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The Picture Worth a Thousand Words

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President Barack Obama looks out a window as he and First Lady Michelle Obama tour the Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) Museum on Gorée Island, Senegal, June 27, 2013.

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

We will never be a post-racial America until those who enslaved human beings and sent them thousands of miles from home to be beaten and killed are no longer celebrated.

Until we no longer have the Confederate flag flying over state capitols and honored in state legislatures.

Until we no longer have military bases and government buildings named after Confederate generals.

~

Until we no longer have a Supreme Court of the United States willing to rule from their ivory (white) towers that there is no racial discrimination in America.

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Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 43 Comments

43 comments

  1. JanF

    And those who deny what is right in front of their faces will one day be judged at the bar of history for what they are.

  2. HappyinVT

    given that we know she’s descended from slaves.  I’m not trying to read too much into it … could be she was chilly, in the process of adjusting her stance, or something else but it is interesting to me to she looks uncomfortable.  And that’s not a criticism just an observation.

  3. Mets102

    the Court’s ruling this week.  The majority was made possible by an African American man who grew up in the Jim Crow Deep South and whose marriage would be illegal in his home state if not for an ‘activist’ Supreme Court that stepped in to protect the civil rights of all citizens.

    Despite what so many want to claim, racism did not go away in November 2008 just because Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.  If anything, it brought it out in much more public force because so many people were complaining about ‘the black man in the White House.’

  4. HappyinVT

    over statehouses amuse me.  If German towns chose to fly the Nazi flag there would rightfully be a huge outcry.  But yet it is “tradition” and “history” and “southern pride” that okays a traitorous flag to fly.  Of course, there is really nothing traditional or historical about the confederate flag anyway but you cannot convince people of that.  To alot of people it is a poke in the eye of the Feds.

    I have friends who really like the country group Lady Antebellum.  Never really occurred to me until someone mentioned it but that name rather glorifies a time that shouldn’t be.

    And, of course, one of the counties in MS is named for Nathan Bedford Forrest.  I’m not sure how many people in MS know that and probably fewer care because, “get over it already.”

  5. princesspat

    Roberts Pulls Supreme Court to the Right Step by Step

    Chief Justice Roberts has proved adept at persuading the court’s more liberal justices to join compromise opinions, allowing him to cite their concessions years later as the basis for closely divided and deeply polarizing conservative victories.

    ~snip~

    The decision issued on Tuesday nominally returned the fate of the law to Congress, but the chances that it will act are remote. As a practical matter, the key provision of the law is very likely dead.

    In the decision, Chief Justice Roberts repeatedly quoted from his 2009 opinion. He took pains to note that eight members of the court, including its four liberals, had already agreed that “things have changed in the South” and that the voting law seemed at odds with principles of federalism and “equal sovereignty” among the states.

    The liberal justices, he suggested, had joined him four years ago in building a time bomb with a very long fuse.

  6. louisprandtl

    The Ridgeley family built their wealth upon the backs of enslaved Africans and indentured Europeans. Our African American park ranger commented how the rise and fall of the Ridgeleys coincided with the crests and troughs of United States before the World Wars. At the height of their wealth and power the plantation had 300 slaves working away their lives to enrich the Ridgeleys who went for long vacations in Europe every year.  It’s still a chilling experience to see the slave quarters, the chains, the ironworks, gaudy mansion rooms, the tunnels…

    http://www.nps.gov/hamp/index.htm

  8. JanF

    Long slog ahead for Voting Rights Act

    On the assumption that the Voting Rights Act process will follow the same path other legislation has traveled this Congress, the Senate will act first, and the House will have to decide whether or not to follow suit. Democrats can exert pressure, but they’re effectively cut out of the decision.

    The initial hearings [in the Senate, per Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT)] will begin after Congress returns from Fourth of July recess.

    [The] House Judiciary Committee, and its chairman, Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) intends to hold a hearing on the issue in July, to examine the implications of the Court’s decision, according to a committee aide.

    “I would like to see something called – well, I haven’t even discussed this with my caucus, but – the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would address the concerns that the Court put in its decision about Section 4,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters Wednesday. “It’s really a step backward and it’s not a reflection of what is happening in our country in some of these places.”

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