Post Racial Blog: It's interesting how the folks at Wonkette find this NYC Bakers bigotry and color arousal "Hilarious." I guess with Wonkette and this NYC Bakers help we will never be Post-Racial. More HERE. More news from the "Post-Racial" blog and the consumerist website about the NYC Baker who is selling 'Drunken Negro Head' Cookies.
Ted Kefalinos, the proprietor of a bakery in Greenwich Village (a neighborhood in New York City), can't understand why the media is having such a field day over his Drunken Negro Head cookies. They're fun! Nobody complained about his dead geese cookies last week! He's got a Cuban brother-in-law! We'd be more willing to believe it was just a bad marketing decision if it weren't for the follow-up comments a customer alleged he made.
A shocked customer tells My Fox NY that Ted Kefalinos, proprietor of Lafayette French Pastry, asked her, "Would you like some drunken negro heads to go with your coffee? They're in honor of our new president. He's following in the same path of Abraham Lincoln; he will get his."
H/T Huffingtonpost.com and Earnest Harris
What a fantastic few days this has been. I am still on a natural high as John Denver would say. Now that President-Elect Obama has gloriously become President Obama we can finally turn our attention to the real work of getting this country back on track and into that famously promised "post racial America."
I, like most people, am realistic enough to know that President Obama cannot fix everything that is wrong with our economy and country. Sure there will be those who are looking for him to fail, waiting for those first missteps. But I think even they can't expect one man to fix in a few months or even a few years what has taken eight years to mess up. But I am indeed amazed at the number of people, in the media and that I know personally, who truly do expect America to be now and forever free of its ethnic, religious and racial differences. And this is not coming solely from White Americans who some might think are doing a bit of wishful thinking that minorities can now stop complaining about getting a fair shot. I have also come across some Black Americans who seem to believe that President Obama is going to make everything OK for everybody, or that all Black people's credit scores are now raised as one comedian joked... Doesn't Obama doesn't have enough on his shoulders?
But frankly I have to admit, I too used to think the success of one Black man (and I refer to him as Black since he himself chooses that descriptive) would mean that all Black people would rise with him, that when strangers looked at me from now on, they would think Obama and not Willie Horton or some other more recent negative association. I clearly remember the day after Obama's surprising win in the Iowa caucus, the win that caused most of us to believe that where we are today was possible, how when I was out in public I walked a bit taller, a bit prouder, feeling that everyone who saw me surely must be thinking positive thoughts about me and all Black people. After all, the Obamas proved that all of us were not bad, that some of us were even educated and people to be admired. But that feeling did not last long for me. As the campaign waged on and all the ugliness of the Jeremiah Wright affair, the rise of PUMA, the William Ayers mess, the Bill Clinton coded words after New Hampshire and in North Carolina, after all that, any notion that race was not going to play a factor in Obama's life, and mine as well, was washed away for the most part. More HERE
Barack Obama today stepped out of the Capitol building which is filled with art depicting the story of America — and yet somehow only holds one image of an African-American.
There, he was — at the threshold of history. Fifty years ago, a black man couldn't be served at lunch counters in some cities. And today, Barack Obama stood in front of millions of Americans on the mall — black and white, right and left— to take the oath of the highest office in the land.
His speech generally respected the situation —- heavy on those things that bring us together and shed light on specifics that might divide. In the days leading up to the speech, some on the left claimed that division would be coming from that evil minister of hate — Oprah Book Club author Rick Warren. His crime: He agrees with much of Obama's platform on gay marriage. What bigotry there.
However, it was another minister — Reverend Joseph Lowery — who used his benediction, to ask God for this:
"We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right." Is this how the post-racial Obama administration begins? That someday the brown can stick around, the yellow can remain mellow, and the white will embrace what's right? Even at the inauguration of a black president, we are being called racist. Mr. President — I want to believe. I want to trust. I want to hope for change — but I am really failing to see how this is any different. USA Today reports that you smiled when he said this and shook your head. And it's not like you didn't know what you were getting yourself into. This is the same Reverend Lowery that even made Coretta Scott King's funeral about politics! America is with you today, Mr. President. We are all tired of the partisan bickering, the racial divides, the greed and corruption. There are many that didn't vote for you, myself included, that want you to succeed, and that pray for you and your safety. You may be fascinated to learn that we don't hate minorities, and we don't want to starve the poor, and we are perfectly fine with the brown sticking around. We will do our part. But help us help you. We will argue about politics — but let us expect the best from each other, and chastise those who insist on driving wedges between us on both sides of the aisle. More HERE
(AP Photo/The Enterprise, Tim Correira) Brockton, Massachusetts -- The Boston Globe reports: A man accused of a horrific rape and killing spree told investigators that he was "fighting extinction" of the white race and had stockpiled 200 rounds of ammunition to "kill 'nonwhite people' such as African Americans, Hispanics and Jewish people," according to a police report filed today in court.
 Selma Goncalves, 20 |
Down the street, Luke allegedly opened fire and killed a homeless man who happened by pushing a shopping cart. He told police after his arrest that he had planned to go to a synagogue near his home and, "kill as many Jews as possible during bingo night," according to the report. "Luke told us that he intended to shoot himself in the head when he was through."
Rabbi Joshua Cohen of Temple Beth Emunah, a Conservative synagogue in the neighborhood where Luke lives, said a Massachusetts state trooper and Brockton police officer told him this morning that Luke evidently had planned to continue his rampage at the temple. The synagogue has a bingo night Wednesday starting at 6:30 p.m. More HERE
With the nation poised to inaugurate its first African American president, the survey found that just over a quarter of all Americans said they see racism as a large societal problem, less than half of the 54 percent who said so about a dozen years ago. Americans also have high hopes that Obama -- who is of mixed-race parentage but refers to himself as African American -- will inspire an improvement in race relations.
But even as declining numbers of Americans see racism as a big problem for the country, there has been little change in the amount of racism people perceive in their local communities. The survey also found that there has been little change over the past six years in the proportion of African Americans who said they have experienced racial bias in housing, employment and other areas.
"There are two levels of identity with racism," said Ron Walters, a University of Maryland political scientist. "One is the national level, which is more symbolic. And the other is how they parse it in terms of their lives."
Often, he explained, people channel the experiences of family and friends as they develop their views about racism. "If I have a brother who is pulled over by the cops, it influences me almost as much as if it happened to me," Walters said.
The poll shows continued wide disparities over how people of both races perceive the issue, and there has been no letup in the numbers sensing discrimination where they live.
In the new survey, 44 percent of blacks and 22 percent of whites continue to see racism as a large societal problem. In 1996, 70 percent of blacks and 52 percent of whites held that view.
Conversely, 28 percent of whites and 15 percent of blacks in the new survey said they see racism as a small problem, or no problem at all.
Racial disparities are also apparent when people were asked whether African Americans have achieved or will achieve racial equality in this country. Seventy-three percent of all those surveyed said African Americans have reached or will soon reach equality, including three-quarters of whites and just over half of blacks. More HERE
By William Bennett and John Cribb, January 10, 2009
Neither of us voted for Barack Obama, but we never doubted that a black man could be elected president of this country in 2008, and we celebrate his election along with millions of other Americans — those who voted for him and those who did not. Now the time has come to bury many prejudices of the past and truly to move beyond racial politics in America.
Skeptical Brotha says: I’m interrupting your regularly scheduled corporate propaganda to bring some disturbing news from the West Coast. Apparently, the post-racial America that signaled Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States is a fraud. More HERE
Black Informat.com says: Yesterday I did a quick post asking what exactly does “Post-Racial” really mean as it applies to America. This is a term that has been kicked around since Obama won and to me sounds very vague.
Today, I happened to come across a Youtube video featuring Tavis Smilely who briefly dealt with this issue.
“…Obama’s election is not the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream. It is another down payment on the dream.”
Then he goes on to quote Cornell West: “America, with Obama’s election is now less racist.”
I don’t like the the guilt game he is playing here because it never ends. In other words, in the age where every fart, sneeze and hiccup from White folks can be construed as form of racism, WHO exactly has the ability to declare that all debts have been paid in full? Jesse? Al? NAACP? CBC? More HERE
Racism Is Over
by John McWorter
The question someone like me has been asked to answer several times a week since Nov. 5 has been, "Are we now in a post-racial America?"
Giving an answer requires that we know what the question really refers to: whether America is past racism. Moreover, the point is largely racism against black people, i.e., Barack Obama, i.e., the people who are America's eternal shame, and so on. We are not really thinking about racism against Arabs. Most of us have a sense that the Asian pitching in on how the question applies to her is vaguely beside the point.
So, in answer to the question, "Is America past racism against black people," I say the answer is yes.
Of course, nothing magically changed when Obama was declared president-elect. However, our proper concern is not whether racism still exists, but whether it remains a serious problem. The election of Obama proved, as nothing else could have, that it no longer does.
I make that claim while quite sure that in 2009, a noose or three will be hung somewhere, some employer will be revealed to have used the N-word on tapes of a meeting, and so on. America will remain imperfect, as humans have always been.
It's not an accident, however, that increasingly, alleged cases of racism are tough calls, reflecting the complexity of human affairs rather than the stark injustice of Jim Crow or even redlining. A young black man is shot dead by three police officers and only one of them is white. A white radio host uses a jocular slur against black women--used for decades in the exact same way by black rappers celebrated as bards.
The issue, then, is degree. When it comes to racism, too many suddenly think in the binary fashion of the quantum physicist: either there is no racism or there "is" racism, which, no matter its nature or extent, indicts America as a land with bigotry in its warp and woof.
But anyone who wants to take this line from now on will have to grapple with the elephant in the middle of the room: the president of AmeriKKKa is black. If the racism that America is "all about" is the kind that allows a black man to become president, then I'm afraid the nature of this "all about" is too abstract for me to follow, and most Americans will feel similarly. It's time to change the discussion.
Blumenthal praises Ambers' new piece on how the Obama campaign approached race. Cornell Belcher, one of Obama's pollsters, gives his take:
Belcher resampled the white voters whose racial animus he had measured before. More than half had voted for McCain, but not by an overwhelming margin. Belcher concluded that Obama might have done better among them had he not been black. In 1992, Belcher noted, 85 percent of voters who said the economy was bad broke for Bill Clinton. In 2008, in a verifiably worse economic climate, only 66 percent of voters who said the economy was bad voted for Barack Obama. “The economy is clearly not the only story. I could argue that the economy wasn’t as big an impact this time around as in 1992,” Belcher told me. “You can’t look at that swath of hard-red counties that actually grew even redder and say that we are post-racial.”
Surely the truth is that there is greater polarization on this than ever before. The range of views and feelings in America on race and gender and sexual orientation now has a far wider span than in the past. Crude bigotry endures at one end while total post-racial consciousness grows at the other. This stretches both across generations and regions, creating a bewilderingly complex picture in which everything you could say about America is true in some respect. Americans, to take the gay example, are probably more homophobic and more accepting of homosexuality than any other modern culture. There is Appallachia and Provincetown. And racially, there are those parts of America that actually trended GOP this past cycle - and then a place like Adams Morgan.
To me, this is an overwhelming reason for federalism. America cannot endure as a coherent polity without more of it. By More HERE
By DeWayne Wickham of USA Today
That Oscar Grant didn't live long enough to see Barack Obama sworn in as this nation's first black president is proof that the post-racial era that Obama's election was supposed to usher in has not arrived.
(Grant: Killed on New Year’s Day / AP)
Grant, a 22-year-old black man, was killed on New Year's Day. He was shot in the back as he lay face down on a subway platform in Oakland. His killer was a white transit cop — one of several officers who detained Grant and several other young men for questioning in connection with a fight that occurred on a train.
The shooting was captured on cellphone video cameras by several onlookers. One of them shows officers forcing Grant to the ground before a cop stands up, pulls his gun and fires a single shot into the young man's back. Shortly before he was supposed to be interviewed by investigators, Johannes Mehserle, 27 — the cop who shot Grant — resigned.
Same story, different decade
Later that day, a demonstration in Oakland over the fatal shooting turned violent. Store windows were smashed, police cars were vandalized and some vehicles were set on fire. More than 100 demonstrators were arrested. But so far, no charges have been brought against Mehserle — and that's not surprising.
The wheels of justice have always turned slowly — if at all — in cases in which cops have used deadly force against unarmed blacks. Nothing symbolizes America's long-running era of racial conflict more than these kinds of killings, and the failure of the criminal justice system to do something about them.
In 1966, a Los Angeles cop shot to death Leonard Deadwyler, a black man who was rushing his pregnant wife to the hospital. The officer, who stopped Deadwyler for speeding, leaned inside the car window with his gun drawn and shot him. A coroner's jury ruled the killing accidental.
In 1979, white off-duty policeman Larry Shockley shot 22-year-old Randy Heath in the back of the neck outside a Miami warehouse. The officer first said he caught Heath attempting to burglarize the building and shot the unarmed man after a short struggle. He later admitted there was no struggle and claimed his gun discharged accidentally. Heath's sister said her brother had stopped at the building to urinate. A grand jury refused to indict Shockley.
Seeds of discontent
And then there were the cases of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, two unarmed black men who were killed in New York City in separate police shootings. Diallo, an African immigrant, was struck by 19 bullets fired by four white cops in 1999 while standing in the vestibule of his apartment building. The officers said they mistook a wallet in his hand for a gun. A jury acquitted them. More HERE
By Jonathan Saltzman and Brian Ballou, Globe Staff
SPRINGFIELD, MA. -- As reported by the Boston Globe, and linked by African American Political Pundit. More HERE - Three Springfield men, including one who allegedly complained that blacks and Puerto Ricans would have more rights than whites under President Barack Obama, set an arson fire that destroyed the construction site of a mostly black church just hours after Obama's landmark victory, authorities said today.
The men, Benjamin Haskell, Michael F. Jacques Jr., and Thomas Gleason Jr., all of whom are white, poured gasoline on the exterior and interior of the construction site of the Macedonia Church of God in Christ in the early morning of Nov. 5 and later boasted about it, according to prosecutors.
Four days after the fire, which many in Springfield's black community had immediately feared was related to the election of America's black president, Haskell and Jacques drove by burnt rubble with an unidentified associate and laughed, according to the affidavit of an FBI agent.
``We did it,'' Haskell allegedly told to the associate, who later became a cooperating witness. When the associate asked why they set the blaze, Haskell replied, ``Because it was a black church.''
Jacques asked the associate whom he had voted for, the affidavit said. When he replied that he voted for Obama, Jacques uttered a profanity-laced racial epithet and predicted that Obama would be assassinated.
Haskell later admitted to authorities that he helped set the fire and said Jacques had been angry the day before Election Day that the country was going to have an African-American president and that blacks and Puerto Ricans would have more rights than whites, according to the affidavit. More HERE
I’ll be watching Barack Obama’s swearing in as our 44th president among family and friends, enjoying the sweet taste of triumph and heartfelt relief. But the Inauguration party I’d like to crash is at Clarence Thomas’ house. Maybe Ward Connerly would get an invite too, though I suspect Clarence couldn’t stand having two high-yella negroes like me and the former UC regent around to assuage his grief. Either way, Shelby Steele could bring copies of his A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win to pass out as party favors. I can’t help but think of Clarence, sitting with a big cigar, Rush Limbaugh on his iPod, bemoaning the state of things — that we’ve fallen so far that we could elect BARACK OBAMA, that one, that inauthentic black who has ascended to the highest office in the land through tireless effort and ambition.
Obama didn’t get a thing he didn’t earn, and shouldn’t that make Clarence happy? Isn’t that the sacred credo of the far right — that the hard work of the individual striving to better his situation is the only societal change worth having? Maybe affirmative action is only for those genuinely underqualified Supreme Court justices and sons of former presidents who have nothing better to do but drive the country into ruin.
Clarence, anyway, doesn’t seem to be taking Obama’s win well. And he couldn’t have been happy about Obama’s backhand pimp slap in a recent interview, when the Prez-elect named Thomas the Supreme Court justice he definitely would not have picked. When Clarence circulated that nuisance lawsuit about Obama’s citizenship among his fellow Supreme Court justices, he just looked petty.
How troubling it must be for Clarence and his woebegone Post-Race allies who have made careers out of their distaste for the collective achievements of the Civil Rights Movement. Their argument is that if they pulled themselves up through the dint of their hard work and rugged individualism, you should too. They sucked it up, those vicious insults and threats of high-tech lynchings, the segregation, the condescension of racist whites, and the ridicule of black folks down with the movement, because they were made of sterner stuff. These guys wanted to be thought of as agents of change confronting racism without the cloying support of the Civil Rights pimps who exploited the weak-willed for their own gain. We’re talking to you, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Through sheer effort, Post-Race men scaled the daunting wall of racism and crossed over to the promised land of racial inclusion as it manifested itself in W’s administration.
As USA Today said in 2004, “before Bush, no person of color had been named to any of the four most prestigious Cabinet jobs — at the departments of State, Treasury, Defense and Justice. Now he has named two blacks as secretary of state and a Mexican-American as attorney general.”
Those colored folk in the Bush administration got to be Post-Racial, and if we only knew how good that was, we’d all want to get there too. All one needed was to be slavishly loyal to a vicious ideology, like good old Clarence.
It’s unfair to contrast Obama, who seems to float above the stings and barbs of the lunatic right, to the ever-suffering Clarence (and what is Clarence, anyway, other than the Bizarro version of Thurgood Marshall, trying to roll back all the good Thurgood did advancing civil rights and happily bearing the cross of liberal anger?). I never heard Obama complain about being accused of treason and/or terrorist activity. Obama triumphed because he’s optimistic, opportunistic and farsighted, not to mention disciplined and rigorously analytical. His blackness informs him, as does his whiteness, as do all our backgrounds, but never did I get the impression that Obama is obsessed with race. Obviously, he is fond of black people enough to want their respect and to marry one, and he thinks that they deserve Voting Rights, as opposed to Clarence, who voted against the act’s expansion. I suppose Democracy makes Clarence nervous.
Counterpunch’s The Black Commentator sums up Clarence nicely: “The lesson Thomas drew seems to go like this: If oppression can turn you into a Supreme Court justice like me, then we need more oppression.”
With the rise of Obama, Clarence is made even more ridiculous as a scold, reveling in the wretchedness of his upbringing — shucking and jiving for the right white folks who awarded him lifetime employment and the animosity of a nation of millions. Maybe Inauguration Day will give Clarence the chance to take a look at the country and himself, and get on the change bandwagon. It’s never too late, or so I’ve heard.
America's First Post-Racial Inauguration Scam according to AOL News and linked by African American Political Pundit.
History will be made this coming Tuesday when, for the first time in our nation's history, con artists will invoke an African-American president as they scam unwitting patriots.The founder of Californians for Obama - an unauthorized Los Angeles-area group that used Sen. Obama's name to raise thousands of dollars from donors during last year's presidential campaign - has told one five-star Washington hotel [the Ritz-Carlton] he's organizing a "California High Tea" with Rep. Diane Watson, D-Los Angeles, ambassadors and political luminaries for inauguration week.
Problem: Watson's chief of staff, Richard Butcher, said the congresswoman knows nothing about the planned event - and most certainly didn't authorize the use of her name by the self-described political organizer, Emmett Cash III, who had also previously used her name without permission to raise money from Democratic donors.
The last time Cash claimed he'd be selling photo ops with Rep. Watson, he also bizarrely claimed that singer Eartha Kitt would be on hand as well. In fairness to Cash, Eartha was still alive at that point, but she bewilderedly denied any knowledge of the event.
Roland Martin
Source: Essence
It has been interesting to watch so many people talk about how America has moved from a nation fixated on race to one where we are now living in a post-racial world, courtesy of the election of President-elect Barack Obama.
There is no doubt that we crossed a huge hurdle with the election of Obama to the highest office in the land. But that doesn’t mean that the realities of race are not being played out in our communities each day. In Oakland, a semi-riot took place last night after the funeral of Oscar Juliuss Grant III, who was gunned down during a scuffle with Bay Area Rapid Transit officers. Click here to read the Oakland Tribune story on the semi-riot. More HERE
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