Tag Archives: Race and Racism

US Justice Department Will Investigate Murder of Trayvon Martin

  By Greg Laden | March 20, 2012 - 9:25 am | Gun Ownership, Race and racism, Trayvon Martin
9 Comments

I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have opened an official investigation into the killing of 17 year old Trayvon Martin by a vigilante “Neighborhood Watch” member George Zimmerman. Zimmerman pursued, confronted, then shot to death Trayvon Martin who was on his way home from the convenience store having picked up a bag of Skittles. Local police, apparently caught like deer in the headlights of an idiotic recently enacted Florida Law stating, according to some, that you can kill anyone you want as long as you can later say that they made you feel icky, have refuses to even bring Zimmerman in for questioning.

There have been protests, a lot of noise from the Liberal Blogosphere, and even a write in campaign using the Sanford Police’s own web site (click here to get in on that!), and limited criticism from the press.

(The 911 calls related to this case are very damning of Zimmerman, and you can listen to them here.)

Are you annoyed by those pesky Indians and Black folk?

  By Greg Laden | January 23, 2012 - 10:56 pm | Race and racism, Teabaggers
13 Comments

All that whinging and hand wringing about slavery, taking the land from the Indians, and all that stuff is very annoying, especially when the assertion is made that our founding fathers had anything do to with all that. Even though they did. But still, it is very annoying to have the names of those who saw fit to found this nation besmirched by the so called “facts” of “history.”

And that is why the Tennessee Tea Party wants to make it illegal in the Mottoless State of Tennessee to teach the truth. Here’s the wording they propose:

“No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

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Women in Elevators and Black Guys Sneaking Up Behind You

  By Greg Laden | January 16, 2012 - 2:35 pm | Race and racism, Sexism
3 Comments

As you may know, I wrote a post, Women in Elevators: A Man To Man Talk For The Menz, in which I wrote:

I am not afraid of dogs, and most women are probably not “afraid of men.”

Except I’m actually afraid of dogs and most women are justifiably afraid of men. If you get what I’m saying so far, go away and do something useful because this post is not written for you. If you are puzzled, especially about the idea of women being afraid of men at all, then sit down, shut up, and allow me to slap you across the chops a couple of times with a little reality because that is what you need. Assuming you are a sentient adult and still have no clue.

Several people got really really mad at me because of that post … I literally lost a few friends … and they got even madder when I pointed out that getting mad at me for that post increased in my mind the chance that you are likely to be abusive to women. Holy crap. Anyway, it all relates to the whole Schrödinger’s Rapist thing. (See this recent post at Camels with Hammers for more on that)

Anyway, one of the responses to that post (and other conversations going on at the time) was to point out that a man saying that he recognized that women could be justifiably nervous about running across an unknown male on a lonely street at night was equivalent to saying that all black people are criminals. Or something like that.

Well, my bloggy friend Ian Cromwell who it turns out is a big scary black guy has addressed that issue, skillfully and engagingly, in a post called “Shuffling feet: a black man’s view on Schroedinger’s Rapist.” Go have a look.

Danny Chen’s Death: The Ultimate Hate Crime?

  By Greg Laden | December 21, 2011 - 9:09 am | Race and racism
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Nineteen year old Private Danny Chen killed himself with a firearm in a combat station in Kandahar, Afghanistan after being taunted and verbally and physically abused in a decidedly racist manner by several of his fellow soldiers. Eight such soldiers, of C Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry, are now facing charges related to Danny’s death. The details of the charges have not been released.

Officials said …

… 1st Lt. Daniel J. Schwartz, Staff Sgt. Blaine G. Dugas, Staff Sgt. Andrew J. Van Bockel, Sgt. Adam M. Holcomb, Sgt. Jeffrey T. Hurst, Spc. Thomas P. Curtis, Spc. Ryan J. Offutt and Sgt. Travis F. Carden were all charged Friday with counts ranging from dereliction of duty to making a false statement to assault, negligent homicide and reckless endangerment.

It was not clear from the information provided whether the military believes the soldiers actually killed Chen, or whether officials are alleging that their mistreatment of Chen led him to take his own life.

More at the Washington Post

Forbes’ Gene Marks Needs To Check His Priv

  By Greg Laden | December 13, 2011 - 1:00 pm | Education, Protest, Race and racism
58 Comments

Gene Marks, you wrote an essay for Forbes that has gotten a lot of people rather upset. People are upset because you display insensitive unchecked privilege and, essentially, you blame an entire class of people as the victims of what is mostly not their fault but rather, your fault and the fault of the modal Forbes reader, as well as society more broadly, history, culture, economics, racism and all sort of other things that are largely beyond the control of the Poor Black Kids of the Inner City of whom you write.

I think you meant well, but you did not do well. There are many ways in which you display a marked lack of a clue about your topic. How so? Let’s start at the beginning of your essay: (more…)

SCOTUS will review Arizona’s Immigration Law

  By Greg Laden | December 12, 2011 - 10:26 am | Immigration
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Moments ago, the Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to review a highly controversial Arizona law. This promises to be one of the more significant things they’ve done in a while.

The deck is stacked for a more conservative ruling because Justice Kagan will recuse as she worked on the law while in the Obama administration.

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Atheists who are Nazis should be shamed and driven from the community

  By Greg Laden | December 4, 2011 - 8:25 am | Atheism, Nazi, Race and racism
22 Comments

From my Facebook message thingie:

Mat Nuzareyin
We have 47 mutual friends and are both atheists.

Greg Laden
Except in real life, I have only about 4 friends, but that’s OK!

Mat Nuzareyin
Do you think stupid people should be sterilized?

Greg Laden
I wasn’t thinking that, no.

Mat Nuzareyin
Why not?
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Racial Bias in Presidential Pardons?

  By Greg Laden | December 3, 2011 - 10:56 pm | Race and racism
1 Comment

The pardon process relies on the recommendations of a special office of the White House, which takes a number of factors (not skin color) into account overtly, including things like level of remorse or financial or family factors. The process was, wisely one would have thought, depoliticized by George Bush at the beginning of his first term, so that the professional pardon lawyers’ recommendations are routinely followed, plus or minus only small variations.

So, we therefore know that the fact that a white person is 400% more likely to be pardoned than a black person is not because of some yahoo racist president or evil chief of staff. Rather, it’s just how the legal system turns out.

Propublica did the study that gives us these results. (more…)

Why do NASCAR fans hate our troops?

  By Greg Laden | November 21, 2011 - 6:40 pm | Politicians-suspect
4 Comments

Several NASCAR fans booed two women who were announcing the start of a race (with the famous words “Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!!”). The women were part of the “Joining Forces” initiative, which is in support of military families. The women stood next to retired Army Sgt. Andrew Barry, who was wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is unclear why NASCAR fans hate America.

Source

Cain’s Sexual Harassment Problems

  By Greg Laden | November 1, 2011 - 10:15 am | Election 2012, Race and racism
2 Comments

It does look like there may be something to the allegations, and there does seem to be some denial followed by backpedaling.

Herman Cain

Herman Cain

I would like to point out, however, that he was a male CEO, a person of power, wealth, and fame. This is often true of the men in the race, and in presidential races generally. When Norm Colemen was trying to get re-elected as Senator from Minnesota, very credible and verifiable details of his horrid “womanizing” (a term I never quite understood but whatever) behaviors came out, and no one noticed or cared or did anything about it except a few of us bloggers. It took years for the John Edwards thing to come out. As it were. Remember Gary Hart? Same thing.

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Is gun control racist?

  By Greg Laden | October 10, 2011 - 7:57 am | Gun Ownership, Race and racism
1 Comment

That’s actually not the correct question. The answer to “Is gun control racist?” is no, because if I ask you that question, you assume I mean current modern day gun control efforts in the United States. If anything, gun control is the opposite of racist, give who is most affected by lack of it, ans who most wants more of it, and the nature of the pro-gun lobby when it comes to issues of race.
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Berkeley Campus Republicans: Native American Women are the Lowest Form of Life

  By Greg Laden | September 25, 2011 - 3:28 pm | Race and racism, Republicans
24 Comments

The Campus Republicans of the UC-Berkeley campus are having a bake sale with the cost per item set in relation to the buyer’s skin color and gender. White males would pay full price, but people who have very dark skin and are female get the food for less. Here’s the pricing structure:

  • White $2.00
  • Asian $1.50
  • Latino $1.00
  • Black $0.75
  • Native American $0.25
  • $0.25 off for all women

This is their way of demonstrating how admission policies at UC allow inferior people who should be valued less into college. The intention of the bake sale was to make people mad. That failed, and instead it made people look at the Campus Republicans of the University of California Berkeley and go “Oh, isn’t that cute. They have no brains but they can still talk and walk. Like those Japanese robots.”

From the cnn report:
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Charles and Willie

  By Greg Laden | September 22, 2011 - 5:34 am | Race and racism
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The Kennedy School of Government had banned all smoking within the building, but had not yet banned smoking just outside the doors facing the Charles River, to the south of the complex. An African American woman, about fifty years of age, took a light from me, and we stood in the falling snow enjoying our smokes. That was a heavy year for snow. It seemed that every day about the same time the two of us would be standing here in a blizzard.
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Day of Justice, Day of Shame: The killing of Troy Davis

  By Greg Laden | September 21, 2011 - 1:04 pm | Death Penalty
4 Comments

I do not know for certain that Troy Anthony Davis is not guilty of killing Mark MacPhail, a Savannah Georgia cop. But I do firmly believe that there is more than reasonable doubt of his culpability to say he is legally not guilty, and I am not alone in thinking this. The other people who think this include Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, dozens of members of congress, more than 500,000 petition signers, and … perhaps most significantly … seven of the nine witnesses who testified against him who have now changed their stories, and three of the original jurors who voted guilty. The case was based primarily on eye witness testimony, and if even one of the jurors at the time felt he was not guilty he would not have been convicted. (more…)

Racism, Creationism, Darwinism

  By Greg Laden | February 20, 2007 - 2:04 am | Darwin, Politics, Race and Racism
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Racism and it’s various manifestations such as eugenics is a Janus Faced monster of human society. One side speaks to people’s fear and hate, and is social and political. It speaks a sermon to the angry and downtrodden who love to hear that their “race” is superior, or to the social managers and engineers who benefit from a handy excuse to explain the results of repression and economic inequality as the natural outcome of history and circumstance beyond our control and thus not the fault of those self same social managers and engineers.

The other face is the biological one, the scientific description of “race” itself, and the scientific explanation for racial differences.

Each of these aspects of modern racism can act independently and to some extent have different histories, but by and large they are two parts of the same trend. Prior to Eugenics, the biological side of this monster was not scientific, and was in fact typically religious. When European Christians needed to explain the people of the New World (how the heck did they get there, and who were they, really?) or the “savages” of Africa, they turned to the bible … and there found the basis for (more…)