Author Topic: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.  (Read 389839 times)

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile

objectivist1

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 1048
    • View Profile
The Point of an Honest Discussion of Race...
« Reply #401 on: May 23, 2014, 08:44:03 AM »
‘The Point’ of an Honest Discussion of Race

Posted By Jack Kerwick On May 23, 2014 @ frontpagemag.com

In reply to a recent article in which I disclosed some neglected facts concerning race and slavery, a reader inquired as to the point in unveiling them.  Before answering, let’s review some of the tidbits that I shared in the interest of that “honest discussion” of race that the Eric Holders of the world continually charge the rest of us with deferring:

(1) For centuries, millions of white European Christians were enslaved by Asian and African Muslims;

(2) The first slaves in Colonial America were white;

(3) Blacks were in America prior to slavery;

(4) A significant portion of African blacks who eventually became slaves in America were already Christian;

(5) These black slaves had been converted by the African blacks who sold them into bondage;

(6) During the antebellum period, there existed several thousand slave owners who were black;

(7) The first slave master in America was a black man, Anthony Johnson, an Angolan who had originally been sold into slavery by his fellow Africans to Arabs and who owned black and white servants.

There is still other historical “trivia” that defy the conventional narrative on race and slavery.

The civilized world, justly, expresses outrage over the abduction and enslavement of hundreds of young Nigerian schoolgirls at the hands of the African Islamic terrorist organization, Boko Haram.  But the stone-cold truth of the matter is that this sort of thing has been transpiring in Africa from time immemorial.  For millennia upon millennia, black Africans have seized upon and enslaved other black Africans.  And, as notes famed Islamic scholar, Bernard Lewis, among others, from the dawn of Islam, Muslims have abducted and enslaved non-Muslims—both black and white.

It is estimated that well over 100 million black Africans died over the span of 14 centuries as they were marched across the scalding hot sands of the Sahara Desert by those Arab raiders and traders intent upon reducing them to a life of bondage in foreign lands.

In spite of the tremendous number of blacks transported to the Middle East, the latter consists of relatively few blacks today. Why?  For one, African boys were frequently forced to undergo castration, a practice so barbaric that but a tiny percentage survived it.  Those who did, however, fetched a purchasing price several times that of their peers who were not made into eunuchs.

Another consideration accounting for the miniscule black population in the contemporary Middle East is that African girls were sold as concubines and into sex slavery to Arab masters.  This reflected the Islamic belief—most recently articulated by the leader of Boko Haram but first stated in the Koran and practiced by Muhammad—that girls can and should become wives once they are nine years of age.  Upon begetting their masters’ offspring, many eventually became assimilated into their families.

But, thirdly, the tragic fact is that many slaves were simply worked to death.

What follows are some other fascinating truths that are a “must” for any truly honest discussion of race and slavery:

While whites were by no means unique in practicing slavery, they were indeed unique insofar as they were the first people in all of history to have developed a moral revulsion against this age-old institution.  No one liked being abducted and enslaved by others.  But many of these same unfortunates wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same to others if the opportunity had arisen.  Whites, more specifically, English white Christians, personified and led by the conservative William Wilberforce, succeeded in prevailing upon the British Empire—the most economically and militarily powerful presence on the planet at that time—to abolish slavery, not just in England or even within the Empire, but in every area of the globe over which Britain could hope to exercise any of its influence.

More scandalously, the British met with much resistance from Arabs, Asians, and Africans.  Bernard Lewis relays an exchange between a British Consul General in Morocco and the Sultan of that land that typifies precisely the challenges to its campaign against slavery that the English had to surmount.  When the Sultan was asked what he had done to relegate to the dustbin of history the trade in human flesh, he “replied, in a letter expressing evident astonishment, that ‘the traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam…up to this day.’”  The Sultan added that he was oblivious to slavery’s “manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day.”

Incidentally, England’s success was a long time coming, for in some parts of the non-European world, places like India and Saudi Arabia, slavery didn’t become illegal until the 1940s and 1960s, respectively.

My reader who inquired as to the “point” in raising these facts at no time denies any of them.  Thus, he confirms what some of us have long suspected: in their tireless promotion of the conventional orthodoxy on race and slavery in America, neither he nor his ilk has ever been in the least bit interested in history for its own sake.  Rather, there has always been a “point” to their campaign, the advancement of a political agenda involving fictions concerning perpetual black suffering, white oppression, and white guilt.

The facts to which I allude here frustrate that agenda.

And this, by the way, is “the point” of mentioning them.
"You have enemies?  Good.  That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile


G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18535
    • View Profile
Reparations
« Reply #405 on: June 03, 2014, 05:25:52 AM »
Well, we did fight a Civil War.  750,000 dead at a time when there were roughly 32 or 33 million people in the US (22 in the North and 9 in the South roughly 4 mill of them slaves .   That would be around 7.5 million deaths in today's numbers 300 mill + 30 mill illegals:

***Thursday, May 29, 2014 FULL SHOW | HEADLINES | PREVIOUS: "A Peace Warrior": Poet, Civil Rights Activist...

The Case for Reparations: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Reckoning With U.S. Slavery & Institutional Racism

African-American History, Race in America

"We Shall Overcome": Remembering Folk Icon, Activist Pete Seeger in His Own Words & Songs
Jan 28, 2014 | Story

Bill Moyers on Dark Money, the Attack on Voting Rights & How Racism Stills Drives Our Politics
Jan 27, 2014 | Story

SPECIAL: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words
Jan 20, 2014 | Story

An explosive new cover story in the June issue of The Atlantic magazine by the famed essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates has rekindled a national discussion on reparations for American slavery and institutional racism. Coates explores how slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and federally backed housing policy systematically robbed African Americans of their possessions and prevented them from accruing inter-generational wealth. Much of the essay focuses on predatory lending schemes that bilked potential African-American homeowners, concluding: "Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole." Click here to watch Part 2 of this interview.":http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/30/part_2_ta_nehisi_coateson

AMY GOODMAN: "The case for reparations. 250 years of slavery. Nine years of Jim Crow. 60 years of separate but equal. 35 years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole." So begins an explosive new cover story in the June issue of the Atlantic magazine by the famed essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates. The article is being credited for rekindling a national discussion on reparations for American slavery and institutional racism.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the essay, Ta-Nehisi Coates exposes how slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and federally backed housing policy systematically robbed African Americans of their possessions and prevented them from accruing intergenerational wealth. Much of the piece focuses on predatory lending schemes that built potential African-American homeowners. This is a video that The Atlantic released a preview its new cover story, "The Case for Reparations."


*BILLY LAMAR BROOKS SR.: This area here represents the poorest of the poor in the city of Chicago.


MATTIE LEWIS: I’ve always wanted to own my own house, because I work for white people when I was in the South, and they had beautiful homes and I always said, one day I was going to have me one.


JACK MACNAMARA: White folks created the ghetto. It drives me crazy today even that we don’t admit that. This is the best example I can think of the institutional racism.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: To talk about "The Case for Reparations," we’re joined now by Ta-Nehisi Coates here in New York City. Welcome to Democracy Now! You start your article with one particular figure, Clyde Ross. Tell us his story and why you decided to begin with him.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Mr. Ross is really just emblematic of much of what has happened to African-Americans across the 20th century, and I emphasize 20th century. Mr. Ross was born in the Delta region of Mississippi. His family was not particularly poor, they actually quite prominent farmers. They had their land and virtually all of their possessions taken from them through a scheme around allegedly back taxes and were reduced to sharecropping. In the sharecropping system, there was no sort of assurances over what they might get versus what they actually picked. When I first met Mr. Ross, the first thing he said to me was he left Mississippi for Chicago because he was seeking the protection of the law. I didn’t quite understand what he meant by that. But, as he explained it to me, he said, listen, there were no black judges, no black prosecutors, no black police — basically, we had no law. We were outlaws and people could take from us whatever they wanted. That was very much his early life. He went to Chicago thinking things would be a little different. On the surface, they were. He managed to get a job, got married, had a decent life. He was basically looking for that one more emblem of the American middle class in the Eisenhower years, and that was the possession of a home. Unfortunately, due to government policy, Mr. Ross at that time, like most African-Americans, was unable to secure a loan due to policies or red-lining and deciding who deserved the loans and who doesn’t. There was a broad, broad consensus that African-Americans, for no other reason besides blatant racism, could not be responsible homeowners. Mr. Ross, as happens when people are pushed out of the legitimate loan market ended up in the illegitimate loan market and got caught up in the system of contract buying, which is essentially just a particularly onerous rent to own scheme for people looking to buy houses. Ended up purchasing a house, I believe at $27,000 he paid for it. The person who sold it to him had bought the house only six months before for $12,000. Mr. Ross later became an activist, helped formed the Contract Buyers League, and just fought on behalf of African American home owner on the west side of Chicago. I should add that it is estimated during this period that 85% of African-Americans looking to buy homes in Chicago bought through contract lending.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Let’s hear Clyde Ross and his onward speaking a in 1969 on behalf of the Contract Buyers League a coalition of black homeowners on Chicago’s South and West Sides from all of whom had been locked into the the same system of predatory lending.


CLYDE ROSS: They have cheated us out of more than money. We have been cheated out of the right to be human beings in a society. We have been cheated out of buying homes at a decent price. Now it’s time now, we got a chance. The Contract Buyers League has presented a chance for these people in this area to move out of this crippled society, to move up. Stand on your own two feet. Be human beings, fight for what you know is right. Fight.

AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates, can you talk about this example and others in this remarkable piece and how you then talk about the bill for reparations that has been introduced by John Conyers year after year in the house, and what reparations would actually look like?

TA-NEHISI COATES: What I try to establish in this piece is that there is a conventional way of talking about the relationship in America between the African-American community and the white community, and it is one that we are very comfortable with. I call it basically the lunch table view of the problem with racism in America is that black people want to sit at one table and white people want to sit at another lunch table. If we could just get black and white people to like each other, love each other, everything would be solved. In fact, even these terms that we’re using are inventions, and they’re inventions of racism. If you trace back the history back to 1619, a better way of describing the relationship between black and white people is one of plunder, the constant stealing, the taking from black people that extends from slavery up through Jim Crow policy. Slavery is obviously the stealing of people’s labor. In some cases the outright theft of people’s children, and the vending of people’s children, the taking of the black body for whatever profit you can wring from it, up through the Jim Crow South where you have a system of debt peonage, sharecropping — which really isn’t much different minus the actual selling of children you steal, exploiting labor and taking as much as you can from it. Into a system when you think about something like separate but equal. In the Civil Rights Movement, we traditionally picture colored only water fountains, white only restrooms. The thing people have to remember, if you take a state like Mississippi or anywhere in the deep South where you have a public university system, black people are paying into that. Black people are pledging their fealty to the state and yet, they aren’t getting the same return. This is theft. This is systemized. When we try to talk about the practicality of it, I spent 16,000 words almost just trying to actually make the case. At the end, what I come to is that the actionable thing right now is to support Representative John Conyers’ Bill H.R.40 for a study of what slavery has actually done, what the legacy of slavery has actually done to black people and what are remedies we might come up with. I did that not so much to dodge the question, but because I think to actually even sketch out what this might be would take another 16,000 words. We have to calculate what slavery was. We have to calculate what Jim Crow was. We have to calculate what we lost in terms of redlining and come to some sort of ostensible number and figure out whether we can actually pay it back. And if we can’t, what we might do in lieu of that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: When you mentioned that the systemic plunder that occurred, I mean, this is not ancient history.

TA-NEHISI COATES: No, no.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the most recent economic crisis in the country, there was this enormous reduction in the wealth of African-Americans in the country as a result of the housing crisis, yet the narrative portrays it as the housing crisis was caused — the conservative narrative is — by affirmative action policies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make it easier for African-Americans with low credit to get loans. Talk about that and this enormous wealth loss that occurred recently.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, the great sociologist Douglas Massey has a very interesting paper out specifically about the foreclosure crisis as it should be rightly called that happened very, very recently. One of the things he demonstrates in the paper is the thing that made this possible, segregation was a driver of this. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The African-American community is the most segregated community in the country, and what you have in that community is a population of people who have been traditionally cut off from wealth building opportunities. So, anxious to get wealth-building opportunities. If you are a banker and you are looking sell a scheme to somebody and rip somebody off, well there your marks are, right there, right in the same place. That’s essentially what happened.

AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates, I wanted to go to this issue of reparations and the examples you have seen, for example, after the Holocaust, Germany and the Jews. Can you talk about how those reparations took place?

TA-NEHISI COATES: It is very, very interesting. One of the reasons why I included that history, because as we know, reparations for African-Americans has all sorts of practical problems that we would have to deal with and fight about. I wanted to just demonstrate that even in the case of reparations to Israel, the one that’s most cited, this was not a sure thing. One thing that people often say about African-American reparations is, well, oh you’re just talking about savory, that was so long ago, as though if we were talking about a more proximate or more present case it would be much easier. But, in fact, the fact it was so close made it really, really hard for people, made it hard for some Israelis who did not want to feel like they were taking a buck off of folks’ mothers or brothers or sisters or grandmas who had just been killed. In Germany in fact, if we look at the public opinion surveys at the time, they were no more — Germans in the popular sense — were no more apt to take responsibility today than Americans are for slavery. So, it was a very, very difficult piece. What’s interesting and I think one of the lessons that can be learned from it, however, is the way it was structured. In fact, Germany did not just cut a check to Israel. What they actually did was they gave them vouchers. Those vouchers that were worth a certain amount of money, those vouchers had to be used with German companies. So, essentially, what they structured was a stimulus for West Germany while giving reparations to Israel at the same time. It gives us some clue that some sort of creative solutions we might have in the African-American community.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: One of the issues you also raise is that this reparations demand is not new in American history. You talk about Belinda Royall who in 1783 had been a slave for 50 years, became a freed woman. She petitioned the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for reparations.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Right, right, right, and I think people think of this as something that just sort of came up, you know 150 years — Black people — reparations is basically as old as this country is, and it’s not just, as you mention, Belinda Royall, people like that, but, it is also white people who understood at the time some great injury had been done. Many of the quaker meetings for instance — basically, they would excommunicate people who didn’t just free their slaves, but actually gave them something, you know, paid them reparations in return. We have the great quote from Timothy Dwight who was the president of Yale who said, to liberate these folks, to free these folks and to give them nothing would be to entail a curse upon them. Effectively, that is actually what happened upon African American and really, I would argue, upon the country at large. Many, many people of the Revolutionary generation, the generation that fought in the Revolutionary War, understood that slavery was somehow in contradiction to what America was saying it was. Many of those folks also at the very least gave land to African-Americans when they were liberated. Some of them educated them. But they understood to just cut somebody out into the wild, which is basically what happened to black people, would not be a good thing.

AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates, we want to thank you very much for being with us. We’re going to do part two right after the show and we will post it online at democracynow.org. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent of The Atlantic where he writes about culture, politics and social issues. He has just written a cover story called "The Case for Reparations." Ta-Nehisi Coates is also the author of the memoir "The Beautiful Struggle."***




G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
So, would the children of Vietnamese immigrants have to pay taxes for reparations ?

DougMacG

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18288
    • View Profile
So, would the children of Vietnamese immigrants have to pay taxes for reparations ?

Some African Americans are white from South Africa. Some are black and descendants of slave owners or slave traders.   How about somethi8ng to white northerners whose ancestors fought to free slaves.  Recipients of reparations should have a little more slave in their blood that Faux-cahantas Warren has of Cherokee.

What we should pay are welfare reparations.  That is what did the most harm to people still in the so-called underclass.  Pay the damages and then stop doing it.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile
And Gandhi shows how to deal with it , , ,
« Reply #409 on: June 05, 2014, 10:05:25 AM »


When Gandhi was studying law at the University College of London, a white 
professor, whose last name was Peters, disliked him intensely and always 
displayed prejudice and animosity towards him.

Also, because Gandhi never lowered his head when addressing him , as he 
expected.... there were always "arguments" and confrontations.

One day,  Mr. Peters was having lunch at the dining room of the University,
and Gandhi  came along with his tray and sat next to the professor. The
professor said, "Mr  Gandhi, you do not understand. A pig and a bird do not sit
together to eat." 
Gandhi looked at him as a parent would a rude child and calmly replied,
"You  do not worry professor. I'll fly away," and he went and sat at another
table. 

Mr. Peters, reddened with rage, decided to take revenge on the next test 
paper, but Gandhi responded brilliantly to all questions. Mr. Peters, unhappy
 and frustrated, asked him the following question. "Mr Gandhi, if you were 
walking down the street and found a package, and within was a bag of wisdom
and  another bag with a lot of money, which one would you take?"

Without  hesitating, Gandhi responded,"The one with the money, of course."

Mr.  Peters , smiling sarcastically said, "I, in your place, would have
taken the  wisdom, don't you think?"

Gandhi shrugged indifferently and  responded,"Each one takes what he
doesn't have."

Mr. Peters, by this time  was fit to be tied. So great was his anger that
he wrote on Gandhi's exam sheet  the word "idiot" and gave it to Gandhi.
Gandhi took the exam sheet and sat down  at his desk trying very hard to remain
calm while he contemplated his next move. 

A few minutes later, Gandhi got up, went to the professor and said to  him
in a dignified but sarcastically polite tone, "Mr. Peters, you signed the 
sheet, but you did not give me the grade."

******
Molon  Labe

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile
Race in the age of genomics
« Reply #410 on: June 08, 2014, 10:24:56 AM »
Race in the Age of Genomics
Uncomfortable truths must be dealt with, but we should stick to facts and call out rampant speculation.
Email
By David Altshuler And Henry Louis Gates Jr.
WSJ
June 6, 2014 6:47 p.m. ET

Writing just before the outbreak of the Civil War, the fugitive slave Harriet Jacobs paused in her passionate attack on the evils of slavery to question its underlying justification: the biological fixity of race and the view, then written into law and culture, that inborn characteristics make some human beings fit by nature to be held in bondage to other human beings. "And then who are Africans?" Jacobs asked. "Who can measure the amount of Anglo-Saxon blood coursing in the veins of American slaves?"

Jacobs, who was of mixed ancestry, could hardly have imagined that a century and a half later widely available technology would make it possible to answer her question. Genetic testing can determine the proportion of any individual's ancestors who lived in Africa, Europe, Asia or the Americas, and can identify specific genes that influence traits such as skin color or risk of disease. But Jacobs probably would not have been surprised to learn this science tool would be twisted for political ends and to justify the advantages of some groups over others.

Genomic technology has now made it possible to sequence an individual's genome for as little as $1,000, and to determine aspects of ancestry and genetic risk for under $100. Scientific journals and the media are filled with stories about the role of genetics in disease, making clear the role that DNA plays in shaping individual characteristics. As more becomes known about DNA, the impulse to view race strictly through the lens of genetic inheritance is gaining force.

The most prominent example is a new book by New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade, "A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History." The book starts by describing advances in genetic science, then proceeds to speculate about how human evolution and genetics shaped human culture and history. Such an approach takes square aim at the idea that race is a social construction—defining groups of people according to whatever criteria societies choose to impose—and encourages the framing of this matter as a conflict of political correctness vs. scientific truth.

That is an unfortunate development, because the rise of genomics just adds texture to an age-old question: What does "race" mean?
Enlarge Image

Getty Images

One challenge in answering the question is that different people have used the word in different ways across time. Yet the thread running through most racial theorizing since the 18th century—when Carl Linnaeus, Georges-Louis Leclerc (Count de Buffon) and Immanuel Kant first defined the races of man—has been the ranking of human groups into hierarchies. By the 19th century, the tenets had become crisply defined, with Europeans placing themselves as the top of the racial table. Race was claimed to be fixed by God or nature, and was used to justify economic, social and political power relationships, encompassing slavery, colonialism and anti-miscegenation laws.

Such thinking led, in the 20th century, to the justification of the Holocaust in the name of race science. It wasn't until the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and '60s that the linking of ancestry, biology and social hierarchy in the name of race was seriously challenged in the political sphere. As it happened, science would also come in on the side of shaking up received ideas about rigid racial boundaries.

We now know that biological variation among individual humans, while correlated with ancestry, stems from a variety of factors—genetic, environmental, cultural and behavioral. Widespread migration, urbanization and the relaxing of social boundaries over the past century has led to a vast number of people of mixed ancestry.

It is also true that, on average, people whose ancestors lived in the same place tend to be more closely related to one another than people whose ancestors lived in more distant locales. This shared ancestry can be detected based on differences in the frequencies of genetic variants across human populations. So, if the question of race is limited simply to whether our DNA contains information about where our ancestors lived, then genomic science can be said to inform thinking about race. But the history, legacy and meaning of race are more than biogeographic ancestry. The questions underlying the debate are the extent to which differences in characteristics among groups are determined by inheritance, can be shaped by environment and behavior, and are used to defend or attack social policies.

In recent years, we have started to learn about how specific genes contribute to variation in human traits. Commonly varying traits such as body weight and cholesterol levels and diseases like diabetes, cancer and schizophrenia are each influenced by a vast number of genes and by environmental factors. Nearly all genetic variants yet found to influence common human traits are either widely distributed across populations or vanishingly rare, existing only in a single individual or family.

A small proportion of genetic variants that influence diseases or traits are common in some places and rare in another, but these appear to be the exception and not the rule. Even where such genetic variants exist, they appear to explain only a small fraction of the variation in the trait within the population. Moreover, most differences in frequency of genetic variants have arisen by chance rather than natural selection. Even in special cases where natural selection can be evoked, differences track not with "racial" groupings but rather with the geographic range of an environmental exposure. For example, in the U.S., sickle-cell anemia is often considered a disease of African-Americans. But sickle cell is common in many places where malaria was once endemic, including Southern Europe and the Middle East.

In other words, attempting to draw conclusions about race from DNA evidence is a fool's errand. What is now becoming clear about genomics, as has occurred regarding race over the past few centuries, is the tendency of some to extrapolate from outlier examples to the general case, to cherry-pick examples that fit a thesis and ignore the rest, and to speculate on how biological observations might translate in the social and political sphere.

Genetics is becoming a Rorschach test, too often employed to support racial arguments or to debunk them. The fact that genetic data can be used to cluster people based on ancestry, and that ancestry is correlated with racial labels, tells us nothing new about how human characteristics are shaped by environment, or about the social meaning of "race." No data have yet documented a role for genetics in the social or political characteristics of human populations, other than the obvious fact that discrimination continues and is often based on skin color and surname, both of which are inherited.

We are all curious about our origins and the origin of our individual traits, and science is racing ahead to reveal these fascinating genetic stories. But we shouldn't let the current focus on DNA dominate the vital discussion of race and society. We must embrace the conversation being sparked by what genetics teaches us about human variability—and if someday we learn uncomfortable truths, we must deal with them. But in doing so we should stick to the facts, both historical and scientific, and call out rampant speculation and biased arguments wherever they may be found.

Dr. Altshuler is deputy director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and was a leader of the HapMap and 1000 Genomes projects on genetic variation. Mr. Gates is the director of Harvard's Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, co-founder of AfricanDNA.com and executive producer of the PBS program "Finding Your Roots.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18535
    • View Profile
Are there four other white guys on this board that would like to sign a petition to the Trademark Office describing how we cannot sleep eat or calm down over the name Cracker Barrel?

Why are not 50 Senators spending their time with this?   No time between raising cash I guess.  One absurd meaningless crusade is as much as they can handle.

DougMacG

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18288
    • View Profile
Are there four other white guys on this board that would like to sign a petition to the Trademark Office describing how we cannot sleep eat or calm down over the name Cracker Barrel?

Why are not 50 Senators spending their time with this?   No time between raising cash I guess.  One absurd meaningless crusade is as much as they can handle.

Very funny!  Yes, another agency without oversight.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile
I just went to washingtonredskins.com and bought two t-shirts.

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18535
    • View Profile
Jesse Jackson again addresses the wrong crowd.
« Reply #415 on: June 22, 2014, 10:47:36 AM »
Excuse me.  I meant the "Reverand" Jesse Jackson.
I guess he implies Yahoo is racist and keeping Blacks and Hispanics ( a phoney label unto itself - made clear by Marc Levin this past week) from its work force.   This shyster should be speaking to crowds of Blacks and Latinos motivating and encouraging and helping them do better not blaming Yahoo which is hiring the best candidates for their positions.  Yes JJ, Asians are kicking the asses out of Blacks and Latinos , and many of us Whites too.  Wake up you phoney corrupt shakedown artist:


Jessica Guynn, USATODAY 1:25 p.m. EDT June 18, 2014

Half of Yahoo's work force of more than 12,000 is white, 39% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 2% black and 4% undisclosed or more than one race, reflecting the stark lack of diversity in Silicon Valley.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Yahoo on Tuesday shared some basic demographic information on its work force, the latest Silicon Valley company to reveal the stark lack of diversity in its ranks.

For years technology companies have resisted reporting this information even though they collect it and report it to the federal government.

But Google late last month swung open the door by revealing the gender and racial breakdown of its work force, bringing to the fore an issue that Silicon Valley has long wanted to keep hidden from public view: that these work forces are predominantly white and male.

Google made the move after Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. stood up at its annual shareholder meeting to urge Google to disclose its numbers. He made a similar plea at the Facebook shareholder meeting. But the giant social network where Sheryl Sandberg is the No. 2 executive, said it preferred to share the data internally first.

Yahoo, which is also run by a woman and another former Google executive, Marissa Mayer, said 50% of its work force of more than 12,000 is white, 39% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 2% black and 4% undisclosed or more than one race.

Asians comprise 57% of Yahoo's tech workers while 35% of tech workers are white. About 37% of Yahoo workers are women and 23% of senior managers are women.

Last week, LinkedIn also disclosed its diversity figures, which were very similar to those released by Google and Yahoo. But LinkedIn also released the demographic report it provides to the federal government.

Only Intel, Cisco and a smattering of other companies routinely disclose their demographic reports to the federal government.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile
Good point
« Reply #416 on: June 25, 2014, 07:57:22 AM »
I like the way this connects the NAACP taking money from Donald Sterling and taking money from Teacher Unions to oppose school choice.

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/why-does-the-naacp-promote-policies-harmful-to-the-black-community/

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Good point
« Reply #417 on: June 25, 2014, 08:05:58 AM »
I like the way this connects the NAACP taking money from Donald Sterling and taking money from Teacher Unions to oppose school choice.

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/why-does-the-naacp-promote-policies-harmful-to-the-black-community/

They aren't going to work their way out of a job.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile

DougMacG

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18288
    • View Profile
Re: iCleveland Indians targetted
« Reply #419 on: June 25, 2014, 09:20:29 AM »

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Sports/2014/06/24/Native-American-Groups-to-Sue-Cleveland-Indians-over-Chief-Wahoo-Mascot

Will the Minn. Vikings be next?


No. It is still legal to portray white people of Scandinavian ancestry as ruthless savages.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile
Prager: Why the Left's preoccupation with the Redskins?
« Reply #420 on: July 01, 2014, 04:50:25 PM »


Why the Left’s Preoccupation with the Redskins?
Tuesday, Jul 1, 2014


Given how much evil there is in the world; given how many signs of moral, intellectual and economic decline there are here in America; and given the increasing irrelevance of America to world events, it is fair to ask why the American Left is preoccupied with the name Washington “Redskins.”

The Washington Redskins have been in existence for 82 years. For about 80 of those years, virtually no one, including the vast majority of American Indians, was troubled by the name.

Yet, it is now of such importance to the American left that the majority leader of the United States Senate has repeatedly demanded, from the floor of the United States Senate, that the team drop its name; 50 United States senators, all of them Democrats, have signed an open letter demanding the same; Sports Illustrated’s Peter King no longer uses the name; other leading sportswriters have adopted the same practice; and the president of the United States has weighed in on the issue.

The pressure is relentless. There is more concern in the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times — not to mention the rest of the left — with the Redskins than with Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups for investigation, one of its division heads pleading the Fifth Amendment before Congress, and the Agency’s losing all relevant emails and hard drives.

The angry will tell you that the name “Redskins” is profoundly offensive to American Indians and that they — the angry — are simply more sensitive to racial slurs than others.

This explanation is self-serving, but insufficient.

The great majority of American Indians understandably just don’t care. Like heterosexual AIDS and so many other crises, this has been entirely manufactured by the left. Since 1947, there has been a movie theater, the Redskins Theatre (with the same logo as the football team), in Anadarko, Oklahoma, a city whose population is divided evenly between Indians and whites, and which calls itself the “Indian Capital of the Nation.” Why, in 67 years, have the Indian populations of Anadarko and Oklahoma not changed this theater’s name?

Because the left hadn’t made it an issue. It’s not an Indian issue; it’s a left-wing issue.

And why is the left so preoccupied?

It isn’t because they are more morally sensitive to injustice. That is what the left believes about itself. But there are other reasons for the manufactured hysteria about the Redskins name. Here are some:

First, there is a rule in life: Those who do not confront the greatest evils will confront much lesser evils or simply manufacture alleged evils that they then confront. This has been a dominant characteristic of the Left for at least half a century. The greatest evils since World War II have been Communism and, since the demise of Communism in the Soviet Union and most other Communist countries, violent Islam — or, as it often called, Islamism. Islamism is the belief that Sharia (Islamic law) must be imposed wherever possible on a society, beginning, of course, with Muslim-majority countries. These Islamists are, as the British historian Andrew Roberts has noted, the fourth incarnation of fascism — first there was fascism, then Nazism, then communism, and now Islamism.

For many years, most of the Western left was supportive of communism, and after the 1960s, it was simply hostile to anti-communists. The left was far more concerned with attacking America than with attacking the Soviet Union. So, too, today, the left is far more concerned with attacking America — its alleged racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia and economic inequality — than with fighting Islamism.

Second, the corollary to the above is that those who do not fight the greatest evils invariably loathe those who do. The left hated American anti-communists much more than it hated communists. The left today hates traditional America much more than it hates traditional Islamists. The Redskins name is a symbol of that hated America.

Third, the left has huge nostalgia for the sixties. In the left’s eyes, virtually every one of its causes is as morally urgent as the civil rights battles on behalf of blacks (for which it falsely claims exclusive credit). Therefore getting the Redskins to change their name is a contemporary expression of working to give blacks full voting rights.

Fourth, aside from tearing down another American tradition, and showing how awful America was and remains, the motivating issue here is left-wing self-esteem. Remember it was the left that developed the self-esteem movement. And nobody feels as good about themselves as the left does when it finds another American moral flaw, especially when that flaw is another example of “intolerance,” and racism.

Fifth, and finally, the left is totalitarian at heart. Whenever possible, they seek control of others; and they love to throw their considerable weight around. The left-wing president does it so often that the Supreme Court has unanimously shot down his attempts on a dozen occasions. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, under huge pressure from leftists, just dropped conservative Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist George Will. Under pressure from left-wing professors and students, Brandeis and other universities dropped the few conservative speakers they had invited to this year’s commencement exercises.

Forcing the Redskins to do their will is just the left’s latest attempt to force its views on the vast majority of its fellow citizens. That’s why it’s worth fighting for the Redskins. Today it’s the Redskins,tomorrow it’s you.

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Apache blessings
« Reply #421 on: July 02, 2014, 03:28:47 AM »
http://www.army.mil/article/68557/

Scroll through the photos to view Apache elders blessing the Apache helos.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile
 :-D


G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: The Origins of the ice cream truck song
« Reply #424 on: July 17, 2014, 03:28:24 PM »

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18535
    • View Profile
Re: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.
« Reply #428 on: August 18, 2014, 05:51:37 AM »
 
"Some seriously stupid white people" - these guys must be masochists.   I notice they are all not physically imposing and do approach people larger than them and insult them to their faces.

The racial insults are offensive. 
The flatus ones are actually kind of funny but the kind of stuff a ten y. o. might do with a school mate - not to  some stranger on the street.

It is sad to think these young people think it funny to insult people of different race because of their skin color in this day and age.

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18535
    • View Profile
Re: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.
« Reply #430 on: August 19, 2014, 08:24:11 AM »
"Barack Obama has not yet said that Michael Brown looked like the son he never had–probably not because the physical resemblance is implausible, but because he has already used that line"

The article says it all.  As I noted, nor has Bamster said the *looters* look like the son he never had.

DougMacG

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18288
    • View Profile
Re: Race, Ferguson, MO
« Reply #431 on: August 19, 2014, 09:35:53 AM »
Strange, strange story.  Proves me right on one thing.  Look away from these breaking stories, unless there is something you can do to help, until the facts begin to come in.

More than a dozen witnesses - plus three autopsies - corroborate the police story (that I never heard in the media).  He was coming toward the officer.

But what was the uproar about?  Too many black getting shot by whites?  Really?  The odds are 15-fold higher in the other direction.  In fact, the fear of a black being shot is to be shot by another black.  That is tragic.

Did "protesters" really believe he was gunned down in broad daylight for no reason?  Did the officer have a history of that?  Did the police department have a history of that?  No.  But if that is what he had done, the man isn't any more dead the last 40 to be gunned down in Chicago.  But this one rose high in the news.  Partly because the news ran it wrong.  And partly because the protests are planned and orchestrated, not spontaneous.

One might ask, as I have done in the "America's Inner City" thread, what else is going wrong in these neighborhoods and with these people that is keeping them out of productive activities and responsibilities.  Comments?

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.
« Reply #432 on: August 19, 2014, 09:49:41 AM »
Anyone heard anything on the autopsy of  the US ambassador to Libya?

DougMacG

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18288
    • View Profile
Re: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.
« Reply #433 on: August 19, 2014, 09:55:10 AM »
Anyone heard anything on the autopsy of  the US ambassador to Libya?

Was he as valuable as this guy?

Maybe we can send Eric Holder there to get at the "truth".  And interrupt a golf trip to announce it.

I have long complained that equal protection under the law has no meaning with this group of ruling bullies or to anyone else on their side of the aisle.  They don't even have equal curiosity.

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Let's not pretend...
« Reply #434 on: August 19, 2014, 10:20:06 AM »
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sFomUgbqUFc

[youtube]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sFomUgbqUFc[/youtube]

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Trapped in the 60's
« Reply #435 on: August 20, 2014, 01:15:21 AM »

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18535
    • View Profile
Re: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.
« Reply #436 on: August 20, 2014, 05:27:19 AM »
Did anyone watch the CNN series on the sixties?  The leaders of our nation live breath (marijuana) and speak in the 60s.

Some call it the "greatest" decade.

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.
« Reply #437 on: August 20, 2014, 05:30:53 AM »
Did anyone watch the CNN series on the sixties?  The leaders of our nation live breath (marijuana) and speak in the 60s.

Some call it the "greatest" decade.

Not even employees of CNN watch CNN.



Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile
Jonathan Gentry: Until we change!
« Reply #440 on: August 20, 2014, 04:15:21 PM »
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10204325511367677&fref=nf


"Acting like Curious Georges on Red Bulls , , ,"
« Last Edit: August 20, 2014, 09:21:38 PM by Crafty_Dog »

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18535
    • View Profile
If true anyone care to wager whether will ever see an apology
« Reply #441 on: August 20, 2014, 05:28:22 PM »
from the race baiters.  Including POTH and the AG?   We know Sharpton will BS it into it is "bigger" then this.   I agree with Savage.  Why won't Gates fire this dirtball.:

Missouri cop was badly beaten before shooting Michael Brown, says source

By  Hollie McKay
·Published August 20, 2014·
FoxNews.com

Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Mo., police officer whose fatal shooting of Michael Brown touched off more than a week of demonstrations, suffered severe facial injuries, including an orbital (eye socket) fracture, and was nearly beaten unconscious by Brown moments before firing his gun, a source close to the department's top brass told FoxNews.com.

“The Assistant (Police) Chief took him to the hospital, his face all swollen on one side,” said the insider. “He was beaten very severely.”

According to the well-placed source, Wilson was coming off another case in the neighborhood on Aug. 9 when he ordered Michael Brown and his friend Dorain Johnson to stop walking in the middle of the road because they were obstructing traffic. However, the confrontation quickly escalated into physical violence, the source said.

“They ignored him and the officer started to get out of the car to tell them to move," the source said. "They shoved him right back in, that’s when Michael Brown leans in and starts beating Officer Wilson in the head and the face."

The source claims that there is "solid proof" that there was a struggle between Brown and Wilson for the policeman’s firearm, resulting in the gun going off – although it still remains unclear at this stage who pulled the trigger. Brown started to walk away according to the account, prompting Wilson to draw his gun and order him to freeze. Brown, the source said, raised his hands in the air, and turned around saying, "What, you're going to shoot me?"

At that point, the source told FoxNews.com, the 6-foot-4, 292-pound Brown charged Wilson, prompting the officer to fire at least six shots at him, including the fatal bullet that penetrated the top of Brown's skull, according to an independent autopsy conducted at the request of Brown's family.

Wilson suffered a fractured eye socket in the fracas, and was left dazed by the initial confrontation, the source said. He is now "traumatized, scared for his life and his family, injured and terrified" that a grand jury, which began hearing evidence on Wednesday, will "make some kind of example out of him," the source said.

The source also said the dashboard and body cameras, which might have recorded crucial evidence, had been ordered by Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson, but had only recently arrived and had not yet been deployed.

A spokesman for the St. Louis County Police Department, citing the ongoing investigation, declined late Wednesday to say whether Wilson required medical treatment following the altercation.

Edward Magee, spokesman for St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCullough, said the office will not disclose the nature of the evidence it will reveal to a grand jury.

"We'll present every piece of evidence we have, witness statements, et cetera, to the grand jury, and we do not release any evidence or talk about evidence on the case."

Nabil Khattar, CEO of 7Star Industries – which specializes in firearms training for law enforcement and special operations personnel – confirmed that police are typically instructed to use deadly force if in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily injury.

“You may engage a threat with enough force that is reasonably necessary to defend against that danger,” he said.

Wilson is a six-year veteran of the Ferguson police force department, and has no prior disciplinary infringements.

Massive protests have since taken over the St. Louis community, prompting Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon last Thursday to place Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson at the helm of security operations in an effort to calm ongoing tensions. The federal government is also investigating the death, and Attorney General Eric Holder has taken the lead – calling “the selective release of sensitive information” in the case “troubling.”

On Friday, Ferguson police released surveillance video showing Brown stealing cigars from a convenience store just before his death. Jackson came under intense criticism for disclosing the tape and a related police report as he also insisted that the alleged robbery and the encounter with Wilson were unrelated matters. Brown’s family, through their attorney, suggested the tape’s release was a strategic form of “character assassination.”

However, FoxNews.com’s source insisted that there was absolutely no spin agenda behind the tape’s release and that there were a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) media requests filed by media outlets seeking it. Tom Jackson is said to have waited on publicly releasing it, and did not want it shown until Brown’s grieving mother first had the chance to see it.

“He defied the FOIAs as long as he could,” noted the insider. “A powerful, ugly spin has completely ruined public discourse on this whole situation.”

Follow @holliesmckay www.twitter.com/holliesmckay

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile
Re: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.
« Reply #442 on: August 20, 2014, 09:24:11 PM »
6'4" and 292lbs?  That is a big man, especially if you have just had your face broken by him.

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.
« Reply #443 on: August 20, 2014, 10:26:27 PM »
6'4" and 292lbs?  That is a big man, especially if you have just had your face broken by him.


There is a legal concept called disparity of force.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/16/massad-ayoob-fist-vs-gun-disparity-of-force-and-the-law/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69460
    • View Profile

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Imagine if Rick Perry said this...
« Reply #446 on: August 22, 2014, 03:29:08 PM »
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/215763-reid-apologizes-for-asian-jokes

Anyone see this on the MSM? Amazing how having a D next to your name allows you so much protection.

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18535
    • View Profile
Re: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.
« Reply #447 on: August 22, 2014, 06:00:31 PM »
Or if a police officer in Fergusen said this.

It would headline news all over CNN and he would be forced to resign amidst national MSM upping it into a world wide scandal.


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18535
    • View Profile
Re: Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, "discrimination", & discrimination.
« Reply #449 on: August 23, 2014, 03:23:28 PM »
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/23/police-brutality-michael-brown_n_5700970.html

No actually I am tired of race baiting demonstrators.  I am tired of people not taking responsibility for their actions.  I am tired of bullies going around robbing store clerks and I am tired of juveniles who think they can assault police officers without repercussion.  And finally I am tired of parents and grandparents who seem unable to teach these children right from wrong. 

Shove around an older store clerk after robbing him, walk down the middle of a road which has a sidewalk, refuse to get onto the sidewalk, then assault a police officer and charge him all while he is supposedly walking to grannies house. 

Then have race baiters and the rest of the libs descend on the scene and make this into some sort of bigger issue than it is.

That is what I am tired of.