Tag Archives: African-Americans

American christianity is a cargo cult

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American christianity is a cargo cult

Jesus loves me
Haha I sympathize with this meme. But it applies to the colonized as well as the colonizers. I do tend to fault impoverished people for shackling themselves to church dogma. Religion rationalizes and preserves inequity. Of course this ignores that African American congregations are community centers above everything else. To cast off religion would deprive believers of their whole social fabric. But isn’t that like arguing that slave plantations were more than places of involuntary employment? Obviously tobacco and cotton plantations were the centers of slave communities. To end slavery threatened a slave’s source of everything: sustenance, shelter, family and community. Small wonder most slaves resisted those agitating for abolition. Slave rebellions were always betrayed by fearful slaves. No churches advocated for abolition. Even the civil rights movement a century later, was resisted by African American churches, except for a tiny few associated with MLK. Everyone today pretends to have marched with MLK, even as they admonish their followers to stay in their pews! Ferguson ignited the Black Lives Matter movement despite local preachers incessantly calling for the protests to cease.

The guard towers of Camp Amache, CO, Japanese-American internment camp

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Visitors to what remains of the WWII-era Granada Relocation Center located on Highway 50 past Lamar, are tempted to conclude that the remote location was isolation enough to restrict the movement of its 7,000 Japanese-American internees. Gone are all 560 buildings except their concrete foundations; the few remaining photographs depict a vast layout of spartan barracks, playing host to ordinary civilian lives, minus the atmosphere of incarceration. Were there cyclone fences and watch towers? The answer should not surprise you. Of course. Camp Amache was ringed by the usual multiple perimeters of prison fences, including six watch towers manned by military police, who were there, it was explained, for the internees’ protection. I think plans to further restore Amache need to begin with the security fortifications. If such blights on American history as these race-based detention centers are memorialized in the hope that our nation not do it again, it dishonors our victims, and blunts the lesson, not to illustrate our heavy hand.

I attended a recent screening of a documentary made of Camp Amache, attended by its producers, who expressed the usual motivation: in remembrance, never again. Special emphasis was placed on the contributions made by Japanese-Americans during the war, and on the magnanimity with which the internees accepted their lot. Survivors were not to receive an official apology until 45 years later, given $20,000 restitution for their livelihoods and families destroyed. It would be safe to say the audience felt well beyond the prejudice that had motivated their parents. Against Japanese-Americans.

Unfortunately both the documentary and the filmmakers’ commentary left the impression that “never again” describes a successful holding pattern. Of course, America has been at it again and as usual, its citizens have been obliviously complicit.

Look at the War on Islam, which has necessitated the internment of Muslim-Americans and Muslims worldwide. Guantanamo is not much different from the Wartime Relocation Authority (WRA) special Isolation Centers such as Dalton Wells, near Moab, where the WRA sent internees profiled as potential insurgency threats.

America has been building a network of fresh detention facilities to house Hispanic-Americans who run afoul of the country’s illegal labor market. Most of the detainees are promptly deported, but many languish while immigration issues and family ties are sorted out. While ICE pretends to protect the American people from the security-threatening unlawfulness of illegal aliens, in reality its detention centers enforce the successful abuse of a Hispanic-American slave labor pool.

You need only visit a traditional prison or jail to see that an overwhelming disproportion of its inmates are African-American and Hispanic-American, far exceeding what can be excused as representative of America’s poor. The American judicial system is still stacked against non-whites, and motivated by the same racist premise of protecting the security of white Americans.

And of course there are the open air prisons which still incarcerate the Native-Americans, the internment camps we call reservations, the original Wartime Relocation Centers.

The Wondrous Tale of Brer Lamborn, Brer FOX & Obama the Tar Baby. Uncle Remus and Racism in Colorado Springs.

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COLORADO SPRINGS- If US Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) remembered one thing from the Uncle Remus stories, it was not to touch that Tar Baby! You know, the one Brer Rabbit mistook for a cute black infant who would not tip his hat to his better. Or was that a Porch-Monkey? Colorado’s 5th District is unclear about the distinction if the local media and Fox News are to be believed. Either term refers to a poor person whose sticky problems become your “quagmire” if you ignore your natural prejudice to their skin color and you let them touch you. Can a representative of bigots be bothered to know if a racial slur is offensive? According to Lamborn, he can’t. More important, the congressman reiterates –as he professes his apology to people taking umbrage at racism he hadn’t intended to express– is: NOT TO TOUCH THAT OBAMA!
 
To be clear, Doug Lamborn hasn’t apologized to his constituents, he’s only claimed to have sent President Obama a letter, assuring all that Obama, the black untouchable, will have the grace to forgive him as “a man of character”.
 
And so this Uncle Remus tale simply goes on…

The story so far
Lamborn calls black US president a Tar-Baby, public outrage ensues, Gazette newspaper lends support to Lamborn’s excuse that Tar-Baby wasn’t used in racist sense. Protests held by NAACP, community groups and local progressives, all which Lamborn refuses to meet. Lamborn office erects sign NO PROTESTS.

ACT II: Lamborn office calls for his supporters to rally, presumably under the “no protest” sign. His office issues a press release: AP, Fox News, national and statewide outlets report before the fact that LAMBORN SUPPORTERS RALLY. Huffpo and Springs activists scramble to get images of said protest sanctioned despite “no protest” sign, find none. Local TV station KOAA which had depicted rally with a photo, hours before it was alleged to happen, omitted to mention photo was from file, conveniently unfocused and likely of a past year election event.

With every shenanigan, the theme resounds: the Colorado Springs establishment supports what Doug Lamborn said about Obama being a Tar Baby.

Racism in Colorado Springs
No one is in denial about the unsavory support behind Doug Lamborn. So does Colorado Springs support his bigotry?

Does the Tea Party shit in Acacia Park? You should see those clan gatherings, you can’t find a parking space for blocks, then it’s a sea of hate-filled white faces, with Doug Lamborn right there up front.

The comment section of every local media blog overflows with indignation that “Tar-Baby” is being construed to be racist. Commentators assert their preference for Freedom of Speech over Political Correctness.

BTW, Colorado Springs is as segregated as Chicago, with black neighborhoods, churches and schools. Many lives never cross the path of another of different ethnicity, so we’re blameless actually when we conclude there’s no racism here.

Except toward Hispanics, grouped conveniently with illegal immigrants, who don’t count, by definition, according to our favorite definition: legality. Same as used to apply to slaves.

The Pikes Peak region was a hotbed of clan activity in the 1930s, and obviously before that. At the turn of the century, the good folks of Limon had to hold up a lynching, make the poor young black boy wait hours in the November cold because hundreds wanted to come on the train from Colorado Springs to see 16-year-old Preston Porter burned alive at the stake.

Lynchings of Native Americans weren’t even recorded, being as they were, sanctioned as vermin control. It was seldom that white men distinguished themselves by speaking out in defense of Indians. Pikes Peak volunteers rode with Colonel Chivington to commit the Sand Creek Massacre.

Today downtown Colorado Springs boasts a lone statue of an African-American, a William Seymour, among the city notables immortalized in bronze. His is the only likeness made to take off his hat, outdoors, I kid you not.

Speaking of which, that was Tar-Baby’s offense.

Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby
Brer Rabbit was passing by the little black figure, and called out a friendly hello. But Tar-Baby wouldn’t answer when spoken to. When he wouldn’t even take off his hat, Brer Rabbit figured he’d teach him a lesson. Apparently, it’s not inappropriate to clobber some status of people if they’ve disrespected you.

Of course that was the only way Brer Fox’s plan was going to ensnare the rabbit, to mire him in the tar.

You might ask, how did Brer Fox know that Rabbit was going to mix it up with the Tar Baby? Would Rabbit have laid his hand on the baby if he’d been white? Would it have mattered if a white baby didn’t answer to his greeting?

Put aside that the Tar Baby expression became a racial slur in itself, the original Tar-Baby character impersonated an African-American child who didn’t show the expected deference to a rabbit.

The accompanying images reflect the changing visual representation of Tar-Baby. He makes his first appearance in an early chapter of the Uncle Remus Tales (as collected by Joel Chandler Harris) called “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story.” Above is one of the original illustrations by artist A.B. Frost. There Brer Fox creates a “baby” made of tar to lure Brer Rabbit into his clutches.

The next images are from Disney versions. First the animated film SONG OF THE SOUTH, then the children’s books which followed.

Disney famously has not released Song Of The South after its theatrical run. The depictions were too ethnic, and Tar-Baby recalled the black-face entertainment that ought not to have so amused white audiences. Black-face is what passes for a negro face to whites. Similarly, a baby made of tar passes for a negro, but only in exaggeration. Oblivious to many, apparently, is that African-Americans are not by any approximation black. If Brer Fox had made a baby out of milk, would white people confuse its color for their flesh tone?

Disney rewrote the tale for its children’s book series, making the tar baby this time out of glue. Not only that, but they gave him ears to resemble a rabbit. This preempted confusing him for a human baby, black or white. Now Brer Rabbit could be seen taking him for his kin, which of course shifts the premise, and might puzzle some children to wonder why Brer Rabbit is so quick to come to blows.

Uncle Remus
Some will probably ask in earnest: are the Uncle Remus tales racist? No, but their context is complicated. The stories emerged from the plantation South, from storytellers who lived in slavery. The lessons imparted are universal, but the particulars were obviously crafted to help slaves come to terms with their unchallengeable fate. Shall I quote a few passages to see if you get the idea?

Brer Tarrypin, he lay back up dar, he did, des es proud ez a nigger wid a cook possum.
–chapter 10

He scrape it clean en lick it dry, en den he go back ter wuk lookin’ mo’ samer dan a nigger w’at de patter-rollers bin had holt un.
–chapter 17

Dey er mighty biggity, dem house niggers is, but I notices dat dey don’t let nuthin’ pass. Dey goes ‘long wid der han’s en der mouf open, en w’at one don’t ketch de tother one do.
-chapter 27

How about this wrenching bit from A Story of War?

Nigger dat knows he’s gwineter git thumped kin sorter fix hisse’f, en I tuck’n fix up like de war wuz gwineter come right in at de front gate.

From chapter 33: Why the Negro is Black:

ONE night, while the little boy was watching Uncle Remus twisting and waxing some shoe-thread, he made what appeared to him to be a very curious discovery. He discovered that the palms of the old man’s hands were as white as his own, and the fact was such a source of wonder that he at last made it the subject of remark. The response of Uncle Remus led to the earnest recital of a piece of unwritten history that must prove interesting to ethnologists.

“Tooby sho de pa’m er my han’s w’ite, honey,” he quietly remarked, “en, w’en it come ter dat, dey wuz a time w’en all de w’ite folks ‘uz black—blacker dan me, kaze I done bin yer so long dat I bin sorter bleach out.”

The little boy laughed. He thought Uncle Remus was making him the victim of one of his jokes; but the youngster was never more mistaken. The old man was serious. Nevertheless, he failed to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the child, appearing to be altogether engrossed in his work. After a while, he resumed:

“Yasser. Fokes dunner w’at bin yit, let ‘lone w’at gwinter be. Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w’en we ‘uz all niggers tergedder.”

“When was that, Uncle Remus?”

“Way back yander. In dem times we ‘uz all un us black; we ‘uz all niggers tergedder, en ‘cordin’ ter all de ‘counts w’at I years fokes ‘uz gittin’ ‘long ’bout ez well in dem days ez dey is now.

But atter ‘w’ile de news come dat dere wuz a pon’ er water some’rs in de naberhood, w’ich ef dey’d git inter dey’d be wash off nice en w’ite,

en den one un um, he fine de place en make er splunge inter de pon’, en come out w’ite ez a town gal.

En den, bless grashus! w’en de fokes seed it, dey make a break fer de pon’,

en dem w’at wuz de soopless, dey got in fus’ en dey come out w’ite;

en dem w’at wuz de nex’ soopless, dey got in nex’, en dey come out merlatters;

en dey wuz sech a crowd un um dat dey mighty nigh use de water up, w’ich w’en dem yuthers come long, de morest dey could do wuz ter paddle about wid der foots en dabble in it wid der han’s.

Dem wuz de niggers, en down ter dis day dey ain’t no w’ite ’bout a nigger ‘ceppin de pa’ms er der han’s en de soles er der foot.”

And my favorite passage, called Turnip Salad:

“How many er you boys,” said he, as he put his basket down, “is done a han’s turn dis day? En yit de week’s done commence. I year talk er niggers dat’s got money in de bank, but I lay hit ain’t none er you fellers. Whar you speck you gwineter git yo’ dinner, en how you speck you gwineter git ‘long?”

“Oh, we sorter knocks ‘roun’ an’ picks up a livin’,” responded one.

“Dat’s w’at make I say w’at I duz,” said Uncle Remus. “Fokes go ’bout in de day-time an’ makes a livin’, an’ you come ‘long w’en dey er res’in’ der bones an’ picks it up. I ain’t no han’ at figgers, but I lay I k’n count up right yer in de san’ en number up how menny days hit’ll be ‘fo’ you ‘er cuppled on ter de chain-gang.”

“De ole man’s holler’n now sho’,” said one of the listeners, gazing with admiration on the venerable old darkey.

“I ain’t takin’ no chances ’bout vittles. Hit’s proned inter me fum de fus dat I got ter eat, en I knows dat I got fer ter grub for w’at I gits. Hit’s agin de mor’l law fer niggers fer ter eat w’en dey don’t wuk, an’ w’en you see um ‘pariently fattenin’ on a’r, you k’n des bet dat ruinashun’s gwine on some’rs.”

What about “nigger”?
When Russel Means writes of today’s economic and anti-democratic troubles, and addresses America’s newly impoverished middle class by saying Welcome to the Reservation, this is the wisdom I think he’s looking to impart. Welcome to niggerdom, Nigger.

With that word now struck from Huckleberry Finn, the concept of “nigger” becomes harder to grasp and can’t teach us its lesson.

Listen to Uncle Remus talk about what it means to be a lowest class being, beneath the interest of humanity, untouchable, as government functionaries like Doug Lamborn would prefer the underclass laborer remain.

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work. AND
I ain’t handy with figures, but I lay I can count on one hand how many days it’ll be before [“knocking around” will land you niggers] in the chain-gang.

I suggest you reread that last passage of Uncle Remus in its original. Now I’ll try my hand at the last half of that phrase:

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work, and when you see them apparently fattening on air, you can just bet that ruination is going on somewhere.

Doug Lamborn won’t touch President Obama because he says he’s a Tar Baby

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Yes Congressman Doug Lamborn, this is technically not a Tar Baby but an English GolliwogThat line probably gets lots of laughs at Tea Parties, but over Denver airwaves, Congressman Doug Lamborn’s likening President Obama to a “Tar Baby” got, I’ll say it, sticky. Yeah, the expression meant “intractable quagmire” when Mitt Romney used it to describe an cost-prohibitive subway project, but Tar Baby’s primary allusion to a negative African-American stereotype got Romney in trouble. Now like a banana peel gag irresistible to Republicans, “Tar Baby” is how Doug Lamborn chose to describe, not a hole in the ground into which you pour money, not a trap set by a clever fox to lure the Uncle Remus progenitor of Bugs Bunny, but to describe his Teabag constituents’ poster child usurper, risen from America’s untouchable class, our first black president.
 
You dopey Tea Party Klan jester, you won’t shake Barack Obama’s hand because it’s black. You’re a racist sneak, unfortunately egged on by the bigots endemic to your backwater district. I hope you find that the rest of Colorado will make your “Tar Baby” remark a real tar baby for you.

Lamborn says he meant “quagmire” and a supportive media is referencing the dictionary to assert his usage was correct. But the instances for which Romney and John McCain apologized were quagmires, not personifications, least of all OF Obama. A physicist can say he’s got a problem that’s real bitch, but not if he’s talking about his wife.

I think it’s fairly disingenuous to say the primary definition of Tar Baby is a quagmire. That’s like concluding Fag is a cigarette. Yes, but that’s when neither are used to describe a person.

Curiously the local media helpfully mention that “Tar Baby” was a plot device in Uncle Remus, popularized by Disney in Song of the South. No mention that it’s the only animation that has not been reissued, because it’s widely regarded as offensive on racist grounds.

Lamborn has apologized to President Obama and assures interviewers that he’s confident his apology will be accepted. Isn’t it ironic that he won’t touch Obama with a ten foot pole, yet can count on the man’s magnanimity? Of course he’s right, the president opposes nothing, why take issue with racism?

But I believe Lamborn will have lost his value to even his Tea Party Klan associates. Having his apology accepted, it’s going to be impossible for Lamborn to belittle Obama with even a pea-brain pretense of credibility.

Avatar: novel push for noble savage

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Avatar: novel push for noble savage

Avatar movie poster based on the novel by SapphireI’d like to contrast the high-profile critical receptions being given two Hollywood films about darker-skinned-ness. Precious is about an African-American girl so dark she absorbs the light, without being about race at all. The movie tells a story of poverty, incest and the cycle of abuse, while tipping the scales with gratuitous stereotypes of Hottentot welfare mamas attendant their usual good-for-trouble black males. Vilifying the subjects it pretends to rescue, Precious has the blessing of the media, a shameless Oprah included. James Cameron’s Avatar on the other hand, opened to depth-charges of faint praise calculated to dim the buzz, perhaps because it packs the most subversive black-is-beautiful message since Muhammad Ali.

Avatar evokes rudimentary indigenous spirituality, peppered with what even elementary-schooled audiences can associate as Native American themes, from which we can infer the concepts are eternal, but idealizes an athletic aesthetic more human than the movie’s live-action characters. The “blue cat people,” as the critics have chosen to describe its Na’vi tribe, are but fantasy-striped, tailed Spartans, computer iterations of the Williams sisters and NBA dream teams. The real humans of Avatar tower in prowess, dignity and luminescence over their modern mensch oppressors.

Where racial equality on film is plotted according to how black figures are granted access to the world of white priviledge, Avatar celebrates the sovereignty of dark skin in its environment, where it’s not a barbershop, rapper’s crib, or street corner in Harlem. And instead of prepping the more palatable light-skinned negro for easier assimilation to the welcome-diversity crowd.

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, is an ugly project by and for gentrified American, whose title character is White-America’s usual avatar into their mysterious conception of Black America. I can do it no better justice than this review excerpt published Counterpunch:

A fiction whose “policy message is that welfare recipients are black women who wish to avoid work, who use their time having sex with their daughters, watching television and dining on pig leavings.” Is this a film – or a crime?

A crock and defamation that reinforces white man’s supremist burden.

Under Iran’s culturally repressive Islamic Revolution, the artists have produced a golden age of film. The greatest of these films have had to disguise their social message in analogies surrounding the concerns of children. Avatar takes perhaps a similar tack. Behind diversions of fantasy and special effects, is a profound morality tale. Critics can attack James Cameron for his simplistic storytelling, it’s the price to pay to bring the simplest of viewers along. Perhaps the director can release a final cut for cineastes which omits the redundant exposition. I don’t mind that Cameron uses a highlighter for the Cliftnote set. A survey of online comments shows me that some fans applaud themselves for getting Avatar’s message where they are certain their fellow audience members might not.

Most certainly the alarm most critics are raising has to do with the unpatriotic attitude which Avatar takes toward Capitalist imperialism. In GWOT America where we still “Support Our Troops” and still refrain from labeling our military contractors as mercenaries, this film will rub flag wavers the wrong way. I’d hate to be an active duty US soldier, watching Avatar in my uniform, as the audience roots for good to vanquish evil. It will probably be some time before Americans will want to see Iraqi or Afghan freedom fighters depicted as heroes. We’ve yet to see sympathetic accounts for example of the Vietcong holding down the Ho Chi Min Trail, or for that matter, the real Germans or Japanese beyond the Allied propaganda. But by disguising his story in science fiction, James Cameron has rehabilitated the Vandal and Visigoth, from the shadow of the Roman Empire. The shadow of man’s civilizing drive which grows darker the more it is illuminated.

And best of all, Cameron’s pagans are not whites like the typical Anglo Semites of the Christian holy lands. Cameron’s indigenous humans have the beautiful noses, skin and haunches indigenous to the climates which cradled humankind.

Suddenly colored television

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Suddenly colored television

Today Show-network now African AmericanImmediately after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the term “Nine Eleven” was already tripping off the tongues of TV talking heads as if it was more natural than saying “last Monday,” or “last week Monday,” before even we knew the attack was not going to last several days. The day after the election of Barack Obama, a suddenly large proportion of the TV talking heads were black, overnight, like it had become some sort of costume party theme.

Television has become colorized, and much more vigorously than Ted Turner might have ever intended.

Have you noticed? On post-Bush television, Black is the new focus of equal-time. When pundits are summoned, now there’s a black person among them. Nothing wrong with this development. Whatever years of seasoning these new African-American faces may lack, they make up for by being visibly brighter than the vacuous white-breads they replaced. There must be an entire class of Anglo-Saxon communication majors who are lamenting the great lost entitlement of 2009.

It’s a fine development, though certainly limited in its generosity. The proportion of African Americans to the total population, is vastly smaller than the new TV ratio. Conversely, over half the US public is progressive. But still almost zero percent of the corporate media personalities reflect that.

Where did all these colored faces come from? Had they been training in the wings, for just this contingency? It’s a wise move on the part of the networks. President Obama and his family would be looking pretty dark against the sea of white Washington DC. Someone could confuse him for security or kitchen staff, but for the media framing of black commentators to remind White America that there is no cause to panic, the new American lens is colorblind.

It should be, but is it? White man still looks upon dark-skinned people as requiring domination. American urban blacks are to incarcerate, African blacks are to rescue, and insurgent/Muslim/pirate blacks are to lynch. I’m not sure we don’t really long to lynch the bunch of them, if AIDS isn’t thinning their number fast enough for our taste.

Hitch your horse to this manservantObama meanwhile is the black man we invite to dinner. And these colored teevee folk too. They’re not poor blacks after all. They’re the Thomas Sowells, Uncle Toms, educated reformed black people. Rich black people are the new lawn jockeys.

Okay, so the corporate media wants to project an urbane sophistication about integrating racial harmony into its facade. We hope, I suppose, that by portraying it so, they can make it so. I think we have to wonder if that’s the real manipulation.

The day after September 11, the term “Nine Eleven” was coined before most of us knew what even happened. Flights were grounded anticipating more attacks. How curious that the experts were calling it “9/11” when it might still have turned out to be 9/11 – 17 or other. They’d gotten the memo about how to frame the “world-changing” development, complete with its catchy catchphrase.

Obama is just such another media campaign, to assuage the darker-skinned world that the Great White West comes in peace, see look, we love our Darkies. We respect them, we ask their advice, we put them up in the White House.

This year’s Clio Award, the advertising world’s Oscar, for best campaign, went to Barack Obama. What does that tell you about the collective effort involved, and the focused objective of the marketing?

Clansmen hold a rally in Washington DC

New standard of presidential excellence

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New standard of presidential excellence

presidential physical fitness awardHEYYY! How much did the President’s Award appreciate in value overnight?! It stands for EXCELLENCE again. After such an interim, from crook, to dolt, to hapless (portrayed so), to geezer, to wimp, to cad, to chimpanzee. Barack Obama’s landslide was not only a victory for African- Americans, it was a victory for upright man.

Really, could the presidential award have been more strange an honor, this last ugly two terms, when a child’s determination and diligence was praised by association to a certified underachiever, some world leaders would even say, a moron? The irony could not have been lost on our children, who could guess all along that Dubya stood for DUmB-Ass.

Barack Obama’s election win is not only a victory for African-Americans, it’s a victory for intelligence. The American public no longer want to be represented by a president who can neither cobble two words together nor sit for an interview without a ventriloquist. They want a statesman with bigger ideas, who speaks in terms of ideals and community. Isn’t it such a relief to think we no longer have to cringe out of embarrassment for our elected leader’s next misstep? Instead we hold our breath in awe of a capable man who will surprise us with his resourcefulness.

I must reserve judgment on the interests which Barack Obama has demonstrated to be his priorities. They are not mine, but then, I concede that my aims would not meet with approval by the power-makers. Barack Obama is past the DC gatekeepers, he has not alarmed the corporate dogs, and has been met with welcome by the great beast that is Joe the Public.

So long as a grace period doesn’t cost more Afghan lives, or Iraqi or Iranian or Somali etc, now I think we can give Obama the chance to show the bright, principled social activist which the countless who’ve known him have been telling the rest of us that he is. That’s the hope his victory has given us. If Obama’s promise turns out to be false, what have we lost? If transformation could ever come through an electoral process, it would look like this.

Local black man made to take his hat off

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Local black man made to take his hat off

Statue of William SeymourCOLORADO SPRINGS- An early Pikes Peak Region African American settler is commemorated with a statue in downtown Colorado Springs. A plaque explains that William Seymour was one of many freed slaves who moved west after the Civil War. The statue is meant to honor all those “invisible” pioneers, ignored in the official histories of the city. What’s remarkable is that the statue of this black man is erected next to the Plaza of the Rockies, a bastion of conservative financiers.

The plaque explains a further improbability: the statue was funded by the Plaza. Otherwise known as the Booz Allen Hamilton building, the Colorado Springs home of Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney and RBC Dain Rauscher.

What caught my eye was Seymour’s fedora laying on the adjacent bench. It’s an artistic touch that blurs bronze with reality, but the metal hat also reduces the bench’s utility by half. That’s the first beef I had with it. Only one person can sit at a time to wait for the bus.

Then I pondered why Seymour’s hat was off. The gesture makes him look like a gentleman, fitting to have been the first African American to serve on an El Paso County jury. Seymour was also a founding member of a local Baptist church. Is the park bench meant to be a church pew? He’d have left his coat at the door as well.

Integrated as it is with the park bench, we have to conclude William Seymour is standing outside. We’ve encountered him, as the plaque suggests, on his way home. He’s taken his hat off out of deference to us. We honor he and his fellow “invisible” black pioneers, but we depict him in the lee of Plaza of the Rockies, knowing his place.

Other historical luminaries honored around the downtown have statues who’ve kept their hats on.

What About Black Community, Obama?

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Black hatWhat About the Black Community, Obama? Seems like a reasonable question and to hear The Weasel respond to the question and then look at his response a bit is certainly worthwhile. The Black Community certainly knows where they stand with John McCain but that is still no excuse for allowing oneself to be hoodwinked by Barack. And many Black people are not allowing this to happen.

Barack- ‘I may have a pigmentation disorder, but I’m just like you, Mr. Businessman’

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Barack Obama’s recent campaigning has highlighted how he’s ready to go to war against Iran alongside Israel, and how he supports using the death penalty even more than it already is used by the government in the US. Barack Obama, to the Right of the Supreme Court! Change the business community can back safely! Why he even berates Black fathers for being bad role models for the kids! They’re Black!

Let’s see? More guns, bombs, and equipment for more war! Looks good for business. More prisons, death chambers, and nastiness to the lower classes! Looks good for the industrial-police-prison-National Security business crowd. More sanctimonious moralizing. Looks good for the church businesses, too.

‘I may have a pigmentation disorder, but I’m just like you, Mr. American Dumb Ass Businessman!’ Vote Barack Obama! Safely, now.

Jermaine Ward dies and police begin cover up of their murder by taser

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Here we go again! Yet another police murder by taser and the cover up has already begun. The police say they tasered Jermaine Ward while he was uncuffed, while his companion who was also arrested, says that he was handcuffed already. Can you tell who is telling the truth here?

Possible cause of the original stop by police? Jermaine, who is Black, had a White girlfriend in the car with him. Florida Cops Taser and Kill a Man The police say the handcuffed man was resisting arrest and not following orders.

Did they taser him because he refused to spit out the weed he was trying to swallow? Did the tasering cause him to later choke to death? Did the police officer even care that he was putting a man in danger of losing his life over an inconsequentiality?

With the taser, the police can become cop, judge, and executioner in a heart beat. Why does the Police State love electricity so much, I wonder?

Police State America abroad; Police State America at home.

Will race protest be curtains for Obama?

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If Al Sharpton has his way, it’s the end of Obama.
 
The policemen in New York City were let off for pumping fifty bullets into an unarmed black man, a young bridegroom on the eve of his wedding. Racism is alive and well at the NYPD, and an angry protest by Americans of Color, calling for recognition of racism and reform of the New York police department, will amplify the issue further.

Meanwhile in Pleasantville USA, the suggestion had been ceremoniously posited to the American television audience, and spun without a ripple of discord, that in one eloquent moment last March, Barack Obama transcended the color barrier and dispatched racism to the circular file of American folklore. What a glorious feeling it was, to imagine our nation ready for a smart man in the presidency, regardless his color, but someone forgot to read the memo at the NYPD.

If the black community in NYC gets up in arms about the recent verdict, and does object to policemen, even black ones, being permitted to gun down innocents who fit suspicious profiles, ie. are black –if there is a indeed still a racial divide– what then happens to the colorblind society tapped to elect Obama in November?

If racial tensions build in NYC, Obama is not going to be half white enough.

I’ll vote for a black man, so will you, so will every Democrat on our horizon, but can you speak for the Hoosiers and hillbillies beyond? They have the vote too. Cops have the vote. NASCAR fans and Christian bigots and Rush viewers have the vote too. Lets also throw in Fox viewers, and the CNN misinformed, and everyone who is going to be barraged with the already uninterrupted glowing tributes of maverick, heroic, white man father-knows-best Hi-Ho-Silver McCain.

The worst thing the media could muster about McCain, as an equal time aside, while it was percolating the Obama mystique, was that McCain was too old. They joked about it dismissively, as if McCain had not a black man’s chance in Mayberry. McCain has gotten no younger, but the media will call it a comeback, and we can add that to their new-leaf effusive attaboy of McCain.

‘White-facing’ MLK

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Every year in America, we go through a sick ceremony that ‘White-face’s’ MLK. That ceremony is called MLK Day, where leaders of the White Community, that wouldn’t have bothered spitting on the living Man, as opposed to tasering him, start to slobber all over themselves in order to lecture the general public about ‘the message’ of Martin Luther King.

MLK has been converted into another Establishment Christ figure, but one that seemingly is Black. Per American media, MLK just like their Christ version, loved all equally and supposedly opposed any anger at the racist well-to-do war monger, that the corporate media adore. Don’t be angry, was the message of MLK per the US Establishment.

Here is a commentary about this phenomena 40 Years Later, Martin Luther King Is Still Silenced published on alternet.

MLK, largely did not get openly angry, except that begin to change in the last few months of his life. He stopped staying silent about many issues that he had not addressed previously, in his role as a raterh conservative pastor. The flock had gotten tired of all that ‘turn the other cheek’ stuff, and demanded more from Martin, and he began to belatedly deliver more. That anger that came out at the end of his life is the real message of Martin Luther King today. He spoke out and lost his life for it in the end. Don’t let the corporate media and government turn MLK into a white-faced Establishment pastor. MLK had broken from that mold. He had gotten fed up.

Black teenager taser-murdered by cops at his workplace over eating Hot Pockets

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Murdered TeenYes, once again we see the police using their tasers to murder somebody. This time, they came and tasered a 17 year old kid working at a Food Lion grocery store, who hot eaten some Hot Pockets there and gotten into a dispute with his supervisors over it.

His mom had actually sent him back to the Food Lion telling him to settle the matter like a man. Teen Dies After Shocked by Taser by Police While at Work (Be sure to see the video where the mom talks about the police’s actions) The cops settled it like the thugs they are. And how proud the Food Lion managers there must be for their role in all this.

Lesson here? When thugs (police) are given lethal weapons to use, they will kill people with them. Researching some to write this commentary, I found that this kid whose last name is ‘Turner’, was not the only Turner to be tasered to death by police. Google some, and check it out.

Interestingly enough, just days after the Obama speech on race matters, I could find no media outlet that either mentions the race of the supervisors of this Black teenager, or the race of the cops that murdered him. What are they trying to hide, I wonder?