Getting to know black people

There's a new poll out today that shows Brother Barack gaining some steam among black voters. Let's face it -- unlike the proven product that are the Clintons, Obama is a new face for African-Americans. Black people are like other people. We actually take voting seriously (if you consider our voter registration and participation rates) and many African-Americans are discerning values voters. They listen to a candidate before deciding to vote for him or her.

Ari Melber at the Nation writes:

Then this month, The New York Times offered a front page news flash under the headline, "So Far, Obama Can't Take Black Vote for Granted." The article quoted Debra J. Dickerson's claim that "Obama isn't black" in an American racial context, and then explored why "some black voters" are "so uneasy" about Obama. One barber explained that Obama might not be right for the Presidency because he was not "born, raised, bred, [and] fed in America." Whatever. That kind of talk has been shredded by The Nation's Patricia Williams, among others. Now these new poll numbers should remove one crutch reporters were using to write premature stories about how black voters supposedly did not like Obama "enough."

Couldn't agree more. I hope we've all learned something from this experience.

Loathe Thy Neighbor

This is a frightening video segment from the Daily Show. More evidence that Muslims are the new blacks. (hat tip: Dean Obeidallah) Very worth watching:

Why is the CBC in Bed with Rupert Murdoch?

When I read that the Congressional Black Caucus was considering partnering with FoxNews for another presidential debate, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was one thing to do it in 2004. Perhaps the motive was increased recognition of the CBC among a new audience.

Isn’t time to question both the CBC and FoxNews’ motives here? Let’s first look at FoxNews. These are the same people who have at least twice publicly attacked a CBC member, Barack Obama and got pushed back by other media sources. First there was the consistent, disingenuous linking of Sen. Obama’s name with Osama, as in Bin Laden. Newscasters and commentators would repeatedly make a pseudo-Freudian slip…”Sen. Osama…pardon me, I meant to say Obama!” The confusion extended even to photos and captions on TV. This continues today, btw, on Fox and other channels. Then there was the fabricated story that Obama had attended a madrassa in as a child living in Indonesia in order to spread the mis-information that he is a Muslim and not Christian. When confronted, FoxNews blamed the Clinton campaign for spreading the story, thus managing to damage two Democratic contenders with a single blow.

This is just par for the course for the regularly racist, rightwing Fox News. Maybe it’s news to some, but the whole point of FoxNews is to deliver a conservative slant on the news. FoxNews is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a well-known conservative moneybags man originally from Australia.

Does Murdoch really have black voters’ best interests at heart in sponsoring a presidential debate? Or does he want to appear to be modern and open while creating a forum in which his team can control the outcome. What influence does he want to have over the presidential campaign – one in which Republicans are entering even weaker than they did in 2004 if you go by the TechPresident blog mention rankings?

Murdoch is the same guy who publishes the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine. According to RightWeb, “Conveniently, every Monday one of Vice President Cheney 's aides stops by the office to pick up 30 copies of the magazine…”

Not only does this hand legitimacy to those who fight regularly against the priorities of our communities, it erodes alliances in the progressive movement and even undercuts the existing African-American owned media outlets like TV1.

Cathy Hughes and her investors including Quincy Jones founded TV1 to provide an alternative to the disgusting, unrepresentative BET. How better to show our new power than supporting a black-owned channel that is trying to provide positive programming that is more representative of our culture. Did you know TV1 is going to re-broadcast Roots during Easter week? Why not have the presidential debate on TV1?

Furthermore, Hughes has proved herself as someone who is on our side. A good old progressive organization the National Council of Negro Women honored her in 2006 with their Uncommon Height Award which is named after stalwart civil rights soldier/saint Dr. Dorothy Height.

I hope no one is taking some kind of under the table kickback from FoxNews at the CBC. I really do. I think our CBC brothers and sisters are better than that though. I want to think that the new CBC wants to show America how strong we really are and represent. Let's hope they make a different choice.

Emmett Till Case Closed Forever

This just came down

(AP) All but closing the books on a crime that helped give rise to the civil rights movement, a grand jury has refused to bring any new charges in the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was beaten and shot after whistling at a white woman in the Mississippi Delta.

The district attorney in rural Leflore County had sought a manslaughter charge against the white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, who was suspected of pointing out Till to her husband to punish the boy for what was a grave offense in the segregated South.

But the grand jury last Friday issued a "no bill," meaning it found insufficient evidence, according to documents made public Tuesday.

I don't know if this happens with kids today, probably not, but when I was coming up in the 80s, you couldn't be a black boy and have avoided the tale of Emmett Till. It was a rite of passage to be told about the brutalization of someone your age a few decades earlier for the crime of being black.

This legal effort was the last best attempt to being someone to justice. The men who committed the crime had been acquitted and later admitted to the murder.

I love the stubbornness of one of the players in the situation. From the article:

Horace Harned, 86, a former Mississippi legislator and member of the Sovereignty Commission, a state agency that worked clandestinely to preserve segregation, said he was glad to see no charges filed. He said the suggestions that Donham had a role in the crime are "a bunch of foolishness."

"Of course, I don't believe in murder. That's the wrong thing. It always backfires on you. That shouldn't have happened," he said. But he added: "You can't correct all the ills of the past. If we did, the Southerners were treated much worse than anybody back in the Civil War."

Yes, murder should not be committed because it always "backfires" not because it's wrong, and Southerners were of course treated much worse than anybody in the Civil War. I suppose if you don't consider blacks to be people, that's a very easy statement to make.

The Secret Wealth of African-Americans Part II

Recently on Feb 8, I quoted from the Wikipedia entry for "African-American" on our economic status. The comments I received in part showed that even black people have trouble seeing ourselves in a new light. We have been so conditioned by what we see in TV and hear on the radio to think of black people in America as uneducated, deprived, disadvantaged, diseased and dysfunctional. Listen up Progressives, Liberals, Democrats and other well-meaning people who want to "help minorities". It's time that all Americans sat up and looked around.

While poverty and its corresponding symptoms of poor education, income and healthcare still afflict African-Americans disproportionately, the facts show that we are an emerging economic power whose strength and contribution is growing. Sure, the nation was built on our sweat, blood and tears and America still owes us a great debt for that. Yet, from the Wikipedia, here are more facts you need to recognize if you want to work with us, help us, understand us.

Original links and footnotes can be found here. Emphasis mine. Note that the entry recently changed and deleted some interesting info comparing African-American wealth as comparable to that of Poland and 80% of Russia's. I hope that gets added back in. The original entry I saw was even stronger and better-written and researched.

By 2003, sex had replaced race as the primary factor in life expectancy in the United States, with African American females expected to live longer than white males born in that year.^[17] In the same year, the gap in life expectancy between American whites (78.0) and blacks (72.8) had decreased to 5.2 years, reflecting a long term trend of this phenomenon.^[17] The current life expectancy of African Americans as a group is comparable to those of other groups who live in countries with a high human development index. In 2004, African American workers had the second-highest median earnings of American minority groups after Asian Americans, and African Americans had the highest level of male-female income parity of all ethnic groups in the United States.^[18] Also, among American minority groups, only Asian Americans were more likely to hold white collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields),^[19] and African Americans were no more or less likely than whites to work in the service industry.^[20] In 2001, over half of African American households of married couples earned $50,000 or more.^[20] Although in the same year African Americans were over-represented among the nation's poor, this was directly related to the disproportionate percentage of African American families headed by single women; such families are collectively poorer, regardless of ethnicity.^[20]

Collectively, African Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority