Rolling 2016 Thread on Race

Because a new year deserves a new thread.

I'm going to start with something positive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efttzj5VtXE

I feel like this could be handwaved as trend-hopping whatever but let's not undermine what's happening here: a woman of color does a near-flawless floor routine where the dancing bits between her tumbling runs and skill tricks are full-on hip-hop moves set to explicitly hip-hop music and she scores a 9.925 that gives her team the win. I can't imagine this happening in gymnastics even two years ago.

wow, she's incredible.

It's pretty rapid acceleration for the general public's consciousness to go from people bemoaning Gabby Douglass's hair to celebrating Sophina DeJesus dabbing and nae naeing during her floor exercise, IMO

Right on

Back to the negative; file this under "how not to appeal to blackAmericans with your message":

https://twitter.com/samsteinhp/status/693500048441606144

That's some ellipsis

idgi

"Bill Press makes the case why, long after taking the oath of office, the next president of the United States must keep rallying the people who elected him or her on behalf of progressive causes. That is the only way real change will happen. Read this book."

Buyer's Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down

"Bill Press makes the case... Read this book."

Yeah. Would like to know why Sanders ok'ed that ellipsis.

sanders is morbs

*coffee cup*

(1) I know there's never been a candidate with such tight focus-grouped control of his optics as Bernie Sanders but it's possible he wasn't consulted on his blurb formatting
(2) Even with the ellipsis it doesn't come close to being mildly "problematic," "troublesome," or "I find it *interesting* that," jfc

the problem is that hillary + bernie both agree that obama did some very important things and was a great democratic president. but bernie then associates that w/ disappointment that he didn't do more, and hillary wraps herself in the obama administration. when hillary says "bernie has criticized the president" that fact shouldn't matter to us bc you can criticize the president and still think he's wonderful, but it does matter to ppl and bernie can't really just say "it's not true i'm 100% with president obama on every decision" bc he doesn't really feel that way. if presidential primaries were more sophisticated maybe this would become an argument about the specifics of the TPP or something that would underline in maybe more productive ways why you might support or criticize the president on a given issue.

it would be difficult to criticize hillary without at least indirectly criticizing obama. i can see why strategically he would be wiser to avoid criticizing obama directly

Yeah this has little to nothing to do with Bernie Sanders and everything to do with publishing a book about primarily white Americans disappointed in casting a vote for a black American under the title "Buyer's Remorse" because that evokes some very strong slavery imagery and if you don't see that, wake the fuck up

It feels a little like I'm living in bizarre production of Native Son that I'd actually have to point this incredibly obvious point

oh, d'uh, sorry

also hadn't thought of that implication but once pointed out it's egregious

this fucking asshole made me want to hurl

http://gawker.com/nevada-assemblyman-accuses-fbi-oregon-state-police-of-1759123326

JFC what a piece of shit

“That man died at the hands of the Oregon state police, and federal agents, and he did not need to. That’s why I’m here today, that’s why I came up here—to try to prevent the further loss of life,” he said. “I will travel anywhere for that purpose.”

the fuck you will, you contemptible slug

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/701589800193650688

that was so awesome

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/23/no-hate-crime-convictions-for-white-san-jose-state-students-who-clamped-black-roommate-in-bike-lock/

Alongside other first-years, the 18-year-old was assigned a dormitory suite with seven other students, including a high school friend with whom he shared a bedroom. But collegial relationships soon dissolved into a series of hijinks targeting Williams, the only African American roommate.

In early September 2013, he was standing in his hallway when one of his roommates came up behind him and placed a U-shaped bike lock around his neck. Williams struggled to be released, but the lock remained clamped shut until his roommate gave him the key five minutes later.

A week later, three of his roommates again attempted to secure him inside the lock. Williams resisted and a scuffle ensued, ending with Williams walking out.

The bike lock was never to be used again, but other dubious ploys took its place: hanging a Confederate flag in the common room, displaying a racial slur on a dry-erase board, penning a sarcastic letter quoting the “Beloved Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.”

On other occasions, the claustrophobic Williams was locked inside his room and closet. In time, he said he gained the nicknames “three-fifths” and “fraction” — a reference to how the Constitution once counted black slaves when apportioning representation in Congress by the states.

A juror in his 30s who spoke to the Mercury News after the decision said he went in thinking the actions were a hate crime but concluded that it was Williams’s word against his roommates’.

jesus christ.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/magazine/how-should-asian-americans-feel-about-the-peter-liang-protests.html?

liked this jay caspian lang piece on the asian-american backlash to the peter liang verdict

*kang obviously, autocorrect

The militia fuckwits are going to hold an event in Portland next week, with subsequent counter event being planned.

Federal government suing B&H (big NYC photo/video/electronics store) for mistreatment of minority workers, biased hiring practices

sanders is morbs

GOOO ONNNNNNNN

Ashley Williams on Democracy Now

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/26/whichhillary_blacklivesmatter_activist_demands_apology_from

To expand upon that:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/02/25/hillary-clinton-responds-to-activist-who-demanded-apology-for-superpredator-remarks/

https://scottwoodsmakeslists.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/gods-of-egypt-is-the-most-racist-film-ever/

hadn't seen that Kang article on the Liang protesters; feel very similarly

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/business/media/melissa-harris-perry-is-out-at-msnbc-cable-network-confirms.html

this is a bummer, MHP was pretty good

http://www.vox.com/2016/2/26/11121378/iron-fist-racism

I had missed this entire fracas and, as someone completely uninvested in Iron Fist outside of his awesomeness in Marvel Puzzle Quest, I find it super interesting and informative. I don't know if I necessarily agree but after reading it, I think I get the perspective.

cross-posting in baldwin thread too http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelkaadzighansah/the-weight-of-james-arthur-baldwin-203

Having rediscovered the defunct Roosevelt Franklin character through listening to old Sesame Street records with K, H and I were sort of puzzling over whether the character was problematic in its racial portrayal.

Turns out people had those concerns at the time too, and it's pretty interesting:

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Roosevelt_Franklin

Roosevelt Franklin was the source of criticism by some African-American intellectuals who scrutinized the character for signs that he was too black, or not black enough.

For example, in a 1973 issue of literary digest Black World, the article "Sesame Street: A Linguistic Detour for Black-Language Speakers" took Sesame to task for the way that black characters on the show spoke: "The fact that Black Language is a legitimate linguistic system is not recognized on Sesame Street... Adherents to the fallacious assumption that poor Black children are verbally destitute, the producers of Sesame Street attempt to eradicate what they perceive as a "communicative deficit" by subjecting their audience to large doses of middle-class verbiage... An analysis of the content of Sesame Street will reveal that only a token effort is made to acknowledge that some Black people speak differently than white people and that this effort, in fact, constitutes a gross misrepresentation of Black Language."

The article took issue with the language used in a sketch in which Roosevelt's mother asks Roosevelt to spell his name:

“ Even a cursory analysis of the preceding transcription reveals that Matt Robinson and Loretta Long do not employ Black Language in portraying Roosevelt and his mama. Usages such as "she says" (versus "she say"), "who was to blame" (versus "who be to blame" and "an L" (versus "a L") make it apparent that the producers of Sesame Street confuse Black Language with what William Stewart describes as a "stage Negro dialect" which "... is little more than standard English with a slightly ethnicized or southernized pronunciation, reinforced by insertion of such general nonstandardisms as ain't and the double negative, and perhaps a sprinkling of southern or inner-city Negro lexical usages like honey child or man."

The fact that Roosevelt says "po'rly" or that Mama says "right on" (a phrase whose cultural-linguistic significance has been destroyed through its co-optation by whites) or that southernized inflections are employed in portraying these characters does not make them Black Language speakers...

It becomes apparent that it is unreasonable to assume that any educational program devised by the oppressor can do anything other than serve his interests... The only effective educational program for the majority of Black children in this country must be one devised and controlled by Blacks who, although having acquired certain technical skills, continue to identify with the interests of the Black masses rather than with European interests. Language intervention programs like Sesame Street are merely deterrents or detours on the road to this goal. [4]

4.↑ Stewart, Barbara H. "Sesame Street: A Linguistic Detour for Black-Language Speakers", Black World. August 1973.

Anyone who isn't trying to teach their children fluency in the dialect of English spoken by the people who control the wealth in this country is a short-sighted idiot.

(By which I mean there is a tangible difference between identifying AAVE as a legitimate English dialect that is not inferior to standard English and formally teaching it as the primary mode of communication to a segment of the population already facing system-driven barriers of entry to the highest echelons of power in this country.)

Yeah I just found it fascinating how the character feels sort of like an attempt to meet people halfway on that, and the subtle ways in which the "stage" dialect plays out that I probably wasn't picking up on. I mean on the immediate level I agree with you, best thing anyone can do is teach their children to negotiate the world they live in. But there's still a lot there about the power dynamics around race in America.

Anyone who isn't trying to teach their children fluency in the dialect of English spoken by the people who control the wealth in this country is a short-sighted idiot...(By which I mean there is a tangible difference between identifying AAVE as a legitimate English dialect that is not inferior to standard English and formally teaching it as the primary mode of communication to a segment of the population already facing system-driven barriers of entry to the highest echelons of power in this country.)

All true. (I'm not the biggest David Foster Wallace fan, but his writing on this subject - it's included in the essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - was pretty amazing.) But, you know, 1973.

And also, if you're an educational show aimed mostly at urban black and latino kids (which apparently SS was when it started out), is it better to just have everyone on the show speak standard American English, or is it good to have AAVE-speaking characters for validation, and is having a character that's sort of in-between in a contrived way the worst of both worlds?

Anyone who isn't trying to teach their children fluency in the dialect of English spoken by the people who control the wealth in this country is a short-sighted idiot.

this is a righteous post

I thought about posting this on I Love Games but I don't actually love anything about this, which sucks:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cc9585gW8AEisWq.jpg

I mean come the fuck on

wow

wow

(xpost)

what is that?

The best I can ask of the racist dystopia my country is hell-bent on being is that it makes me laugh really fucking hard as it works its way around to oppressing me.

“You’re a liar, I don’t care, because I’m a consumer,” she shouts at an employee.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune publishes story about Mall of America's first black Santa, the predictable happens: https://twitter.com/stribgillespie/status/804532412613087232

Good suggestions in the replies to that tweet - only let paid subscribers comments online, but make them visible to everyone.

lol ulysses

Three years since Megyn Kelly's "And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white."

remember when she was as bad as it got? 2014 seems very very far away now.

i don't know if this belongs here but i know that if the guy that CONFESSED to the shooting was black he sure as hell would not have been released .

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/joe-mcknight-shooter-released-charged-article-1.2895977

WHAT THE FUCK. I can't even find any explanation or attempted justification for releasing him.

If you'd like more information on the investigation (feel free to disseminate far and fucking wide):
Jefferson Parrish Sheriff's Office Homicide Division - 504-364-5300
Colonel John N. Fortunato, Commander, Public Information Office - 504-363-5521

first words out of the sheriff's mouth at the press conference are the he will arrest and imprison protesters .

what a fucking dick this sheriff is . strange vibe to this thing

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/12/watch_live_sheriff_normand_pre.html

wtf does social media have to do with anything and why is he even talking about that?

Jury says no consensus in South Carolina ex-cop Michael Slager's trial for Walter Scott's murder

xpost Well, social media is where I've been spreading his office's contact information, so I guess he has reason to be concerned about that.

lol nice

Did Michael Slager, who shot an unarmed black man in the back as he was running away from him, commit a cowardly murder with malice on his mind? How could one ever discern such a thing?

wtf this sheriff. Is he going to say anything at all about the decision to release Gasser?

He did say it wasn't about race, so I guess we'll have to find another thread to discuss that particular murder of an unarmed black man.

One would guess that the lone holdout in the Slager case is a wingnut claiming he's innocent, right

right

one would guess that several people in the Slager jury believe that Slager was genuinely in fear for his life as he shot down this man who was running away from him, because black people are terrifying and must be put in their place

Serious question: what is the general policy/law on this? Are police legally allowed or expected to shoot fleeing (and assumed armed) suspects?

Pretty sure the policy is they do whatever the fuck they like

apparently the jury was 11-1 Dan but it doesn't say in which direction

hmm

Serious question: what is the general policy/law on this? Are police legally allowed or expected to shoot fleeing (and assumed armed) suspects?

Yes, if they are black.

Not only is this what history tells us, but this is also what recent current events tells us. It's an aberration for it to be otherwise.

yeah summary execution is cool if the person running away is black. doesnt really matter the crime!

Other sad shit, no murder though:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-democratic-staffer-exposes-soft-bigotry-senate-dems-article-1.2893049

Guess I'll post this here since a search turned up no results. Shaun King is spearheading an Injustice Boycott that starts Monday.

I'm in

Kinda feeling like that needs its own thread, seeing as how it's intended to be an ongoing endeavor with regular updates on plans of action.

Christ, I'd somehow missed this entirely: a local 24-year-old trying to get on the ballot to run for city clerk was arrested...for petitioning while black. So congratulations to my police department on helping to raise the profile of this guy (who seems pretty righteous) and securing my vote.

I kind of can't stop laughing at that though

...one of the officers, a white woman, saw Reid and another man with clipboards and wondered what they were doing. He said she stopped them and asked for their names and birth dates. The other man was a white 23-year-old, according to a Monday release by the city.

The men gave their names but Reid, who said he hopes to run for Evanston city clerk, refused to give his birth date, Dugan said.

"She asked several times. He refused several times," Dugan said. Finally, the officer told Reid she would arrest him if he did not give his birth date. He still refused and she put him under arrest after calling for assistance from another officer...

Keystone Kafka

Do we yet have an ongoing "what to do/social activism in the age of Trump" thread or something, because i'd follow that

Fight hard as fuck iirc

Give a wrong time, stop a traffic line.

Do we yet have an ongoing "what to do/social activism in the age of Trump" thread or something, because i'd follow that

― Nhex

yeah i'm really disappointed at the lack of organization so far. i guess i should organize things myself? but i have severe social anxiety and no clue about how to actually do this stuff.

like, how do we as patients put pressure on the ama to repudiate their endorsement of tom price? that seems like a pretty big thing and pretty important. just calling members of congress isn't going to cut it.

New thread: Social Activism in the Age of Trump: What To Do and What We Are Doing

http://projects.heraldtribune.com/bias/sentencing

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-masked-white-men-harass-indigenous-people-north-dakota-article-1.2904957

https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/807295020105547776

https://twitter.com/afamhistfail/status/807302833418731520

https://theawl.com/our-racist-dogs-dc83ca711b42#.9qyo16r3u

12 grafs retelling the plot of 'White Dog' is maybe not the ideal lede

one of the great sam fuller's last films, and -- iirc, i saw it in like 1987 -- a *very* sam fuller movie, meaning intermittently o_0 in amazing ways that literally no one else wd dare

sam's fuller brand of anti-racism was so goddamn weird, god bless him

Good Morricone soundtrack too!

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/12/what-on-earth-was-the-los-angeles-times-thinking

Well, as we are discovering day by day, every single historical issue about which we thought we expressed shame–genocide against Native Americans, slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese internment–are all now being actively defended by Trump supporters. And because the mantra of the media is that Both Sides Must Be Represented, these absolutely revolting viewpoints are being mainstreamed. This is deeply disturbing and as I have been saying, we are simply going to have to fight this at every juncture.

candidate for 2017 thread?

In the vein of the rap thread, it should be "Rolling 2017 thread on Pepes"

No it shouldn't.

remember "crack babies"? well

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/health/rise-in-infant-drug-dependence-in-us-is-felt-most-in-rural-areas.html