Category: Race,

How conservative media transformed the Covington Catholic students from pariahs to heroes | US news | The Guardian

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

In making this happen, conservative media have normalized the boys’ aggressive form of political expression, and tried to further discredit both fact-oriented media and high-profile liberals. Media outlets have been effectively gaslighted, and many climbed down from coverage which was based on the most clear and obvious interpretation of the boys chanting, making gestures and making tomahawk chops.

What it tells us is that in 2019, conservatives understand they can construct a parallel reality and have it accepted. They can act in bad faith and prevail, using tried and tested tactics that liberal media continue to fall for. Those are:
1. Reframe the debate as soon as possible
2. Pick your narratives
3. Focus on the extremes of the other side

How conservative media transformed the Covington Catholic students from pariahs to heroes | US news | The Guardian

hmmmm

Canada Is Sending A Generation Of Indigenous Children To Jail

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Race,, The Americas,Leave a comment

 Nearly 50 per cent of youth in Canadian jails are Indigenous.

…98 per cent (no, that is not a typo) of girls in Saskatchewan jails are Indigenous. In Manitoba, approximately 80 per cent of both girls and boys in custody are Indigenous.

…Forty-three per cent of all adult women in Canadian jails are Indigenous, yet Indigenous people make up only 5 per cent of Canada’s overall population.

Canada Is Sending A Generation Of Indigenous Children To Jail | HuffPost Canada

Whoa!

The GOP’s Sexualized Assault of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

What matters, in all these cases, is that powerful women are portrayed as being bad at femininity. Power, intelligence, ambition, authority: In our culture, those qualities are all “masculine,” too. We’re being reminded that, if women manage to possess any of those leadership qualities, it’s only at the expense of their feminine graces. The caricatures the GOP typically creates are monstrous in the manner of Lady Macbeth, praying to the gods to “unsex her” so that she can get on with the male business of killing and ruling. The implication is that by trying to be king, these women have lost their womanhood, and turned themselves into freaks. Just ask the Lady Macbeth of Little Rock. [emphasis: mine]

The smears aimed at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aim not to desexualize her, but to hypersexualize her, casting her as an empty-headed pinup with ideas above her station. …There are the Sarah Palin comparisons, the constant, ancient implication: A woman that turns you on can’t be smart. Right?

…It was easy to mock powerful Boomer women as desexualized or androgynous because they had been trained to desexualize themselves in order to survive hostile work environments. 

…[The GOP] portray her as a sex object because sex objects don’t talk back, unless it’s to ask what more they can do for you. In so doing, they give themselves an excuse not to deal with the more serious challenge she poses. Ocasio-Cortez is not meant to be challenging, she is not meant to be argumentative or assert herself, she is not meant to have bold opinions or radical ideas, because she is not meant to have ideas and opinionsat all. She’s not supposed to think. She’s supposed to be looked at. She is supposed to be consumed.

When she ages, men will decide she’s not worth looking at, and that, too, will be cited as a reason not to listen to her.

The GOP’s Sexualized Assault of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez | Dame Magazine

This. All of this.

Duke official steps down after telling students to speak English

On By peanutgallerynhIn Race,, Schools,Leave a comment

The director of graduate studies for a Duke University School of Medicine department stepped down Saturday after screenshots of an email reported to be from her circulated on social media, suggesting students refrain from speaking Chinese to “improve their English.”

…Two faculty members approached Neely to express disappointment that first-year students were speaking Chinese in student study and lounge areas.

…”I encourage you to commit to using English 100 percent of the time” on campus or in professional settings, the email states.

…”They were disappointed that these students were not taking the opportunity to improve their English and were being so impolite as to have a conversation that not everyone on the floor could understand,” the email reads.

…”To be clear,” [Medical school dean Mary E. Klotman] wrote, “there is absolutely no restriction or limitation on the language you use to converse and communicate with each other. Your career opportunities and recommendations will not in any way be influenced by the language you use outside the classroom.”

Duke official steps down after telling students to speak English

And what of the two faculty members???

I know what I saw when I watched the Covington video

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

Their behavior was widely condemned as disrespectful, privileged, and racist.

Then, the news cycle flipped. Now, we are told, in labeling this interaction racist, we jumped the gun. We need to go back and watch the many camera angles to understand that the crowd of menacing tomahawk chops were actually innocent boys in a more complicated and nuanced situation. We are told the takeaway isn’t about racism or privilege, but a much more palatable “don’t believe everything you see online.”

I know what I saw.

….The truth is, Native Americans experience racial hostility daily, but people rarely pay attention. In the now ancient reactions of the first 24 hours of this controversy’s life cycle, Native voices were the first to report and share the video. Rather than expressing shock, most Native voices expressed a tired familiarity of just how common, how everyday these experiences are. We have all seen our prayers, our songs, our culture mocked. We have all been on the receiving end of that shamelessly smug smirk.

….But before the public could learn about contemporary racism against Native people, the truth got squashed — professionally.

…Sandmann’s family hired a well-connected PR firm to spin the story. RunSwitch, whose co-owner Scott Jennings is an adviser to House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and is a CNN contributor, pushed the story Sunday that Nick and his peers were the real victims. After neglecting to disclose its ties to RunSwitch, CNN shared Sandmann’s statement, and the rest of the mainstream media, with its bottomless mercy for white boys and bottomless suspicion for people color, gobbled it up.

…While we are told by Sandmann’s PR firm that the high school students were frightened and intimidated by the group’s insults, on camera they respond by chanting, yelling, and ripping off their shirts.

Countless people have been harassed in public by the Black Israelites and groups like them, but nowhere else do such interactions translate into blanket permission to harass and disrespect other people. How does the behavior of a completely separate group of people justify the students’ treatment of Phillips?

…In what reality do intimidated and frightened teenagers scream, chant, and rip off their shirts? In what universe does singing a hand drum song — the AIM anthem — equal a threat or confrontation? How on earth is staring someone down and smirking an expression of respect and peace?

…Up is still up, down is still down, the truth is still the truth and the actions of the Covington Catholic youth are still racist and wrong. The media pundits who are tripping over themselves to appear neutral and balanced are feeding into gaslighting tactics that are becoming more common in the era of Trump and more effective as our national dialogue is anchored further and further away from the truth.

…The privilege, the racism, the searing hate in the video is undeniable. The only question is whether or not we will call it what it is or — as so often happens — rewrite history.

I know what I saw when I watched the Covington video – ThinkProgress

Yup.

White victimology, white privilege and the Covington Catholic rules of race | Salon.com

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

The mere accusation of racism against a white person is worse than the impact of racism on the safety, security, lives and literal existence of nonwhites.

…Whiteness is benign. White people, regardless of the evidence of their bad behavior or ill intent, are always entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

…White racial innocence and white racial fragility must always be honored.

…Intentions, feelings, and the unanswerable question “What is in their heart?” trumps all empirical evidence and facts about the consequences of racist behavior and the context in which it occurred.

…In America only white people are allowed to “stand their ground.” It is expected that nonwhites, especially black people, will always be deferential and submissive to white people. 

…”Personal responsibility” does not apply to white conservatives.

…For example: the white teen MAGA mob is somehow held to be not responsible for their foul behavior toward Native American elder Nathan Phillips because a small group of “Black Israelites” (essentially racial chauvinist black Power Ranger cosplay clowns) said mean things to them. [emphasis: mine]

…A group of white teenage boys donned their MAGA hats — which are overt and intentional symbols of bigotry, racism and ignorance — attended a right-wing Christian rally aimed at denying women their reproductive rights, then happened upon a group of “Black Israelite” cartoon bigots, and in retaliation decided to harass and insult a Native American. They did so because white privilege had trained them from birth that they would likely be able to act in such a way without consequences.

…What W.E.B. Du Bois described as the “psychological wages of whiteness” can take many forms. One of them is the ability of those deemed to be “white” to bend reality and distort plain and obvious facts in the service of white supremacy. Defending the behavior of the white teens of Covington Catholic is a prime example of an old and dangerous American problem.

White victimology, white privilege and the Covington Catholic rules of race | Salon.com

Yup.

Thoroughly disappointed in (and have eroded respect for) for our fellow white liberals who wanted to talk about how there was ‘more’ to the Covington story and how we should ‘give the young boys a chance’ before condemning them. Whether meant to be or no, well-intended or not,  those types of responses were racist AF and you all should be very, very ashamed of yourselves both for being racist and for being stupid enough to be manipulated by the media like that. For reals. Peanut Gallery out.

Dr. Gladys West, mathematician and woman behind GPS, inducted into Air Force Hall Of Fame

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She was also publicly recognized for her work as a member of a team of all black female professionals who did computing for the U.S. military before electronic systems were even available to the public. West also excelled during the midst of the Jim Crow segregation and among an industry predominantly ran by white men. 

Dr. Gladys West, mathematician and woman behind GPS, inducted into Air Force Hall Of Fame – KRDO

A superior intellect to e sure, but what a spine that woman must have to have contributed so much under those conditions….

The View From Here: Time’s up for Skowhegan ‘Indians’

On By peanutgallerynhIn Local Interest,, Media and Culture,, Race,, Schools,, The Americas,Leave a comment

You don’t need to have bad intentions to cause real pain for native people fighting for their culture.

…“Genocide has two phases,” wrote Raphael Lemkin, the lawyer who coined the term in 1944. “One, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor.”

It’s that second part of the definition, cultural genocide, that needs to be considered as the town of Skowhegan considers dropping the name “Indians” from its sports teams.

…We may not think of it as genocide, but that’s been happening to Indians in Maine – not just in Colonial times but also in our era, while white people were cheering for sports teams with names like “Redskins.”

In 2015, the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation Commission issued a report after 27 months of fact-finding among the state’s native people, a process that’s the subject of the documentary “Dawnland” (it aired on PBS last year and is scheduled for several screenings around Maine this winter). It describes the lifelong trauma that follows Indian children who were taken away from their homes and brought up in an alien culture. 

…They found that in the years leading up to their study, Maine Wabanaki children were being taken into state custody more than five times as often as non-native children. Tribal relationships were not treated with the same deference given to family relationships, even though federal law required the state to do that.

These removals, probably done with good intentions, hurt many children. It also tore the fabric of community and decreased the population of people who could speak native languages and participate in religious practices. In other words, cultural genocide.

…And what’s even more disturbing is the idea that we can participate in cultural genocide without having any bad intent. All it requires of us is blindness.

The View From Here: Time’s up for Skowhegan ‘Indians’ – Portland Press Herald

mmmhmmm

Herrera v. Wyoming: Can U.S. Void Any Tribe’s Treaty? – The Atlantic

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Herrera v. Wyoming, an Indian treaty-rights case argued in the Supreme Court last Tuesday, revolves around a basic of federal Indian law: No promise to Indian people actually binds the United States. Congress can unilaterally void any treaty or agreement. The only limit on this power so far has been a requirement that Congress say it is doing so. It is not supposed to act by “implication.” 

…Herrera and the tribe argue that the hunt was legal, because the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie guarantees the Crow “the right to hunt on the unoccupied lands of the United States so long as game may be found thereon, and as long as peace subsists among the whites and Indians on the borders of the hunting districts.” When Herrera was brought to trial, however, the state court refused to hear his argument. The treaty, the court said, was invalid under a 120-year-old Supreme Court case.

Herrera v. Wyoming: Can U.S. Void Any Tribe’s Treaty? – The Atlantic

Why is this an issue? It’s so embarrassing to be a citizen of the United States sometimes…

Advocate hopeful Indigenous newborn taken by authorities to be returned to family this week

On By peanutgallerynhIn Modern Parenting,, Race,, The Americas,Leave a comment

A total of 354 infants were removed from their families in Manitoba in 2017, 87 per cent of them First Nations; and 259 remained in care 12 months later, putting them on the fast-track for permanent wardship.

The members of the baby’s family, including the mother, said in a news conference Friday that officials with Manitoba’s CFS told them she was removed from St. Boniface Hospital because her mother appeared intoxicated when she arrived at the hospital. The mother vehemently denied this, saying doctors and nurses allowed her to breastfeed, which they would have stopped had they believed she had been drinking.

Advocate hopeful Indigenous newborn taken by authorities to be returned to family this week – The Globe and Mail

Screwing over indigenous peoples, it’s not just an American thing!

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, remembering the women civil rights leaders left out of spotlight

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

Those unsung women activists included: Daisy Bates, Ella Baker, Septima Poinsette Clark, Diane Nash, Fannie Lou Hamer, Gloria Richardson, Amelia Boynton Robinson, and Anna Arnold Hedgeman.

They led Freedom Rides; organized citizenship and freedom schools; persuaded poor, rural blacks to try to register to vote; fought for economic justice; organized political parties; lost their jobs; went to jail — and were beaten while there.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, remembering the women civil rights leaders left out of spotlight

mmmhmmmm

Elizabeth Warren’s claim to Cherokee ancestry is a form of violence?

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Race,, The Americas,Leave a comment

Elizabeth Warren’s claim to Cherokee ancestry is a form of violence — High Country News

Ummm, Nope!

No, it’s not.

If she was claiming Cherokee heritage or identity it would be though.

The issue is this. Other people should not define what it is to be [insert ethnicity, etc. here], only people of that background are able to define their experience.

Another big looming issue is that white people have dominated the narrative for far to long and should not be the arbitrators of what is and what isn’t defined or discussed. That is a wrong that should be righted but if we are to right it as a society we have to be consistent. If for no other reason than being inconsistent is what got us here in the first place….

For example, the people of the Cherokee nation are the only ones who can define what it is to be Cherokee, just like only Jewish people can define what it is to be Jewish.

A member of my father’s ancestry was Jewish. Does that make me Jewish? Hell, no. For one thing it travels down the matrilinear side. For another, I was raised as a mostly-Christian person in a largely Christian community. My experience with Judaism is as an outsider and and an observer.

It does make me someone whose ancestors were Jewish though. Their experiences escaping persecution in Europe and living in the United States are part of how my family (and I!) came to be. Along with the experiences of all my ancestors, they are part of me and who I am. To pretend I had no Jewish ancestry would be to deny those members of my family tree their story and that’s not something I think I should do.

It would be very different if Senator Warren was claiming to BE Cherokee, but she is not. Instead she is just affirming that she has a Cherokee ancestor, an ancestor that she is as proud of (if not more) than she is any of the rest of her forebearers.

And isn’t that the goal here? For people of all background to be able to define themselves as members of their own communities?

Whitewashing and eradication of native cultures in the United State is a horrid injustice. One that deserves to be confronted, stopped, and turned right around. I just don’t think blurring the line between those who claim ancestry and those who claim membership does us any good.

 

B’way Legend Carol Channing Dies at 97, ‘Proud of Black Lineage

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“I know it’s true the moment I sing and dance. I’m proud as can be of [my black ancestry],” Channing said of her heritage. “It’s one of the great strains in show business. I’m so grateful. My father was a very dignified man and as white as I am. My [paternal] grandparents were Nordic German, so apparently, I [too] took after them [in appearance].”

CHANNING:  …I mean look, what makes you, you? You don’t know. None of us knows our heritage. Not in the United States. 

KING: We’re all immigrants. 

CHANNING: Exactly, this is the changing face of America. I’m part of it. Isn’t it wonderful?

B’way Legend Carol Channing Dies at 97, ‘Proud of Black Lineage

R.I.P.