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Racist Suspect Watch


free your mind!

Cress Welsing: The Definition of Racism White Supremacy

Dr. Blynd: The Definition of Racism

Anon: What is Racism/White Supremacy?

Dr. Bobby Wright: The Psychopathic Racial Personality

The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy)

What is the First Step in Counter Racism?

Genocide: a system of white survival

The Creation of the Negro

The Mysteries of Melanin

'Racism is a behavioral system for survival'

Fear of annihilation drives white racism

Dr. Blynd: The Definition of Caucasian

Where are all the Black Jurors? 

The War Against Black Males: Black on Black Violence Caused by White Supremacy/Racism

Brazen Police Officers and the Forfeiture of Freedom

White Domination, Black Criminality

Fear of a Colored Planet Fuels Racism: Global White Population Shrinking, Less than 10%

Race is Not Real but Racism is

The True Size of Africa

What is a Nigger? 

MLK and Imaginary Freedom: Chains, Plantations, Segregation, No Longer Necessary ['Our Condition is Getting Worse']

Chomsky on "Reserving the Right to Bomb Niggers." 

A Goal of the Media is to Make White Dominance and Control Over Everything Seem Natural

"TV is reversing the evolution of the human brain." Propaganda: How You Are Being Mind Controlled And Don't Know It.

Spike Lee's Mike Tyson and Don King

"Zapsters" - Keeping what real? "Non-white People are Actors. The Most Unrealistic People on the Planet"

Black Power in a White Supremacy System

Neely Fuller Jr.: "If you don't understand racism/white supremacy, everything else that you think you understand will only confuse you"

The Image and the Christian Concept of God as a White Man

'In order for this system to work, We have to feel most free and independent when we are most enslaved, in fact we have to take our enslavement as the ultimate sign of freedom'

Why do White Americans need to criminalize significant segments of the African American population?

Who Told You that you were Black or Latino or Hispanic or Asian? White People Did

Malcolm X: "We Have a Common Enemy"

Links

Deeper than Atlantis
« Man Pleads Guilty to Writing Threats to Justice Clarence Thomas | Main | Michigan US Rep. John Conyers' primary opponent drops out »
Saturday
May172008

Douglas Wilder won't run for 2nd term as Richmond mayor

Ap News L. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor, announced Friday that he would not seek re-election as Richmond's mayor, likely bringing his storied political career to a close. The 77-year-old grandson of slaves announced his plans to retire during a meeting with Richmond city department directors, then issued a news release. He didn't disclose his future plans. "I've done everything you can do," Wilder said in a brief, televised comment. He declined requests for interviews.  Wilder was elected mayor in 2004, the first popularly elected mayor of Richmond since the 1940s and a decade after he left the governor's office. During his time as mayor, Wilder's approval plunged amid poor relations with the City Council and the school board. By last October, polling by the Richmond Times-Dispatch showed only 35 percent of those surveyed would support Wilder for re-election. His decision to leave office does not come as a surprise because of his sinking popularity, and he had not mobilized a re-election campaign. Several rivals, including a popular Democratic state legislator and an estranged longtime Wilder adviser, announced their candidacy weeks ago.

Wilder's mayoral troubles came to a peak last fall when he brazenly ringed City Hall with moving vans and a cordon of police to carry out an unannounced nighttime eviction of the school board during a fight about funding and accountability.

A court halted the chaos in a dramatic midnight hearing, then ruled this year that Wilder lacked the authority to force the education offices into rented space in an office building.

Last month, news reports revealed that Wilder had accepted $25,000 in personal car allowances while taxpayers spent $1.2 million to pay for the mayor's security detail, drivers and the city car in which he rides.

Since leaving the governor's office in 1994, Wilder retained some influence in the political world. He is an adviser to Democrat Barack Obama who could become the nation's first black president and has been highly critical of former President Bill Clinton.

When Clinton, while campaigning in February for his wife in South Carolina, suggested that an Obama victory in that state would merely be a race-based award as it was for the Rev. Jesse Jackson two decades earlier, Wilder said Clinton's remarks damaged his standing among black voters.

"A time comes and a time goes. The president has had his time," Wilder said in February.

Wilder began his political career in 1969 as a state senator. He wore an Afro haircut and challenged the white majority by pushing for a holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and demanding that "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia," be abandoned as the state song for lyrics that speak of an "old darkey" who "labored so hard for old massa."

He was elected lieutenant governor in 1985 and governor in 1989, when he defeated Republican Marshall Coleman by only 7,000 votes. He remained the nation's only elected black governor until Deval Patrick's election in Massachusetts in 2006.

Wilder's inauguration as governor, on the grounds of what had been the Capitol of the Confederacy, symbolized a turning point for Virginia and the South. Thirty years earlier, Virginia had defied the Supreme Court mandate to desegregate public schools with a strategy of "massive resistance."

"It showed that Virginia had made far more racial progress than anyone had imagined," said Robert D. Holsworth, a Virginia Commonwealth University political science professor who has known Wilder for decades.

"He created a sense of hope and aspiration for Virginians," Holsworth said.

Wilder was praised for guiding the state through a crippling recession during the outbreak of the first Persian Gulf War by shepherding austere budgets without tax increases. He created the Revenue Stabilization Fund, a reserve account that serves as the state's fiscal safety net when tax collections come up short in tough times.

But Wilder had become unpopular by the end of the single, nonrenewable term Virginia's Constitution uniquely allows its governors.

Politically, he relished his role as a power broker, but the unpredictable Wilder often vexed fellow Democrats who sought his blessing. He had friendly relations at times with his Republican successors, George Allen and Jim Gilmore, and in 1997 refused to endorse Gilmore's Democratic opponent, Donald Beyer.

"Doug has always been willing to offer an independent voice, and he and I have not always agreed, but I have enormous respect for his public service," said Democratic former Gov. Mark R. Warner, who managed Wilder's campaign for governor and is heavily favored to win the seat of retiring Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va.

Had Wilder sought another term as mayor, he would have faced Del. Dwight C. Jones, a 14-year legislator who has a loyal following as pastor of a large, predominantly black church in the city.

"Doug Wilder opened doors for many African-American candidates throughout the country," Jones said in response to Wilder's announcement.

Though he is done seeking elected office, he will continue to wield influence, particularly if Obama is elected president, Holsworth said.

"He won't just disappear. He's got the spirit of a 20-something, and the spunk of one as well," Holsworth said.

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