported by Nielsen, black-targeted media received some $2.3 billion in 2008. This figure represented 1 percent of measured ad spending. The figures for Q1 2009 reveal the same "niggardly" level of spending being allocated to black-targeted media.

Of the $1.3 billion spent by the federal government via Madison Avenue prime contractors in 2006-07, only $6.1 million found its way into black media vehicles, according to Nielsen.

When confronted with these figures, Madison Avenue agencies attempt to rationalize their policies with media gibberish about "impressions delivered" and meeting arbitrarily concocted media criteria.

What is being done is the same as when blacks were declared three-fifths of a person in the Constitution. Despite Jim Crow having been declared illegal more than 40 years ago, Madison Avenue continues to enforce a condition of marketing "peonage" on black Americans and the media that serve them.

Let us not forget that one of the differences between totalitarianism and democracy is the extent to which a free media system is supported by paid advertising. Also, let us consider the historical context since Cole uttered his scathing remark. Changes include the U.S. Voting Rights Act being passed, black rule in South Africa, black CEOs running U.S. corporations, black creative expression setting the tone of America's pop culture, and the U.S.'s first African-American president. Yet Madison Avenue refuses to lift the "cotton curtain" of discrimination.

We have had 40 years of pious pronouncements by the leaders of the industry, 40 years of investigations, reports and obfuscation, 40 years of denying the significance of the black consumer market. It is time to return the favor. It is time to make the CEOs of the holding companies pay a price with their own money, to affect their compensation packages and their company's stock price.

Thus my appeal to Thompson. As the youngsters say, it's all about the Benjamins.

Sanford Moore is an industry critic, former agency executive and current black talk radio co-host. He can be reached at thecutmancv@hotmail.com.

STOP SAYING NBC STANDS FOR NOTHING BUT CAUCASIAN, STOP IT RIGHT NOW!

NBC's 2009 Fall TV Season Promo.

THOUGHTS???

Sometimes Black Republicans Have To Call A Spade A Spade!

So I said to him, "Barack, I know Abe Lincoln, and you ain't Abe Lincoln."

A fellow member of the GOP, also African American, sent this picture and accompanying words via email. It depicts famed members of the Republican Party including Nixon, Reagan, Bush I & II, and Roosevelt among others sitting around a table engaging in what appears to be a friendly poker game.

My friend wanted to know what I thought of this. I had an immediate visceral reaction that was so strong, it me to stop what I was doing and post it. It doesn't stop here. Under the hood, check out the rest of the language.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.

You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

.....Abraham Lincoln

Thoughts???

QUICKIE: T-Shirt Saying "Nigger Please, It's A White House" Makes Sarah Palin's Fashion Controversy Seem Silly!

Thoughts???

Stuff White People Hate: Goofy Best Men Who Ruin The Wedding

THIS IS HYSTERICAL AND YOU WILL WATCH AGAIN!!!

A White Teacher Has Issues With A Black Man Name Barack Promoting C-H-A-N-G-E

Greg Howard Flunks The Race Test

The Jackson County School Board has taken action against a teacher who apparently made racial commentary on presidential candidate Barack Obama.

According to parents and students in Greg Howard’s seventh-grade social studies class, Howard on Friday, Sept. 26 asked the class a question regarding Obama’s call for change, and proceeded to write out what the letters C-H-A-N-G-E stood for.

“She told me that he wrote on the board ‘Can You Help A (expletive) Get Elected, and then laughed about it,” said Shelia Christian, a mother of one of Howard’s students.

Jackson County Superintendent Danny Sims said that description of this incident was “pretty accurate.” Sims said Howard apparently repeated the action in more than one class, having made the comment in “a couple of periods.” According to a news release from the school board, Howard was suspended with pay on Monday, Sept. 29.

Source

New Kids On The Block On ABC's "The View": The Return of The Guy Group, By White Boys Who Clearly Know How To Do It Right!

Does The Political Right Support Racism, While The Left Simply Ignores It?

What Racism Does to White People

by David Weiner

Racism in the United States no longer involves fat sheriffs spewing prejudice at young black people trying to enter college, black maids sitting in the wrong places on buses, or black workers attempting to eat at white-only lunch counters. Today, it goes about its business quietly and in the shadows. Racism continues to damage communities of color but it damages the dominant white community as well.

"Authoritarianism, the soil of racism, makes dominant white culture in the United States an easy pawn of fascism." So said social-psychiatrist Erich Fromm and others who argued that racism "renders its proletarian benefactors passive and weak, ready to coalesce into angry or obedient mobs but unable to pursue the goals of a self-actualized citizenry."

The U.S. has been a nurturing culture for white racism, an environment that taught young whites to believe that, "If black people, or brown for that matter, did poorly it was because of bad attitude, poor parenting, and cultural degeneracy."

Since Gordon Allport's ground breaking 1954 study, The Nature of Prejudice, psychologists acknowledge that racism harms those who benefit from it as surely as those it disenfranchises. White people receive unearned and undeserved benefits at the expense of their peers of color. They are not asked if they want these benefits and lack the power to reject them. Some white people welcome a game rigged on their behalf but most, surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center tell us, do not. People crave security but they also prefer to earn their status in society. Few people, of any color, wish to see themselves as Cinderella's sisters.

In 2002, Alvin F. Poussaint, Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry, noted that while the "American Psychiatric Association has never officially recognized extreme racism (as opposed to ordinary prejudice) as a mental health problem, although the issue was raised more than 30 years ago...". This issue remains on the table and consistently comes up for discussion at meetings. He is among a growing contingent who views extreme racism-as-pathology, akin to a delusional disorder, to be a strong hypothesis.

If so, how deep and widespread might this pathology be? Does it still prevail? Or, like a disease that once ravaged a population, has it mostly run its course, leaving devastation in its wake? Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson's impressive body of empirical research suggests this to be the case. Job market changes combined with the effects of discrimination in the past, and "benign neglect" in the present, has created a deep well that people cannot climb out of. The forces that fought for civil rights in the past assume their efforts resulting in programs such as Head Start and Affirmative Action to have been sufficient, and now turn their attention to other matters.

"White people receive unearned and undeserved benefits at the expense of their peers of color."

Critical Race Theorists disagree. This group, established in the 1970s by Derrick Bell, another Harvard scholar, conclude that little has changed since Oliver Cox and WEB DuBois critiqued early 1900s racism. They perceived it to be a Machiavellian device employed by the nation's Power Elite - a segment of that class of U.S. citizens possessing great wealth and traditional elite status - to divide the nation's masses. Their goal being to set ordinary citizens in conflict with one another, undermining efforts to build organization juxtaposed to the Ruling Class. Marginalized at the time, the works of these and other scholars skeptical of the benevolence of American capitalism, now rank among the most valued in the field.

In Silent Covenants, Bell's recently published analysis of the context and consequences of the famous civil rights case, Brown vs the Board of Education, he notes that "from the nation's beginnings, policymakers have been willing to sacrifice even blacks' basic entitlements of freedom and justice as a kind of political catalyst that enables whites to reach compromises that resolve differing and potentially damaging economic and political differences."

In fact, "policymakers recognize and act to remedy racial injustices when, and only when, they perceive that such action will benefit the nation's interests without significantly diminishing whites' sense of entitlement." Landmark twentieth century works as Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma, Lawrence Goodwyn's The Populist Moment, C. Van Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow, and David Roediger' 2005 study, Working Toward Whiteness, support this argument.

Simply stated, it would appear that white people have been offered supremacy among peasants in exchange for their passivity. Since briefly during late 1800s Populism, no social movement has truly challenged this trend. Wilson agrees with Bell et. al. that the political right continues to support racism, and the Left ignores it. This writer's ten year survey of articles in several journals on the left, including the prestigious Z Magazine, turned up little focus upon racial disenfranchisement.

Whites feeling the need to act more selfishly on their own behalf received more attention. Prominent progressive and radical activists inform me that their efforts to recruit economically threatened whites might well be compromised should the Left adopt racism as a cutting edge issue.

"Policymakers recognize and act to remedy racial injustices when, and only when, they perceive that such action will benefit the nation's interests without significantly diminishing whites' sense of entitlement."

People's awareness of damaging racial stratification begins early. In 1939 and 1940 psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark found that little girls of all colors preferred to play with white dolls. In 2005, Kiri Davis replicated these studies, with the same results. In her documentary A Girl Like Me, black dolls were universally perceived to be ugly; white dolls, pretty. My daughter, trained in social work, has worked with racially and economically diverse urban children for nearly two decades.

She and her co-workers consistently find that children from a very young age perceive color to be very relevant in determining people's status in society. Some take this perception in stride, but most feel baffled by it, and often anxious - regardless of their color. In his classic study, Caste and Class in a Southern Town, John Dollard described how during the 1940s young white males were not merely invited, they were required to participate in the color stratification of their community, risking ostracism and worse if they refused.

Over the last half century my own work with schools, communities and businesses around issues of discrimination has lead me to conclude that less change has occurred than the media reflect. In many cases, expressions of white solidarity in racism have become more subtle and more sophisticated, but no less committed than in the past...

David Roediger and others (see Richard Delgado's 1997 book, Critical White Studies) describe how whiteness is sold in America. Whites are encouraged to ignore real indicators of their status and to view their color-class membership as of paramount importance. Growing up I learned from my peers and teachers that as a white person I owned the right to limitless social mobility. If I fared better than dark skinned neighbors and classmates it was because I deserved to.

Unlike most of my peers, I had parents who pointed out that this was a two-pronged lie. First, white people were highly differentiated as regarded their access to social mobility. Second, white people were allowed to bully people of color under controlled conditions, which had nothing to do with anything deserved. When I mentioned the confusion I was feeling to my best friends, they refused to discuss it. They let me know, in fact, that I was skating on very thin ice by even bringing up the topic.

"During the 1940s young white males were not merely invited, they were required to participate in the color stratification of their community."

Looking back, I realize that my peers and I were invited by community leaders, both sacred and secular, to exercise a simple "sleight of mind," to believe, without regard to evidence, that those downgraded and placed below us in the pecking order fully deserved this fate. No injustice was involved, hence we were not complicit in anything disreputable. If black people, or brown for that matter, did poorly it was because of bad attitude, poor parenting, and cultural degeneracy. Evidence that whites with bad attitudes, poor parenting and terrible cultural role models tended to do just fine, was irrelevant.

Not so long ago, a group of white peers, many proud to be called "liberal," to a man refused to acknowledge my proposition that prison violence is less likely orchestrated by powerless black prisoners than by the powerful officials who run prisons: white wardens, obedient to white mayors and governors, controlled by white elites.

Nor would they consider that crime infested black communities might well be ruled by thugs kept in business by police and FBI. I assumed this to be mainly a function of their lack of exposure to sources illuminating how white forces act to insure black inadequacy: popular movies such as the film Boys in the Hood, or documentaries such as Mario Van Peebles 1995 Panther, or surveys such as Tara Herivel and Paul Wright's 2003 collection of studies and essays, Prison Nation, or the archives of journals such as the Black Agenda Report and Black Commentator. Imagine my surprise at how their perceptions shifted dramatically as the evening wore on. As alcohol flowed, one after another indicated at length how well and how long they had perceived exactly what these sources reveal.

When sober, facts have little relevance for people whose need to believe in the inadequacy of others is rooted in their own insecurity. This was certainly the case regarding my teenage peer group. We desperately clung to our "right" to see ourselves as society's potential movers and shakers rather than small-fry allowed to act as bullies backed by people with real power. We blotted out awareness of ourselves as parties to, if not designers of a system of cruel repression. To have done otherwise would have placed us at odds with principles of morality and ethics we wanted to believe defined us. Some of us have broken this pattern, but many, including some who consider themselves to be politically progressive, have not. This fact always baffled me, but finally its root cause seems clear.

Relinquishing racism requires acknowledging one's failure to declare independence of a process that denigrates oneself as an individual. In Escape From Freedom, social-psychiatrist Erich Fromm, a colleague of Allport, built upon Theodore Adorno's studies of authoritarianism to provide the insight that this may be the most damaging effect of all. The "main theme of this book" Fromm states, is that man, "the more he becomes an ‘individual,' has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self." Kicking racism, in short, is no less difficult than kicking any addiction. And like any other addiction, Fromm implies, racism should be regarded as a form of illness.

"If black people, or brown for that matter, did poorly it was because of bad attitude, poor parenting, and cultural degeneracy."

Adorno and Fromm found the pathology of authoritarianism, with racism one of its core components, to be powerful and complex. It renders its proletarian benefactors passive and weak, ready to coalesce into angry or obedient mobs but unable to pursue the goals of a self-actualized citizenry. "The loss of the self has increased the necessity to conform," Fromm tells us, "for it results in a profound doubt of one's own identity." This terrible alienation from self he calls the "despair of the human automaton," which he finds to be "fertile soil of the political purposes of Fascism".

During the 1970s, Herbert Marcuse reigned as the most publicly acclaimed member of The Frankfurt School, a group which included Fromm, Dollard and Adorno. In One Dimensional Man he asked how ordinary citizens, implicitly white people, could free themselves of self-destructive mindsets such as racism. These only set them up to fill the very role of those they felt irrationally privileged to lord it over. Marcuse urged his readers to acknowledge and reject the pathologies that rendered them mere shadows of whom they could be.

Most psychological studies since Allport have focused on how racism adversely affects its victims. While these effects are terrible and debilitating, they would not, however, seem to undermine the basic functionality of the black community. Myrdal's An American Dilemma team, one of the best funded and most prestigious collaborations of social scientists ever mobilized, found post-slavery African Americans to be a demographic as poised and ready for assimilation as any European immigrants had ever been.

This finding contradicted the scholars' initial assumption that blacks must have suffered severe psychological damage during slavery. Extensive interviews and tests revealed no support for this conclusion. However, they found substantial evidence that white racism would very likely create a barrier to black assimilation. Subsequent research, including their own, reinforced this finding.

In 1966 James Coleman published the weakly researched but widely reported Coleman Report, purporting to show that black culture failed to support stable family life. It was heavily attacked by sociologists and social psychologists immediately, but achieved huge publicity and media support. Two decades later, following social scientists' unanimous endorsement of William J. Wilson's elegant studies showing that in U.S. society families of all colors deteriorate when men can't get work, Coleman continues to be cited.

While Wilson never characterized racism as basic ruling-class policy in the United States, he demonstrated that any genuine attempt to understand the conditions of America's sub-populations of color must abandon focus upon their allegedly unique social or individual psychology. It must address the unique context in which they live, created by social forces external to them.

As it turns out, racism may be even more psychologically damaging for the social class that "enjoys" its benefits, than for the class victimized by it. Fromm and his colleagues argued that authoritarianism, the soil of racism, makes dominant white culture in the United States an easy pawn of fascism. Post Modernists such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida fully agree. They perceive a citizenry rendered passive and ineffectual, incapable of effectively interacting with much less restraining a power elite grown less democratic and more corrupt in direct proportion to its immunity from real criticism. Jurgen Habermas, the least pessimistic of the Frankfurt School scholars, finds the situation to be less hopeless. With resolve and proper knowledge, people may be able to free themselves of debilitating mind-sets and beliefs systematically inculcated by the powerful, exactly as predicted by Antonio Gramsci more than a century ago.

"Fromm and his colleagues argued that authoritarianism, the soil of racism, makes dominant white culture in the United States an easy pawn of fascism."

In general, social scientists and historians are not optimistic about America's chances of avoiding fascism. We live at a time when it seems reasonable, in fact, to assume that it might well engulf the world. Some feel this has already occurred. Now more than ever might ordinary citizens find it prudent to seek full participation in deciding how their future shall unfold. In The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki reminds us that humans are enormously adaptive as a species when we operate as groups of independent individuals, rather than as manipulated hordes.

Surowiecki's work suggests that A self-actualized citizenry, where many people operate at the higher end of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, could have great potential to meet terrifying survival challenges quite visible on our horizon: water and food shortages as global warming creates vast ecological changes on the planet; the shift of Earth's magnetic poles, with similar effects; great meteoric strikes upon the planet. None of these threats would seem to be un-manageable if people can find the courage and the resolve to reject theories, such as Samuel Huntington's popular thesis in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, that sell racism on both a local and a global scale.

People skeptical of their ability to create life-and-liberty affirming organization spontaneously and effectively need only read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States to perceive how often people have done this in the past; and James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me to understand how systematically they have been deprived of such information; and Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point to understand how spontaneous organizing is happening constantly all around them. If not yet generating the kind of tipping point needed, if not yet the kind that rendered Gandhi's movement capable of removing the British from India, history supports Habermas as well as Foucault: there is as good reason to predict that social connectedness and humanism can prevail, as that they cannot. But only, it seems clear, if the illness of racism, and all that it implies, is addressed in our nation seriously and without delay.

David Weiner teaches sociology in Austin, Texas. He can be contacted at dweiner@austin.rr.com

Black Agenda Report

White Singers Black People Love: Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time"

Dallas Cowboy Linebacker DeMarcus Ware Adopts White Baby

I'm sorry is that headline a little too harsh? Perhaps a little to Jerry Springer or National Enquirer. Well hell, then let me know. Cause' those are the words that fell out of my mouth. Ware and his wife, Taniqua have adopted a White baby girl.

They believe they appreciate their daughter, Marley, more because they adopted her after three failed pregnancies. So how do I throw water on that? I can't. But every time we go to an orphanage we see hundreds of African American babies with no home, no future. Every couple and adoption agency in the worldwide "adoption land" knows that the most sought after "prize", is a White baby.

All concerned also know that these White babies go to the most influential and financially equipped parents. DeMarcus is a well paid highly visible All-Pro NFL Football player.

Am I the only one who feels just a little sad that they made this selection if in fact the baby is White? Would I feel different if the baby was biracial? Perhaps it is the media and the agencies who don't constantly remind us of unwanted African American babies here in the United States, thus my angst at even the possibility that this beautiful little girl does not have some sistah in her.

Recent celebrity adoptions and the television infomercials constantly remind us of orphans around the world in Africa and little girls from China have flooded America. Don't tell me you haven't noticed.

DeMarcus and Taniqua say they have two angels — one they hold each day, and one they can feel but never see or touch. A poem, “Angel in the Sky,” sits on the mantle in the living room. It refers to Omar Ware, who was stillborn in 2006 and cremated the same day. The Wares placed his ashes in a gold urn next to the poem.

To read more of their thought process, check out this NY Times article by Greg Bishop and tell us what you think.

Why Should Blacks Have All The Fun At HBCU's?

Changing Face of Historically Black Colleges
Hudson to Launch Album in September
Four Philadelphia Police Fired Over Filmed Beating
South Africa Seeks to End Anti-Foreigner Attacks
Warren Buffett Backs Barack Obama
GOP Fails to Recruit Minorities

Nas Reneges Regarding 'N****r' Name Change
Architect Requests More Changes to King Statue
Heavy Fighting Resumes in Sudan Flashpoint
Janet Jackson Announces First New Tour in 7 Years
Food Tax Cuts, Export Bans Not Sustainable for Africa
Self-Employment Gains Favor with Minorities

White Artists That Black Folks Love: Brit Sensation Rick Astley

The Internet is amazing. How else can a once skinnyy, red-head, pop 80's singer who everyone thought was Black suddenly be all the rage with this notion of being Rick Rolled?

If you don't know what that means, you're obviously riding with the late freight. In the meantime, enjoy Rick Astley in the catchy tune I can't stop singing now "Never Gonna Give You Up."

White Boy Lands Valedictorian Spot At Morehouse: You Got A Problem With That?

Meet The Tom Cruise Of Black Harvard

In its 141-year history, Atlanta's Morehouse College has managed to do something it has never done before. In 2008, "Da' House" has ended up with it's first white valedictorian.

The only all-male, predominantly Black campus in the country, where are the brothas with the perfect 4.0 g.p.a.'s and the extensive study abroad experiences? Where are the brothas interning on Wall Street and being Rhodes Scholar finalists? Where are the brothas with the same grades, same experiences, and the same opportunities "fighting" to become valedictorian of their alma mater?

Granted, Joshua Packwood deserves to be highly celebrated for his achievements at Morehouse. He put in the hard work and the dedication necessary to succeed in college. But should this be celebrated?

From his first day at Morehouse, Packwood has been a standout. His popularity got him elected dorm president as a freshman. His looks and physique made him a fashion-show favorite. His intellect made him a Rhodes Scholar finalist. His work ethic landed him a job at the prestigious investment banking firm Goldman Sachs in New York City.

But it's his skin that has made all of this an anomaly. The 22-year-old from Kansas City, Mo., will graduate on May 18 with a perfect 4.0 GPA and a degree in economics.

He could have gone elsewhere, to a school like Columbia, Stanford or Yale, but his four-year journey through Morehouse has taught him a few things that they could not, and he makes it clear that he has no regrets.

"I've been forced to see the world in a different perspective, that I don't think I could've gotten anywhere else," he said. "None of the Ivies, no matter how large their enrollment is, no matter how many Nobel laureates they have on their faculty ... none of them could've provided me with the perspective I have now."

When Packwood applied to Morehouse, he had frequent conversations with George Gray, an alumnus who was a recruiter at the school. Gray was impressed by Packwood's credentials and spent months trying to talk the sought-after senior into choosing Morehouse over other elite schools.

"He had outstanding numbers," said Gray, now director of admissions at historically black Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark. "He was the kind of kid we were looking for to be a presidential scholar."

After several conversations, Packwood began to suspect that Gray had no idea that he was white. His suspicions were confirmed when one of Gray's calls caught Packwood in the middle of track practice.

"Don't let the white kids walk you down," Gray quipped. "Wait," Packwood responded. "You know I'm white, right?" Silence. Uneasy laughter. Confirmation.

"The challenge was to get the best student that we could, and Josh definitely fit that," Gray said.
And for Packwood, knowing that he had been picked on his merits, and not as a token white recruit, made the difference.

"That said I could come here and, ironically, be accepted for who I am," Packwood said. "I thought I made the right decision then, and I know I made the right decision now."

It was not as if this was the first time Packwood experienced life in the minority. He was among the few white students in his class at Grandview Senior High School in Kansas City, Mo. He has mixed-race siblings and his mother was married to a black man. Packwood's experiences growing up have helped him navigate black culture while remaining comfortable with his own complexion.

Packwood's mere presence on campus wouldn't make history at this school founded by a black minister and cabinetmaker two years after the end of the Civil War. Howard Zehr, Morehouse's first white student, graduated in 1966, and there have been dozens of other whites on campus since.

And so Packwood turned down Columbia University, postponing his dream of living in New York City. He ignored some in his family who warned that he might not have the same opportunities he would have as a Columbia graduate, and headed South.

When he came to Morehouse, Packwood was sweating a bit under his swagger, which is why he was reluctant to run for president of his dorm at the end of his freshman year. The novelty was wearing off, but Packwood didn't want his new friends to think he was the white guy trying to "act black" or take over their school.

Classes proved to be a challenge socially and academically when the discussions shifted to issues of race. Once, Packwood was asked to sit on a panel about interracial relationships. Though he had dated black girls since high school, he spent the first hour of the panel getting warmed up, feeling out the crowd and trying to couch his thoughts.

"It was kind of heated, and there were very strong views on both sides," he said. "But eventually I realized they put me on the panel not to just pander to the crowd, but to voice my opinion."

Packwood said such exchanges taught him a lesson.

With each semester, Packwood's grades remained high, his confidence grew and his resume became more impressive. Summers were spent on Wall Street at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, he studied abroad in London and Costa Rica, and his studies have taken him to China and Switzerland.

He also drew attention with his looks — some Atlanta University Center coeds took to calling him "Tom Cruise." His photo album on Facebook shows a smiling Packwood posing with dozens of young, black women who fill his page with notes.

As Morehouse embraced him, Packwood became an unlikely ambassador for the school.

"Josh Packwood is Morehouse," the college's president, Robert Franklin, said in his inauguration speech in February. "He happens to be Euro-American and brings much appreciated diversity to our campus."

Wendell Marsh, a junior English and French major who is black, said talking to Packwood as a high school senior helped make up his mind to come to Morehouse.

"Right now we live in a time where people say the black institution is obsolete, that you can get a better education at a majority institution," Marsh said. "To see a white guy who had declined Harvard for Morehouse, I figured it was good enough for me."

WATCH VIDEO OF JOSHUA PACKWOOD

Packwood raised "the bar for everyone," said Stanton Fears, a senior economics major.

"The best man got it, that's how I look at it," Fears said. "It's about equality here, too. If he wants to come here and make a name for himself, he should be allowed the same types of things we're allowed."

Being surrounded by black men for his undergraduate career has taught him more about diversity, Packwood said.

"I've been here for four years and yet, I cannot give you the definition of black," he said. "I cannot tell you what a black man is. I really learned to look much deeper. It takes a lot of effort to know people."

As a graduate of Morehouse who was dorm treasurer, sophomore class president, writer for the campus newspaper and ultimately, student body president, I'm cool with this young man doing his thing. You don't come to Morehouse to "get by". You go to become the best you can be. Taking issue with Packwood for actually "believing the hype" of a Benjamin Elijah Mays. It was Mays, one of the most influential presidents the college has ever had, who once said that "Morehouse puts a crown above the heads of its student and challenges them to grow tall enough to wear it.

Just like Barack Obama becoming the first African American student to become the editor of the Law Review at Harvard University, we expect nothing less of Packwood.

I have two sons and trust me, I will do everything in my power to make sure they end up wearing the maroon and white. And if a white guy is running the show ten years from now, then that's who I want my boys running with.

Because when it comes to education, it's not about race family. It's about excellence! [Newsweek]

2008 Democratic Primaries: Blacks and Whites At Odds As Obama Landslides North Carolina, Hillary Squeeks Out Indiana Victory

Okay, this is how Tuesday's primary election went. But am I the only one who is concerned for the Democratic Party and yesterday's numbers. Obama scored 96% of all Black voters in each state and Hillary took 69% of all working class Whites in each state. This Black-White division could mean trouble for the Democratic Party. One good thing, Hillary last night said she would fervently back anyone given the Democratic nomination even Obama.

You Know If These Were Some Black Women, This Thing Would Have Been On & Poppin A Long Time Ago!

Surprise-Surprise, Chaotic Hearing in Polygamist Case Begins

SAN ANGELO, Tex. — Sistahs, accustomed to handling their business while their men are missing in action, are collectively shaking their weaves right about now.

A hearing on the fate of 416 White children birthed by 6 cowardly White men (okay, we're exaggerating... a little) taken in a raid on a polygamist compound descended into chaos on Thursday. That's not surprising, consider police allegedly found papers at the prison, er... compound suggesting one man had 22 wives. The youngest is believed to be 16.

Before the proceedings were recessed after about 45 minutes of wrangling, a lawyer for the state’s Department of Child Protective Services said it would seek psychiatric examinations for the children, as well as genetic testing of both the children and the adults, and would try to have the children relocated to other parts of the state, away from this town in west Texas. Then defense lawyers in the second location started entering a flurry of objections as the state tried to press on with its case.

The request for genetic testing appeared to be a way for officials to establish the family relationships between the children, many of whom appear to be half-brothers and half-sisters, and the adults involved.

"It is a huge logistical problem today," said Tom Vick, a lawyer from Weatherford, Tex., and member of the Access to Justice Commission created by the Texas Supreme Court who helped secure volunteer lawyers to represent the 416 children.

Thursday’s hearing was the first time the state has attempted to present evidence since it persuaded Judge Barbara Walther of Tom Green County to sign an emergency order two weeks ago giving the state custody of the children on the basis of a telephone call from a girl who said that she was a 16-year-old and that she had been raped and beaten by her 50-year-old spiritual husband.

The girl said that she had already had a child with the man and that she might be pregnant again. Under Texas law, children under 16 cannot get married.

After the raid, during which the Department of Child Protective Services took away all the children from the 1,700-acre Yearning for Zion Ranch, authorities searched the buildings on the property, taking documents and computer hard drives as possible evidence.

Since then, the two sides have engaged in what has amounted to a propaganda war.
Members of the polygamous group, calling itself the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, denied that any abuse took place and said the state is prosecuting them because of their faith. They said the remote ranch, with its log cabin-style houses and white temple, is simply a refuge from a hostile and sinful world.

A lawyer representing some of the families questioned whether the girl who reportedly made the original complaint even exists. "Not only have they not found her, but no one around here seems to know who she is, or where it came from or what it’s about,” said the lawyer, Jim Bradshaw of Salt Lake City. “It appears to be created out of thin air."

Janet, a woman at the raided compound in Eldorado, Tex., who declined to give her last name, asserted, “We don’t know who she is."

Because many of the children have similar names and were reluctant to talk to state authorities, family relationships were difficult to sort out. Officials first confiscated all the cellphones held by the children and mothers who went with them to shelter to prevent communication with outsiders. Later, they separated the mothers from children older than 6 in hopes of getting them to talk without a parent in attendance.

Because more than 350 lawyers are involved in the case, many on a voluntary basis, the county courthouse was too small to accommodate them and the members of the church who wanted to attend the hearing. That is why the live video feed was set up at the nearby city hall.

Some lawyers said they expect all sides to make group arguments, rather then individual ones. Nevertheless, some predicted that it would be another day before Judge Walther would decide whether to keep the children in state custody or allow them to return to their homes. [NY Times]

Is John McCain Seriously Trying To Woo African American Voters?

Don't Trip, The GOP Is Still Ignoring Black Folks!

Spending an unconventional week on the campaign trail, starting with memories of a rebellious youth and capped by an appearance Friday before an understandably hostile African-American crowd gathered in Memphis to remember Martin Luther King Jr., John McCain's got some esplainin' to do!

You don't vote against making King's birthday a national holiday, decline visits to speak before Black civil rights groups, pretend that there's no such thing as Black Republicans who may have actually voted for your old ass, and then pimp King's assassination anniversary for political expediency. Senator, that dog don't hunt!!!

Trying to connect with the brothers after speaking at the Lorraine Hotel, the site where the slaying of the civil-rights icon occurred 40 years ago, candidates usually try to cast their lives in a glossy sheen, and set their speeches before friendly audiences.

But the Arizona senator and presumptive Republican nominee to beome the 44th president of the United States spent the past few days frequently doing the opposite.

He was barely audible at the King event, over a driving rain and murmuring crowd. His speaking style was staid compared with the other speakers, giving his appearance an awkward quality.

"Martin Luther King Jr. was not a man to flinch from harsh truth, and the same is required of all who come here to see where he was in the last hours of his life,"

Sen. McCain said, standing beneath the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was shot 40 years ago Friday. "We look up to that balcony, we remember that night, and we are still left with a feeling of loss."

As he left the stage, there was a mixture of applause, booing and shouts of "End the war now!" and "No justice, no peace!"

"His words didn't carry the tone and passion that we're accustomed to hearing," said Earl McKinney, 51 years old, an architect born and raised in Memphis. Still, he said, he appreciated the appearance of Sen. McCain, who has said he will compete for African-American votes, normally unfriendly terrain for Republicans. "That shows interest," Mr. McKinney said. "You have to give him something for that."

• Discuss: Which presidential hopeful has the most interesting history?
• Complete Coverage: Campaign 2008

In his telling, a misspent youth and a twisted sense of honor later gave way to a deeper and more meaningful understanding of both honor and his place in the world. The turning point was an oft-told story -- his time as prisoner of war in Vietnam. That, he said in Jacksonville, Fla., where he lived before and after Vietnam, was when he learned the true meaning of honor as he endured beatings and declined an offer for early release.

Sen. McCain largely ignored controversial episodes from his life from more recent years, though on Friday he mentioned his opposition to creating a federal holiday for Dr. King in 1983, his first term in Congress. "I was wrong and eventually realized that," he said to boos from the crowd.
Several times, he tried to tie lessons of his past to the nation's future, as when he pivoted from his enrollment in the Naval Academy to call on Americans to service.

In a question-and-answer session at his former high school, Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., junior Katelyn Halldorson said that students had been told the visit was "not a political event" and yet, she said, it appeared obvious that it was. "So what exactly is your purpose in being here?" she asked. "Not that I don't appreciate the opportunity, but I'd just like some clarification."

Sen. McCain stammered through a reply but never fully answered her question. And that is endemic of the party in general. Ironically, Next Gingrich of late seems to be the only White guy in the GOP leadership hierarchy you gets it. Who's have thunk it??? [Wall Street Journal]

Folks Who Get It: Black Atlanta Judge Takes African American Inmates To The Woodshed With Whites Left On The Outside Looking In!

We Agree, Judge Marvin Arrington Is No Racist!

As a former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge, I completely get it. Despite ordering white lawyers out of his courtroom, Fulton County Superior Court judge Marvin Arrington said what needed to be said.

The parade of young black defendants in courtrooms across this country has got to stop!

"I came out and saw the defendants, about 99.9 percent Afro-Americans, and some point time I excused some of the lawyers, most of them white, and said to the young people in here 'What in the world are you doing with your lives.'"

Arrington said he thought his message might have more power if it was delivered to a blacks-only audience. "I didn't think about racism or reverse racism, I practiced law for 30 years and 75 percent of my partners were white," he explained.

The judge said the majority of people who appear before him accused of crimes such as murder, rape and robbery are black and he wanted to do something about it, one on one.

"I didn't want them to think I was talking down to them; trying to embarrass them or insult them; be derogatory towards them and I was just saying 'Please get yourself together,'" he said.

Arrington added that he may make a similar speech next week, but this time he'll allow everyone to hear it.

And they should. Because the message also should be to Whites, Latinos, Asians that when Black folks need to be checked, we as a people are completely okay with that. Do you thing judge, we get it!