Sunday, June 19, 2011
July 4, 1911
From Jonathan Mahler's piece "From Jackie Robinson to Dead Silence" in the NYT: On July 4, 1911 Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans, who happened to be Cuban, made their major league baseball debut with the Cincinnati Reds. "The Reds took great pains to highlight the irreproachable ethnicities of their newest employees: yes, they were Cubans, but they were purebred Spaniards, without so much as a trace of African blood."
Invoking MLK
I must admit that this never occurred to me. According to Mike Huckabee, political analysts discriminated against Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour: "There were people who said, 'Nobody is going to elect some white guy from Mississippi with a real, slow molasses-type Southern accent for president of the United States.'" Invoking the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Huckabee said, "I thought our nation had learned something, I thought that maybe we had taken seriously the message of Dr. King who said that we should not be judged by the color of our skin but by the contents of our character." Huckabee added that people "should not be judged by the accent of our speech."
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
A Nagging Tale
From the NYT: Madison Phillips "says that he and his mother, Annette Singleton, both black, were turned away from a church shelter by a white woman on the afternoon of April 27, the day of the tornadoes [in Alabama]. And within hours, Ms. Singleton and two of Madison's young friends, who had been huddling with him in his house within yards of that church, were dead."
Oh No He Didn't
In May of this year James Bolling, a Fox host, posted on Facebook and Twitter that President Obama was "chugging 40's in IRE while tornadoes ravage MO." He recently followed that up with this teaser for a segment of his Follow the Money Show regarding a White House visit by the president of Gabon: "Guess who's coming to dinner? A dictator. Mr. Obama shares a laugh with one of Africa's kleptocrats. It's not the first time he's had a hoodlum in the hizzouse." Now that's playing the race, stereotyping, implicit association, etc. cards.
Of course, Bolling later apologized.
Of course, Bolling later apologized.
My Race Is . . .
When filling out a college application, how should an applicant with an Asian mother and a black father describe herself?
Monday, June 13, 2011
Loving Day
Herman Cain: Obama "Was Raised In Kenya"
GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain on President Obama: "I think he's out of the mainstream and always has been. Look, he was raised in Kenya, his mother was white from Kansas and her family had an influence on him." Silly season never ends.
The Genesis Group
Plessy And (Not Versus) Ferguson
Keith Plessy, a descendant of Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court's infamous 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, and Phoebe Ferguson, the great-great-granddaughter of the Louisiana trial court judge who upheld Louisiana's separate-but-equal law, have started a new civil rights education organization, the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation.
On Inter-Minority Racism
"Some minorities uphold White supremacy in what has become multiracial White supremacy," says Dr. Nitasha Sharma.
Sam Garrison, Rest In Peace
Sam Garrison, the youngest member of the Tuskegee Airmen, has passed away.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Eleven Percent
That's the number of black children with an incarcerated parent; the comparable number for white children is 1.75%.
Westboro Baptist Church And (Versus) The KKK
This CNN story notes that the Ku Klux Klan challenged Westboro Baptist Church protesters this past Memorial Day.
The "Mothership" In The Smithsonian
Parliament-Funkadelic's Mothership will land at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History. As the song goes, make my funk the P-Funk.
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