Colorblind:The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity

Fire in the Heart: How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice

for crafting a beautiful argument (and invaluable collection of links) for the three ring circus that is the state of racial/racist rhetoric in America today. Black Power’s Gonna Get You Sucka: Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism | Red Room.

From Alternet: “To convict on the higher charge of voluntary manslaughter, the prosecution would have had to prove that Mehserle’s fear of Grant and his friends was “unreasonable.” It decided the crime was involuntary. In other words, Mehserle’s fear? That was reasonable.”

Oscar Grant was shot in the back by a BART police officer while pinned to the ground, face down. The officer claims he thought he reached for his Taser and instead drew his .40 caliber service revolver and fired into Grant’s back.

Why would a man who is pinned to the ground by several officers need to be tased, let alone shot?

I debated this with myself for quite awhile, as you can tell by the dates of the comments.  In the end, I decided to post them, as they evidence the hatred that is still out there for people of color and their allies.  I don’t know if I’ll do the same next time.

Born on Sept. 6, 1919, in Yonkers and raised in Harlem, Air Force Lt. Colonel Lee A. Archer left New York University to enlist in the Army Air Corps in 1941 but was rejected for pilot training because the military didn’t allow blacks to serve as pilots.

“A War Department study in 1925 expressly stated that Negroes didn’t have the intelligence, or the character, or the leadership to be in combat units, and particularly, they didn’t have the ability to be Air Force pilots,” said Brown.

Archer instead joined a segregated Army Air Corps unit at the Tuskegee, Ala., air base, graduating from pilot training in July 1943.

From The Washington Post: Pilot considered the only ace Tuskegee Airman dies – washingtonpost.com.

Steve Sailer’s iSteve Blog: The Old Mulatto Elite.

Last February, Steve Sailer called out Eric Holder for his comment regarding the US being a “nation of cowards,” Mr. Holder referring to “white” Americans’ distaste for dialogue on racism, and then gave a rundown of Holder’s family tree with roots in Barbados.  Bajans, Mr. Sailer noted, (or “Barbadians,” as Mr. Holder prefers) are the “best behaved black population of the West Indies.”

Referring to Mr. Holder’s wife, Sailer wrote, “Mrs. Holder. . .is not a Bajan. She’s a Harvard graduate obstetrician.”

I’ve just been introduced to Steve Sailer via his blog.  Charmed, I’m sure.

photo credit isteve.blogspot.com

I haven’t posted here for awhile, because I’ve been busy reading other bloggers who can say things so much better than I.  But I hate being a slacker, so here I am to try to make amends.

So what’s up with Avatar?

Now, I admit, I’m not a big James Cameron fan.  I’ve seen very few of his films, in fact, probably far fewer than most movie-going Americans.  Not Aliens, not Rambo, not Terminator, not even Dances With Wolves or Titanic.  (I have seen True Lies, The Abyss, and Terminator 2.)  So I’m no Cameron scholar, but the argument posted below makes sense to me.

Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it’s about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy.

More here–

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”?.

via field negro

Think Progress » Washington Times op-ed: Obama lacks ‘blood impulse’ for what America ‘is about’ due to his ‘Kenyan father.’.

So there are full-blooded Americans?  And they’re “white,” I suppose?  Sigh.  It never ends, the racism, does it?

From Think Progress.

From Student Life, the independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis:

About 200 Washington University seniors were attending Mother’s Night Club Original bar on Saturday night as part of their class trip to Chicago, sponsored by the Senior Class Council. According to Senior Class President Fernando Cutz, the six black students were told they would not be allowed in because of their failure to comply with the bar’s “baggy jeans” policy. A few white students who had already been admitted then came out to demonstrate that their jeans were more “baggy,” but the black students were still denied admission.

The six students offered to change their clothes, but the bar manager still refused to allow them in. The white students were allowed to return.

The next morning, the students were back with signs and fliers to protest the bar’s actions.

Story here.
See the other protest flyers here.