Tag Archives: racism

national news

Symbols matter, but keep eye on big picture

confederate flag

The Confederate flag is a symbol of hatred, racism and human bondage.

So are the statues of Confederate “heroes” that populate public property throughout the Deep South.

It’s good that governments are taking aim at these symbols. Indeed, many pundits — and I include myself in that gang — have gone overboard to cry out for the removal of flags and statues.

It’s important that we rid ourselves of these visible, tangible and identifiable symbols. They need not stare us in the face and remind us of the path we’ve taken as a nation.

The bigger issue, though, lies in what they represent. The racism. The belief that some of us are better than others merely because of the pigment of our skin.

We’ve had a lot of intense discussion about these issues in the past several days. A young white man walked into a black church, sat down next to black Christians and joined them in a Bible study. The young man then pulled out a gun and shot nine of his acquaintances to death. Dylann Roof has been accused of the crime and we’re learning more about the young man each day, about his hatred of African-Americans and the deep-seated racism he harbored deep within what passes for his soul.

Is he alone? Hardly.

How do we rid society of this kind of evil? That remains the 64 bazillion-dollar question today as we continue to grieve over the deaths of those people in Charleston, S.C.

Yes, the symbols must be taken down. The Confederate battle flag belongs in museums, as President Obama noted. Indeed, removing these symbols doesn’t mean we ignore the things for which they stand. It means we must redouble our vigilance against those who would do the kind of harm against fellow human beings that was done this past week in that Charleston church.

The campaign against hate must continue.

 

national news

‘N-word’ burns my ears, even when POTUS uses it

Barack Obama’s use of the “n-word” the other day in an interview made me cringe.

OK, he’s the president of the United States. He’s partly of African-American descent. The subject of his media interview was racism. So he’s entitled, I guess, to use the word.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/245793-obama-uses-n-word-to-provoke-talk-about-racism

But I hate the sound of the word. I hate seeing it written. I hate hearing it spoken. In the words of one of my sons, “It makes my ears bleed.”

The use of the word had become a staple of black comedians’ efforts at some sort of self-deprecation. They have felt it’s OK to use the word, drawing laughs in the belief of audience members that “It’s all right for them to use the word.”

Where I come from, it’s not all right for anyone to use a word intended as a racial slur.

That includes gang members who tag buildings with the word and who use it in casual conversation among themselves.

Rap artists have bastardized the word with crazy spellings meant for mispronunciation. It’s not the actual “n-word,” but you hear it said and you know what it means.

According to The Hill, Obama told an interviewer: “Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say n—– in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not.”

The comments, of course, have come in the wake of that hideous massacre in Charleston and the intense debate it has launched — yet again — over whether racism still poisons our society.

Of course it does.

I get what the president says about the impolite use of the “n-word” and whether it can bring an end to the racist strains that infect so many of us today. Striking it from our vocabulary, though, is a start.

national news, political news

It’s far more than just a flag

Gov. Nikki Haley, a South Carolina Republican, has joined the call she should have led immediately after a suspect was caught and charged with murdering nine African-American church members in Charleston.

She’s urged the South Carolina legislature to take down the Confederate flag that flies at full staff on the statehouse grounds in Columbia.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/06/22/gov_haley_candidates_call_for_confederate_flags_removal.html

She waited five days after the tragedy. The suspect, a young man named Dylann Roof, is an avowed racist. He wrote in his diaries he intended to start a “race war” by killing African-Americans.

Haley’s call came amid a bipartisan show of solidarity today. Republican presidential candidates, GOP lawmakers, Democratic lawmakers, the head of the Republican National Committee … they all were there to join Gov. Haley’s call.

Look, it’s not just about a flag. It’s about what that flag has come to represent.

To many millions of Americans it represents hatred and evil, racism and murder. It represents the hideous views of hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, that wave the flag with pride at their hate-filled rallies.

And what about that “Southern heritage” crap we hear from those who still resist the notion that the flag symbolizes tyranny against Americans? Their pleadings are sounding more hollow every passing hour.

I’m glad Gov. Haley has joined the chorus of indignation that’s sweeping the nation.

South Carolina law says the legislature has the sole power to remove the flag. Thankfully, lawmakers are coming back into session to look at several issues.

Let me think. Do you suppose the flag will be one of them?

Take down the flag.

 

national news

Glad to have this flag debate

Nothing good has come from the Charleston, S.C., massacre.

However, I am glad that we’re having this discussion of the Confederate flag and its place in U.S. history and in contemporary times.

Those who see the flag now are more willing to call attention to the hate that it symbolizes in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans.

Dylann Roof apparently thought enough of the flag to wave it — apparently with some pride — prior the event that took the lives of those nine church members in Charleston. Roof has been accused of nine counts of murder.

But back to the flag.

None of reasons I’ve read that seek to justify reasons for flying the Confederate flag works, in my view. It all goes back to what the flag represents today and how it now stands as a symbol of hate, oppression, enslavement, and indeed treason.

Those calls we’ve heard since, oh, about January 2009 about secession? They sound a good bit more offensive today, given the tragedy in Charleston and the debate that’s ensued about whether the Confederate flag should fly at all — let alone on public property, as it does in front of the South Carolina statehouse.

national news

Attention turns to Confederate flag

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Just as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas is able legally to deny issuing motor vehicle license plates depicting the Confederate flag, the issue of flying the flag in South Carolina has emerged to become a central discussion topic.

The Confederate flag flies in front of the state capitol in Columbia, S.C. But over on the Atlantic Coast, in Charleston, a young man this week opened fire in a predominantly black church, killing nine worshipers in a horrifying massacre.

Dylann Roof admitted to committing the crime today in court, so we can take away the “alleged” description of the person who did the terrible deed.

Why? The young man is a raving racist, according to those who know him.

Thus, we get back to the issue of the rebel flag. What does it represent? To many Americans, it symbolizes hatred. It flies at Ku Klux Klan rallies, where Americans proclaim their “pride” in a movement that enslaved other Americans.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/take-down-the-confederate-flag-now/396290/?utm_source=SFTwitter

The flag should come down. It shouldn’t fly on the South Carolina’s capitol grounds. It should be put away, never to be seen in public.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has it within her power to remove the flag. She should act.

Think about this, too: Charleston was where the Confederate States of America fired the first shots that ignited the Civil War. They bombarded Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor and thus began the bloodiest war in American history. Why? Because the Confederate states had seceded from the Union because they claimed that as individual states, they had the power to own slaves.

The flag symbolizes hatred, the kind of hatred that prompted Dylann Roof to attack people — in a place of worship.

Bring it down, Gov. Haley.

 

 

legal news

Suspect’s ‘character’ being revealed

Dylann Roof is a vicious young man.

He’s accused of killing nine people in a Bible study at a Charleston, S.C. church. The victims were black; Roof is white. Now we hear that he’d planned for months to carry out an attack like what occurred at the church.

He is angry that African-Americans are seeking to “take over the world,” said his roommate.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/charleston-shooting-suspect-dylann-roof-wanted-to-ignite-civil-war/ar-AAbOWk8

What on God’s Earth do we think of this fellow?

Just as important, what on Earth does this individual’s deep-seated hatred symbolize in the world at large?

I won’t for a moment believe he speaks for many others. He does, though, allegedly speak to some terrible, dark instincts that do exist. That one man has acted on them must suggest that he is not totally alone.

I happen to be frightened at what the shooter exhibited in that house of worship.

Now we ask: How does this individual face justice? Do the feds try him for committing a hate crime or do we let the state of South Carolina prosecute Roof for murder?

Whether he committed a hate crime really doesn’t matter as much as some folks believe it does. The individual who did this horrible deed killed nine victims in a brutal attack. He will qualify for the death penalty if a jury — either state or federal — convicts him.

My hope at this moment is to pray for the men and women who died at the hands of one whose anger twisted out of control.

I’d say we should pray for the shooter as well … except that I can’t go there. Maybe one day. Just not now.

 

media news

Welcome to the Twitter-verse, Mr. President

Barack Obama wanted, I guess, to show the world how hip he has become.

So he opened a Twitter account and tweeted a message out there.

What follows below is a small sample of the “welcome” responses received by the president of the United States of America, leader of the Free World and the most well-known and easily recognized individual on Planet Earth:

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/05/18/welcome-to-twitter-ngger-righties-go-full-racist-potus-twitter-account-tweets/

Were there other messages like that? Oh, more than likely.

Racism lives on. Probably forever.

I won’t even summarize what’s contained in the messages shown on the link. Just seeing the operative word — let alone hearing it — makes me shudder.

Yes, the president did get some actual welcome messages. Indeed, as soon as I finish this brief post, I’m likely to send one myself.

But as the link notes, the president and his family are handling this display of hate: “If this doesn’t tell you that Barack Obama has handled the unprecedented disrespect and outright hatred directed at him from right-wing racists with the utmost grace and dignity, I don’t know what will.”

 

 

national news, political news

Let's not quibble over use of 'thug'

1 Comment

Allow me this request.

How about stopping the quibbling and quarreling over the use of the term “thugs” to describe individuals who loot, pillage, burn and otherwise destroy other people’s property — not to mention injure or kill others — while rioting?

Dennis Prager, writing for RealClearPolitics.com, seems to think liberals have gotten thin-skinned about using the term. Liberals, according to Prager, seem to think it connotes someone’s race.

I consider myself a liberal thinker. I know other liberals, friends of mine. I’m unafraid to use the term. I mean nothing other than to describe the activity of the individual doing the misdeed. A thug is a thug. Period.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/05/why_the_left_wont_call_rioters_thugs_126496.html

It doesn’t. Honest. The term covers many aspects of misbehavior. If you mug someone on the street, you’re a thug. If you like to fight others just to prove your manhood, you’re a thug. When I was growing up, if you “TP’d” someone’s house with toilet paper, you were a thug; these days, such activity is considered a compliment if you’re a teenager.

This notion that the rioters who destroyed businesses in Baltimore and other communities of late were labeled “thugs” because of their race is ridiculous on its face.

A team wins the World Series or the Super Bowl or the NBA championship. Fans who live in the city of the winning team are so delirious they storm the streets, turn over cars, light them on fire. Last time I witnessed one of these events on TV, I noticed a lot of white folks among them. They’re thugs, too.

Thuggish behavior knows no racial boundary.

 

entertainment news, national news

'Selma' lays racism bare

“Selma” may be one of the more important films of the past decade.

It tells the story of Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts to rally a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. It’s gripping in the extreme.

But my wife and I took the same feeling away from the film as we drove home this evening from the theater. It was the presence of the Confederate flags being waved by counter protesters who did and said some nasty things aimed at the marchers.

Proud sons and daughters of the Confederacy keep saying — with all earnestness — that their pride rests in their heritage and that it has nothing to do with race. They contend, for example, that slavery was not the reason the Confederate State of America seceded from the Union.

But those Confederate flags waving at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and in Montgomery, where the marchers ended their trek tell a different story — at least to my wife and me.

This enduring symbol of the Confederacy often is displayed by those objecting to African-Americans’ calls for equality. Why is that? How is it that the Stars and Bars has become such a symbol of groups that remain dead set against equality for all Americans based solely on the color of their skin?

We watched the film tonight with our son and his girlfriend. Our son said the film is “tough to watch,” but said it is “worth the time.” We all liked the film very much.

For me, the toughest elements to watch in the movie were the brutality inflicted by law enforcement on the marchers seeking to cross the bridge — and the sight of those Confederate flags waving amid the hideous insults being hurled at Americans who were demanding the right to vote.

Yes, indeed. “Selma” is an important piece of moviemaking.

 

national news

Racism, or mistaken identity?

1 Comment

Take a look at the picture of first lady Michelle Obama attached to this blog post.

It shows her shopping at Target in 2011. She’s dressed casually, with a ball cap and sunglasses. The first lady said during a “highly publicized” shopping excursion, the only person who talked to her was a woman who asked her to take something off a shelf.

The first lady used that encounter as an example of the racism she and her husband, the president, have experienced over many years.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/12/17/michelle-obama-i-was-asked-to-get-something-off-the-shelf-at-target/

I guess my confusion is rooted in a single question: Would I have recognized this woman as the first lady of the United States had I seen her pushing a shopping cart through a mid-level department store?

I’m not so sure.

The only giveaway that she is a very important person would be the presence of security personnel wearing ear pieces, dark suits and perhaps handguns bulging from the side of their jackets.

Yeah, that would tip me off that she’s the first lady.

There can be zero doubt that President and Mrs. Obama have felt slights — large and small — growing up in the United States. They are laying some of that experience out in a lengthy People magazine interview. It is wrong for it to have happened in any context … ever!

However, I am a bit puzzled by the example cited by the first lady.

The only thing I can figure is that the Secret Service agents were keeping a considerable distance away when the woman asked the first lady for some help.

Am I wrong to think this?