The Transgender Sista Among Us

A blogger at Black Women, Blow the Trumpet, blogs about MtF transgendered women within the Black community:

The church folks who read this blog and who know me personally have noticed that I have a few transgender friends. I never set out to find transgender friends, but life has a way of bringing us into situations that are intended to teach us. My transgender friends have always created a huge scene whenever they visit my church. People seem to become nervous and afraid when seeing transgenders. I think that our natural instinct is to fear whatever we do not understand. There is a blog that addresses transphobia. Click here to read the writings of a 30-something transwoman.

Poor White Folk and Poor Black Folk

Malik blogs:

I think the analogy of the house negro and the field negro is better applied to the relationship between poor Black folks and poor white folks than to the relationship between poor Black folks and “Black conservatives”. Poor white folks are the ultimate house negros. They are only marginally better off than poor Black folks (the “overwhelming advantage” is a well-maintained illusion), but because they inhabit the same psychological house as their rich white masters, and get a few extra favors, they wholly identify with their masters. Think about it.

Happy Birthday to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

In honor of this blogs namesake.

Sylvia blogs:

In honor of what would have been Malcolm X’s 83rd birthday, Villager has compiled a phenomenal list of links to some of his famous speeches and interviews, including “Ballot or the Bullet,” “Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?” and “House Negroes vs. Field Negroes.” He’s also leading a discussion about how this man has touched the lives of so many people through his voice, his fire, and his life.

…

Happy birthday, Brother; your spirit lives on.

Latoya blogs:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of the defining books in my life. The first time I read it, I was nine. Even now, though I haven’t picked it up in about five years, I can still remember whole passages by heart, and the basic wording of much more. What I find interesting is that as I grew older, my interpretation and understanding of the book changed. When I was younger, I was enthralled by ex-criminal, black nationalist Malcolm X; as I got older I began to wonder more about his transformation to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, his journey to Mecca, and his change in mindset and focus. It is his journey that inspires my own.

Melissa blogs:

Many of our modern leaders live by cynical double standards. They practice slippery personal ethics, while lecturing the masses about morality. They consume conspicuously, while telling ordinary folks to save their pennies. They father children outside of marriage, then blame single mothers for the violence in black communities. They blame individuals for their circumstances, rather than help them deconstruct, understand and overcome the historical, structural, political, reasons for their plight.

Malcolm taught us better. He criticized the powerful rather than the powerless. He pointed to the pathologies of the privileged instead of the failings of the oppressed. His own story of redemption was emblematic of the possibilities available to even the most disempowered, but when he pointed to solutions, they were consistently collective.

Miss Jones blogs:

…very few people, even those who claim to love him, have taken the time to learn more about what he believed and what he did over his lifetime. There was more to Malcolm X than his views on race; his leadership style is something to admire. Too often, as I have written about here, older leaders are inaccessible because they are spoken about as though they are angels who neither grow nor change over their lifetime. However, Malcolm X never hid the fact that he made mistakes and that he was constantly learning and growing nor that he expected people to take ownership of their lives.

Mr. Shadow blogs:

Above all we must understand what Malcolm stood for: justice, freedom and equality for Africans in America and abroad. It is for this he fought and it is for this that he died.

I think it is appropriate to end this post with the spiritually moving eulogy at Malcolm’s funeral given by our late elder, actor and activist Ossie Davis.

No Justice for Sean Bell

Brotherpaecemaker blogs about the acquittal of the homicidal cops from New York:

People in the black community need to rethink our relationship with the dominant community. The disparity between the two communities is getting wider and wider. Police murder us in the streets and suffer no repercussions while black pastors are demonized for preaching about racial disparity in our communities. Even when the most extreme forms of this discrimination is caught on tape it is dismissed as our fault because we didn’t prostrate ourselves in front of the cop fast enough or the police officer was having a bad day and had to release his frustrations on the black citizen or whatever. We are in danger every time we come out in public from the very people sworn to protect the public. The police and the courts are doing their best to protect the public from black people.

TOXIC SLUDGE IS GOOD (enough for black folk)…

Francis L. Holland blogs about a recent article he read from the Associated Press:

Although whites would have us believe that AIDS could NOT have been started by whites and that the Tuskegee Experiment could never happen again,

BALTIMORE - Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.

…

It galls me. It galls me that the major news institutions can make federal cases out of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s prophetic indignation at a nation whose policies undervalue and marginalize whole populaces, and reduce it to the rantings of a mad man, when in our own backyard our own government is conducting more experimentation on its citizens!

[Hat Tip: the field negro]

Steps to Success: Step One, GET ENSLAVED!

Karnythia blogs at The Angry Black Woman on a recent blog post by Pat Buchanan:

It’s this deliberate misinformation that bolsters the idea that black people are somehow magically getting ahead without merit, and fosters the resentment you see so often from whites that argue so vociferously against the concept of white privilege and against affirmative action. Never mind that the main beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white women. No, let’s just scream about that one time a POC “stole” a job that you really wanted/needed/preferred and ignore the part where you weren’t entitled to that job above all applicants.

It doesn’t help that even in school the history books skim over what Ida B. Wells, the NAACP, The Black Panthers, the NOI and others were doing in support of the black community. Aside from the actual Civil Rights Movement marches and demonstrations that are discussed, there is very little mention of day to day life in black communities.

Black History Box

The newest blogger, Sara Rosell, of Double Consciousness blogs about Black History Month:

We definitely need to teach what contributions blacks have made, but before we teach about that we need to first talk about what it means for those contributions to be absent when it comes to the teachings of History itself. The problem is that our Anglo-centric educational system boxes “Black History” into a month, separating it from “U.S. History.”

Race and Law

The Field Negro blogs about a recent murder case in Northern California involving a white home owner shooting and killing two (of three) robbers who broke into his house and were Black:

OK I must admit that this case has me torn. On one hand I am thinking that it was racism why this Northern California prosecutor chose to charge this young man with first degree murder under the rarely used “Provocative Acts Doctrine.” On the other hand I am thinking; Renato, just what the fuck were you thinking when you broke into that man’s home with your friends?

Your ignorant ass actions set into motion an act that cost two of your friends their lives, and now you are on the verge of losing your freedom; and if the good folks of California have their way, maybe your life as well.
But please don’t think I am letting Mister homeowner off the hook either. Yes, he has a right to defend his home, but he doesn’t have a right to shoot two fleeing individuals in the back. Had I been the DA I would have charged his ass with at the very least, voluntary manslaughter. But we know how that works; small county, every one knows each other, no one wants to upset the order of things. Heck I am sure the DA was a friend of Mr. Homeowner, or maybe even a family member.

Race and the Vote

JanInSanFran writes:

When you can’t win an election on your own merits, wouldn’t it be great to pick own your electorate who you can trust will vote for you? That’s why politicians like to draw district boundaries to ensure one-party dominance. A new study [pdf] from the University of Washington’s Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality shows pretty conclusively that by demanding voters show photo IDs, Republicans ensure that more voters are white, older, and affluent. Others, likely Democrats, get pushed off the rolls.

Indiana’s photo ID law is being challenged as discriminatory in court. Researchers set out to find what it really would do voter eligibility. They polled carefully randomized samples of voters and non-voters about their IDs. The results show clearly that the ID requirement is designed to build a Republican bias into the universe of voters and potential voters.

Republicans and the Race Card

Lambert, on Corrente, blogs about a recent article by Paul Krugman on how the Republicans used race to gain the upper hand over Democrats in the South and have been playing that card ever since:

Today, Krugman—Yay! No pay wall!—gives the Conservative apologists for the Republican’s racist Southern Strategy a good old-fashioned beating, and would leave them whimpering if they weren’t all the idelogical equivalent of The Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Public Statements and Private Thoughts

Asabanga comments on the latest controversy caused by geneticist Dr. James Watson on his comments that Blacks are “naturally” inferior to whites:

He simply stated what is the widely held belief among those in the dominant “white” society. It is not the first time (nor the last) that science has been utilized to assert the inferiority of the so-called “Black Race”. Scientists are forever coming up with hypotheses and theories either contending that “whites” and/or “Europeans” and their culture is superior to everyone elses, or that “Blacks” and/or “Africans” and their culture are inferior to all others. However, because it is no longer “socially acceptable” nor “politically correct” to make such assertions publicly, “the rule” now is to do it within private (i.e. where Black people aren’t allowed) confines of the backrooms, the social clubs, the boardrooms, the executive offices… hell even in the bathroom…. but never, never out in the open and certainly not to the media! If you break this rule…. you are on your own!

Jena, Katrina, and Racism

Zee writes about the outpouring of support for the Jena 6:

This should show people that the cries of inequality and racism over Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were accurate. Remember that white officials in Louisiana stopped Black people at gunpoint when they were trying to escape the city. We were not even allowed to walk on public streets to find our way to safety. Louisiana has a social structure that is based on racism. When thousands of African-Americans were displaced from New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina(actually the neglect of the levees by the Federal Government), the racist structure of Louisiana jumped on the opportunity to rebuild a New Orleans without the Black people that made up the flavor of the world reknowned city. Why didn’t people protest then?

Black Woman + Spilt Cake + White Security Guard = … Oh brother

Elle, at elle, phd, posts a video on one of her posts in where a Black high school girl is arrested for spilling some cake at her high school:

Professor Black Woman on how recent incidents of violence against PoC are not “isolated incidents” but part of a pattern. She also notes how PoC and their allies who document and protest the pattern are likened to “antebellum white Southerns who took isolated incidents out of context in order to stir up a violent fervor targeted at a named enemy.”

Black Woman + Spilt Cake + White Security Guard = … Oh brother

Elle, at elle, phd, posts a video on one of her posts in where a Black high school girl is arrested for spilling some cake at her high school:

Professor Black Woman on how recent incidents of violence against PoC are not “isolated incidents” but part of a pattern. She also notes how PoC and their allies who document and protest the pattern are likened to “antebellum white Southerns who took isolated incidents out of context in order to stir up a violent fervor targeted at a named enemy.”

Congressional Black Caucus Week

The blogger for What About Our Daughters writes:

I don’t usually do politics, but when I was in DC a few days ago, everybody kept asking me is I was staying for CBC Week. I was like Um NO! They were disappointed. Apparently CBC Week is like the Super Bowl of the Black Elite Establishment inhaling drank and vittles from corporate America, oh yeah and they have workshops too! The theme this year was “Unleashing Our Power!” Honey, don’t I KNOW it.

Well some Black bloggers have a WHOLE LOT to say about the CBC and the Annual Legislative Conference so I did a little research…

Jena 6 and Black bloggers

AngryIndian posts:

Jackson, Sharpton and other big-name civil rights figures, far from leading this movement, have had to scramble to catch up. So, too, has the national media, which has only recently noticed a story that has been agitating many black Americans for months.

As formidable as it is amorphous, this new African-American blogosphere, which scarcely even existed a year ago, now comprises hundreds of interlinked blogs and tens of the thousands of followers who within a matter of a few weeks collected 220,000 petition signatures-and more than $130,000 in donations for legal fees-in support of six black Jena teenagers who are being prosecuted on felony battery charges for beating a white student.

A Noose, is a Noose, is a Noose

Pop Startled posts a blog entry on the Jena Six with links to some news articles about the incident:

The status quo is a white dominated society. Sure, its possible to think that nooses are not racially charged when you’re a white person. That comes from the unwavering idea held by most white Americans that racism is dead and that everyone is equal in our enlightened American society. However, the fact that you can see a noose and think a radically different thought than a fellow American who happens to be black shows that the status quo is actually just an imposed historical forgetfulness, an amnesia of only 1-2 generations after the struggles of the civil rights protesters and the death spasms of Jim Crow (who’s ghost continues to haunt white suburbs vs black urban neighborhoods).

Dog Breeding and…Black Slavery?

Zuzu, at Feministe, blogs about a post on Feministing in where blogger Jessica posted a video of her puppy and was attacked for it because the puppy was from a breeder, with commenter’s equating puppy breeding as a feminist issue as well being on par with slavery and the selling of Black slaves:

That’s just so willfully blindly privileged, and tin-eared, and utterly cruel, and racist all at the same time. But I suppose, given PETA’s history of racist and anti-Semitic ads, where images of black slaves and Jewish inmates at extermination camps were set alongside images of cattle going down a chute or chickens in battery cages, that this is not so uncommon an attitude among the animal-rights set.

Dog Breeding and…Black Slavery?

Zuzu, at Feministe, blogs about a post on Feministing in where blogger Jessica posted a video of her puppy and was attacked for it because the puppy was from a breeder, with commenter’s equating puppy breeding as a feminist issue as well being on par with slavery and the selling of Black slaves:

That’s just so willfully blindly privileged, and tin-eared, and utterly cruel, and racist all at the same time. But I suppose, given PETA’s history of racist and anti-Semitic ads, where images of black slaves and Jewish inmates at extermination camps were set alongside images of cattle going down a chute or chickens in battery cages, that this is not so uncommon an attitude among the animal-rights set.

Afro-Spear Carnival: The Mis-Education of the Negro in the 21st Century

Afro-Spear hosts their carnival for September and tackles topics such as diversity in education and how today’s educational system relies on propaganda and miseducation:

Welcome to Afrospear’s first Blog Carnival. I would like to thank those who participated. If you have any ideas for future Carnival topics, let us know.

Private Lives, Proper Relations: Regulating Black Intamacy

The blogger at Feminist Review posts a book review on the book Private Lives, Proper Relations:

Why is contemporary African American literature — particularly that produced by black women — continually concerned with issues of respectability and propriety? Her first book, Private Lives, Proper Relations, Candace M. Jenkins looks at how African American writers express the political consequences of intimacy for the susceptible black subject. Jenkins argues that this fascination grew from recurrent beliefs about African American sexuality, and that it expresses a basic aspect of the racial self: an often unexpressed link between the intimate and the political in black culture.

“Oh domestic violence. How funny arte thee?”

Elizabeth writes about her experience while listening to two guys laugh about domestic violence perpetrated on a Black woman while she was on a ferry ride on the blog All Girl Army:

What year is this? Why would anyone ever laugh at a woman getting beaten up for no fucking reason. Are you serious?! and then they laughed harder cause she was African American! Seriously?! How fucked up is that.

Why aren’t the men in this world being taught that this isn’t funny, and it isn’t right?! We seriously need to get most of the men out their educated on domestic violence issues.

“Oh domestic violence. How funny arte thee?”

Elizabeth writes about her experience while listening to two guys laugh about domestic violence perpetrated on a Black woman while she was on a ferry ride on the blog All Girl Army:

What year is this? Why would anyone ever laugh at a woman getting beaten up for no fucking reason. Are you serious?! and then they laughed harder cause she was African American! Seriously?! How fucked up is that.

Why aren’t the men in this world being taught that this isn’t funny, and it isn’t right?! We seriously need to get most of the men out their educated on domestic violence issues.

Racism Don’t Exist Any More! CSI Told Me So!

The Angry Black Woman blogs about a  storyline in CSI were a young Black man was killed by one of the main white characters in the show which delves into a “Black people are soooooo sensitive” side story:

This storyline wouldn’t bother me so much if similar situations didn’t happen between law enforcement and black folks all of the time. It’s shows like this that convince people that black folks are usually in the wrong, anyway, or deserved to be killed because they were up to no good, and are crazy to think that the police are racists out to get them, and even if you give them what they want, money, they’ll just act like fools and still commit crime because, well, black people are just bad. By framing it in this context, with a character the audience knows and loves and guest characters who are unrealistically/stereotypically drawn, the show is doing a disservice to the very serious issue at hand. And that just makes me angry.

Racism Don’t Exist Any More! CSI Told Me So!

The Angry Black Woman blogs about a  storyline in CSI were a young Black man was killed by one of the main white characters in the show which delves into a “Black people are soooooo sensitive” side story:

This storyline wouldn’t bother me so much if similar situations didn’t happen between law enforcement and black folks all of the time. It’s shows like this that convince people that black folks are usually in the wrong, anyway, or deserved to be killed because they were up to no good, and are crazy to think that the police are racists out to get them, and even if you give them what they want, money, they’ll just act like fools and still commit crime because, well, black people are just bad. By framing it in this context, with a character the audience knows and loves and guest characters who are unrealistically/stereotypically drawn, the show is doing a disservice to the very serious issue at hand. And that just makes me angry.