Showing posts with label Racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Racism. Show all posts
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Let us Halt the Meme - Virus of the Mind
Posted December 2009 - It is election year in the USA 2012:
When Racism Masquerades as Something Else...
By Carlos Dews
Don't let the virulent hatred of Obama's presidency - veiled in "policy differences" - fool you.
Just ask someone raised around bigotry. Carlos Dews is an author, a professor of English literature, and chairman of the Department of English Language and Literature at John Cabot University in Rome‘'The nigger show."
I first heard this expression used to describe the Obama administration during a visit to my hometown in East Texas during the early summer of 2009. I understood what the epithet meant: Our minds are made up, the president lacks legitimacy, and there is nothing he can do that we will support. I was not surprised to hear such a phrase.
I grew up in the 1960s during the ragged end of the Jim Crow era, where many of the books in my school library were stamped Colored School, meaning they had been brought to the white school when the town was forced to integrate the public school system. I recall my parents had instructed me, before my first day of elementary school, not to sit in a chair where a black child had sat. And I remember my sister joked that her yearbook, when it appeared at the end of her first year of integrated high school, was in "black and white."
The outward signs of racism of my home state have now disappeared, but racial hatred remains. My father and his friends still use the word nigger to refer to all black people, and the people of my hometown don't hesitate to spout their racist rhetoric to my face, assuming I agree with them. I hold my tongue for the sake of having continued access to this kind of truth. I learned long ago how not to accept the hatred I was being taught and how to survive not having done so. More recently, I realized that I also learned another lesson: how to recognize racism when it masquerades as something else.
More than 40 years after my first experiences with racism, I am thousands of miles away in Rome, but surrounded by ghosts. Last year, I received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a community program called the Big Read, which sponsors activities to encourage communities to come together to read and discuss a single book. I chose Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, in part because I thought that some of the most salient issues in the novel - racism, classism, xenophobia, the Jim Crow era - were perhaps relevant to an increasingly diverse, contemporary Italy.
That there is racism in Italy is obvious to anyone who pays attention to current affairs. In fact, during the first week of the Big Read Rome, a story in one of Italy's national newspapers detailed the experience of a Nigerian woman being called sporca nera (essentially, dirty nigger) by two women she asked to stop smoking on a Roman bus.
But I never imagined that consideration of the novel would prove so relevant to a country that had just elected its first black president. Ironically, until the election of Barack Obama, my discussions of racism in the United States seemed historical. I felt that with the passage of the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, the country had turned a corner, that the slow evaporation of overt racism was perhaps inevitable. Now, my personal experience of Southern racism feels current and all too familiar. A news story about the Big Read that appeared in La Repubblica on Sept. 20 (unaware that my grant was awarded during the Bush administration), presciently brought Rome, Obama, To Kill a Mockingbird, and racism together in its headline: "Obama brings antiracist book to Rome."
Jimmy Carter was lambasted for having recently explained that the vehemence with which many Americans resist Obama's presidency is an expression of racism. Carter was accused of fanning the flames of racial misunderstanding by labeling as "racist" what on the surface could be perceived as legitimate policy differences. Like Carter, as a white Southern man, I can see beyond the seemingly legitimate rhetoric to discern what is festering behind much of the opposition to Obama and to his administration's policy initiatives. I also have access, via the racist world from which I came, direct confirmation of the racial hatred toward Obama.
The veiled racism I sense in the United States today is couched, in public discourse at least, in terms that allow for plausible deniability of racist intent. And those who resist any policy initiative from the Obama administration engage in a scorched-earth policy that reminds me of the self-centered white flight, the abandonment of public schools, and the proliferation of private schools, that followed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate public schools. The very people, like my own rural, working-class family back in East Texas, who stand to gain from the efforts of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are, because of their racism, willing to oppose policies that would benefit them the most. Their racism outweighs their own self-interest.
Unfortunately, racists in the United States have learned one valuable lesson since the 1960s: They cannot express their racism directly. In public, they must veil their racial hatred behind policy differences. This obfuscation makes direct confrontation difficult. Anyone pointing out their racist motivations runs the risk of unfairly playing "the race card." But I know what members of my family mean when they say - as so many said during the town hall meetings in August - that they "want their country back." They want it back, safely, in the hands of someone like them, a white person. They feel that a black man has no right to be the president of their country.
During a phone conversation a few weeks after Obama's election, my father lamented that he and my mother might have to stop visiting the casinos in Shreveport, La.: Given Obama's election, "the niggers are already walking around like they own the place. They won't even give up their seats for white women anymore. I don't know what we're going to do with 'em."
My students often ask me how I managed to avoid accepting the lesson in racism offered by my family. From the time I was 4 or 5 years old - roughly the same age as Scout Finch, the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird - I recall knowing that I didn't agree with racism. More important, my paternal grandmother provided me with the encouragement that I could ignore what I was being taught. She provided me with the courage to resist.
My grandmother hoped that my father and his father represented the last generations of the type of Southern man that had shaped her life - virulently racist, prone to violence, proud of their ignorance, and self-defeatingly stubborn. It was a type of Southern man that she hoped and prayed I could avoid becoming.
However, my father and his father were not the last of their kind; their racial hatred has been passed on. My grandmother, if she were alive, would recognize the same tendencies among many of the people who shout down politicians and bring guns to public rallies. She would also see how the only change they have made is to replace overt racist epithets with more euphemistic language.
Rather than seeing my home state and its racist attitudes, slowly, over time, pulled in the direction of more acceptance, the country as a whole has become more like the South, the racial or cultural equivalent of what is called the Walmartization of American retail.
It might be easy to see literature as impotent in the face of the persistence and adaptability of racism. But I continue to believe in the transformative potential of literature and its ability to provide an alternative view of the world. And for children who are not lucky enough to have grandmothers like mine, I believe that books like To Kill a Mockingbird can provide inoculation against the virus that is racism.
________________________________
This article originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of Aspenia, the Italian journal published by the Aspen Foundation Italy.
How enlightened has American's become since 2009. Articles like this makes me feel sorry for white folks who have been infected by the virus of the mind of this sort. It is such a debilitating disease, robs people of their natural joy of living and being in a world of difference. Oh how sad. If those racists of days gone by could have seen through the crystal lens and see the future would they have been different. Now that we have seen the future of our foreparents let us make the future of our children a heck of a lot brighter, happier and free-er. Do not let then carry our burdens let us inject them with an antidote to take with them to the future and that antidote is LOVE
When Racism Masquerades as Something Else...
By Carlos Dews
Don't let the virulent hatred of Obama's presidency - veiled in "policy differences" - fool you.
Just ask someone raised around bigotry. Carlos Dews is an author, a professor of English literature, and chairman of the Department of English Language and Literature at John Cabot University in Rome‘'The nigger show."
I first heard this expression used to describe the Obama administration during a visit to my hometown in East Texas during the early summer of 2009. I understood what the epithet meant: Our minds are made up, the president lacks legitimacy, and there is nothing he can do that we will support. I was not surprised to hear such a phrase.
I grew up in the 1960s during the ragged end of the Jim Crow era, where many of the books in my school library were stamped Colored School, meaning they had been brought to the white school when the town was forced to integrate the public school system. I recall my parents had instructed me, before my first day of elementary school, not to sit in a chair where a black child had sat. And I remember my sister joked that her yearbook, when it appeared at the end of her first year of integrated high school, was in "black and white."
The outward signs of racism of my home state have now disappeared, but racial hatred remains. My father and his friends still use the word nigger to refer to all black people, and the people of my hometown don't hesitate to spout their racist rhetoric to my face, assuming I agree with them. I hold my tongue for the sake of having continued access to this kind of truth. I learned long ago how not to accept the hatred I was being taught and how to survive not having done so. More recently, I realized that I also learned another lesson: how to recognize racism when it masquerades as something else.
More than 40 years after my first experiences with racism, I am thousands of miles away in Rome, but surrounded by ghosts. Last year, I received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a community program called the Big Read, which sponsors activities to encourage communities to come together to read and discuss a single book. I chose Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, in part because I thought that some of the most salient issues in the novel - racism, classism, xenophobia, the Jim Crow era - were perhaps relevant to an increasingly diverse, contemporary Italy.
That there is racism in Italy is obvious to anyone who pays attention to current affairs. In fact, during the first week of the Big Read Rome, a story in one of Italy's national newspapers detailed the experience of a Nigerian woman being called sporca nera (essentially, dirty nigger) by two women she asked to stop smoking on a Roman bus.
But I never imagined that consideration of the novel would prove so relevant to a country that had just elected its first black president. Ironically, until the election of Barack Obama, my discussions of racism in the United States seemed historical. I felt that with the passage of the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, the country had turned a corner, that the slow evaporation of overt racism was perhaps inevitable. Now, my personal experience of Southern racism feels current and all too familiar. A news story about the Big Read that appeared in La Repubblica on Sept. 20 (unaware that my grant was awarded during the Bush administration), presciently brought Rome, Obama, To Kill a Mockingbird, and racism together in its headline: "Obama brings antiracist book to Rome."
Jimmy Carter was lambasted for having recently explained that the vehemence with which many Americans resist Obama's presidency is an expression of racism. Carter was accused of fanning the flames of racial misunderstanding by labeling as "racist" what on the surface could be perceived as legitimate policy differences. Like Carter, as a white Southern man, I can see beyond the seemingly legitimate rhetoric to discern what is festering behind much of the opposition to Obama and to his administration's policy initiatives. I also have access, via the racist world from which I came, direct confirmation of the racial hatred toward Obama.
The veiled racism I sense in the United States today is couched, in public discourse at least, in terms that allow for plausible deniability of racist intent. And those who resist any policy initiative from the Obama administration engage in a scorched-earth policy that reminds me of the self-centered white flight, the abandonment of public schools, and the proliferation of private schools, that followed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate public schools. The very people, like my own rural, working-class family back in East Texas, who stand to gain from the efforts of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are, because of their racism, willing to oppose policies that would benefit them the most. Their racism outweighs their own self-interest.
Unfortunately, racists in the United States have learned one valuable lesson since the 1960s: They cannot express their racism directly. In public, they must veil their racial hatred behind policy differences. This obfuscation makes direct confrontation difficult. Anyone pointing out their racist motivations runs the risk of unfairly playing "the race card." But I know what members of my family mean when they say - as so many said during the town hall meetings in August - that they "want their country back." They want it back, safely, in the hands of someone like them, a white person. They feel that a black man has no right to be the president of their country.
During a phone conversation a few weeks after Obama's election, my father lamented that he and my mother might have to stop visiting the casinos in Shreveport, La.: Given Obama's election, "the niggers are already walking around like they own the place. They won't even give up their seats for white women anymore. I don't know what we're going to do with 'em."
My students often ask me how I managed to avoid accepting the lesson in racism offered by my family. From the time I was 4 or 5 years old - roughly the same age as Scout Finch, the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird - I recall knowing that I didn't agree with racism. More important, my paternal grandmother provided me with the encouragement that I could ignore what I was being taught. She provided me with the courage to resist.
My grandmother hoped that my father and his father represented the last generations of the type of Southern man that had shaped her life - virulently racist, prone to violence, proud of their ignorance, and self-defeatingly stubborn. It was a type of Southern man that she hoped and prayed I could avoid becoming.
However, my father and his father were not the last of their kind; their racial hatred has been passed on. My grandmother, if she were alive, would recognize the same tendencies among many of the people who shout down politicians and bring guns to public rallies. She would also see how the only change they have made is to replace overt racist epithets with more euphemistic language.
Rather than seeing my home state and its racist attitudes, slowly, over time, pulled in the direction of more acceptance, the country as a whole has become more like the South, the racial or cultural equivalent of what is called the Walmartization of American retail.
It might be easy to see literature as impotent in the face of the persistence and adaptability of racism. But I continue to believe in the transformative potential of literature and its ability to provide an alternative view of the world. And for children who are not lucky enough to have grandmothers like mine, I believe that books like To Kill a Mockingbird can provide inoculation against the virus that is racism.
________________________________
This article originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of Aspenia, the Italian journal published by the Aspen Foundation Italy.
How enlightened has American's become since 2009. Articles like this makes me feel sorry for white folks who have been infected by the virus of the mind of this sort. It is such a debilitating disease, robs people of their natural joy of living and being in a world of difference. Oh how sad. If those racists of days gone by could have seen through the crystal lens and see the future would they have been different. Now that we have seen the future of our foreparents let us make the future of our children a heck of a lot brighter, happier and free-er. Do not let then carry our burdens let us inject them with an antidote to take with them to the future and that antidote is LOVE
Friday, February 20, 2009
JohnLegend's Open Letter to NY Times Racist Cartoon
Open Letter to the New York Post
Yesterday at 8:02pm
Dear Editor:
I'm trying to understand what possible motivation you may have had for publishing that vile cartoon depicting the shooting of the chimpanzee that went crazy. I guess you thought it would be funny to suggest that whomever was responsible for writing the Economic Recovery legislation must have the intelligence and judgment of a deranged, violent chimpanzee, and should be shot to protect the larger community. Really? Did it occur to you that this suggestion would imply a connection between President Barack Obama and the deranged chimpanzee? Did it occur to you that our President has been receiving death threats since early in his candidacy? Did it occur to you that blacks have historically been compared to various apes as a way of racist insult and mockery? Did you intend to invoke these painful themes when you printed the cartoon?
If that's not what you intended, then it was stupid and willfully ignorant of you not to connect these easily connectable dots. If it is what you intended, then you obviously wanted to be grossly provocative, racist and offensive to the sensibilities of most reasonable Americans. Either way, you should not have printed this cartoon, and the fact that you did is truly reprehensible. I can't imagine what possible justification you have for this. I've read your lame statement in response to the outrage you provoked. Shame on you for dodging the real issue and then using the letter as an opportunity to attack Rev. Sharpton. This is not about Rev. Sharpton. It's about the cartoon being blatantly racist and offensive.
I believe in freedom of speech, and you have every right to print what you want. But freedom of speech still comes with responsibilities and consequences. You are responsible for printing this cartoon, and I hope you experience some real consequences for it. I'm personally boycotting your paper and won't do any interviews with any of your reporters, and I encourage all of my colleagues in the entertainment business to do so as well. I implore your advertisers to seriously reconsider their business relationships with you as well.
You should print an apology in your paper acknowledging that this cartoon was ignorant, offensive and racist and should not have been printed.
I'm well aware of our country's history of racism and violence, but I truly believe we are better than this filth. As we attempt to rise above our difficult past and look toward a better future, we don't need the New York Post to resurrect the images of Jim Crow to deride the new administration and put black folks in our place. Please feel free to criticize and honestly evaluate our new President, but do so without the incendiary images and rhetoric.
Sincerely,
John Legend
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Re: Lyching party comment
Subject: Star Jones Reynolds responds to Bill O'Reilly/Fox News about Michelle Obama
Below is Star Jones' informed and provocative response to Bill O'Reilly's
comment about 'having a lynching party for Michelle Obama if he finds out
that she truly has no pride in her country.'
Bill O'Reilly said: 'I don't want to go on a lynching party against
Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how
the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels - that is a bad
country or a flawed nation, whatever - then that's legit. We'll track it
down.'
Star said: 'I'm sick to death of people like Fox News host, Bill
O'Reilly, and his ilk thinking that he can use a racial slur against a black
woman who could be the next First Lady of the United States, give a
half-assed apology and not be taken to task and called on his crap. What the
hell? If it's 'legit,' you're going to 'track it down?'
And then what do you plan to do? How dare this white man with a microphone
and the trust of the public think that in 2008, he can still put the words
'lynch and party' together in the same sentence with reference to a black
woman; in this case, Michelle Obama? I don't care how you 'spin it' in the
'no spin zone,' that statement in and of itself is racist, unacceptable and
inappropriate on every level.
O'Reilly claims his comments were taken out of context. Please don't
insult my intelligence while you're insulting me. I've read the comments and
heard them delivered in O'Reilly's own voice; and there is no right context
that exists. So, his insincere apology and 'out-of-context' excuse is not
going to cut it with me.
And just so we're clear, this has nothing to do with the 2008 presidential
election, me being a Democrat, him claiming to be Independent while talking
Republican, the liberal media or a conservative point of view. To the
contrary, this is about crossing a line in the sand that needs to be drawn
based on history, dignity, taste and truth.
Bill, I'm not sure of where you come from, but let me tell you what the
phrase 'lynching party' conjures up to me, a black woman born in North
Carolina .. Those words depict the image of a group of white men who are
angry with the state of their own lives getting together, drinking more than
they need to drink, lamenting how some black person has moved forward
(usually ahead of them in stature or dignity), and had the audacity to think
that they are equal. These same men for years, instead of looking at what
changes they should and could make in their own lives that might remove that
bitterness born of perceived privilege, these white men take all of that
resentment and anger and decide to get together and drag the closest black
person near them to their death by hanging them from a tree - usually after
violent beating, torturing and violating their human dignity. Check your
history books, because you don't need a masters or a law degree from Harvard
to know that is what constitutes a 'lynching party.'
Imagine, Michelle and Barack Obama having the audacity to think that they
have the right to the American dream, hopes, and ideals. O'Reilly must think
to himself: how dare they have the arrogance to think they can stand in
front of this nation, challenge the status quo and express the frustration
of millions? When this happens, the first thing that comes to mind for
O'Reilly and people like him is: 'it's time for a party.'
Not so fast...don't order the rope just yet.
Would O'Reilly ever in a million years use this phrase with reference to
Elizabeth Edwards, Cindy McCain or Judi Nathan? I mean, in all of the
statements and criticisms that were made about Judi Nathan, the one-time
mistress turned missus, of former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, I
never heard any talk of forming a lynch party because of something she said
or did.
So why is it that when you're referring to someone who's African-American
you must dig to a historical place of pain, agony and death to symbolize
your feelings? Lynching is not a joke to off-handedly throw around and it is
not a metaphor that has a place in political commentary; provocative or
otherwise. I admit that I come from a place of personal outrage here having
buried my 90 year-old grandfather last year. This proud, amazing
African-American man raised his family and lived through the time when he
had to use separate water fountains, ride in the back of a bus, take his
wife on a date to the 'colored section' of a movie theater, and avert his
eyes when a white woman walked down the street for fear of what a white man
and his cronies might do if they felt the urge to 'party'; don't tell me
that the phrase you chose, Mr. O'Reilly, was taken out of context.
To add insult to injury, O'Reilly tried to 'clarify' his statements, by
using the excuse that his comments were reminiscent of Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas' use of the term 'high-tech lynching' during his
confirmation hearing. I reject that analogy. You see Justice Thomas did mean
to bring up the image of lynching in its racist context. He was saying that
politics and the media were using a new technology to do to him what had
been done to black men for many years -- hang him.
Regardless of if you agreed with Justice Thomas' premise or not, if in
fact -- Bill O'Reilly was referencing it â?" the context becomes even
clearer.
What annoys me more than anything is that I get the feeling that one of
the reasons Bill O'Reilly made this statement, thinking he could get away
with it in the first place, and then followed it up with a lame apology in a
half-hearted attempt to smooth any ruffled feathers, is because he doesn't
think that black women will come out and go after him when he goes after us
Well, he's dead wrong. Be clear Bill O'Reilly: there will be no lynch party
for that black woman And this black woman assures you that if you come for
her, you come for all of us.'
-- Star Jones Reynolds
Below is Star Jones' informed and provocative response to Bill O'Reilly's
comment about 'having a lynching party for Michelle Obama if he finds out
that she truly has no pride in her country.'
Bill O'Reilly said: 'I don't want to go on a lynching party against
Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how
the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels - that is a bad
country or a flawed nation, whatever - then that's legit. We'll track it
down.'
Star said: 'I'm sick to death of people like Fox News host, Bill
O'Reilly, and his ilk thinking that he can use a racial slur against a black
woman who could be the next First Lady of the United States, give a
half-assed apology and not be taken to task and called on his crap. What the
hell? If it's 'legit,' you're going to 'track it down?'
And then what do you plan to do? How dare this white man with a microphone
and the trust of the public think that in 2008, he can still put the words
'lynch and party' together in the same sentence with reference to a black
woman; in this case, Michelle Obama? I don't care how you 'spin it' in the
'no spin zone,' that statement in and of itself is racist, unacceptable and
inappropriate on every level.
O'Reilly claims his comments were taken out of context. Please don't
insult my intelligence while you're insulting me. I've read the comments and
heard them delivered in O'Reilly's own voice; and there is no right context
that exists. So, his insincere apology and 'out-of-context' excuse is not
going to cut it with me.
And just so we're clear, this has nothing to do with the 2008 presidential
election, me being a Democrat, him claiming to be Independent while talking
Republican, the liberal media or a conservative point of view. To the
contrary, this is about crossing a line in the sand that needs to be drawn
based on history, dignity, taste and truth.
Bill, I'm not sure of where you come from, but let me tell you what the
phrase 'lynching party' conjures up to me, a black woman born in North
Carolina .. Those words depict the image of a group of white men who are
angry with the state of their own lives getting together, drinking more than
they need to drink, lamenting how some black person has moved forward
(usually ahead of them in stature or dignity), and had the audacity to think
that they are equal. These same men for years, instead of looking at what
changes they should and could make in their own lives that might remove that
bitterness born of perceived privilege, these white men take all of that
resentment and anger and decide to get together and drag the closest black
person near them to their death by hanging them from a tree - usually after
violent beating, torturing and violating their human dignity. Check your
history books, because you don't need a masters or a law degree from Harvard
to know that is what constitutes a 'lynching party.'
Imagine, Michelle and Barack Obama having the audacity to think that they
have the right to the American dream, hopes, and ideals. O'Reilly must think
to himself: how dare they have the arrogance to think they can stand in
front of this nation, challenge the status quo and express the frustration
of millions? When this happens, the first thing that comes to mind for
O'Reilly and people like him is: 'it's time for a party.'
Not so fast...don't order the rope just yet.
Would O'Reilly ever in a million years use this phrase with reference to
Elizabeth Edwards, Cindy McCain or Judi Nathan? I mean, in all of the
statements and criticisms that were made about Judi Nathan, the one-time
mistress turned missus, of former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, I
never heard any talk of forming a lynch party because of something she said
or did.
So why is it that when you're referring to someone who's African-American
you must dig to a historical place of pain, agony and death to symbolize
your feelings? Lynching is not a joke to off-handedly throw around and it is
not a metaphor that has a place in political commentary; provocative or
otherwise. I admit that I come from a place of personal outrage here having
buried my 90 year-old grandfather last year. This proud, amazing
African-American man raised his family and lived through the time when he
had to use separate water fountains, ride in the back of a bus, take his
wife on a date to the 'colored section' of a movie theater, and avert his
eyes when a white woman walked down the street for fear of what a white man
and his cronies might do if they felt the urge to 'party'; don't tell me
that the phrase you chose, Mr. O'Reilly, was taken out of context.
To add insult to injury, O'Reilly tried to 'clarify' his statements, by
using the excuse that his comments were reminiscent of Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas' use of the term 'high-tech lynching' during his
confirmation hearing. I reject that analogy. You see Justice Thomas did mean
to bring up the image of lynching in its racist context. He was saying that
politics and the media were using a new technology to do to him what had
been done to black men for many years -- hang him.
Regardless of if you agreed with Justice Thomas' premise or not, if in
fact -- Bill O'Reilly was referencing it â?" the context becomes even
clearer.
What annoys me more than anything is that I get the feeling that one of
the reasons Bill O'Reilly made this statement, thinking he could get away
with it in the first place, and then followed it up with a lame apology in a
half-hearted attempt to smooth any ruffled feathers, is because he doesn't
think that black women will come out and go after him when he goes after us
Well, he's dead wrong. Be clear Bill O'Reilly: there will be no lynch party
for that black woman And this black woman assures you that if you come for
her, you come for all of us.'
-- Star Jones Reynolds
Thursday, May 10, 2007
"Barack the Magic Negro - Not Funny"
Obama Speaks Out on 'Barack, the Magic Negro' Parody
By Aysha Hussain
© DiversityInc 2007 ®
Barack Obama is finally speaking out about the video parody that painted him as "the Magic Negro," dressed in a fake Ku Klux Klan outfit, and a black man suitable to whites.
In a recent interview with Paul W. Smith, host of WJR Radio in Detroit, Obama discussed his feelings about the video parody entitled "U Da Real Negro Al, Screw Obama." In the now infamous video, Paul Shanklin, a well-known conservative political satirist famous for his voice impersonations, imitates the voice of the Rev. Al Sharpton and portrays Obama as a socially accepted black man with the song "Barack, the Magic Negro," a twist on the 1963 hit song "Puff, the Magic Dragon" performed by Peter, Paul and Mary. (See also: 'Barack, the Magic Negro': Will Rush Limbaugh Get the Ax?) Obama appeared unconcerned about the video and its images, according to Political Punch, an ABC News blog site.
"You know, I have not heard it but I've heard of it," said Obama. "I confess that I don't listen to Rush on a daily basis. On the other hand, I'm not one of these people who takes myself so seriously that I get offended by every comment made about me ... what Rush does is entertainment, and although it's probably not something that I listen to much, I don't mind. I don't mind folks poking fun at me. That's part of the job." Listen to audio of the interview on WJR.com.
The video had been shown on Rush Limbaugh's web site (and then made its way to YouTube). Limbaugh also aired the audio portion on his radio show.
The radio station interviewed Rush Limbaugh the next day. He responded to Obama's reaction, expressing his satisfaction with the way Obama handled the questioning of the video. "This is a classy way to deal with it," said Limbaugh. "This is the way he should have dealt with it if anyone asked. It's the first time he's probably been asked about it, but this is the way for these guys to deal with it. Blow it off. Laugh it off. No big deal."
If Obama is seemingly unaffected by Limbaugh and others who continue to criticize him for not being "black" enough or having a so-called controversial last name, why then did Obama recently request a protection order through Secret Service because of potential racist threats? As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the protection came at his own request because of a rise in racist threats combined with increased crowd sizes. No specific threat has been reported yet. Obama's request is the earliest request for protection ever made by a presidential candidate.
By Aysha Hussain
© DiversityInc 2007 ®
Barack Obama is finally speaking out about the video parody that painted him as "the Magic Negro," dressed in a fake Ku Klux Klan outfit, and a black man suitable to whites.
In a recent interview with Paul W. Smith, host of WJR Radio in Detroit, Obama discussed his feelings about the video parody entitled "U Da Real Negro Al, Screw Obama." In the now infamous video, Paul Shanklin, a well-known conservative political satirist famous for his voice impersonations, imitates the voice of the Rev. Al Sharpton and portrays Obama as a socially accepted black man with the song "Barack, the Magic Negro," a twist on the 1963 hit song "Puff, the Magic Dragon" performed by Peter, Paul and Mary. (See also: 'Barack, the Magic Negro': Will Rush Limbaugh Get the Ax?) Obama appeared unconcerned about the video and its images, according to Political Punch, an ABC News blog site.
"You know, I have not heard it but I've heard of it," said Obama. "I confess that I don't listen to Rush on a daily basis. On the other hand, I'm not one of these people who takes myself so seriously that I get offended by every comment made about me ... what Rush does is entertainment, and although it's probably not something that I listen to much, I don't mind. I don't mind folks poking fun at me. That's part of the job." Listen to audio of the interview on WJR.com.
The video had been shown on Rush Limbaugh's web site (and then made its way to YouTube). Limbaugh also aired the audio portion on his radio show.
The radio station interviewed Rush Limbaugh the next day. He responded to Obama's reaction, expressing his satisfaction with the way Obama handled the questioning of the video. "This is a classy way to deal with it," said Limbaugh. "This is the way he should have dealt with it if anyone asked. It's the first time he's probably been asked about it, but this is the way for these guys to deal with it. Blow it off. Laugh it off. No big deal."
If Obama is seemingly unaffected by Limbaugh and others who continue to criticize him for not being "black" enough or having a so-called controversial last name, why then did Obama recently request a protection order through Secret Service because of potential racist threats? As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the protection came at his own request because of a rise in racist threats combined with increased crowd sizes. No specific threat has been reported yet. Obama's request is the earliest request for protection ever made by a presidential candidate.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
The Price of Being Black of any Shade in the World
April 9, 2007
Editorial Observer
For Obama, Estranged in a Strange Land, Aloha Had Its Limits
By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Reporters have been shuttling across the Pacific lately in search of the early chapters of Senator Barack Obama’s life story. Their guidebook is his memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” in which he describes his adolescence in Honolulu — where he was born and lived through high school, except for a few years in Indonesia — as a difficult time marked by drug use, disaffection and a painful search for identity.
The New York Times listed the ingredients of his young psyche as “racial confusion,” “feelings of alienation” and “disquietude.” The Los Angeles Times suggested that it was not just angst, but boiling angst.
Sounds oddly bleak, doesn’t it? Angst boils up in most people at some point in life, but if there were any place the son of a Kansan and a Kenyan could have fit in, wouldn’t it have been Hawaii? If there is a heaven, it probably looks a lot like Oahu, and the happy souls in it probably go around talking like our national spokesman for racial relaxation, Senator Obama.
So who was this brooding Barry, taking lessons in African-American swagger from a black high-school buddy, Ray, studying black nationalism and going to black parties on Army bases?
His struggle may seem strange in that setting, but the setting itself was strange. Hawaii, where I also grew up in the 1970’s, is famously mellow about race and ethnicity. It’s what you would expect from an ocean crossroads populated by Polynesians and early-20th-century plantation immigrants from across the globe. But tolerant is not the same as oblivious. Hawaii is acutely conscious of — you could say hung up on — racial, ethnic and cultural differences.
People in this motley state, less a melting pot than a tossed salad, invented a host of slang terms for themselves. A pidgin English field guide would list buk-buks, pakes, buddaheads, katonks, mokes, titas, popolos, yobos, blalahs, haoles and portagees. These labels can be affectionate or angry, though they are usually used neutrally or with just mild rudeness, often in the kinds of ethnic jokes that passed out of polite favor on the mainland long ago.
Hawaii’s fixation on social taxonomy is also seen in the local habit of linking identity to diploma. The first question locals ask one another is where they went to high school. Implicit in the answer are a lot of assumptions about ethnicity and class, whether the school is Punahou (elite white and Asian), Iolani (elite Japanese), Farrington (working-class Filipino and Samoan) or whatever.
There is, in this crowded paradise, a slot for everybody.Or almost everybody.
For Mr. Obama, fitting in at Punahou could have been hard, given its reputation as a cliquish school dominated since missionary days by the rich white people who founded it. Mr. Obama, a scholarship student, wasn’t rich and didn’t look white.
Beyond that, his parents — University of Hawaii graduate students — and his Kansas grandparents, who helped raise him after his father returned to Africa, had no roots in the local culture. He lived in a state that, then as now, had a minuscule African-American population. He seems to have been surrounded by people who knew just enough about black America to be stupidly insensitive, and his family couldn’t help him.
“I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle,” he wrote. “I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.”
In one sense, he wasn’t alone. Being black isn’t common in Hawaii, but being biracial is. There’s a Hawaiian word for it — hapa, or half — that traditionally refers to combinations of white with Hawaiian or Asian, though many use it for any racial blend. Being hapa is hardly cause for discrimination in mixed-up Hawaii, but it can be problematic. Dwelling on it can tie a person in knots. It can be disorienting to feel forced to choose between identities when you are both and neither. It can be infuriating to be stared at by people trying to puzzle out what you are.
Vexations like these, felt by growing numbers of multiracial Americans, have helped to spur a blossoming of hapa awareness on the mainland. People are trying out the idea of a hapa culture that is greater than the sum of its parts. There are hapa conferences, hapa college clubs and hapa Web sites. More and more people consider the pursuit of hapaness to be the answer to the paradox of bifurcation. Certainly, it is powerful evidence of the irrepressible yearning for identity. So is Mr. Obama’s story, his restless searching for a solace that Hawaii could not offer.
I asked him recently about that search. He described a long process of pulling together the parts of his life before finding a skin he could live in. The multitudes that he contains — Kenya, Kansas, Hawaii, Indonesia, Harvard, Illinois — could have been arranged in infinite ways. But he settled in long ago as an African-American in Chicago, a professor turned politician in one of the most segregated cities in America.
The first thing he asked me was what high school I had gone to.
Editorial Observer
For Obama, Estranged in a Strange Land, Aloha Had Its Limits
By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Reporters have been shuttling across the Pacific lately in search of the early chapters of Senator Barack Obama’s life story. Their guidebook is his memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” in which he describes his adolescence in Honolulu — where he was born and lived through high school, except for a few years in Indonesia — as a difficult time marked by drug use, disaffection and a painful search for identity.
The New York Times listed the ingredients of his young psyche as “racial confusion,” “feelings of alienation” and “disquietude.” The Los Angeles Times suggested that it was not just angst, but boiling angst.
Sounds oddly bleak, doesn’t it? Angst boils up in most people at some point in life, but if there were any place the son of a Kansan and a Kenyan could have fit in, wouldn’t it have been Hawaii? If there is a heaven, it probably looks a lot like Oahu, and the happy souls in it probably go around talking like our national spokesman for racial relaxation, Senator Obama.
So who was this brooding Barry, taking lessons in African-American swagger from a black high-school buddy, Ray, studying black nationalism and going to black parties on Army bases?
His struggle may seem strange in that setting, but the setting itself was strange. Hawaii, where I also grew up in the 1970’s, is famously mellow about race and ethnicity. It’s what you would expect from an ocean crossroads populated by Polynesians and early-20th-century plantation immigrants from across the globe. But tolerant is not the same as oblivious. Hawaii is acutely conscious of — you could say hung up on — racial, ethnic and cultural differences.
People in this motley state, less a melting pot than a tossed salad, invented a host of slang terms for themselves. A pidgin English field guide would list buk-buks, pakes, buddaheads, katonks, mokes, titas, popolos, yobos, blalahs, haoles and portagees. These labels can be affectionate or angry, though they are usually used neutrally or with just mild rudeness, often in the kinds of ethnic jokes that passed out of polite favor on the mainland long ago.
Hawaii’s fixation on social taxonomy is also seen in the local habit of linking identity to diploma. The first question locals ask one another is where they went to high school. Implicit in the answer are a lot of assumptions about ethnicity and class, whether the school is Punahou (elite white and Asian), Iolani (elite Japanese), Farrington (working-class Filipino and Samoan) or whatever.
There is, in this crowded paradise, a slot for everybody.Or almost everybody.
For Mr. Obama, fitting in at Punahou could have been hard, given its reputation as a cliquish school dominated since missionary days by the rich white people who founded it. Mr. Obama, a scholarship student, wasn’t rich and didn’t look white.
Beyond that, his parents — University of Hawaii graduate students — and his Kansas grandparents, who helped raise him after his father returned to Africa, had no roots in the local culture. He lived in a state that, then as now, had a minuscule African-American population. He seems to have been surrounded by people who knew just enough about black America to be stupidly insensitive, and his family couldn’t help him.
“I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle,” he wrote. “I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.”
In one sense, he wasn’t alone. Being black isn’t common in Hawaii, but being biracial is. There’s a Hawaiian word for it — hapa, or half — that traditionally refers to combinations of white with Hawaiian or Asian, though many use it for any racial blend. Being hapa is hardly cause for discrimination in mixed-up Hawaii, but it can be problematic. Dwelling on it can tie a person in knots. It can be disorienting to feel forced to choose between identities when you are both and neither. It can be infuriating to be stared at by people trying to puzzle out what you are.
Vexations like these, felt by growing numbers of multiracial Americans, have helped to spur a blossoming of hapa awareness on the mainland. People are trying out the idea of a hapa culture that is greater than the sum of its parts. There are hapa conferences, hapa college clubs and hapa Web sites. More and more people consider the pursuit of hapaness to be the answer to the paradox of bifurcation. Certainly, it is powerful evidence of the irrepressible yearning for identity. So is Mr. Obama’s story, his restless searching for a solace that Hawaii could not offer.
I asked him recently about that search. He described a long process of pulling together the parts of his life before finding a skin he could live in. The multitudes that he contains — Kenya, Kansas, Hawaii, Indonesia, Harvard, Illinois — could have been arranged in infinite ways. But he settled in long ago as an African-American in Chicago, a professor turned politician in one of the most segregated cities in America.
The first thing he asked me was what high school I had gone to.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Can Obama Win In spite of his Race
Can Barack Obama Become President?
By Allan Hunt Badiner, AlterNet
Posted on March 13, 2007,
The man with an increasingly good chance of becoming America's first black president officially announced his candidacy on a cold Springfield morning just as newly deceased Anna Nicole Smith and newly shorn Brittney Spears inflicted serious competition for TV viewers.
Nevertheless Barack Obama, the 45-year-old son of Kenya and Kansas, has penetrated the media's foggy obsession with tabloid stars and has become, in short order, a celebrity himself. He has jump-started interest in the presidential race and zinged from something like 12 percent name recognition to being a close second for the Democratic nomination. With the campaign's starting gun only just fired, Obama is already perceived as a powerful threat to Hillary Clinton's well-funded political juggernaut and John Edwards' carefully planned strategies, and has emerged as the presumptive speaker for the conscience of the country in the 2008 presidential sweepstakes.
Many are excited just to be passionate again about a presidential campaign, even if it turns out be the classic brief dance of an underdog. But with lightning swiftness, an Obama nomination seems tantalizingly possible. Even sitting presidents can't always raise the $1.3 million taken in by the Obama campaign during a single fundraising event in Los Angeles on Feb. 20 sponsored by Hollywood moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeff Katzenberg and David Geffen.
The field reports on Obama are also impressive: He recently addressed the largest ever pre-presidential-primary crowds in New Hampshire, Iowa, Ohio and Texas and has been endorsed by Iowa's attorney general and state treasurer -- pragmatic characters practiced at backing obvious winners in their state. The Iowa caucuses early next year will be among the nation's first electoral tests of presidential candidates. Inside the offices of MoveOn.org, there is agreement that Obama is far and away the favorite among its members and has been for the past six months. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has endorsed him, saying that Obama "personifies the future of Democratic leadership."
What do we know about this first-term U.S. senator who wants to be our president? The Obama resume is impressive: Harvard Law School graduate and president of the Harvard Law Review, civil rights lawyer, constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, author of two best-selling books, grass-roots organizer and Illinois senator for eight years, where his style has been described as methodical, inclusive and pragmatic. Factors such as his stalwart opposition to the Iraq war, a growing appreciation for his self-effacing charm and crossover appeal, and Americans' desire for fresh and future-focused leadership all seem to bode well for Obama's continuing momentum.
Race in the race
So now that Obama has burst on the scene as a real contender, the question becomes: Is America ready to elect a black man to its presidency?
For sure an Obama nomination would be a powerful update on the black condition in America and signal wide acceptance of the enormous diversity of its population. Yet, on the other hand there are pockets of resistance and reluctance in the African-American community to get on the Obama bandwagon. Some question Obama being the product of a mixed marriage -- his mother is white, his father from Kenya. Obama's origins were not the slave experience shared by many African-Americans, especially its senior political class. But that may not have as much impact in the rank and file, and among younger African-Americans.
Meanwhile Bill Clinton has been by far the most popular president among black voters, and Hillary Clinton has her share of their support. The initial reluctance among black voters should have been no surprise -- the Clintons have earned their close friendship with African-Americans. But as the viability of Obama's run becomes more apparent, a dramatic growth of his support in black America is to be expected.
Surely Obama's ideas and positions will play well in black communities: universal healthcare, technological improvements for poor and rural communities, reform for the political system, energy independence and ending the war in Iraq. The fact that racial minorities make up a disproportionate percentage of the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan is not lost on people of color in this country.
For many, Sen. Obama represents a modern and positive image of blackness. He is a worldly, well-educated man married to a well-educated professional black woman. Another way that the race issue may ultimately work in Obama's favor is that it helps force those who are loudly critical to base their stand on his record and positions and steer clear of personal attacks that could be construed as racist.
But what about the election? The voting booth provides ample coverage for secret racists. Yet a newly announced Gallup poll found that 94 percent of Americans would vote for their party's African-American nominee for president before their party's woman nominee. And it's safe to assume that the same people who would reject Obama on the basis of his skin color would probably reject his progressive views even if he were white.
The votes he may "lose" due to race alone are votes he would not have had anyway. With his early and impressive following among young people, some experts are predicting an unprecedented increase of eligible young voters coming to the polls to support Obama in 2008.
Other well-known figures have paved the way for Obama's run. The first black woman to be elected to Congress, Shirley Chisholm, ran for president in 1972 and established the importance of the black vote. In 1984 and 1988, Jesse Jackson was taken seriously as a possible presidential candidate and won more states in the 1988 primaries than anyone thought possible. Throughout the 1990s former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was riding a wave of success after the first Gulf War, was widely lauded as presidential material. Had he run in 1996, he may well have won. As with Obama, his racially mixed background was seen as a plus. Finally, in 2004 both Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton ran full-blown campaigns for president.
It is unlikely that there will be a moment during the nomination process when everyone suddenly decides that the time is right for a black president. If history is any guide, these cultural shifts take on a life of their own, and only after the fact does everyone agrees it was time.
The experience paradox
In 2008, given the disastrous state of political affairs in America and its standing in the world community, the candidates with the most Washington experience appear to be headed for trouble in some popularity surveys. Polling consistently shows that many Americans want a fresh approach, a leader who is not representative of the system that has brought us to the crisis point. "Most voters want something new," says Democratic consultant Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000. "They want less D.C. experience and more good values."
Nevertheless, Obama does have significant experience under his belt -- eight years in the Illinois state Senate and a seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his first two years in the Senate. Senator Obama has been notably productive in Washington -- he's the primary sponsor of 152 bills and resolutions, including three Senate resolutions, and 14 bills that he co-sponsored have become law. He introduced the Spent Nuclear Fuel Tracking and Accountability Act, which works to deter nuclear proliferation; the Drinking Water Security Act of 2005, which reduces pollutants in our water; and the Lane Evans Veterans Health and Benefits Improvement Act of 2006, which secures health benefits for our veterans.
Obama's perspective on the topic of experience is instructive: "Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have an awful lot of experience, yet they have engineered what I think is one of the biggest foreign policy failures in our recent history. So I would say the most important things are judgment and vision ... and passion for the American people and what their hopes and dreams are." He is on record as believing that given a certain necessary level of experience, sound judgment is always more important than time on the job.
Can Hillary hold on?
Many Democrats agree that their '08 candidate should be a unifier, someone who can give voice to the issues Americans agree on and reach across independents and some Republicans for votes. Hillary Clinton, despite her high name recognition, acumen for raising money, political markers transferred from Bill and popularity among the Democratic elite, will have to prove that she is not the polarizing figure that many of rank-and-file Democrats worry about. Intelligent and articulate, she nevertheless lacks the ability to connect with people that made Bill so magnetic. To quote Bill Mahar, "She's the wrong Clinton."
Others fear that once Hillary is a candidate, Republicans will relentlessly dredge up vivid reminders of the more tawdry aspects of the Clinton presidency: the Monica Lewinsky revelations, Jennifer Flowers and the impeachment attempt. Many Americans were sympathetic to Hillary throughout that drama, but it is a fair guess that voters do not want to be reminded of it daily.
There is also a long history of Hillary being the prime target of reactionary talk show hosts throughout the American South and West, who railed on nightly about Hillary and invited listeners to call in and join in the demonization of the first lady when Bill was president. The right-wing conspiracy that Hillary decried did in fact exist, and she was their target. Although attacks on Hillary were essentially groundless, almost half of the American electorate go into this election season with a negative perception of Hillary Clinton.
Finally, Hillary's refusal to "admit she made a mistake" when voting on the Iraq war is regarded by many as a strategic blunder and stands in contrast to Obama's clarity about the need to end the occupation of Iraq quickly.
Obama on record
"I think one of the things about national politics that is so exhausting is this attempt to airbrush your life," Sen. Obama has said. "This is who I am, and this is where I've come from." Some critics have called Obama the Rorschach candidate, loved not so much for his positions but for his appealing persona. The instant rock-star status he enjoys, and the media frenzy he generates, have the downside of creating the impression that he is heavy on charm and light on ideas. Yet in his new book, "The Audacity of Hope," Obama spells out his platform in detail. His stands on the most complex and divisive issues of the day, from gay marriage to the Middle East to the death penalty, are fully explained in 384 well-written pages that the average reader can comprehend.
The book also recounts Obama's position on the Iraq war. In 2002, he strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq because he felt it was an ill-conceived venture that would "require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undermined cost with undetermined consequences." He warned that an invasion without strong international support could "drain our military, distract us from the war with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and further destabilize the Middle East." Currently, Obama takes issue with those who feel the problem was one of strategy or implementation: "I have long believed it has also been a failure of conception, and that the rationale behind the war itself was misguided." In January 2007, Sen. Obama introduced legislation that would commence redeployment of troops no later than May 1 of the same year.
But with friends like democrats...
Universal healthcare, energy independence, action on global warming, more affordable education and a phased withdrawal from Iraq all will have a clear appeal to progressives. But one should never underestimate the ability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
A sizable percentage of the progressive sector may not be happy with any candidate who does not agree with them on every issue. They have already shown a surprising lack of concern for the political and practical consequences of their inflexibility. The following that Dennis Kucinich, and Ralph Nader enjoyed are cases in point. Intractable liberal voters are like window shoppers who feel most comfortable going home empty-handed and later whining that they couldn't find something they liked. They may have been as responsible for reelecting Bush as his hard-core conservative base.
Has America under George W. Bush dropped into an abyss of moral and economic bankruptcy? Sadly, this is what our nation now represents to the rest of the world. Perhaps the most groundbreaking aspect of an Obama presidency would be the message it sends globally: The post-Bush era of American governance has arrived.
If candidate Obama's challenges are daunting, his overcoming those challenges would be all the more significant for many around the globe. An Obama presidency could vault him and all of us into a new era, where sane and compassionate policies are championed by a more united and rational citizenry. Still, world popularity doesn't elect U.S. presidents. Will Americans be driven primarily by their fear or their hope? The possibility of a new president named Barack Hussein Obama hangs in the balance.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Credit Rating Hurts Blacks & Latinos
Study says credit scores used against minorities
The Denver Business Journal - January 9, 2007by Renee McGawDenver Business Journal
Credit scores are used to deny African-Americans and other minorities access to credit and financial services, according to a study conducted by the University of Denver Center for African American Policy and released Tuesday by the National Black Caucus of State Legislators.
"Our research found that, while banks site branches in minority and lower-credit-score communities, they do not provide the same access to their services as those in higher-credit-score communities," Mississippi state Rep. Mary Coleman, immediate past president of the caucus, said in a statement. "And even worse, there is often no way for those trapped with sub-prime credit scores to establish a prime credit score -- which would enable wealth creation."
Key points of the study, which was conducted by Rickie Keys of DU's Center for African American Policy, included:
Credit scores are more closely correlated to lack of access to financial services for unbanked and underbanked communities than other factors, such as race, income and ethnicity.
Credit scores today are used for an increasing array of basic necessities, such as determining eligibility to obtain employment, rent a home, obtain insurance and open accounts for checking accounts, as well as basic utilities like telephone service or electricity.
The more than 130 million Americans lacking prime credit scores (also the unbanked and underbanked) are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.
Although banks may be located in areas with high concentrations of low Fair Issac & Co. (FICO) scores, they do not provide proportional access to their services in these underserved areas, compared with higher-FICO-score, higher-income communities.
Researchers constructed maps overlaying FICO scores with race, income, employment, ethnicity and other variables with the availability of traditional banking and fringe financial institutions in various communities. Data came from a variety of sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Credit Union National Association, state banking agencies and telephone directories, officials said.
"Having identified the problem, we found it especially disconcerting that there is no endorsed method by which consumers can move from a sub-prime credit score to a prime credit score," said Colorado Senate President Pro Tem Peter Groff, D-Denver, who is also executive director of the University of Denver Center for African American Policy. "It's a Catch-22. To build a prime score, banks require consumers to demonstrate positive credit; but banks won't extend credit to these consumers without a prime credit score, leaving many trapped.
"Exacerbating the problem is that consumers' on-time payment histories for things like rent, utilities, and non-traditional loans are not reported to credit bureaus," Groff said. "They're responsible borrowers, but they are being prevented from graduating to a prime credit score, and thus from gaining access to the financial services and products needed to establish wealth."
The Denver Business Journal - January 9, 2007by Renee McGawDenver Business Journal
Credit scores are used to deny African-Americans and other minorities access to credit and financial services, according to a study conducted by the University of Denver Center for African American Policy and released Tuesday by the National Black Caucus of State Legislators.
"Our research found that, while banks site branches in minority and lower-credit-score communities, they do not provide the same access to their services as those in higher-credit-score communities," Mississippi state Rep. Mary Coleman, immediate past president of the caucus, said in a statement. "And even worse, there is often no way for those trapped with sub-prime credit scores to establish a prime credit score -- which would enable wealth creation."
Key points of the study, which was conducted by Rickie Keys of DU's Center for African American Policy, included:
Credit scores are more closely correlated to lack of access to financial services for unbanked and underbanked communities than other factors, such as race, income and ethnicity.
Credit scores today are used for an increasing array of basic necessities, such as determining eligibility to obtain employment, rent a home, obtain insurance and open accounts for checking accounts, as well as basic utilities like telephone service or electricity.
The more than 130 million Americans lacking prime credit scores (also the unbanked and underbanked) are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.
Although banks may be located in areas with high concentrations of low Fair Issac & Co. (FICO) scores, they do not provide proportional access to their services in these underserved areas, compared with higher-FICO-score, higher-income communities.
Researchers constructed maps overlaying FICO scores with race, income, employment, ethnicity and other variables with the availability of traditional banking and fringe financial institutions in various communities. Data came from a variety of sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Credit Union National Association, state banking agencies and telephone directories, officials said.
"Having identified the problem, we found it especially disconcerting that there is no endorsed method by which consumers can move from a sub-prime credit score to a prime credit score," said Colorado Senate President Pro Tem Peter Groff, D-Denver, who is also executive director of the University of Denver Center for African American Policy. "It's a Catch-22. To build a prime score, banks require consumers to demonstrate positive credit; but banks won't extend credit to these consumers without a prime credit score, leaving many trapped.
"Exacerbating the problem is that consumers' on-time payment histories for things like rent, utilities, and non-traditional loans are not reported to credit bureaus," Groff said. "They're responsible borrowers, but they are being prevented from graduating to a prime credit score, and thus from gaining access to the financial services and products needed to establish wealth."
Reality race harassment handled successfully
Jan 29, 2007 8:22 am US/Central
(AP) LONDON Indian actress Shilpa Shetty won the British reality TV show "Celebrity Big Brother" Sunday after enduring alleged racial bullying that triggered protests in India and sparked a race relations debate in Britain.
The 31-year-old Indian star won the public's support after a fellow contestant hurled racially tinged insults at her in an episode that led to a record 40,000 complaints to media regulators.
"It's truly been a roller coaster ride," Shetty said. "The highs, the lows, each one has taught me so much."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Treasury chief Gordon Brown and Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram have commented on the incident, which South Asian and anti-racist groups said revealed the face of racism in Britain.
Shetty received 63 percent of viewers' telephone votes Sunday, host Davina McCall said. She did not give the number of votes cast.
Contestants on the show are locked in a house for about three weeks and are evicted one by one until someone is chosen as the winner of a cash prize for charity.
Shetty defended fellow contestant Jade Goody, who repeatedly reduced the Indian actress to tears by shouting at her, calling her cooking untrustworthy, mocking her accent and calling her "Shilpa Poppadum."
Goody became famous after appearing on the non-celebrity version of "Big Brother" and has earned an estimated $16 million fortune through television and magazine appearances, an autobiography and an exercise video — a livelihood endangered by her behavior in the house.
"She is a little aggressive and hot tempered, but she's not a racist," Shetty said.
"I don't want people here feeling they welcomed an Indian here and she created so much trouble. I want to thank the whole of Great Britain for giving me this fantastic opportunity to make my whole country proud."
Shetty has hired British celebrity publicist Max Clifford to help develop her career in Britain. He estimated Sunday that she could earn $2 million in the next year from new contracts after appearing on the show.
"It's been a huge success for her because of how she's handled these nasty attacks with dignity," Clifford said on British Broadcasting Corp. television.
The program made front-page news for days in both Britain and India, where the show's producers were burned in effigy. More than 8.8 million people tuned into the show following the racism controversy.
Other participants on the show included former Jackson Five leader Jermaine Jackson and "A-Team" actor Dirk Benedict. Model Danielle Lloyd and singer Jo O'Meara were also seen by the British public as tormenting Shetty.
(AP) LONDON Indian actress Shilpa Shetty won the British reality TV show "Celebrity Big Brother" Sunday after enduring alleged racial bullying that triggered protests in India and sparked a race relations debate in Britain.
The 31-year-old Indian star won the public's support after a fellow contestant hurled racially tinged insults at her in an episode that led to a record 40,000 complaints to media regulators.
"It's truly been a roller coaster ride," Shetty said. "The highs, the lows, each one has taught me so much."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Treasury chief Gordon Brown and Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram have commented on the incident, which South Asian and anti-racist groups said revealed the face of racism in Britain.
Shetty received 63 percent of viewers' telephone votes Sunday, host Davina McCall said. She did not give the number of votes cast.
Contestants on the show are locked in a house for about three weeks and are evicted one by one until someone is chosen as the winner of a cash prize for charity.
Shetty defended fellow contestant Jade Goody, who repeatedly reduced the Indian actress to tears by shouting at her, calling her cooking untrustworthy, mocking her accent and calling her "Shilpa Poppadum."
Goody became famous after appearing on the non-celebrity version of "Big Brother" and has earned an estimated $16 million fortune through television and magazine appearances, an autobiography and an exercise video — a livelihood endangered by her behavior in the house.
"She is a little aggressive and hot tempered, but she's not a racist," Shetty said.
"I don't want people here feeling they welcomed an Indian here and she created so much trouble. I want to thank the whole of Great Britain for giving me this fantastic opportunity to make my whole country proud."
Shetty has hired British celebrity publicist Max Clifford to help develop her career in Britain. He estimated Sunday that she could earn $2 million in the next year from new contracts after appearing on the show.
"It's been a huge success for her because of how she's handled these nasty attacks with dignity," Clifford said on British Broadcasting Corp. television.
The program made front-page news for days in both Britain and India, where the show's producers were burned in effigy. More than 8.8 million people tuned into the show following the racism controversy.
Other participants on the show included former Jackson Five leader Jermaine Jackson and "A-Team" actor Dirk Benedict. Model Danielle Lloyd and singer Jo O'Meara were also seen by the British public as tormenting Shetty.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Black skin is Career Limitin'
Lighter Skin, Higher Salary, New Study Finds
By Eric L. Hinton
In what may fall under the umbrella of "least surprising news of the day" for those with dark complexions, a new study revealed light-skinned immigrants in the United States make more money on average than their darker-skinned counterparts.
The study, conducted by Vanderbilt University law and economics professor Joni Hersch, looked at a government survey of 2,084 documented immigrants to the United States from across the globe and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.
Hersch drew her data from a 2003 federal survey of nearly 8,600 new immigrants. Her survey used an 11-point scale for measuring skin tone. Zero represented an absence of color while 10 represented the darkest possible skin tone.
"On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education," Hersch told The Associated Press. Her study also found that taller immigrants earn more than shorter ones, with an extra inch of height associated with a 1 percent increase in income.
"To dark-skinned Americans this is of NO surprise, but who is really listening and truly taking this to heart?" asked one blogger.
Another added, "It absolutely is true. I'm a dark-skinned African-American, [41-year-old] male. I am an [IT director] with a college degree and 22 years of experience in my field. Most dark-skinned blacks have learned that in a corporate world where whites are the majority, a dark-skinned black (especially men) have to go out of their way to put white people at ease with them, to beat the stereotypes."
Harrison conducted that study with 240 psychology undergraduates at UGA. Each participant received one of two résumés that varied by educational and work experience. Along with the résumés, the participants received one of six pictures of candidates, all black, who varied by skin tone and gender. They then were asked to rate the candidate as a job applicant and to say how likely they would be to hire the applicant themselves.
Harrison found that dark-skinned blacks are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to employment. Even when they have higher educational attainment and more qualified résumés, participants were inclined to select their light-skinned counterparts.
"I think what was most shocking to me was to find that dark-skinned black males with greater credentials were still recommended less—or seen as less of a candidate—than light-skinned blacks with worse credentials," Harrison told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Hersch will present her full findings next month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
Jennifer Millman contributed to this article.
By Eric L. Hinton
In what may fall under the umbrella of "least surprising news of the day" for those with dark complexions, a new study revealed light-skinned immigrants in the United States make more money on average than their darker-skinned counterparts.
The study, conducted by Vanderbilt University law and economics professor Joni Hersch, looked at a government survey of 2,084 documented immigrants to the United States from across the globe and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.
Hersch drew her data from a 2003 federal survey of nearly 8,600 new immigrants. Her survey used an 11-point scale for measuring skin tone. Zero represented an absence of color while 10 represented the darkest possible skin tone.
"On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education," Hersch told The Associated Press. Her study also found that taller immigrants earn more than shorter ones, with an extra inch of height associated with a 1 percent increase in income.
"To dark-skinned Americans this is of NO surprise, but who is really listening and truly taking this to heart?" asked one blogger.
Another added, "It absolutely is true. I'm a dark-skinned African-American, [41-year-old] male. I am an [IT director] with a college degree and 22 years of experience in my field. Most dark-skinned blacks have learned that in a corporate world where whites are the majority, a dark-skinned black (especially men) have to go out of their way to put white people at ease with them, to beat the stereotypes."
Harrison conducted that study with 240 psychology undergraduates at UGA. Each participant received one of two résumés that varied by educational and work experience. Along with the résumés, the participants received one of six pictures of candidates, all black, who varied by skin tone and gender. They then were asked to rate the candidate as a job applicant and to say how likely they would be to hire the applicant themselves.
Harrison found that dark-skinned blacks are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to employment. Even when they have higher educational attainment and more qualified résumés, participants were inclined to select their light-skinned counterparts.
"I think what was most shocking to me was to find that dark-skinned black males with greater credentials were still recommended less—or seen as less of a candidate—than light-skinned blacks with worse credentials," Harrison told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Hersch will present her full findings next month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
Jennifer Millman contributed to this article.
Black skin is Career Limitin'
Lighter Skin, Higher Salary, New Study Finds
By Eric L. Hinton
In what may fall under the umbrella of "least surprising news of the day" for those with dark complexions, a new study revealed light-skinned immigrants in the United States make more money on average than their darker-skinned counterparts.
The study, conducted by Vanderbilt University law and economics professor Joni Hersch, looked at a government survey of 2,084 documented immigrants to the United States from across the globe and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.
Hersch drew her data from a 2003 federal survey of nearly 8,600 new immigrants. Her survey used an 11-point scale for measuring skin tone. Zero represented an absence of color while 10 represented the darkest possible skin tone.
"On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education," Hersch told The Associated Press. Her study also found that taller immigrants earn more than shorter ones, with an extra inch of height associated with a 1 percent increase in income.
"To dark-skinned Americans this is of NO surprise, but who is really listening and truly taking this to heart?" asked one blogger.
Another added, "It absolutely is true. I'm a dark-skinned African-American, [41-year-old] male. I am an [IT director] with a college degree and 22 years of experience in my field. Most dark-skinned blacks have learned that in a corporate world where whites are the majority, a dark-skinned black (especially men) have to go out of their way to put white people at ease with them, to beat the stereotypes."
Harrison conducted that study with 240 psychology undergraduates at UGA. Each participant received one of two résumés that varied by educational and work experience. Along with the résumés, the participants received one of six pictures of candidates, all black, who varied by skin tone and gender. They then were asked to rate the candidate as a job applicant and to say how likely they would be to hire the applicant themselves.
Harrison found that dark-skinned blacks are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to employment. Even when they have higher educational attainment and more qualified résumés, participants were inclined to select their light-skinned counterparts.
"I think what was most shocking to me was to find that dark-skinned black males with greater credentials were still recommended less—or seen as less of a candidate—than light-skinned blacks with worse credentials," Harrison told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Hersch will present her full findings next month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
Jennifer Millman contributed to this article.
By Eric L. Hinton
In what may fall under the umbrella of "least surprising news of the day" for those with dark complexions, a new study revealed light-skinned immigrants in the United States make more money on average than their darker-skinned counterparts.
The study, conducted by Vanderbilt University law and economics professor Joni Hersch, looked at a government survey of 2,084 documented immigrants to the United States from across the globe and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.
Hersch drew her data from a 2003 federal survey of nearly 8,600 new immigrants. Her survey used an 11-point scale for measuring skin tone. Zero represented an absence of color while 10 represented the darkest possible skin tone.
"On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education," Hersch told The Associated Press. Her study also found that taller immigrants earn more than shorter ones, with an extra inch of height associated with a 1 percent increase in income.
"To dark-skinned Americans this is of NO surprise, but who is really listening and truly taking this to heart?" asked one blogger.
Another added, "It absolutely is true. I'm a dark-skinned African-American, [41-year-old] male. I am an [IT director] with a college degree and 22 years of experience in my field. Most dark-skinned blacks have learned that in a corporate world where whites are the majority, a dark-skinned black (especially men) have to go out of their way to put white people at ease with them, to beat the stereotypes."
Harrison conducted that study with 240 psychology undergraduates at UGA. Each participant received one of two résumés that varied by educational and work experience. Along with the résumés, the participants received one of six pictures of candidates, all black, who varied by skin tone and gender. They then were asked to rate the candidate as a job applicant and to say how likely they would be to hire the applicant themselves.
Harrison found that dark-skinned blacks are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to employment. Even when they have higher educational attainment and more qualified résumés, participants were inclined to select their light-skinned counterparts.
"I think what was most shocking to me was to find that dark-skinned black males with greater credentials were still recommended less—or seen as less of a candidate—than light-skinned blacks with worse credentials," Harrison told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Hersch will present her full findings next month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
Jennifer Millman contributed to this article.
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