Mississippi State Senator Called "Ole Nigger" in Email

Really? Has it come to this? Highlights below and thanks to BlackPoliticsontheWeb.com and BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Blacks in the small, Mississippi Delta city of Greenwood are seething over a white city councilman's e-mail that referred to a black political leader, who is highly respected statewide, as an "ole nigger."
[...]
Since Sunday, when the e-mail -- exposed by one of the 15 whites who received it -- and its subsequent furor began attracting statewide national media attention, Greenwood and Leflore County, where it sits, has been bombarded by reactions in the city's newspapers and its talk radio stations.

The e-mail, which Jordan said "is shocking," was sent early last week by John Lee, one of the city's two white Republican councilmen. Since then, Lee has increasingly been scorned and heaped with disdain and contempt by the vast majority of Greenwood's African-American population, according to several residents who asked for anonymity before speaking with BlackAmericaWeb.com. Many blacks are also believed to hold an equal amount of contempt for the other white councilman, John Jennings, who continues to defend the embattled Lee.

In his e-mail, Lee alleged that he "had a long talk after the city council meeting ... with David Jordan. The ole nigger can't understand why the black's (sic) continue to shoot one another. I told him he needed to spend less time with the old people at the Voters League and more time with the young people about getting an education."

Lee's e-mail erroneously claims that Jordan missed an opportunity to help a "big black" who asked him for employment. In fact, according to an outraged Jordan, he had previously employed the young man during several election cycles.

The young man, Lee claimed, told Jordan that he is a rapper. "I told David he missed his chance. He should have told that black boy he should be in school getting his education in order to have a future." Jordan said the "black boy" is a 28-year-old man."

An outraged Jordan, who is also president of the Greenwood Voters League, the political engine which has propelled blacks to growing representation and power since the 1960s, told BlackAmericaWeb.com that "Lee's lying and fabricated a story" which has no factual foundation.

Gotta Gotta Get Me Some...Economic Stimulus

Today is Tax Day in the United States. I'm curious -- how do you plan to use your economic stimulus package? My guess is that African-Americans are going to lean heavily on the bill-paying rather than the new iPhone-buying tip? Maybe I'm wrong though and we'll all feel stimulated by this small amount of aid to ordinary folks struggling with higher food and gas prices. What do you think?

Open Thread: FREE TIBET

That's all for me y'all. Tell us what YOU think about the controversial Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco today. Let's hear the black perspective.

Civil Rights Groups Wither - New Ones Taking Their Place

This Washington Post story Civil Rights Groups Seeing Gradual End of Their Era ends with this sentence though I'd like to start my response with it. It quotes E. Ethelbert Miller:

"What would happen if W.E.B. Du Bois or Marcus Garvey had a laptop?" Du Bois helped found the NAACP in 1909, and Garvey, a rival, started a back-to-Africa movement around the same time.

We are the answer to that question. In the vacuum of black leadership 40 years after Martin Luther King's death, it's his spiritual grandchildren that are carrying his mission forward now and not the civil rights groups he might have recognized. From the WaPo piece (emphasis mine):

In New York, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which helped shape the movement's philosophy after adopting Mohandas K. Gandhi's doctrine of nonviolent protest, is scarcely known outside Manhattan. CORE conceded that it now has about 10 percent of the 150,000 members it listed in the 1960s.

In Baltimore, the near-century-old NAACP, which tore down racial barriers with deft lawyering in the courts, recently cut a third of its administrative staff because of budget shortfalls. For decades, the NAACP asserted that it was the largest civil rights group, with about half a million dues-paying members, but one of its former presidents recently acknowledged that it has fewer than 300,000.
[...]
Charles Steele, president and chief executive of the SCLC, acknowledged that squabbling nearly doomed his organization. But, he said, the SCLC is coming back. The group says it has 150,000 members at more than 70 branches, but a 2004 analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed that only 730 members paid the $25 membership dues.

Let me break it down for y'all: Color of Change now has over 400,000 members -- 25% more than the NAACP. Over 100,000 unique visitors now read this blog at Jack and Jill Politics each month (and growing fast), putting our audience soon at perhaps 10 times that of CORE. Let's not even talk about the SCLC.

We -- you reading this blog and me writing it -- we are Civil Rights 2.0. WaPo (sort of) acknowledges, stating:

Today, radio deejays, Internet groups such as Color of Change.org and organizations such as the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights are orchestrating bus rides, marches and other actions once performed by civil rights groups.
[...]
When six black teenagers in Jena, La., were being prosecuted as adults last year in the beating of a white classmate, the local branch of the NAACP played a small role in defending their rights, but it was Color of Change.org that secured their release.

Activist Al Sharpton learned about the Jena incident on the radio long after it started. Radio talk-show host Michael Baisden ranted about Jena throughout his program and helped organize bus tours to the town.

Strangely, the article doesn't mention the role of black bloggers in aiding Color of Change and in publicizing the Jena case. We kept the story alive and made sure the facts got reported right. A strange oversight indeed since the media covered our involvement pretty extensively at the time, e.g. Chicago Tribune - Blogs Help Drive Jena Protest and NPR - Bloggers A Force Behind Jena Protests.

But shoot, you and I know what time it is. What if Martin Luther King or Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers had had laptops and high speed internet access...? And blogs? Hmmm...

BTW -- the WaPo also spelled Stokely's name wrong "Stokly". Dag -- that ain't right.

George Soros Says the Credit Crisis Hits Affluent African-Americans Hardest

I just heard George Soros, the famous financier, talk about the financial crisis in the United States and his new book -- The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means. A quick snapshot of his thinking is available in the Financial Times. He believes that the crisis we face today is "the most severe since the 1930s."

Most of our grandparents were around then. I've heard the stories. It sounded rough. Tough to find a job so you had to have 3 or 4 jobs. Tough to find decent, comfortable, safe housing for your family -- that wasn't provided by the government. Food was dear and not to be wasted. Christmas was happy -- but lean.

I'm looking forward to reading the book. In the meantime, he said a few things this am that have relevance specifically for African-Americans. Soros believes that the worst case scenario -- a total financial collapse -- has been averted. Yet he said that the housing super-bubble has not yet fully burst and that there may be a temptation to over-correct. He believes that more regulation and oversight is needed, particularly around foreclosure. The right to foreclosure should remain in effect but be much more restricted because foreclosure tends to have detrimental social effects on communities.

Then he referenced black and latino communities. Housing relief will be needed. The housing market contributes to jobs and those are threatened now. In addition, he spoke of "Affluent African-Americans" noting with a hint of irony in his voice that we are the ones who had bought most into George Bush's "Ownership Society". He mentioned that Prince George's County, home to the wealthiest African-Americans in the country had been "the hardest hit".

Dark times are ahead, y'all. In Black America, the distance between poor, working class, middle class and affluent is not great and is often job-dependent. We tend to have more economic diversity still within our families. At least that's the way it is in my family where I have 1st cousins who are corporate titans and professionals living in million-dollar homes and other 1st cousins who live in double-wide trailers and drive trucks for a living. Still all of them are homeowners and dream of a better life for their children and grandchildren -- including a home, a job and college.

More than ever we will need to raise our voices to ensure that our interests are protected and not exploited. We have more African-Americans in positions of power than ever in American history. Now is the time for them to act -- not just for our sakes but for that of all Americans like us who hope for better and easier lives -- not harder, not poorer, not worse lives -- for ourselves and our children's children.

Top Ten Black Blogs for April 2008

Much love, much love to our brother Wayne Hicks over at Electronic Village who just released the Top 10 Black Blogs in the BBR today. Jack and Jill Politics -- thanks to you -- has climbed to number 9. He mentions Jack and myself yet this blog wouldn't be gr