Detangling racism: White women’s fixation with black women’s hair

Salon

Pictures from a new exhibit by photographer Endia Beal called “Can I Touch It?” showcase several white women, all corporate execs, who agreed to get a “black hairstyle” and then have their portrait taken.

Apparently, this very quotidian fixation with black women’s bodies and black women’s hair is now the stuff of art exhibits.

This project started when Beal began permitting many of her white corporate colleagues to touch her big red ‘fro, to pull it even, while she photographed them doing it.

Over the summer, a friend and I happened upon the “You Can Touch My Hair” exhibit that occurred in Union Square.

Incensed at such protests and convinced that the black woman who facilitated such a moment had no understanding of history or the ways that white folks fetishize black women’s bodies, I was incredibly happy to see the counter protests that emerged as well.

How dare the exhibit organizer put black women on display and then grant permission for touch? Yes, there is something to be said for making it clear that permission is required, but what are we permitting?

This desire to intimately touch and engage with the body of the “other” is one mark of what Sharon Patricia Holland might call “The Erotic Life of Racism.” There is certainly something undeniably erotic about inviting white men to pull a black woman’s hair at work. I don’t use erotic in the positive sense here, mind you. But the touching of bodies is an intimate practice, touch being tethered to the erotic, like a teabag being steeped in steaming hot water. Racism happens here, too.

The Racial History Of The 'Grandfather Clause'

NPR

People aren't exempted from new regulations because they're old and crotchety, even if that's what it sounds like when we say they're "grandfathered in."

The term "grandfathered" has become part of the language. It's an easy way to describe individuals or companies who get to keep operating under an existing set of expectations when new rules are put in place.

The troubled HealthCare.gov website reassures consumers that they can stay enrolled in grandfathered insurance plans that existed before the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010. Old power plants are sometimes grandfathered from having to meet new clean air requirements.

But like so many things, the term "grandfather," used in this way, has its roots in America's racial history. It entered the lexicon not just because it suggests something old, but because of a specific set of 19th century laws regulating voting.

The 15th Amendment, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting, was ratified by the states in 1870. If you know your history, you'll realize that African-Americans were nevertheless kept from voting in large numbers in Southern states for nearly a century more.

Various states created requirements — literacy tests and poll taxes and constitutional quizzes — that were designed to keep blacks from registering to vote. But many poor Southern whites were at risk of also losing their rights because they could not have met such expectations.

"If all these white people are going to be noncitizens along with blacks, the idea is going to lose a lot of support," says James Smethurst, who teaches African-American studies at the University of Massachusetts.

The solution? A half-dozen states passed laws that made men eligible to vote if they had been able to vote before African-Americans were given the franchise (generally, 1867), or if they were the lineal descendants of voters back then.

Caught on tape: CA mayor’s racist remarks about Non-whites

Raw Story

Attempts to reach the California chapter of the Chaldean Federation of America before publication were not successful.

Some of Lewis’ remarks, including his statement that some Chaldean students benefiting from free lunch programs at school are “being picked up by Mercedes Benzes,” were published as part of a report on the influx of Chaldean immigrants into El Cajon, which dates back to the 1950s.

According to the Progressive, nearly a third of the city’s population of around 100,000 people is of Iraqi descent. But many of the city’s new residents told the magazine they were having trouble finding a job, which corroborates the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finding that 67 percent of Iraqis who came to the U.S. after 2009 are unemployed.

In one remark that was not published in the article, Lewis blames inter-faith conflicts for the mass emigration of Chaldeans to the U.S.

“Right now, the Moslems [sic] are causing hardship with the Christian community in Iraq,” Lewis says. “So they’re bailing out of there as soon as they can.”

KGTV-TV reported on Tuesday that residents from various communities publicly criticized the mayor’s remarks during a meeting of the local city council.

“The citizens of El Cajon deserve better than someone to oppress them and say, ‘Hey, you guys don’t matter,’” one Chaldean resident, Mark Arabo, was quoted as saying.

Lewis did not deny making those statements in a separate interview with KGTV after the meeting, saying, “I made those comments but not in that order,” arguing that they stemmed from complaints from other residents looking to qualify for the free lunch program.

“First time, they come over here, it doesn’t take them too long to learn where all the freebies are at,” Lewis says in the interview.

Meanwhile, Lewis can also be heard on the tape saying, “There’s lots of prostitutes in regards to the Middle Eastern community” and telling Gupta that the increasing number of Chaldeans had touched off drug-related tension among three different minority communities.

“The Mexican community feels intimidated, in regards to Chaldeans trying to get into their turf, in regards to selling drugs,” Lewis says. “Same as the Black Africans, Black Americans.”

Don Yelton, GOP Precinct Chair, Delivers Most Baldly Racist Daily Show Interview of All Time

NYMag

Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary

Who Owns The Federal Reserve? The Fed Is Privately Owned and Its Shareholders Are Private Banks

4th Media

No Matter What Happens to US Economy, Permanent War Inc. Continues Everywhere

4th Media

There is a new normal in America: our government may shut down, but our wars continue.  Congress may not be able to pass a budget, but the U.S. military can still launch commando raids in Libya and Somalia, the Afghan War can still be prosecuted, Italy can be garrisoned by American troops (putting the “empire” back in Rome), Africa can be used as an imperial playground (as in the late nineteenth century “scramble for Africa,” but with the U.S. and China doing the scrambling this time around), and the military-industrial complex can still dominate the world’s arms trade.

In the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, it’s business as usual, if your definition of “business” is the power and profits you get from constantly preparing for and prosecuting wars around the world.  “War is a racket,” General Smedley Butler famously declared in 1935, and even now it’s hard to disagree with a man who had two Congressional Medals of Honor to his credit and was intimately familiar with American imperialism...

Korea?  Vietnam?  Lots of profit for the military-industrial complex and plenty of power for the Pentagon establishment.  Iraq, the Middle East, current adventures in Africa?  Oil, markets, natural resources, global dominance.

In societal calamities like war, there will always be winners and losers.  But the clearest winners are often companies like Boeing and Dow Chemical, which provided B-52 bombers and Agent Orange, respectively, to the U.S. military in Vietnam.  Such “arms merchants” — an older, more honest term than today’s “defense contractor” — don’t have to pursue the hard sell, not when war and preparations for it have become so permanently, inseparably intertwined with the American economy, foreign policy, and our nation’s identity as a rugged land of “warriors” and “heroes” (more on that in a moment).

Rich Corporate White Folks Kidnapped by Pirates off Africa coast

From [HERE] The United States is investigating reports that pirates kidnapped two Americans from a U.S.-flagged ship off the coast of Nigeria in West Africa, where security has been a growing concern.

The incident involves a U.S.-flagged vessel, the 222-foot C-Retriever, in the Gulf of Guinea.

"We are seeking additional information about the incident," the State Department said.

The ship's captain and chief engineer were abducted early Wednesday morning, according to the British security firm AKE. Rick Filon of AKE said Nigerian Central Naval Command has provided no additional information.

The ship is owned by Edison Chouest Offshore, based in Cut Off, La. ECO supports the majority of the U.S. Gulf deepwater oil rigs and an expanding global market with a fleet of more than 200 vessels, ranging from 87 to more than 360 feet in length, according to the company website.

Maj. Mark Firman, a Pentagon spokesman, described the incident as "a piracy attack on a commercial vessel off the coast of Nigeria."

Baltimore Police Department to switch to ‘double blind’ suspect photo identification police

BaltimoreNewsJournal

Authorities in Baltimore City will be switching to a new method for identifying suspects.

The Baltimore Police Department has announced that it will begin implementing the new “Double Blind – Sequential Photo Array” for use by detectives investigating criminal acts.

At the cutting edge of law enforcement trends, the Baltimore Police Department will be the largest police department in Maryland to implement this practice.

Endorsed by the Innocence Project as well as the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, this new method dramatically reduces the percentage of innocent people wrongly identified as suspects in criminal cases.

GPS Tracking Requires a Warrant, Third Circuit Rules

Legalintelligencer

Circuit Court Upholds Secrecy Of FBI's Use of Ethnic (non-whites) Mapping

NJ Law Journal 

D.C. Court Hears Challenge to Juvenile Shackling

LegalTimes

On Aug. 20, 2012, an 11-year-old boy, shackled, made his first appearance before a judge. His lawyers today urged the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to declare unconstitutional the shackling of juveniles without a judge first deciding whether the restraints are necessary.

The child in this case, known as M.H., was charged with taking part in a robbery using a BB gun. During his initial appearance, his hands, feet and waist were shackled. Alec Karakatsanis of the Public Defender Service told the court today that this was standard practice for juveniles in D.C. Superior Court.

Restraining a child with metal chains was "humiliating" and painful—emotionally and physically—Karakatsanis told the court. The practice, he said, created a host of constitutional problems, from limiting a child's ability to communicate with his lawyer to weakening the integrity of the juvenile justice system and the court.

In M.H.'s case, Karakatsanis said the judge deferred to a U.S. Marshals Service policy on shackling followed by the city's Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. He argued judges should make individualized determinations before allowing shackling for juveniles, as opposed to deferring to the U.S. Marshals Service policy used by DYRS.

John Woykovsky of the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia focused his case on the procedural reasons why the court shouldn't make any ruling on the merits of the claims. M.H.'s guilty plea meant he couldn't bring the appeal in the first place, Woykovsky said. The government also argued the judge's decision to allow shackling without findings specific to M.H. wasn't the type of order that could be challenged.

Members of the three-judge panel indicated their reluctance to use the case as the vehicle for changing shackling practices at Superior Court. Judge John Fisher noted that other states changed shackling practices for children through legislative or other rule-changing processes, not litigation.

If the Public Defender Service wanted to take the litigation route, Fisher added, a class action lawsuit might allow a more comprehensive record for the appeals court to review.

Karakatsanis said judges were responsible for addressing constitutional violations in courtrooms. He cited a U.S. Supreme Court case finding the shackling of an adult prisoner during sentencing by jury was unconstitutional. Fisher asked how that case applied, since it involved proceedings before a jury, as opposed to an initial appearance before a judge. Karakatsanis said the broader constitutional issues the Supreme Court found problematic when it came to shackling were still relevant.

Woykovsky faced questions from Senior Judge Inez Smith Reid about whether the trial judge exercised her discretion by deferring to the U.S. Marshals Service policy used by the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. Woykovsky said the decision to defer to the policy was an exercise of discretion.

Fisher asked why the city didn't seem to spend much time in its court papers defending the shackling, as opposed to fighting the Public Defender Service's ability to bring the challenge. Woykovsky said the government proceeded under the assumption that procedural issues would knock out the case before the court reached the underlying issues.

Israel revises children’s arrest tactics, but violations continue

Rt

Israel’s army is introducing reforms to how it arrests Palestinian children in the West Bank, the UN Children's Fund said. The move comes amid international criticism after revelations of widespread mistreatment of detained Palestinian children.

United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) said in a statement that Israel was “taking steps” to address some of the problems outlined in a report released by the organization back in March. The report revealed that the Palestinian children detained by the Israeli military in the West Bank were “systematically” mistreated. 

Seven months after the report was released reports of violations are ongoing, reports UNICEF, despite the 38 recommendations issued along with the report that would help to bring the treatment of children in line with international standards.  

But, UNICEF noted that Israel had moved forward on the issue and is currently testing some of the newly reformed measures. The first measure deals with Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) issuing summons for children instead of making night arrests at home, “which can be traumatic for children and their siblings,” UNICEF said. 

The other measure piloted has reduced the time a child can be detained before appearing in front of a military court for the first time. “The new order reduces the time from four days to 24 hours for children aged 12-13, and from four to two days for children aged 14-15. There is no change for children aged 16-17,” UNICEF stated. 

New Setencing Project Publication: Ending Mass Incarceration

Sentencing Project

Mass incarceration has resulted from a great imbalance in our national approach to public safety, one that relies far too heavily on the criminal justice system. This has produced excessive levels of punishment and a diversion of resources from investments that could strengthen the capacity of families and communities to address the circumstances that contribute to crime.

Research has demonstrated that many social interventions are more cost-effective in producing better public safety outcomes than expanded incarceration. This policy brief discusses various interventions in early childhood education, juvenile justice, and community investment that have been demonstrated to be effective in reducing crime.

Read the full brief here.

Report finds a racial and income-based resource gap in NYC schools

CapitalNewYork 

Black, Latino and poor students in New York City public schools have fewer resources, particularly in science and arts, than their white and Asian peers, according to a report released Sunday by the Independent Budget Office.

While graduation rates have risen under the Bloomberg administration, major inequities persist along racial lines, the report found. 

The report was requested by the Alliance for Quality Education, an education research and advocacy group that is calling the current public school system "a tale of two systems," echoing Bill de Blasio's "tale of two cities" campaign slogan. 

The study found that black and Latino students have access to half the number of Advanced Placement classes as their white and Asian peers, according to data from 353 high schools in the 2011-2012 academic year. Data from charter and transfer schools was not included. 

The report also suggested that an essential component of education reform under Mayor Bloomberg—more, smaller schools—has created an odd sort of scarcity: larger high schools are more likely to include a library, medical office or gym, the report found. 

Minorities and poor students—a group the study defines as students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch—generally have fewer science, music and art classes and are less likely to have a library, medical office or gym compared to white and Asian students across the city. About half of Department of Education district high schools don't have art rooms. 

White Boston fan who ripped a home run ball out of a woman's hands Yelled "Bye Trayvon" to Blacks @ Game

YahooSports

The fan who ripped a home run ball out of a woman's hands and threw it back onto the field allegedly spent Game 2 of the American League Championship Series uttering racist remarks, including a parting shot to an African-American man as he was ejected from Fenway Park: "Bye, Trayvon."

The man was not immediately identified, and stadium security declined to provide his name. But fans in Section 42 of the stadium confirmed that he directed multiple slurs at 25-year-old Angelo Sikoutris, a Detroit Tigers fan from Brooklyn, including a reference to Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager whose shooting death sparked a national firestorm and prompted fierce debate about modern-day racism.

"He was talking all game," Sikoutris told Yahoo Sports from his seat in Row 1, right above the Tigers' bullpen, two innings after the man was escorted out by security after throwing back a home run hit by Detroit catcher Alex Avila.

Video of the man taking the ball from a woman sitting next to him and chucking it onto the field quickly went viral as Boston faced a five-run deficit. The Red Sox came back for a dramatic 6-5 victory to even the ALCS at one game apiece.

Click to read more ...

Joe the Plumber says: "Admit it. You want a white Republican president again. Wanting a white Republican president doesn’t make you racist, it just makes you American.”

From [HERE] Samuel Wurzelbacher, the outspoken Ohio handyman known as “Joe the Plumber,” sparked renewed allegations of racism by posting a controversial article on his blog over the weekend.

The article, “America Needs a White Republican President,” opines: “Admit it. You want a white Republican president again. Wanting a white Republican president doesn’t make you racist, it just makes you American.”

“The election of a recognized black president was ... supposed to (1) ease any perceived racial tensions, and (2) allow the government to focus on legislating without race,” the article continues. “Not the case. And that is why having a white Republican president is best for the country.” 

Wurzelbacher was widely blasted on social media for the offensive article, but aggressively defended himself by pointing out the article originally appeared on a website called The Black Sphere, which is run by the conservative black pundit Kevin Jackson. more on white supremacy/racism [HERE]

California governor vetoes bill permitting non-citizens to serve on juries

Jurist

California Governor Jerry Brown [official website] vetoed [text] a bill [AB 1401] on Monday that would have permitted lawful permanent immigrants to serve on juries. The bill's supporters compared [Reuters report] disqualifying permanent residents to outdated laws that preventing women and minorities from serving on juries, while the opposition felt the measure could prevent a defendants from having cases decided by a jury of their peers. The veto stated, "[j]ury service, like voting, is quintessentially a prerogative and responsibility of citizenship. This bill would permit lawful permanent residents who are not citizens to serve on a jury.

Human rights lawyers sue UN over Haiti cholera outbreak

Jurist

The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) [advocacy website] on Wednesday filed a complaint [press release] against the UN [official website] for compensation of Haiti's cholera victims and their families. The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] and comes amid the UN's refusal to compensate the victims earlier this year. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon [official website] stated [press release] that the claims brought on behalf of victims of the cholera outbreak in Haiti cannot be received. Ban relied on Section 29 of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN [materials] that requires the international body to "make provisions for appropriate modes of settlement" in which the UN is a party. The epidemic [CDC backgrounder] has killed more than 8,300 Haitians and sickened more than 650,000 since its introduction in 2010.

Supreme Court Rejects Marijuana Reclassification Appeal

BlackListedNews

The US Supreme Court Monday declined to hear an appeal from medical marijuana advocacy groups who had challenged the DEA's decision to maintain marijuana's status as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, the category reserved for the most dangerous substances.