1 In 100, 1 In 9, 1 In 36

As noted in a New York Times editorial, 1 in 100 adults in the United States are currently in prison; the rate for African-American men is 1 in 9, for adult "Hispanic" men, 1 in 36. From the editorial:
--Reports by The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch "show large disparities in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, despite roughly equal rates of drug use."
--"Black men are nearly 12 times as likely to be imprisoned for drug convictions as adult white men . . ."
--"Between 1980 and 2003, drug arests for African-Americans in the nation's largest cities rose at three times the rate for whites, a disparity 'not explained by corresponding changes in rates of drug use,' The Sentencing Project finds."
--Four in 10 drug arrests are for possession of marijuana, and in 2006 there were 1.86 million drug-related arrests nationwide.
This is a crisis.

Is Obama The Antichrist? COME ON CNN!

CNN Headline News (?) host Glenn Beck, chatting with Reverend John Hagee, made the following lunatic observation: "There are people--and they said this about Bill Clinton--that actually believe he might be the Antichrist. Odds that Barack Obama is the Antichrist?" CNN, the most trusted name in news. Yeah, right.

Nelson Mandela: Terrorist????

As recently reported, Nobel Prize recipient and freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, along with other members of South Africa's African National Congress, are included in the United States government's terrorist watch lists. Describing the listing as "embarrassing," Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and members of Congress have vowed to correct the problem.

What Did She Mean?

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, quoted in USA Today, made clear her view that "Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again," while "whites in [Indiana and North Carolina] who had not completed college were supporting me."

Remember . . .

New Orleans. Darfur.

Colson Whitehead's "Visible Man"

For an interesting, insightful, inciteful and (for me) funny take on race and Amnerica in this political silly season, see Colson Whitehead's recent op-ed in the New York Times.

On Jeremiah Wright and Frederick Douglass

As the Reverend Jeremiah Wright saga continues in all its opportunistic glory, Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell reminds us that Frederick Douglass, "speaking in the tradition of the biblical prophets," was also "a master of the jeremiad." Consider the professor's quotation of the following exemplar of Douglass' prophetic pronoucements:

"Statesmen of America beware what you do! The soil is in readiness, and the seed-time has come. Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow.
"The dreadful calamities of the past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder today at the harvest of blood sown in the springtime of the Republic by your patriot fathers."

Laurence Fishburne On "Thurgood"

Check out this root.com interview with Laurence Fishburne, currently starring on Broadway in the one-man play "Thurgood."

Pat Buchanan On Those Lucky Black Folks

In a recent post on his blog entitled "A Brief for Whitey," Pat Buchanan, regular contributor to MSNBC's filling-air-time chatterfests, recently shared with the world his view that "America has been the best country on earth for black folks." How so? Buchanan: "It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known."
Wait, there's more: white Americans have spent "untold trillions" on "welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream."
He's not done: "Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America" or that "illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?"
For those who hold (but won't openly express) the repugnant belief that ungrateful and inferior Negroes just don't know how lucky they are, good old Pat has your back.

When The Professor Sues The Student

As reported here in the New York Times, University of Arkansas at Little Rock law professor Richard Peltz, "an authority on freedom of speech," has filed a lawsuit against two third-year students at the law school as well as other defendants (including the law school's chapter of the Black Law Students Association). According to the Times article, the professor alleges that the students "defamed him by unfairly describing him on campus as a racist" after he displayed a satirical article belittling Rosa Parks, criticized affirmative action, and "promised to award black students who scored as high as white students on an exam an extra point." Peltz is seeking monetary and punitive damages.

The Black House

At a dinner honoring University of Colorado president Hank Brown, a businessman reading pretend telegrams to the honoree said, "I have a telegram from the White House. They're going to have to change the name of that building if Obama's elected." The audience reportedly gasped. The businessman has apologized.

Hit And Run

Black Entertainment Network founder Bob Johnson, at a South Carolina campaign appearance with Senator Hillary Clinton, said the following to the audience: "And to me, as an African American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood--and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in the book--when they have been involved."

What was Johnson referring to? Obama's published admission of past drug use. What did Clinton say about Johnson's statement when she spoke after Johnson? Nothing. That's not even plausible deniability.

Johnson later explained that he was only speaking about Obama's "time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else." To be polite, that's simply not true. And the game continues.

Shucking And Jiving

Last week New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo made the following statement in a radio interview in which he discussed primary campaigning: "You have to sit down with 10 people in a living room. You can't shuck and jive at a news conference; you can't put off reporters, because you have real people looking at you, saying 'answer the question.'" Cuomo's spokesperson, Jeffrey Lerner, later explained that Cuomo "meant no offense to either candidate because he was praising both in the interview. 'Bob and weave' would have been a better phrase . . ." You think?

A (Purportedly) Colorblind World

From last week's newspapers: There are now more "Hispanics" (1.48 million) than whites (1.44 million) living in Harris County, Texas. And persons who happen not to be white make up a majority of approximately one third of the nation's most populous counties.

The SCLC And Michael Vick

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference may honor Atlanta Falcons quarterback and dog enthusiast Michael Vick at the organization's annual convention. "We will work with anyone who opens their heart and arms to us," said SCLC president Charles Steele (who may want to revisit that standard).

The N Word In A (Purportedly) Colorblind World

The law school at Roger Williams University is named after Ralph R. Papitto, the longtime chairman of the university's board of trustees. At a May 2 trustee meeting, in which the participants were discussing the lack of racial and gender diversity on the board, Papitto (age 80, if that matters) reportedly became agitated and said: "They want us to add more poor kids and they want us to add more, well, I can't call them niggers, I learned that from Imus."

Papitto has resigned from the board to (here it comes) spend more time with his family. An effort to remove his name from the law school has commenced.

A colorblind world indeed.

Loving v. Virginia

Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, wherein the Court held that a Virginia statute banning interracial marriages violated the Constitution's Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses.

Recommended

Ian F. Haney Lopez, "A Nation of Minorities": Race, Ethnicity, and Reactionary Colorblindness, 59 Stanford Law Review 985 (2007).

Bill O'Reilly's Colorphobia

Interviewing Republican presidential candidate John McCain on the May 30, 2007 broadcast of his show The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly, never shy in expressing an opinion, said that open borders for "illegal aliens" would "change, pardon the pun, the whole complexion of America. Am I wrong?" McCain responded, "No, you're right." O'Reilly later accused the New York Times and the "far left" of trying to (in O'Reilly's words) "break down the white Christian male power structure of which you (McCain) are part and so am I."


O'Reilly apparently agrees with Pat Buchanan, who has proclaimed that "White America is in flight." This is a colorblind country? Yeah, right. Where is the news media? Where is the outrage (real or faked)?

Recommended

Arnold Rampersad's Ralph Ellison: A Biography.