Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry said Supt. Ramon C. Cortines learned about the incident Tuesday and had the teachers, who are white, pulled from their classrooms for the duration of an investigation. The suspension is without pay for the first three days.
We’re not post-racial yet.
I don’t know what manner of blindness makes people pillory the race card, and then turn around and threaten a lynching. I don’t know what makes them seethe with this kind of hate. I don’t know what America they want to keep safe, or strong. It isn’t mine. Likely, that’s the point.
via “Lynch Coates” – Ta-Nehisi Coates.
This is the folks who want to keep America safe. With “friends” like this…
Are African-Americans ready to embrace the GOP? Part 2
Jeff Booker, who is currently on the Gloucester Township GOP committee and previously served as the Executive Director of Camden County GOP (2002-04) stated, “I believe that the GOP is the party that exemplifies responsibility, small government, liberty, and self-determination. Younger blacks are becoming Republican because they see the negative affect of a large out of control government can be. As you get older, people start to change their views. We are starting to see suspicion in the local Democratic Party. However, our party has not done a good job of recruiting people of color and I am apart [sic] of the effort to do better.”
via Examiner.com.
First let me say Jeff is a good friend and I respect him and his choice to be a Republican. Even more I applaud his efforts to recruit better. I have long been suspicious of the party because of it’s deplorable track record regarding race and it’s loud and showy “Christianity” that is short on the values that Jesus taught. Having said that, GOP ideology when reduced to core principles that can flexibly be expressed in policy are compatible with mine which are generally center left. If a GOP candidate focused on the following, which generally deals with how the GOP could handle race and religion, I wouldn’t rule out voting for them. (Hey, after the 2008 campaign where Palinites were shouting, “KILL HIM!” that’s the best I can do.)
So if the party can produce a candidate that seriously deals with the four points above, I don’t see why plenty of black people wouldn’t consider the party myself included.
Skin Deep – Black Hair, Still Tangled in Politics – NYTimes.com:
“Anyone who thought such preconceptions were outdated would have been reminded otherwise by some negative reactions to the president’s 11-year-old daughter, Malia Obama, who wore her hair in twists while in Rome this summer. Commenters on the conservative blog Free Republic attacked her as unfit to represent America for stepping out unstraightened.”
(Via NY Times.)
So, a black child’s natural hair is unfit to represent America. Only straightening it to approximate Caucasian hair, would. Right. And why should black people trust this party? Ever?
Op-Ed Columnist – The Town Hall Mob – NYTimes.com:
“That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the ‘birther’ movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s a substantial fraction.
And cynical political operators are exploiting that anxiety to further the economic interests of their backers.
Does this sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.”
(Via NY Times.)
Yeah, it’s Southern Strategy remixed. The fact that people on Medicare don’t want “government-run healthcare” exemplifies the ignorance and plain stupidity of these people.
The Henry Louis Gates Jr. Arrest: When Race Matters – TIME:
“Obama, in all likelihood, has had similar experiences with the police, exchanges in which he was left with the impression that his Ivy League pedigree could take him only so far. And so it’s unfortunate that he felt unable to continue to express what he truly felt. He was forced to revise and turn what was an objectively true statement — that it’s stupid to arrest a man in his own house for being rude — into a vague ‘teachable moment’ [emphasis mine] about nothing particular…
This is deflating. If the rest of the country is too immature for some straight talk about the relationship between blacks and the police, delivered by our most accomplished and temperate diplomats, then the prospects for a broader dialogue about race are not good.”
(Via TIME Magazine.)
Exactly. With all of the defenses I’ve heard for Crowley, not one addresses the fact that they arrested a man in his own home for essentially being rude. All those small government, losing freedom folks said nothing about this. This is the central argument for black folks accurate or not: That Gates’ race made this kind of violation sanctioned in our society. Crowley’s defenders simply prove that fear right.
Going Strong on the Wrong Message | The American Prospect:
“But what every one of the 68 percent of Americans who are not both white and male saw, once again, was the deep well of outrage at discrimination that Republicans seem only to summon when it’s a white guy who got the short end of the stick.
The fact of the matter is that a party that builds its foundation on the racial grievances of white men is doomed to defeat after defeat.”
(Via The American Prospect.)
I think the GOP leaders really showed their true colors (no pun intended) on race. It makes Steele look like a straight token and nothing more. It kills any credibility in the claim that the party is not racist. They just can’t seem to help themselves.
Michael Jackson’s Mirror. – Ta-Nehisi Coates:
“I think, despite the jokes and the sarcasm, we all knew what the plastic surgery was about. There was the stuff that MJ did that we joked about because it was weird, and there was the stuff he did that we joked about because it made us uncomfortable, because it told us something really ugly about the way things are and about ourselves too–I’m not talking just about white people, it’s 2009 and ‘good hair’ hasn’t gone out of style quite yet. I think things are different from the way they were in Jackson’s heyday. But not so different that it’s funny.”
(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates.)
Newscoma » Blog Archive » Racist And Ridiculous:
“Christian Grantham talks to Ms. Goforth, who admits she sent the email.When I asked her if she understood the controversial nature of the photo, Goforth would only say she felt very bad about accidentally sending it to the wrong list. When I gave her a second chance to address the controversial nature of the email, she again repeated that she only felt bad about sending it to the wrong list of people.
I sent it to the wrong list of people? Huh.”
(Via Newscoma.)
My problem isn’t with the racists so much as it is with the GOP environment that would give them aid and comfort.
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