Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

racism

“Show Me” Your Racism

At the Missouri State Fair last Saturday night, a rodeo clown dressed up as President Obama to entertain the crowd. The story was posted on a progressive blog site, ShowMeProgress.com. The report:

“Just prior to the start of the bull riding event, one of the clowns came out dressed in this,” the post says, referring to the photo. “The announcer wanted to know if anyone would like to see Obama run down by a bull. The crowd went wild. He asked it again and again, louder each time, whipping the audience into a lather. One of the clowns ran up and started bobbling the lips on the mask and the people went crazy.”

According to the post, a bull then charged the clown, forcing him to run away “to the delight of the onlookers hooting and hollering from the stands.”

BREAKING: Love’s Just Blade: Doreen Lawrence to be made a Labour Peer

I’m republishing this diary from 18 months ago on the wonderful news that the mother of Stephen Lawrence, victim of a racist killing that continues to have repercussions among the police and press even now, has been elevated to the House of Lords.

I’m no fan of the honours system or our unelected second chamber, but before it’s abolished, the thought that Doreen Lawrence, who has campaigned tirelessly for twenty years to bring her son’s murderers to justice (and expose the collusion and institutional racism of the police) is to become a Labour peer is the best news I’ve heard in ages.

HT to Denise for the following video which shows Doreen meeting with the Trayvon Martin family in London last year at the Stephen Lawrence foundation

Below is a tribute to her, written by our poet laureate.

I Don’t Completely Get It

And I will never completely get it because I am a white, Conservative Jew.  Yes, I am a minority, but I am lucky enough that I can pretty much blend in whenever I want to.  Unless someone is particularly fanatical, lucky and has phenomenal Jewdar, they are not generally going to detect that I am Jewish.  I generally do not cover my head with a kippah in public except when I am going to, and coming home from, synagogue.  I eat vegetarian in non-kosher restaurants.  I am out and about on Saturdays.  I am proud of my Jewishness – it is part of the very core of my personal identity – but it is not something that is always readily discernible from purely visual observation.

Yes, I can see what happens and I can know what happens; I can learn about it, both from the history of our country and from the many different years and places of discrimination that Jews have been subjected to throughout our history.  Still, because I can easily blend in – because I possess white privilege – I will not really know it firsthand.  Because of this I will never have to worry about what President Obama spoke about this afternoon and what every African American goes through merely from living their everyday lives.

Back to Antebellum South?

I apologize up front.  I am not the person to write this.  I admit to being white and somewhat privileged.  While I went to public school, it was a high quality public school in a comfortable suburb.  We had one token black family in my high school.  Therefore, my opinions here are not from an experiential viewpoint but are from somewhere else.

George Zimmerman Sr’s New Book Names the Racist of America, It’s the Black Folks

Moooose, Well I had a flash piece the other day of good news in the Obama administration weighing in on Stop and Frisk now I’ve got to share some tripped out what kind of crap news is this from the Zimmerman saga.

http://thinkprogress.org/media…

Previously, Zimmerman Sr. “believed generally racism was a thing of the past.” He says that, personally, he hadn’t encountered much racism, even though his wife is Hispanic. But after his son shot and killed Trayvon Martin, however, Zimmerman learned that racism is “flourishing at the insistence of some in the African American Community.” He then goes on to list various black leaders and organizations that he believes are racist:

Congressional Black Caucus. “[A] pathetic, self-serving group of racists… advancing their purely racist agenda.” He later adds that “all members of Congress should be ashamed of the Congressional Black Caucus, as should be their constituents.” And finally: “They are truly a disgrace to all Americans.”

The NAACP. “[S]imply promotes racism and hatred for their own, primarily finical, interests” and “without prejudice and racial divide, the NAACP would simply cease to exist.”

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. “[W]hat I would expect of a racist.”

Trayvon Martin’s funeral director. A “racial activist and former head of the local NAACP.”

Benjamin Crump, Natialie Jackson and Darrly Parks, attorneys for Travyon Martin’s family. “The scheme team.”

The National Basketball Players Association.

Black Chamber of Commerce.

National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers.

National Black United Fund.

United Negro College Fund.

While stopping short of explicitly calling President Obama a racist, Zimmerman Sr. does say that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have “shamelessly” sought to exploit his son’s case “to obtain great advantage in the African-American community.”

I also understand he went on to condemn the Electric Slide and Billy Dee Williams for daring to be the pretty individual he is.

Can I get a WTF ya’ll WTF?

Obama Is There For The Children

Over at Smartypants this morning I found this excellent piece, “How the Obama administration is taking on the achievement gap,” it took me back in time to the struggles my children went through in school.


Last year I wrote about the fact that Obama’s Department of Education had begun to collect information on civil rights and education – something that had stopped during the Bush administration. We now see that experts are studying that data and highlighting remedies. What they have found is that one in four black students have been suspended from school. And here are the consequences:

   These findings are of serious concern given that research shows being suspended even once in ninth grade is associated with a 32% risk for dropping out, double that for those receiving no suspensions.

But the Obama administration isn’t just collecting data. You might have heard that the Department of Justice investigated the school district and law enforcement systems in Meridian, Mississippi for their gross violations of student’s civil rights in disciplinary practices.

To have a minority child in the school systyem means as a parent you have to investigate closely what the situation was. Who was involved, what exactly was my child’s involvement, how consequences were handed out to others that were involved? . It meant balancing between not protecting your child from natural consequences and making sure those consequences fit the act and were dealt out evenly between all parties involved.

By the time they were in middle school it became glaringly apparent to me the reality of the disparity in discipline between white students and minority students.

As a parent of bi-racial children I was diligent about teaching them what “playing the race card” was, and that it was not cool. If you broke the rules there were consequences, crying out “it’s because I’m black” was bullshit if indeed they had acted inappropriately.  They had seen this take place, tried it a couple times themselves, but when the whole story came out and they were dead wrong I condoned their consequence and hoped lessons would be learned. Sadly, most of the time it was quite the opposite.

A couple of examples, out of many I could share are these:

   Daughter A is riding home on the bus. Another girl, white and in middle school, starts  picking on a young kindergarten student. Calling her names, throwing paper at the back of her head. After telling her to knock it off several times my daughter and the girl start exchanging words, they get to their bus stop, one where a large number of students get off. The verbal exchange continues and my daughter starts walking ahead with her sister and a couple other friends. The older girl catches up with my daughter and the argument starts again. This time the girl gets up in my daughter’s face, pushes her and calls her a nigger. My daughter pushed her back hard enough to send her butt flying onto the ground. Given the large number of students getting off the bus the driver was still sitting up at the corner and saw this happen.

The next day I get a call from school, my daughter is getting suspended for three days. Up I go to the school office. My first issue is that this happened on private property quite a distance from the bus, not on the bus. “Well it started on the bus, so it’s a school matter.” Okay, I was hesitant but willing to accept that, until I found out that the other girl was not even called to the office, let alone being suspended. My protests finally led to the driver and other students being questioned about the other girls part in the incident. At that point the girl was given one day in school suspension, my daughter’s punishment was still going to stand at a three day out of school suspension. Even though I had issues with the school being involved in an act that actually took place off of school property, I was willing to be flexible enough to agree that both girls put their hands on each other and needed a consequence for that, but a fair and impartial one.

I ended up having to take this issue to the district Supervisor’s office.

Daughter B has her sister put a relaxer in her hair, unfortunately without my supervision, the outcome was that we had to get her hair cut clear down. She was in 7th grade at the time and inconsolable about her appearance until I came up with the idea of buying her several very pretty scarves to use as a head wrap until her hair had grown out a bit more. Now I’m not talking bandanas, I’m talking about nice scarves, ones that cost enough to blow the hell out of our very slim budget. But it was more than worth it to give her peace of mind, that didn’t last long for either one of us. Her first day at school in one of these scarves got her sent to the office. It was “gang related attire” What? When did prints and flowers being come gang colors and/or signs? They were actually going to suspend her if she didn’t quit wearing them. Eventually I raised enough hell that the Principal finally granted permission, but there was one particular teacher who kept sending her to the office claiming they were positive it was gang related. The only hand sign she knew in seventh grade was giving someone the bird, a sign I had to sit on my hands in order to not give to that teacher.  This was no inner city school district, although our income was nowhere close to it the median income in that district of +$80,000.00.

Gangs in the sense of what inner city schools contend with were non-existent in this district.

My entire day could be taken up writing one example after another of the blatant disparities, the assumptions that “if you’re black and in my classroom you’re trouble.” Um, yeah,when you start from day one treating a child with suspicion and scorn while having a warm and positive attitude towards others, that teacher is creating a problem where should never be one.

Looking back on the situations my children were fortunate I was in a position to go to the school to advocate and when necessary fight for them. Many children weren’t for multiple reasons. Those reasons ran a spectrum from the parents who do care have to choose between losing a job to take time during the day to go deal with the school, to the parents in the grips of substance abuse who barely provided minimal care for their child let alone paying attention to how they were being treated at school.

Whatever the reason, not only can parents not always be there, as parents of minority children we  shouldn’t have to constantly monitor how our child is being treated by teachers and school administrators. The educators shouldn’t be the people who show that prejudice, racism, and bigotry are still a part of our society.

For all those children who have so many gifts, so much potential, but yet have so many odds against them from the jump I am grateful that the Department of Education is active on this issue again.

As the author of the article points out, the “Cradle to Prison Pipeline” does exist. As parents, teachers, and taxpayers, we have an obligation to stop the destruction of our children.  

If I’d Kept A Journal: Carol

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The inauguration speech the president delivered was as eloquent as usual, it still lingers. I’ve reread it several times now and continue to be absorbed by this passage;

.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

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Drifting back into my own early history there were some significant markers, profound and perception altering events that would rearrange everything I knew, memories that remain vivid to this day. I’d like to tell these stories from the perspective of the kid I was then, try and recreate the time and the place and the mood.

I was born in 1955.

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Racism and reproductive rights in Israel

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Echoing the history of sterilization of African American, Native American and Puerto Rican women, which included testing toxic birth control dosages on women in PR, the latest reproductive rights outrage is taking place in Israel, where it has been disclosed that Ethiopian Jewish women (members of the Beta Israel) have been given Depo-Provera without informed consent.

Let's get uncomfortable

This was originally posted in Orange.

I got the idea for this diary from Denise’s diary over on GOS Silence is still deadly. Denise’s sig line is


“If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a broad enough coalition” Bernice Johnson Reagon

Let’s get uncomfortable, shall we?

Let’s make a big coalition.

Remember ACT UP?

Actually, you don’t need to remember them, they’re still around; you can find them online.

Silence does equal death.

But what if we ALL Act Up?

Not just regarding AIDS, and certainly not just people who HAVE AIDS or HIV; not even just their friends and lovers and relatives.

Of course, we are ALL related to people with AIDS. Just a question of how closely related. And even if it isn’t very closely (and how would you know? Do you know the HIV status of all your second cousins? At age 50 I discovered some second cousins I didn’t know I had.  Those are my great grand parents great grand children. That’s pretty close).  But everyone is related to everyone. But, as I said, even if we aren’t that closely related, we should be concerned. If you’re only interested in the health and welfare of your closest relatives …. well…..

But it’s bigger.

Let’s make a big coalition.

You know. With all sorts of people in it. All the people who make OTHER people feel uncomfortable, bad or icky. They might even make some of US feel uncomfortable, bad or icky.  Heck, some people make ME feel that way.

But they don’t make me feel like they are sub-human or unworthy of care.

I, personally, feel uncomfortable watching some public acts of affection (between two men, two women or one of each).

That’s my hangup, not theirs. And it’s OK. Everyone’s got some hangups.

One of the groomsmen (Ellen) at my wedding was a lesbian; I found out, years later, that one of the maids of honor told Ellen not to hold her hand. Oy. That’s not OK. That’s letting her hangup hurt someone else. Not OK at all.

So, let’s get uncomfortable.

When I see people with tons of body piercings, it makes me uncomfortable. Dunno why. Just seems weird to me. But that’s OK. That’s my hangup. Not theirs. Everyone’s got hangups.

But some people let their hangups hang others. That’s not OK.

Me? I’m a learning disabled atheist with glasses who likes to eat all sorts of food. Each of those traits makes some people uncomfortable.  (Food? Yes, some people feel uncomfortable with people eating jellyfish, for instance).

I’m a geeky nerdy guy who likes to spend a lot of time alone. Those traits make some people make uncomfortable too.

Let’s get uncomfortable.

Remember “Revenge of the Nerds”? It wasn’t a gem of film making, but it had one good line:

There’s a lot more of us than there are of them

Add up all the people who make someone else uncomfortable. There’s a lot of us. There’s a lot more of us than there are of them.

Let’s get uncomfortable.

Let’s make a big coalition.

Let’s Act Up.

Together.

Because silence = death. For all of us.