Black In Bellaire

In the Houston Chronicle: "A mistaken police dispatch about a stolen car led to an early morning shooting on Wednesday of a Bellaire man in his own driveway and a demand by his lawyers that the officer who shot him be brought up on criminal charges." Robert Tolan, who happens to be black, and his cousin Anthony Cooper, who happens to be white, returned home from a fast food restaurant where Tolan works. After they pulled into the driveway and exited the car two Bellaire police officers, acting on an erroneous report that the car was stolen, ordered Tolan and Cooper (both unarmed) to the ground. While on the ground "Tolan looked up to protest officers' treatment of his mother, who had been drawn outside by the commotion. He was then shot once by Bellaire police Sgt. Jeff Cotton. At least two other shots missed." Tolan's attorney, David Berg: "There's no doubt in my mind that if these had been two white kids, they never would have been shot."

Tolan was hospitalized and is expected to recover. Sergeant Cotton, a certified mental health officer and crime prevention inspector who has taken several cultural diversity classes, has been placed on administrative leave.

The Chronicle story notes that in 1995 Travis Allen, an unarmed 17-year-old, was shot in the back and killed by a Bellaire police officer as Allen lay on the floor with the officer's foot on Allen's back. A grand jury declined to indict the officer.

Black College Students And White Roommates

According to a new study, living with a white roommate can result in as much as a .30 increase in the grade point averages of African-American college students.

The Rising Murder Rate Among Black Teens

A report by Northeastern University professor James Alan Fox states that the murder rate among African-American teenagers has increased since 2000 while murders committed by young whites have not grown or have declined. In 2000 539 white juveniles (ages 14 to 17) and 851 black juveniles committed murder. In 2007, murders were committed by 547 white juveniles and 1,142 black juveniles. Between 2000 and 2007 the number of young black persons in Houston suspected in murders increased 139%, placing Houston at the top of a list of 28 cities. For more on this report, click here and here.

"Katrina's Hidden Race War"

Check out this interesting and important article by A.C. Thompson published in a recent issue of The Nation. Thompson discusses, among other things, events occurring in Algiers Point in the days following Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans. "Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the steets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about fifteen to thirty residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply 'didn't belong.'"

And Thompson writes that an anonymous source stated that her "uncle was very excited that it was a free-for-all--white against black--that he could participate in. For him, the opportunity to hunt black people was a joy." One of her cousins "sent an e-mail to her" and "attached a photo in which he posed next to an African-American man who'd been fatally shot. The tone of the e-mail, she says, was 'gleeful'--her cousin was happy that 'they were shooting niggers.'"

The Shrinking Black Woman

From a recent report: "The average height of a black woman born in the 1980s is just under 5 feet 4 inches; her mother, born in the 1960s, is more than a half an inch taller. Even her grandmother, born in the 1940s, is a bit taller. The average white woman born in the 1980s is about half an inch taller than her mother." Upper-income black women are growing taller. One expert comments that the "only reasonable explanation we can come up with is diet and the obesity epidemic among (middle- and low-income) black women."

Lynchings: Images And History

The Atlanta Center for Civil and Human Rights has acquired a collection of lynching images displayed in the "Without Sanctuary" exhibition previously shown in New York and Atlanta. Brent Staples notes that "many of the people who attended lynchings as children in the 1930s and 40's must still be alive and walking the streets of the principal states of the lynching belt. They include Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, all of which voted against the first black president."

"Barack The Magic Negro"

From the "just plain ignorant" portion of our program: As reported in the December 27, 2008 edition of The Hill, Chip Saltsman is running for the position of the chair of the Republican National Committee. Sending Christmas greetings to RNC members, Saltsman sent them a CD containing the song "Barack The Magic Negro," a so-called parody first heard on the Rush Limbaugh talk radio show. (Check out the May 6, 2007 entry on this blog for a brief description of the airing of the song on Limbaugh's show.) The Michigan Republican Party chair expressed his view that the song was not appropriate and is in bad taste. Saltsman blames liberal Democrats and the media for the controversy.

Reeling Detroit And Black Workers

From The New York Times: As the Detroit automobile companies stuggle for survival, African-American workers, "who occupy most rungs of the car production ladder, from plant workers to white-collar employees to auto suppliers and car dealers," are suffering siginificant job losses. Through November of this year approximately 20,000 black auto workers lost their jobs in the period commencing with the recession beginning in December 2007. Black unemployment nationally rose to 11.2 percent in November (compared to a national unemployment rate of 6.7 percent).

"How Post-Racial Was Obama's Victory?"

From The Boston Review: ""Why . . . did Obama win? Closer examination of exit polls points to a surprising conclusion. Obama won because of race--because of his particular appeal among black voters, because of the changing political allegiances of Hispanics, and because he did not provoke a backlash among white voters."

Lumpkin's Slave Jail

From a Los Angeles Times story: "The place called Lumpkin's Jail was indeed a jail, but it was much more than that. It was a holding pen for human chattel.
"In Richmond's Shockoe Bottom river district, the notorious slave trader Robert Lumpkin ran the city's largest slave-holding facility in the 1840s and 1850s. Tens of thousands of blacks were held in the cramped brick building while they waited to be sold."
Earlier this month the Lumpkin Jail was excavated in Richmond, Virginia, and this week "black and white Richmond residents walked together across the rain-slicked cobblestones . . . that mark the outlines of the old slave jail." Upon his death Lumpkin left the jail to his widow, Mary Lumpkin, a black woman and former slave. She in turn "gave the property to a minister who established a school for freed slaves. Over the years, the school evolved into what is now Virginia Union University, a historically black college."

"Adolf Hitler Campbell"

Heath and Deborah Campbell named their now three-year-old son Adolf Hitler Campbell. A ShopRite store refused the Campbells' order for a birthday cake with the child's name spelled out. Heath Campbell, invoking the name of President-elect Obama: "There's a new president and he says it's time for a change; well, then it's time for a change. They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did." A spokeswoman for ShopRite defended the store's refusal to provide the requested birthday cake, noting that past requests by the Campbells (including a request for a swasitika) had been denied.

The Campbells did find a store willing to provide the Hitler birthday cake: Wal-Mart.

Channel Flipping

Television broadcast of HEB Holiday Parade. Commentator/host says (I'm paraphrasing) "There's Santa with two Rockettes. I wonder what Mrs. Santa thinks about that?" Ah, the grown folks' spirit of Christmas.

Follow Up To December 3's "Sad Story" Posting

As noted in a December 3 posting, the workers' compensation insurer for the Dollar Tree discount chain had taken the position that the murder of 26-year-old Taneka Talley (an African American) by a killer allegedly motivated by Talley's race was not work related. Facing public anger over the insurer's stance, Dollar Tree has now announced that it has made an offer to pay the full benefit amount permitted by California law.

From "Stuff White People Like"

Read this "if you want to befriend a large number of white people at the same time . . ."

Words You Don't (I Didn't) Want To Hear

Saxby Chambliss of Georgia was reelected and will be returning to the United States Senate.

Judicial Appointments In Massachusetts

According to the December 5, 2008 edition of the Boston Globe, Massacushetts Goveronor Deval Patrick, who happens to be black, "picked two minority judges to fill 29 judicial vacancies since assuming office nearly two years ago, accumulating the worst record among recent Massachusetts governors."

Harris-Lacewell On The Election Of Obama

Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell, writing in The Nation:

In his prophetic turn-of-the-century treatise The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois reflected on the experience of being black in America as a constant awareness that others view one as a problem--to be observed, analyzed and solved. For black Americans our very self is the object of the slavery question, the miscegenation threat, the Jim Crow solution, the Negro problem, the black family crisis, the welfare dilemma, the crime concern or the nation's racial scar. It is difficult to live as the object of this amused contempt and pity.

When Barack Obama was elected as the first black president of the United States, African-Americans became the solution instead of the problem. For many black folks, Obama's victory has momentarily healed the double consciousness that is an ordinary part of our lives. To be a citizen in a democracy is to be not only ruled but also the ruler, to not only submit to law but to craft it, to not only die for your country but to live fully in it. In this moment, we are citizens.

We the people, who tilled the soil and cleared the forests and harvested the crops for no compensation. We the people, who endured the abortion of Reconstruction and carried the weight of Jim Crow. We the people, who swung from Southern trees and stood on the front lines of foreign wars. We the people, who taught our children to read even when the schools had no books. We the people, who worshiped a God of liberation even as we suffered oppression. We the people, who gave America back its highest ideals with our nonviolent struggle against injustice.

On Racial Disparities In The Criminal Justice System

From a Rick Casey Houston Chronicle article: In 2006 police raided an apartment and arrested an 18-year-old black man for selling cocaine, and "a white couple in their 30s who leased the apartment and made it available to the teenager in exchange for free crack for the wife." The husband had prior misdemeanor drug and weapons charges; the wife had previously been charged with theft, forgery, and prostitution. The judge presiding over the case gave the couple probation. The same judge sentenced the black teenager (whose record included unauthorized use of a vehicle and misdemeanor marijuana charges) to ten years in prison. According to prosecutors, the charges against the teenager were enhanced because an assault rifle and revolver were found in the apartment. (Those weapons belonged to the white man who leased the apartment.)

Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins' office, concerned about this racial disparity in sentencing, recently "withdrew the weapons charge, clearing the way for the judge to give" the teen "10 years' probation."

Gallup On Black Democrats' Views On Homosexual Relationships

According to Gallup, homosexual relationships are morally acceptable to 31% of black Democrats (compared to 61% of nonblack Democrats). Thirty percent of Republicans say such relationships are morally acceptable.

Sad Story

Consider this:"Taneka Talley was stabbed to death in March 2006 while she was working as a clerk at a Dollar Tree store in Fairfield [, California]. Her killer's only motive, prosecutors say, is that she was African American.
"That's also the reason the store workers' compensation insurer is denying $250,000 in death benefits to Talley's 11-year-old son.
"The boy's grandmother, the child's legal guardian, said Specialty Risk Services is taking the position that a racially motivated killing is personal, not work-related-even though the man charged with killing Talley had never met her before. The insurance company, Dollar Tree and their lawyers aren't talking publicly about the case but are defending their position before a state appeals board that hears workers' compensation disputes."