Manhattan District leader
Mark Levine plans to run for a city council seat in 2013, for
District 7. The problem? Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a Harlem activist who is also running for term-limited Councilman Robert Jackson’s seat,
circulated an e-mail late on November 26th in an attempt to plan a “private meeting” to “discuss the potential damage to the political empowerment of the Black and Hispanic community if Mark Levine, a White/Jewish candidate was elected to the 7th Council District in 2013.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen
on Nov 29, 2012 -
9 comments
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N-----, n-----, n-----.” By 1968 you can’t say “n-----”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N-----, n-----.”
The full audio of Republican operative and Karl Rove mentor Lee Atwater's infamous 1981 interview has been obtained and published by The Nation. [more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty
on Nov 16, 2012 -
144 comments
Right now Baltimore, MD plays host to
FemmeCon, a biannual gathering for those who "seek to explore, discuss, dissect, and support
Queer Femme as a transgressive, gender-queer, stand-alone, and empowered identity and provide a space for organizing and activism within Queer communities". Some of the issues faced by queer femme culture include
femme invisibility in larger queer culture, the
lack of non-stereotypical role models,
being classed 'femme' by default, dismissal as
"too much", as well as intersectional issues of femme with
race,
gender, and
disability. In the meantime, femme subcultures such as
tomboy femme,
hard femme, and
FEMME SHARKS as well as
femmes in specific regions come together for
inspiration,
expression,
power,
creativity and support from each other - as well as from
appreciative butches.
posted by divabat
on Aug 18, 2012 -
111 comments
It all comes down to race. Michael Tesler, expanding upon the research of his mentor David Sears, has found racial bias to be a strong indicator of people's opinions on a myriad of political and other issues. The effect extended even to issues that normally would be the most stable and to opinions that would seem divorced from politics.
[more inside]
posted by caddis
on Jun 2, 2012 -
34 comments
Categories as fundamental as fact and fiction, news and entertainment, gender and sexuality, have eroded away. In literature and architecture, in cuisine, in music, in fashion and furnishings, everywhere, everything—it’s fusion and mix.
Barack Obama emerged as a literal embodiment of this age. To educated people, especially younger people with generally progressive views, other candidates suddenly looked parochial by comparison—or simply outdated. In his ethnicity and biography and in his personality and politics, Obama, the conciliator, was above all a combiner. Because he was from virtually everywhere—Kenya, Indonesia, Honolulu, Harvard, Chicago’s South Side—he was also from nowhere. The pastiche of his persona made him “his own man” in a new sense of the term.
On the Politics of Pastiche and Depthless Intensities: The Case of Barack Obama
posted by Rumple
on Aug 25, 2011 -
22 comments
The Gray And The Brown - why the baby boom generation's concerns about race may mean that it's stabbing itself in the back as it moves into retirement.
posted by Artw
on Aug 19, 2010 -
66 comments
Due to
“credible death and kidnapping threats”, T-Pain has cancelled a concert in Guyana for
Mashramani, the festival that marks the anniversary of Guyana’s independence from Great Britain.
Last years, celebration was soured by a
killing spree perpetrated by a heavily armed gang led by man known as “Fine Man”. Because the 23 victims were mainly of East Indian descent, the massacre was a powder keg issue for the tiny South American nation. With a population of 44% East Indian and 30% African ancestries, Guyana tends to be socially and politically divided along ethnic identity lines.
[more inside]
posted by Stu-Pendous
on Feb 24, 2009 -
12 comments
Obama's Gettysburg Address. Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones (the years of "what is is"), those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor. One of the most important speeches on race in decades if not longer. (
text)
[more inside]
posted by caddis
on Mar 18, 2008 -
1126 comments
Patricia Todd won a tight Democratic party runoff in District 54 in Alabama. Patricia Todd is also gay and would be the first gay representative in Alabama's history. Gaynell Hendricks doesn't understand why she lost, but maybe it has to do with the
race baiting . Hendricks' mother-in-law
contests the election for numerous reasons including "illegal votes were given to Todd" and said that "I want this controversy settled.This is happening like when Bush and Gore were running for president. I don't like it." Unsurprisingly, "Hendricks said she is pleased that someone challenged the results. "
Weeks go by and the results don't get certified. A five member committee is appointed and
bickers. Eventually the committee refrerences an old by law that has apparently not been enforced since 1988 to
disqualify Todd. Although it does not seem quite
over, it should be by tommorrow.
Interestingly enough, Todd said she believes the challenge has nothing to do with the fact she is gay, but is about the fact that she is white and won in a majority black district.
posted by dig_duggler
on Aug 25, 2006 -
38 comments
Why do we always seem to expect the worst from some people? By now, it's common knowledge that media reports of widespread looting, violence and sexual assault in the wake of Katrina's strike on New Orleans were grossly exaggerated, but why? Some might attribute such distortions to
unconscious bias, offering up some hope of alleviating racial tension by bringing unexamined racial biases to light; still others see the problem of racial tension as an intractable one, leading inevitably to an all-out clash of cultures--even finding "evidence" of the inevitably of such a conflict in the
unlikeliest of places. Still
others seem especially eager to bring all these tensions to a head. What's really going on these days? Is racial tension ultimately a political problem or, as some suggest, a
psychological one?
posted by all-seeing eye dog
on Oct 21, 2005 -
35 comments
The Rise and Fall of the Black Voter is a remarkable sequence of maps graphically describing the realignment of voting patterns in the U.S. during the past century (read
this for a bit more context). It is an excellent companion to the
purple maps of the most recent election, and a nice antidote to
simplistic comparisons of pre-Civil War and recent electoral college maps. Republicans can bask in the glow of their successful "
Southern Strategy," while Democrats can take heart that change, while often slow, is still
possible.
posted by googly
on Dec 15, 2004 -
7 comments
Is the GOP tampering with Florida elections? The New York Times reports that State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.
Also, see
here and
here.
Why do we even put up with this?
posted by black8
on Aug 16, 2004 -
61 comments
Bush camp solicits race of Star staffer. President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.
The jounalist's name was Mamta Popat. She sure
sounds like a terrorist.
posted by JeffK
on Jul 31, 2004 -
30 comments
Black-Jew Rift Widens After Southern Primaries WASHINGTON — Participants in this month's Congressional Black Caucus conference say the defeat of two black House members in bitter primaries not only suggests a widening rift with Jewish Democrats, but trouble within the Democratic Party itself.
I have long considered the Democrats in trouble: one of their charms. A Black loses to another Black and it is the fault of the Jews? Reparations? Assuming there had been a strong lobby at work to get the Jewish vote to come out against these candidates, is that un-American? Don't we vote for those we feel best serve our interests? Odd that he Protocols of Zion not mentioned.
posted by Postroad
on Sep 18, 2002 -
26 comments
PBS's Televangelist: "Moyers's difficulty conversing with people on the right seems to have impaired his ability to report their opinions fairly, particularly on issues of race. "The right gets away with blaming liberals for their efforts to help the poor, but what the right is really objecting to is the fact that the poor are primarily black," he told Alterman. "The man who sits in the White House today [George H.W. Bush] opposed the Civil Rights Act. So did Ronald Reagan. This crowd is really fighting a retroactive civil rights war to prevent the people they dislike because of their color from achieving success in American life."" (via
medianews)
posted by owillis
on Feb 18, 2002 -
43 comments
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice -- concert pianist, figure skater, Stanford University Provost, speaker of 4 languages -- should be the poster child for Black achievement in the 21st Century. So why is she largely ignored, if not outright scorned, by the Black community? Could it be because she's
a Republican?
Who's stirring up this pot? Some conservative like O'Reilly, Limbaugh, North? Nope, just a
liberal Black female newspaper columnist.
posted by pardonyou?
on Dec 17, 2001 -
46 comments
Shudder... At least Helms
tries to pretend he's offended...
Warning: Quicktime file, may put you off your feed.
posted by GriffX
on Sep 6, 2001 -
15 comments
Amexica. So, living in two hispanic-dominated regions (Los Angeles, South Florida), I've seen the growth of the latino population create one of the oddest political coalitions ever. Ultra-conservatives (mostly white) want to tighten the borders because they see their "way of life" disappearing or mixing linguistically with Spanish. Blacks are threatened by dropping to #3 in the country's racial make-up, and see whatever political power they've gained begin to evaporate in a numbers game. In LA's recent mayoral race, this coalition became
the deciding factor in defeating the latino candidate.
posted by owillis
on Jun 18, 2001 -
20 comments
Hello, Peril. The so-called
model minority inspire an amazing amount of mistrust, according to a survey of US residents. Featuring the revelation that
one third of those polled "said Chinese Americans are more loyal to China than to the United States. "
posted by anildash
on Apr 25, 2001 -
56 comments
Welcome back, state's rights. As if Dubya's comments following his "ethnic" Cabinet appointments wasn't enough retrograde logic -- roughly: if blacks and hispanics (would only?) work hard and make the right choices in life -- he's now using language that has been used to mask agendas based on race from
before the Civil War through the
fight against integration. And it looks like that fight
ain't over, if you read "states rights" in today's context to mean the right to spend public funds on getting (primarily) white kids out of (primarily) black schools.
posted by subpixel
on Jan 6, 2001 -
13 comments
