Paul Howard ‘Frustrated’ Georgia Jury Won’t Kill

The 2005 Brian Nichols courthouse murders were a national story.  After refusing a guilty plea in exchange for life in prison, Fulton County prosecutor Paul Howard is angry at a few Georgians on the trial jury that refused to agree to murder Nichols.  Howard plans to use this case as a springboard from which to create legislation that allows for a death penalty without a unanimous jury.

Howard wants Georgia to be allowed to kill with only ten jurors agreeing instead of twelve.  Reducing the number of jurors needed to get the death penalty will, of course, only be the first step.  Then it will be nine jurors.  Then it will be pushed for the judge to have the power to overrule the jury and deal out unilateral death sentences.

If you only read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution you would think that this is maybe 1948, not 2008.  The statistics are clear.  Sentencing of the death penalty is racist.   Everyone knows it.  Paul Howard is not concerned with this.  Actually, he isn’t concerned with the death penalty at all, really.  He is concerned with advancing his political career.  And he knows that in the state of Georgia advancing the cause of easier death sentences for Black is his magic ticket to any political ball he might choose to attend.

The AJC write-up about the Nichols sentencing attempts to paint the ‘holdout’ jurors as intransigent liberals, describing one juror as having spent the deliberation process doing crossword puzzles.  In all my years of reading the AJC I have never heard a juror desiring the death penalty be derided as having made up his/her mind before jury selection.  The bias favoring death penalty decisions of the writer, editor and the entire paper could hardly be more obvious.  Perhaps if they did away with the article altogether and simply wrote in 30 font, KILL MORE BLACK MEN, might they get their point across more clearly.  Maybe.

If the Black community doesn’t bring balance to the Paul Howard-ruling class-fascist perspective don’t expect it at all.  And certainly don’t bother looking for it in the pages of the AJC.

Update: Again today the AJC continues to obsess over the jurors in the Nichols case that decided on life without parole instead of murder.  Perhaps this is pre-legislative session public buildup to increase chances of changing execution law next month in the Ga General Assembly.  Or it could just be the usual rallying the racist rabble type stuff that the AJC does everyday.

Obamanation: A Lesson In Black Power

Being Black in the US means something.  It implies an understanding of power and oppression.  It implies an inclination and proclivity to side with those that resist oppression and exploitation, the Black nation having a history of acute experience with those forces.

That said, does it matter if we have sitting, the first Black chairman in the 221 years of the House’s existence, if he sits idly by and congratulates a president-elect that promises to embrace imperial foreign policy across Africa and the so-called Middle East?

Does it matter if that President-Elect’s skin happens to be Black if his office appoints an Attorney General that advocates more of a draconian domestic policy already  decimating Black communities?

Does it matter if we are greeted by the first ever Black Attorney General if he wants to make possession with (cop’s discretion) intent to distribut a 5 year felony?

Does it matter, in 2008, the color of the faces of a system that is grinding into dust, the bones of Black and Brown Americans and Iraqis alike?

Hell yes, it matters so much that he is Black.  But not as a justification for backslapping celebration.  Obama is a tool of the ruling class and when the power of Blackness is used by the ruling class it is Black power in reverse, turned around to use as a weapon against everyone except the ruling class.

The Obama administration, before it officially begins, is shaping up to be the nightmare so many abstainers and McKinney supporters predicted it would.  I told you so’s may make some folks feel better about having been right but that shit doesn’t really matter at all.  What seems important here is the opportunity, maybe an opportunity, to learn and to teach.  Black and Brown communities in the US have represented the tip of the spear of progressive struggle for centuries.  Over the past 35 or so the nature of that struggle has been severely compromised by the phenomenon of Black faces in high places.  My city, Atlanta, is as good an example of it as any Black or Brown city in the country.  Maynard Jackson, in 1974 became the first Black mayor of Atlanta.  Not incidentally, Coleman Young was simultaneously being sworn in as the first Black mayor of the Motor City.  To this day, Atlanta has seen nothing but Black mayors.  From Jackson to Andrew Young to Jackson again to Bill Campbell to Shirley Franklin.  In that time, Atlanta has served as something of the model of the evolution of white institutional power-Jim Crow style-into the new Black face of white power never before illustrated more powerfully than in the placement of Barack Obama in the office of the President of the United States.

On the morning November 5, 2008 I woke to a United States of America that was the same gulag of a country it was when I drifted off to sleep the night before amidst a popcorn symphony of fireworks and pistols celebrating the placement of Barack Obama as the next president of this hellhole.  Okay, okay.  Maybe it’s not a hellhole.  But ask an Iraqi.  Or a Lakota.  Or a Nicaraguan.  If you wanna be precise, there is a long list of people, within and without the US, and from dozens of other countries that will probably sign on to the hellhole moniker.   But that’s another post maybe.  Barack Obama’s melanin didn’t change what this country was or is.  And considering the good mayors like Jackson, Young, Campbell and Franklin have done a major city like Atlanta you must wonder what in the hell we thought Obama would even mean.  Considering what Clarence Thomas in the Judicial and Condoleeza Rice in the Executive have meant to Black people and oppressed people around the world, maybe we should have known better.  The proverbial water is still flowing under the bridge, with the bodies of New Orleans and Iraqis and Afghanis floating just beneath the shimmering, celebratory surface.  What is there to learn here?

The placement, not election, of Barack Obama on the one hand proves that a Black face in a high place is worthless while simultaneously proving that his face is worth it’s weight in gold.  The critical question is for whom.  For us, the people, Black administrators in a system controlled by white corporate power continues to be meaningless.  The system, not select positions within it, is the problem.  For them, the ruling class a Black face is almost priceless.  Black people within and without the United States, have lost faith in the United States.  The nightmare, always marketed as the ‘dream’, had become unbearably harsh for too many.  So harsh that there was a danger that, as with particularly bad dreams, people might be jolted out of sleep.  This is where Obama is needed.

Increasingly hip to the sick game of broken white promises, Enrons, grandmothers drowning in the ninth ward, computers and courts stealing elections, immigration raids sending abandoned kids to hide in the woods, the rich fucks have a crisis of confidence in the whole system on their hands.  And not just the confidence of the usual folks who get fucked but wider now.  White folks were losing faith fast too.  All this makes the placement of ahandsome (read light-skinned), articulate (speak like a white newscaster) 2004 Illinois state senator to President of the United States in 2008.  Once the celebration ends maybe we’ll even ask where this guy even came from.

Obama won’t serve us.  He’ll serve those who coronated him.  And but of course.  Will Black and Brown folks take this moment to contemplate and learn or will we drunk on the narrative of those who would continue our enslavement, stand and salute our Blackness turned around to signal our own demise?

Tim Wise On White Privilege

It was funny finding in my email inbox the link to this piece on white privilege by Tim Wise.  The past couple of weeks, I’d been thinking the same kinds of things about Sarah Palin.  And I brought it up with a friend here and there.  But felt like it was really same s/t different day so….  But Mr. Wise, as usual, blesses us with his very entertaining and concise collection of facts and angling to show just how ridiculous, irrational and insane white supremacy is.  My only problem with his piece is the same problem with almost all pieces like the one he wrote as well as others he has written.  And other similiar pieces written by other anti-racist activists.

The problem is that I got his link forwarded to me by a white person.  By that, I don’t mean to say that people lacking melanin can’t appreciate a rational appeal for above board dealing in presidential elections.  Of course, many white folkcan and this electoral cycle, are trying to do just that.  The problem with pieces like this is that white folks don’t see themselves in this.  They see this as an indictment of the mass media.  And it surely is.  But the mass media is giving white people what they expect.  What they want.  And too many white liberals think themselves somehow apart from the white mass that demands, even if subconsciously, the tireless racial double standard that is but one small part of white supremacy.

I don’t mean to be critical in a biting way about this thought piece or the larger body of work produced by Tim Wise.  I’m just talking aloud, I guess.  Where is all this going?  White liberals read this stuff and they give Amens! to it but when they logout of email, close out Firefox and send their Macbooks into hibernation it’s like they flip a switch.  The closing of the Macbook also signals a switch that I and many Black folks that try to ally with these whites, have seen too many times.  It signals the switch from keyboard anti-racist to regular urban liberal white citizen.   Who rolls with an all-white crowd (or very close to all white), participates in white activities, speaks the white lingo and basically when away from the net where they have an anti-racist identity, lead a very white offline life.

I agree with your conclusion Mr. Wise.  The primary problem in this country is white privilege, white supremacy.  But if it is to be dismantled the folks that are going to have to make the serious changes are busy patting themselves on the back for reading and forwarding your articles to select friends (they never forward your articles to ALL their friends).  White supremacy won’t be taken apart with the election of a president endowed with melanin.  It won’t be destroyed by the election of any president.  Or the election of anyone.  Period.  I used to think that it would be defeated singularly by the emergence of autonomous, self-determining communities of color.  And I do still believe in that necessity.  But I’m convinced now that the permanence of racism and white supremacy in this society requires actual change on the part of the US’ problem people: our amalgamation of European descendents who think themselves to be white.  I challenge you, Mr. Wise to focus more on them and less on the highest folks in the society.  It isn’t the head of state but the everyday white person living in major US cities that needs to pull her/his head out of the sand.

The N Word On ‘The View’

Elisabeth Hasselback, the young white woman in the video, does a great job in illustrating the problems of the white worldview as it attempts to relate to race. At a point in the video she states that we, Black and white people, all live in the same world. This, I believe, is what most white people see the racial reality as in the USA. And it is this misunderstanding of reality that is the largest obstacle to reconciliation and racial progress.

Whoopi Goldberg, the Black woman with the dreads, does a decent job of wading through the many ignorant statements made by Hasselback and grabbing the key statement and focusing on it. If we are to ever reach a point where race and its history in the US are dealt with in a progressive fashion, we as a country, must have something of a common narrative.

I think Elisabeth Hasselback’s opinion represents the worldview of most whites on this issue. This idea, that everyone lives in the same world is a more socially acceptable way of saying that racism does not exist. If racism is about power, about which groups have the power to affect/control the lives of people in other racial groups, then we can’t all be living in the same world. The statement is as akin to the stupidity of a prison guard asserting that he lives in the same world as a prisoner. It’s all about power and control. In a country 232 years old that has had nothing but rich white men as presidents it either the height of stupidity or the height of rank arrogance to make a statement as ignorant as Hasselback’s is. But like I said, her statement represents the thinking of most of white America. If we can figure out a way to affect change in the backwards thinking of whites in this country regarding racial reality, then we can begin to make racial progress.

This is not a small task. And it is, not incidentally, a major factor in the aspirations of the possible first non-white president in the history of this country. Barack Obama, although considered Black, repeats the keywords and catchphrases of whites who think like Hasselback. Obama has repeated, in other rhetorical arrangements, the same toxic ignorance that Hasselback gave us in the video. Obama has stated that there is no Black America. When he says this, he means what Hasselback says, that we all live in the same world, that there are no major differences. Barack Obama has also said that Black people are 90 percent of the way to equality, another way of saying that we all live in the same world (90 percent is close to 100 percent parity, right?). So the candidacy of Barack Obama, while it may have some positive psychological effect in that white America will see a Black face in the highest (political) place, it will also serve to reinforce the wayward thinking of the tens of millions of Hasselbacks across the country who think that Blacks and whites and everyone that is a legal citizen in this country (they definitely don’t include folks who don’t have papers in their thinking) is operating, living on the same economic, social and judicial plane. Although this view isn’t supported by anything but imagination, it is believed by most whites. It is the national delusion that created New Orleans after Katrina. It is the delusion that is responsible for the burnt out urban centers across the nation. This delusion fuels racial division on every front in this country. Divisions that have deep and important political ramifications. Like the fact that people haven’t been able to struggle to get good public mass transit, or universal healthcare, or universal secondary education (free college), or stronger labor laws and higher wages for workers. These are all things that require a unified front as working people struggle against our rich landlords everywhere. In a country with a solid third (if not more) being non-white, the racial divisions fueled by Hasselback thinking none of the aforementioned things are possible to get. We’re too divided. Racial divisions are why we still don’t have universal healthcare. So we all, Black, white, brown, red and yellow, all suffer. Hasselback thinking is killing us all.

If nothing else, debates over Black people being allowed to say and write nigga (that is what the debate is about; whites know they better not use it) allow us to dig a little deeper into what the real racial problems are in this country. So if nothing else, I say let’s keep the word around (hehe…for Black use only) just for that.

Iran and Nukes

The ‘situation’ framed as Iran posing a nuclear threat makes no sense outside of the framework of global white supremacy.  With pressure being applied from Western (read: white) nations, the world looks on cynically.  Folks inside the US, for the most part seem torn on whether or not they are willing to go to war with Iran with feelings on the issue, like most issues in this country, falling roughly along racial lines.  Most whites deem a war necessary if Iran won’t give up its nuclear program while almost all non-whites, along with antiwar whites, polled are against the idea.  The underlying and unspoken premise of whether or not to go to war with Iran is the notion, the racist notion, that Iran shouldn’t be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

The conventional rationales given for this is that Iran (or any Arab or Muslim country for that issue) can’t be trusted with nukes.  Obviously racist.  Then there is the more liberal rationale that states the need to prevent said countries’ extremists from getting a hold of the nukes.  That’s why the country shouldn’t be able to develop nukes.  The crazies might get them.  The real reason is much more straightforward than even those simplistic lies.

The white global powers, for centuries have exploited, through invasion, occupation and colonization, the Black, brown, red and yellow countries of the Earth.  Nukes are a deterrent to white military power.  This is why Iran, and no non-white country that doesn’t already have them, cannot have a nuke.  If Iraq had actually been able to develop a nuke, there never would have been a discussion about WMDs.  The white powers simply would have let Iraq into the club and talked with that country.  Because they knew Iraq didn’t have WMDs, and thus no way to hit them back, they invaded.  That is how it works, if you DON’T have WMDs you get your ass rocked and your citizens get wiped out.  If you can manage to get a nuke, you are acknowledged as a global power and are welcomed into the club.  That is why for non-white countries, the big picture of development, long term, dictates that acquiring nuclear weapon capability is as important as any other single factor.

Nuclear war would suck.  But conventional war sucks too.  Non-white leaders of countries around the world, if you don’t wanna get your asses kicked by the American and British Nazis, I suggest you start spinning those centrifuges overtime and develop some enriched uranium.  Or you’re likely to end up in a spider hole with a CNN camera shoved in your face and a M-16 up your ass.  The only thing white countries understand is force.  Get a nuke and you’re safe.  Acquiesce and they will say you have a nuke anyway and come take your oil (diamonds, natural gas, or whatever you have of value).

All the while, of course, claiming that this or that country will make the world less safe for democracy.

Racist Obama Jokes Off Limits: White Late Night Hosts Miffed

Jimmy Kimmel says, “There’s a weird reverse racism going on. You can’t joke about him because he’s half-white. It’s silly.”  It’s silly.  The New York Times has a two page web writeup explaining the dilemma of an all-white late night comedy lineup that won’t/can’t joke about Obama lest they be charged with racism.  This theme of false racism charges is some toxic shit.

The problem, of course, is that hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Bill Maher, they are racist.  And now they’re miffed that the limitations of liberalism won’t allow them to do what they want to do.  Even still, Maher and the New York Times slips one in as they write about how it is improper and impossible to do it on television.  Maher says, “There’s been this question about whether he’s black enough.  I have this joke: What does he have to do? Dunk?”  But then they wonder why they can’t make jokes about him.  It’s because they can’t do it without resorting to racism.  Racism is so deeply embedded in their minds and in the general public imagination that these comics, and most white citizens, can’t joke about Black people without joking that we are Black.  This seems natural to many whites and thus some kind of affront when they aren’t allowed to engage in the practice.  But imagine how tasteless their usually smiling white audiences would find it if almost every joke about GW and McCain was about how they are white.  The jokes might get a few laughs the first time but they would wear thin quickly.  This is because the white population of the US while accustomed to critiqueing the culture and character of non-whites via comedy, they are less than keen to engage or have a comic engage in the same dynamic when it comes to their white brothers and sisters.

Continuing on Kimmel’s reverse racism theme, the Times reveals that Black comedians are making Obama jokes.  But not on late night comedy since there are no Black late night comics on major shows.  The fact that they, Black comedians, are writing and saying the jokes white comics won’t or can’t is used as subtle implication that whites are the victims of discrimination.  I’m not feelin their pain…at all.

Kanye, Front Page–Crackhouse, No Page

The white press was tripping over each other to run the BS stories about Kanye at Bonnaroo.  Stating that he didn’t perform on time and that he was rude.  And of course they offered no apologies for their behavior as the truth came out that Pearl Jam ran an hour into Kanye’s time and Bonnaroo logistical snafus made a mess of Kanye’s crew setting up his stage.

I post a lot about white double standards and racial mind games and other psychological manipulations played out by the establishment.  Here is another funny one.  It’s funny how white folks won’t comment on the site but email me directly with their complaints.  I mean, what is that all about???  Anyway, here is another one.

Amy Crackhouse punching her fans in the face while singing at Glastonbury. Watch the vid then come back.

Close your eyes and try to imagine Kanye doing Flashing Lights while punching fans in the face.  That negro would be in Guantanamo Bay before the instrumental for that short ass song was even over.

But the white media completely ignores the white girl that everyone knows is on crack when she punches her fans in the face???  This is why, whether it be reporting on the depressed US economy, WMDs or Kanye West, no one but naive white people trust the US mainstream media.

They are a part of the system and the system is a pathological liar.

Zimbabwe In Shambles But The White American Presstitutes Should Be Quiet

This article is the latest sewage to flow from the front pages of the web edition of the New York Times.  The sycophantic guttercrows aka New York Times journalists are not qualified to speak or write about the political problems in Zimbabwe or anywhere on the continent of Africa.

They should shut up.

It is the morning of June 27th and if you visit the Times website you will be met by the aforementioned article by Celia Dugger and Barry Beawak in which they continue the white campaign of attempting to marshall international public opinion against Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, this time by pressuring Mbeki of South Africa, who confuses Dugger and Beawak by his refusal to kiss white ass and openly condemn Mugabe.  This is a good time to state that what is going on in Zimbabwe is very f*cked up.  Democratic participation by the people is openly being subverted and part of that subversion is open state violence and state sanctioned vigilante violence against supporters of Mugabe’s political opposition.   This violence and undemocratic electoral games should be condemned, mediated and ceased.

But not by the United States.

Here’s why.  Zimbabwe.  An African country brutalized under white colonial rule and occupation for more than a hundred years (1888-1980).  The United States of America.  An white controlled country its entire existence, is currently two hundred thirty-two years old.  Black folks in this country just got the legally enforced right to vote 43 years ago!  After almost 200 years of political existence within this country.  One hundred eighty-nine hears after so-called American independence Black Americans obtained the legally enforced right to vote.  Zimbabwe has been independent for twenty-eight years.

Twenty-eight years.
One hundred eighty-nine years.

Only within the borders of this sick country can you witness such insane demonstrations of psychotic hypocrisy.  And so sick are the vast majority of ‘Americans’ that the insanity of the New York Times and other white media outlets goes almost completely unnoticed.  Recently, a friend and political ally asked me what I thought about the situation in Zimbabwe.

I think that the situation needs to be dealt with by the people of Zimbabwe and perhaps the rest of the African continent along with the diaspora. This hot summer the Imperial United States of White Hypocritical America should put down its pens, step away from all microphones, cameras and word processors and relax with a tall, cool glass of shut the hell up.

White Media Piles On Kanye Again; Lying About Bonnaroo

For the record, I don’t give a care about Kanye or multimillion dollar entertainers, generally (with a few exceptions for actually talented folk like Prince and Ndegeocello). I look at these stories cuz they tell a socio-cultural story about where people’s minds are. The white space for music in middle Tennessee also known as Bonnaroo this year had a lineup including Kanye West, a Black artist in the midst of a sea of almost all white artists and even whiter fans.

Kanye was scheduled to go on to perform at 2:45am Sunday morning.  Major white media outlets are reporting here, here and here that Kanye was an hour and twenty minutes late getting started.  Most white outlets are running the AP piece by Jake Coyle, who only finds it fitting to parenthetically mention that the act before Kanye, a white band, Pearl Jam, went over their allotted time by a full hour.  That delay by Pearl Jam, combined with unspecific technical difficulties configuring Kanye’s performance rig are the reason that Kanye was late coming out.  The focus, however, of the white media is Kanye’s supposed refusal to kiss the collective asses of the white fans at Bonnaroo.  Kanye is probably an asshole.  Most millionaires are.  But the white media is again showing their unforgivable whiteness in their biased treatment of millionaires with melanin which is a part of a larger campaign, whether intentional or not, that conditions white America to think and therefore treat Black people as a whole, differently.  And that’s differently as in worse than others are treated.  By constantly sending out negative signals about high profile rich Blacks as well as the required national and local daily broadcasts of poor Black people in handcuffs and orange jumpsuits standing in front of usually white judge (but in their fav cases, the judge will be Black, too), white media conditions white media consumers to think and thus act unfavorably towards their Black countrywomen and men.

White folks will claim that this conspiracy is ludicrous.  I don’t care what you call it.  Conspiracy, assholes engaging in shoddy reporting; it is little consequence to me how motive is rationalized.  The effects are the same, the perpetuation of racist ideas, stereotypes and ultimately actions.  I understand the impulse to recoil from anything even remotely smacking of ‘conspiracy’.  The media, particularly white media but not only them, certainly do execute an ongoing campaign to disparage any kind of talk that describes, charges or analyzes conspiratorial actions unless it is a conspiracy white media owners are amenable to labeling as such.  White media contributors and editors are keenly aware of their influence on public opinion and ultimately public actions, leading them to not publicize all kinds of things that they claim might incite undue fear in the public.  Such as information about chemicals in food, the claims of the dangers of nuclear power and other things.  The point is that they understand fully, the role they play in setting the mental and psychological agenda of the white masses.  So when they regularly pull this kind of shit on millionaires with melanin it’s difficult for me to let them off the hook as it being incidental and random when there are far mor white millionaires that are engaged in all kinds of drug use and other mischieviousness that white media either ignores or frames very differently than when the same actions are pulled by Blacks with money.

White media is simpy the psychological control and manipulation arm of white business that enslaves us all, white and Black.  Blacks and non-whites generally, tend to see and understand this at far greater rates than our melanin-lacking brothers and sisters.  Which gets to the crux of the problem.  White people need to wake up and realize what the fuck is actually going on in the world and stop blaming non-whites for the world they have, in their ignorance, created.  Racism and global colonialism, environmentally degradating consumerism, starvation in the so-called Third World…these are all problems created and sustained by white folks.  But only together can we end them.  Stop watching corporate media white people so that you all might begin the journey to reclaim your minds and your humanity.  Turn off the mind control boxes and start listening to your brothers and sisters of color.  There is a lot for you all to learn and a long way for all of us to travel together.

Memorial Day: A Time For What?

No war fought by the US thus far has benefited Black people in the US, or anywhere for that matter.  Therefore, what stake do Black people have in the celebration of Memorial Day in the USA?  A day devoted to honoring the fallen military officers and enlisted of US wars.  White nationalist wars of conquest that always attempted, and were usually successful at securing land and/or resources for white use and development.  Over the years, concessions combined with Black struggle have allowed a few Blacks to scramble for a pittance of the crumbs of white empire.  But for the most part, the wars of conquest fought by the United States of America have benefited white US citizens.  So, besides attempts at fitting in with the hope of getting a few more crumbs, what stake do Black people have in celebrating this, one of sickest US hol(y)days.  A day when the soldiers of the empire, an empire that has snuffed out the lives of (literally) millions of non-combatant men, women and children, an empire that has used the spoils of its many wars to disproportionately contribute to the degradation and destruction of the natural environment, an empire that oppresses Black, brown, yellow and red men, women and children the planet over, this is a day to celebrate the mostly white men that have died for the cause of genocidal empire-building.

Someone tell me, please(!!) why should any person even vaguely in touch with his/her humanity be interested in a freakish celebration of this magnitude?  Why would anyone of any ethnicity?  But the question is posed most particularly to non-whites and even more particularly to Black people killed by the tens of millions by this country and Red native men, women and children who were almost made extinct by this country’s military apparatus.

This so-called patriotism is sickening.  And while sickening for anyone to participate in, it is beyond delusional for non-whites to involve themselves in this macabre display.  History will remember this day and similar celebrations as relics from an age of racial barbarism on the part of the Western world and the USA in particular.  We, Black people, and oppressed ethnic minorities generally, should step aside and allow whites who have no problem with these celebrations rejoice alone in the blood of the many, many millions who have died in the face of Amerikkkan barbarism.  This is their day.  Not ours.

Barry Bonds and the National White Circus Called Major League Baseball

When it comes to professional sports and race, white fans are like pre-speech toddlers attempting to deliver a lecture on physics. Dave Zirin, whom I don’t always agree with, is one of the only non-Black sportswriters in this country who has a clue.

Professional sports is the national sociological paint canvas upon which racial-psychological politics are metaphorically drawn. Being on the outs in this society, Black folks see this clearly. White folks, rarely actually having to think about race, when called to speak on it, always astonish us with their arrogance but far more often with their extreme ignorance and foolish statements.

The Bonds debacle is all about race. To understand this you have to first understand something political. So if you don’t have the patience to think about things, move along and keep being ignorant cuz you’ll never understand the Barry Bonds saga if you don’t get that this, the United States, is an empire. Like Rome and other empires before, we rule internationally with an unelected, authoritarian iron fist. Domestically, like Rome, we do a lot of jawwing about democracy. Of course the domestic population gets screwed just like the foreign black and brown and yellow people around the globe. In order to keep all of this moving, the US does what so-called democratic empires always do, it provides a circus to turn the population into spectators of spectacles while the rulers do the heavy lifting on stuff that actually matters in the real world (which is not sports). Because the US’, as Rev Wright put it, birth defect of having been born enslaving a large sector of its working class, the US’ circus of choice has always been race. Ostensibly the circus is the big pro sports. But actually, the circus is race.

The biggest pro sports in the US are football, basketball and baseball. The NFL and NBA are largely Black sports and thus tend to not be as reactionary as other sports dominated by whites because the Black population of the country is generally left wing while whites generally numerically are right wing in a political/ideological sense.

Black people dominate football and basketball overtly. Unlike the NFL and NBA, MLB is only 8% Black and thus it is the most reactionary of the big 3 major sports. Though Blacks aren’t represented much in the composition of MLB, still the most coveted mark in all of baseball is held by a Black citizen. This presents a grand opportunity for the white power structure (and regardless of whether or not you believe it is a good thing or not, no one can deny that there is a white power structure; this is an observable fact. The MLB teams and corporations that provide ad revenue are owned almost 100 percent by white males. This is a fact, not opinion)…so the white power structure takes advantage of its largely white MLB audience to use baseball as a stage to play psych games with the minds of Americans as well as to do what circuses do–distract people. In our case, distractions are designed to keep us from paying attention to politics and the rest of real life.

A quick thought experiment makes this clear. Of course, thought experiments are only as effective as the mind of the person attempting to perform the experiment. And as I mentioned before regarding whites thoughts about race, not so impressive. But anyways, imagine if Barry Bonds was instead named Dale Murphy. Nothing and I mean nothing save him being caught in a photograph–no, a video–shaking hands–no, making a bomb–with Osama Bin Laden would keep him off a team or out of the HOF. White players in the big three pro sports are just about impenetrable when they are superstars. Even Clemens, who has far more evidence against him, isn’t being handled the way that Bonds was/is handled. Bonds, who hasn’t been convicted of anything and who wasn’t even being investigated til it was simply decided that he would be. But the thought experiment. Imagine Dale Murphy had broken Hammerin Hank’s record of long balls. The steroid thing would never have come up. Anyone who is honest knows that this is true. We would be discussing building Dale Murphy skyscrapers, naming ballparks after him and sending him around the world as a diplomat for world peace or something. When white players achieve the highest heights only convictions and getting caught red-handed will get them in hot water. And as evidenced by Pete Rose, even when caught red-handed, the punishment has temporal limitations. When Black players f/k up, they’re done. They either go to prison never again to see any kind of contract or even positive publicity, or they are just erased from memory. There are more examples of this than I care to take time to cite. But just look at the behavior of a very white sports like tennis or cycling and the kid gloves deployed to respond to it.
Jenifer Capriati – was on crack but now hailed as comeback kid
Martina Hingis – also caught doing crack; gets to keep all her titles and no bad publicity circus
Lance Armstrong – lots of testimony from people close to him that he used cocaine cocktails and steroids to enhance his performance yet he still gets big endorsement deals and commentators ignore the same kind of hearsay they have virtually convicted Bonds with. Actually the Lance Armstrong hearsay they ignore is much worse than Bonds. But anyways. You get the picture, I hope.

The racial double standard in pro sports is undeniable by anyone that can put two brain cells together for a thought or two. But the Barry Bonds hearsay attack saga rolls on unabated. Meanwhile, over a million Iraqi kids are dead due to a military conflict ordered by white CEOs and their political representatives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Millions more suffer torture in US prison gulags for petty drug charges and tens of millions die slowly because white CEOs won’t allow them or their kids to see a physician until it is too late to do much to help them. All these things happen day in, day out and the same whites that will spend all afternoon coming up with cute remarks to make about Barry Bonds’ lack of a moral code ride around with facist yellow ribbons on their cars and trucks. Right underneath the “W” or “Kerry/Edwards” sticker. They worship those killers while taking a stand on Barry and his behavior in the clubhouse. You people aren’t hypocrites. You all are psychopaths.

If there was a God (which there isn’t) I wish she’d transform this country into something with humanity.

Atlanta Restaurant Owner Says Obama Is a Monkey

Marietta bar owner Mike Norman is selling a t-shirt depicting former Harvard Law Review president and now US Presidential candidate Barack Obama as a monkey.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting on the incident with a hands off attitude typical of the corporate press whenever whites are accused of racism. The AJC headline reads, ‘Group protests Cobb bar, calls Obama T-shirts racist’. Note, the T-shirt isn’t racist. A group is calling the shirt racist. This is how corporate papers communicate with their white readership while maintaining what they claim is a kind of neutrality. But is it neutral to not take a side when a store owner calls a black man a monkey? The AJC, with its largely white racist readership, believes so. This, unfortunately comes as no surprise. The paper’s history is one of racist story after racist story after homophobic story after…you get the picture.

So when the owner of Mulligan’s Bar and Grill in Cobb County, Georgia decides that in 2008 it would be a good marketing tool to sell images of a Black presidential candidate as a monkey, the AJC and most white Georgians hardly miss a beat. Contextualize this kind of thing with the uproar of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The AJC saw no reason to feign neutrality in that instance. Not to imply that the cases are on parity with each other. Wright accused the USA of having a foreign policy that is quite in line with the agreed upon historical record. His sin was having the temerity to speak the truth publicly to white folks. On the other hand, white supremacist restaurant owner, Mike Norman is peddling a racist idea long debunked, that a Black man is sub-human, a monkey. In the first case, the AJC joins the national corporate press in attack mode against Rev. Wright and Black political thought more generally. In the latter instance, and in a classic example of 21st century corporate press white supremacist reporting, the AJC, remains ‘neutral’.

As a side note, more than 1 in 3 AJC readers think there is nothing wrong with the Obama is a monkey shirt, according to the online voting module that the AJC thought a good idea to put up on their site.

Sex aside, nothing sells more in the US than racism.

Black Teens Can’t Speak Spanish: Turned Away From Summer Jobs

Black Teens Feel the ‘Bilingual Preferred’ Summer Job Blues

We Black folks really need to be thoughtful about this. As a Black male living in Atlanta where immigration is occurring at a brisk pace and seeing unemployment amongst Black youth consistently at high levels, I can understand the frustrations of a young Black person in this predicament.

The solution is not to side with reactionary Americans who are attacking immigrants with English only rhetoric and other threats. Since immigration IS happening and will continue to happen, siding with reactionary segments of the population that are overwhelmingly white is the completely wrong action to take.

Black citizens know that whites in the US have not been and are not friendly to us. This means we need to side with brown and black immigrants, not the whites that have made life hard for Black people for centuries. This is a critical moment. Can we afford to be stupid?

Use common sense here. I’m not saying that this will be easy. But it is possible. Whereas, trying to convince whites to give us a fair shake has been a centuries long project that has left us very little to show for it. Everything Black people have attained in this country we’ve won with blood, sweat and tears. Whites have opposed ALL OUR GAINS.

What does all of this mean practically? Blacks in the US need to get active in our elementary school system school boards. We need to run grassroots campaigns for the boards, win positions and implement Spanish courses in elementary school, not high school. This is crucial. In high school, it is too late for kids to become fluent in the way that is needed for articulation on a job. Spanish courses in elementary school should be our priority.

The predictable windfalls of this plan will be:
1) Black youth will be competitive in the job market along with immigrants and those whites willing to get with the program instead of playing the fear game they’ve stuck with for hundreds of years.

2) Blacks and spanish speaking immigrants will forge closer cultural and social bonds if they can communicate more fluidly. This enhanced closeness due to shared languages will be valuable on a political level as these kids become adults who need to form political coalitions.

3) It has been long understood that being bilingual at an early age facilitates better mental faculty in other areas of study. Simply put, learning a second and third language helps you think better in your other courses.

We need to prioritize getting Spanish courses in Black elementary schools. This should be part of a plan for a Black/Brown future in the United States. Don’t be tricked by the white nativists who are currently attacking our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Know your friends! Know your enemies! Be smart!

Worthy and Unworthy Victims: The Psychology of ‘Western’ Disaster Response

The cyclone that hit Burma and now the earthquake that hit China both remind me of another one of those weird global rules. If you pay attention to all disasters, you’ll notice that there are grades of victims. Without a doubt, one can perceive the difference in coverage and therefore treatment of white Floridians whenever a hurricane hits the coast. That’s easy to see. And, considering the history and contemporary manifestation of white supremacy in the United States one would expect there to be significant differences in how white victims and black victims inside the US are covered by US corporate media. More interesting to me is how non-US victims of a disaster are covered and subsequently treated as opposed to black US victims of disasters. And before I go any further, I should make it clear that I understand that the US gov’t doesn’t really significantly contribute to any disaster fund. It’s mostly rhetorical blather. I know. But rhetoric repeated on 24 ‘news’ services has psychological and therefore eventual material effects that can and often do determine life and death for vulnerable economically and socially vulnerable people. But about the non-US vs US black victim coverage. I don’t believe the US gov’t cares at all about the Burmese people. But this tragedy provides an opportunity for them to get in psychological propaganda shots at a gov’t, the Burmese gov’t, that isn’t being as obedient to the US gov’t as they’d like for it to be. Therefore, the people of Burma are presented as in the most dire straits and in need of vital aid, which the Burma gov’t is denying them by keeping out US planes full of food (and let’s face it, who knows what else is on the planes) and supplies. By contrast, because the US gov’t has the US Black population in such a subjugated position and has so little to gain by exposing the plight of threatened US Black populations, they get no press. And none of this even begins to address what is and what is not a disaster. 50%+ unemployment and ridiculously high murder rates are the norm in many Black communities. While these circumstances would merit all order of emergency intervention, aid and supplies if the communities were white this status of a Black community is, by white supremacist definition, not an emergency at all.

What does this mean on the ground for regular folks who ‘want to help’ people? The racial situation inside the US is dire. It is understood to always be the elephant in the room. Even by whites, although white folks, with historic consistency, underestimate the size of the elephant and overestimate the volume of the room. Guilt with white liberals and angst ridden backlash with white conservatives and many liberals are just a small part of the white psychological cost of multigenerational denial and ignoring of the US’ problems. Here Burma and, to a lesser extent, China serve a function very valuable to the American empire. Whites, on several psychological levels, understanding that they unjustly enjoy the good life, savor these opportunities to reach out and help melanin endowed people in a tight spot. This is where white volunteerism and charity best fulfill their 21st century imperial role. They provide a psychological salve to whites in the US and Europe that understand that they are the beneficiaries of global rule by force by allowing them to ‘do good works’ in a situation that they can almost justifiably feel they had nothing to do with. I emphasize almost because of most black, brown, yellow and red people around the world weren’t still resisting or trying to recover from the economic and cultural dislocation of hundreds of years of white colonial rule they would be better able to fend for themselves in the face of natural disasters. Another post, though.

The most intense media focus on ‘international’ disasters work to raise the profile of these tragedies to a point where they are immediately identifiable by anyone not residing under a rock. Then the charity framework is deployed as a psychological weapon against whites, allowing them to discharge their guilt and angst into international assistance endeavors that contribute significantly to them not dealing with the man-made domestic catastrophes in US urban centers. Catastrophes that these same whites played a good part in creating. If not for the psychological displacement effect of these international efforts, whites might be more prepared to understand and admit to the destruction they continue to be a part of not thousands of miles but merely thousands of feet from their very homes. It is understood that the framework of international aid and charity serve a vital material as well as psychological function in hamstringing domestic resistance and thus maintaining the US’ imperial stranglehold on so much of the world.

The suffering of Burmese and Chinese people is, of course, horribly real. If only they could see a true international community response as opposed to the political dog and pony show the US and Europe engage in whenever misfortune strikes a vulnerable population of a developing nation. And if only US whites could break out of the mental gridlock of guilt and angsty backlash and both embrace whate remains of as well as rebuild their humanity, we might all be able to look forward to brighter days.

NYTimes Suggests Rev Wright (and blacks generally) SHUT UP!

The headline says it all.

Not Speaking For Obama, Pastor Speaks For Himself, At Length

If you’re white and not accustomed to scrutinizing the almost constant psychological racial attacks leveled by the Times and other corporate media, you might not immediately notice the acid nature of the NYTimes rhetoric.  Pastor speaks for himself at length?  For surely Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, the late Jerry Falwell…none of these white guys ever spoke at length worthy of notice by the Times.  Right?  What the supremacists over at the Times mean, of course, is that Wright and other blacks as well, should keep quiet with critiques of our apartheid society, the United States of America.

I get it.

However, it is a little surprising to see that the NYTimes has the temerity to print garbage of this caliber. I probably shouldn’t be surprised considering the way that they are cheerleading the wholesale theft by the financial sector to the tune of billions and the promotion of the ongoing Iraqi slaughter.

Oh well. n/t

Hillary Hates This Ish

We all know that Obama is faking it.  So don’t take this the wrong way.  I’m not an Obama-ite.  But even though he’s faking it, he CAN pull off the fake.  Hillary can’t.  And no white guy ever running for US Prez could ever even think about pulling it off.

This is essentially what whites, and by whites I mean not the guilty ones voting FOR Obama, this is what is
hated about a candidate like  Obama and about any  upper echelon black politician and black people somewhat generally.  Because we have to live in dual realities cuz of white supremacy, we learn to speak several dialects.  White people can’t do this and the ones that understand the power of being able to do so, resent Black people for having the talent.

Ironic isn’t it, that we only have this talent because of the privilege white folks enjoy all the time to begin with.

Barack, like many Blacks before him, will attempt to look as if he will use this talent for good.  But of course he’s a corporate imperialist just like the others, so don’t hold your breath.

Robert Downey Jr. Goes Blackface

I guess this is the moral and ethical progress white people are talking about that us black people have a hard time spotting.

How far we’ve progressed. Whites can now perform in blackface and black people are ridiculed BEFORE protesting for even thinking about having the gall to do so. Even pre-emptively we have comments about Al Sharpton commenting on the blackface.

The fact that this movie is supposed to be about the egos of Hollywood actors adds a thick layer of unintended racial irony on top of the obvious offense of blackface performance. It is this: Robert Downey Jr., a white man who, like many super rich entertainers has suffered from drug addiction and has been convicted of drug crimes. He represents the double-standard of Hollywood and this society as no non-white actor could have the resume of drug crime that he has and remain an A-list actor who gets major funding from the big moviehouses. Whites will deny this, as racial double standards are routinely denied by reactionary whites but deep down, they know its true. A black actor would be out of work indefinitely if caught multiple times by police with heroin, cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs as Downey Jr. has been. This social fact adds a sick and very twisted arrogant irony that this actor specifically, one that would be out of work if he were not white to begin with, is tapped to paint his face black and play a black man on the silver screen. Talk about ego. White arrogance, contextualized, seems boundless.

As a preemptive side note to all of those who comment that this won’t be offensive, who decides on this kind of question? Whites or blacks? This issue dates back a century. The legacy of haranguing men like Al Sharpton dates back to before Al Sharpton was born. Whites have always decided what was acceptable or offensive. That is why they essentially hate a person like Al Sharpton who represents non-whites deciding for themselves what is or is not appropriate.  On another side not, it should also be taken into consideration that Downey Jr. has another majorly funded movie coming out this year.  So what?  This says that he wasn’t tapped for this role on some downswing of this career but that this blackface move is something he is riding on the upswing of his career, a move he deems beneficial as gravy on top of the multimillion dollar Iron Man role he is already bagged for 2008 release.  Just something to consider if anyone is thinking this represents some valley in his career to explain the choice.  On the contrary, blackface is apparently the kind of choice made by white Hollywood actors at their peaks.

Patriots Have Been Cheating Throughout Entire ‘Dynasty’

So it comes out today, that not only has the 2007 NFL Coach of the Year cheated his way through the 2007 season but through every season since 2000. And he isn’t alone. In the strictest definition of the word it was a c-o-n-spiracy. The Pats organization knew the rules. They knew Belichick was breaking them. And they kept it quiet to allow him to continue doing so. I wonder what folks would be saying about the Colts Super Bowl rings if it came out that Tony Dungy had been cheating the season and perhaps game in which they won it? I wonder how it would play if any black coach was determined to have been cheating while winning top honors. I think he/she would be disciplined, shamed and ordered to give back the awards. Like Marion Jones. The Pats aren’t Super Bowl champs.

The New England Patriots are Super Cheaters. And Bill Belichick is the Head Super Cheater in charge. I love the way that sports commentators and white sports fans treat white crime with kid gloves. No talk of suspending Belichick from the game, something that clearly should happen immediately. No talk of putting asterisks besides the Patriots for the past 7 seasons. No talk of making them give back the Super Bowl rings and declaring their wins invalid. No serious talk of any of this. But let a guy like Barry Bonds break a record and there be–and this isn’t figurative but literal–NO EVIDENCE OF WRONGDOING, ONLY SPECULATION and you get every kind of discrediting comment and idea one can think of for both Bonds and his achievements.

This is called racially selective treatment and it is the way things work in the US. Sports is the arena where it is most visible but this is how things work in all US institutions. From revisionist history of the white slaveholders that established our original apartheid govt (the Founders) to Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots celebrated for establishing a dynasty while cheating the whole time. This story is more complex than this for sure but as a black weblog, I’m making a few select points because the whitosphere surely won’t bring em up. We’ve gotta do better people.

Kick Belichick outta the league and make the Pats give back their rings. Will that serve as a deterrent? Of course not. The US is a cheating culture through and through. But it’s the right thing to do.

Australians Laughing at Indigenous Expense…Still

When the new Australian Parliament comes into the session the first order of business reportedly will be an official apology to the aboriginal population for the wrongs committed against it by, and this is the Australian govt’s wording, past generations. And notice that while the Times isn’t shy about publicizing the white atonement, it isn’t nearly as forthcoming with context as to what, specifically, the apology is for. Haha. If nothing else you must admire white racial ingenuity. I’ve commented on this before, this ingenuity…this psychosis, as a part of the pathological mindset required to be an American. And it is true but more than that, this apology is a snapshot of the larger pathology associated with being white on this planet at this point in history.

A compelling dramatization of what went down in Australia is the subject of the movie, Rabbit Proof Fence, for those of you that don’t know the history down under. It’s a good way to get a quick sense of the historical scene, so to speak.  Although the current global white supremacist order has managed, of course, to put a happy go lucky face on the country, in the real world, white Aussies are a sordid little gaggle that attempted to destroy an entire people as govt policy. And it was all done specifically along racial lines as it was in the US and the colonies of England, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and the rest of white Europe. Definitely a movie to see if you are thinking that Australia is only about kangaroos and crocodile hunters. Rabbit Proof Fence is about the stolen generations. The stolen generations were Aboriginal kids taken from their families at a young age. The conservative estimate of children kidnapped by the white Australian govt is 100,000. That’s what the govt admits to. That number has been disputed. The reason for the kidnappings was the hope that the kids could be culturally assimilated and eventual subsequent generations bred white. Yes. The folks down under hoped to wipe the Aborigines off the planet. The operative word for official Australian policy is genocide. A conversation on that plane is what Australia and the white world generally, attempts to avoid.

As in the US and most of the world, whites have a disproportionate amount of influence over the lives of non-whites. This is true in Australia, a country that came into being as a penal colony, making that country’s historic role in the global white order particularly harsh and obvious. Even still, Australians, like contemporary US whites, see no connection to them being on top, so to speak, and the racial crimes of previous generations of whites against non-whites.

They see no connection.

Of course they really do see a connection, making hypocrisy and willful ignorance a prerequisite of even being white. A white person must pretend to not understand how privilege and white opportunity today is connected with the overt crimes of yesterday, not to mention contemporary crimes. Not to be overstated, this is an essential component of the psychology of whiteness. Every white person participates and drinks from this cup, to varying degrees, of course. White Australians are in a particularly difficult situation as many of the actual people they beat up, commonly known as the Aborigines, are still alive. This presents a problem.  White countries absolutely must present a liberal social facade for economic purposes (something white South Afrikans evidently had to learn the hard way).  The answer to this problem of course is the shell game being played in the Australian Parliament right now. Hollow ceremonial apologies are but one slight of hand in the game. Monuments and museums are another. All of the tactics are consistent with one primary motive. To put as much temporal distance between the lifespans of those directly affected and the present moment. If enough time is allowed to pass, eventually those living will be able to throw their hands up and claim that everyone affected is dead and no one living is actually responsible. This game was and is played very well inside the United States, another basestar of normalized racism and white hypocrisy. Here, the main issue is, of course, the enslavement of blacks by whites. The waiting game was played here to perfection. Although the white US population had advantages that the Australians do not have relating to global moral standards which allowed US whites more latitude in denying financial reparations to obviously wronged people. Disadvantaged in this regard, still the Australians are soldiering on in their quest to avoid justice and uphold the mantle of global white supremacy. Will Australian white power succeed? I would hope that in 2008 the global tide might be turning against such rank injustice but the clock is surely ticking on the Aborigines. Soon, very soon, whites will move into the amnesia phase of their act, combined with parallel claims that too much time has passed for financial reparations. Financial reparations alongside land redistribution to those who lived on and maintained it, before the killers arrived, is long overdue. I know what side of the issue I’m on.

Death of the Black/White Electorate

Roberto Lovato reflects on Nevada as the harbinger for the death of the black/white electoral divide.

Everyone’s an Expert on the Latino Vote, Except Latinos

I say good riddance.