EXECUTED AT !4 YEARS OF AGE, EXONERATED 70 YEARS TOO LATE

Feeling Rebloggy 

George Stinney Jr was found guilty in 1944 of killing two white girls, 7-year-old Mary Emma Thames and 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker

On Stinney's Exoneration in 2014

"I think it's long overdue," Stinney's sister, Katherine Stinney Robinson, 80, tells local newspaper The Manning Times. "I'm just thrilled because it's overdue."

In her ruling, Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen wrote that she found that "fundamental, Constitutional violations of due process exist in the 1944 prosecution of George Stinney, Jr., and hereby vacates the judgment."

The case was brought by Stinney Robinson and two of her surviving siblings.

S.C. Judge Rules 1944 Execution Of 14-Year-Old Boy Was Wrong

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"It took less than a day for a jury to convict George Stinney Jr. and send him to the electric chair," NPR'S Hansi Lo Wang reports. "He was convicted of the deaths of 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 7-year-old Mary Emma Thames in deeply segregated Alcolu, S.C."



Read More: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/12/17/371534533/s-c-judge-says-boy-14-shouldn-t-have-been-executed

CHRIS ROCK AT THE OSCARS, A VERY BLACK MONOLOGUE

IF SHONDA WERE A BLACK MAN #OscarsSoWhite WOULDN'T BE A THING

WANNA KNOW WHY?

If a black man had done what Shonda has done for black women over the last few years, black people (men and women) would be shouting her name and pointing at her as an example of how to move through Hollywood.


And people would have started following her path years ago. Therefore, no #OscarsSoWhite because the Oscars wouldn't be so white.

She's good. And she knows how good she is. That's why she pulls no punches and gives no damns when she gets an award. When she got the Norman Lear Award, she said.  

“I’m going to be totally honest with you, I completely deserve this.” 

The video below is only a minute long and it's awesome

Shonda Rhimes Talks Diversity
"I totally deserve this" - watch Shonda Rhimes powerful PGA speech!
Posted by ET Canada on Monday, January 25, 2016

When Shonda achieves, people look at work and say "Where are the leading black men?" in a way they never ask about leading black women characters

- when a Denzel film comes out,
- when a Will Smith film comes out,
- when a Spike Lee films comes out, or
- when a John Singleton movie comes out.

I actually read a black man critique the way Olivia and Harrison interact in  Shonda Rhime's "Scandal" by saying, "Olivia acts like he is her subordinate."


I remember thinking, "Does he need the other half of his brain re-inserted, a dictionary, or his superiority gland removed. Olivia Pope plays Harrison's boss. He is her subordinate. Sexism knows no color. Believe this.

And Denzel Washington and Will Smith have had more white and/or non-black actress co-stars than you can shake ten sticks at, so I'm really not hearing any mess about "Where are the black male leads?"

For me it comes down to more than, "Why should I care where they are too?" That is a fair point considering how little reciprocal concern we get as far as representation in the main stream media. But that's not the reason I don't care about where the black male stars are. I fear that if black men become over-present in shows like "Scandal" or "How To Get Away With Murder," or "Being Mary Jane" for that matter, the black women will be come e-raced, accessories, or stereotypes and caricatures ala "Precious" or "Empire."

On a similar note, Black Lives Matter was started by black women but the deaths of black women were still e-raced in the presence of the deaths of black men. It still galls me that #SayHerName became necessary to reinsert black women into black community concern. And Sandra Bland's death happened as this re-insertion was occurring. But I wonder if  #SayHerName is gone already. I mean, as we speak, how many people are trying to figure out what happened to Gynnya McMillen?  

But back to the point.

If Shonda Rhimes was a black man, the only questions would be on how do we copy her success? People would be doing what she did.

And let me tell you how she did it.

   

Rhimes started off with what white people wanted to see or were willing to see. That's a no brainer, yes?

Her first series, "Grey's Anatomy"  had a white woman lead at least one person of color as a central character (an Asian woman) and minor actors (black male and female)

Her second series, "Private Practice,"  had the same white female lead with the black characters that were more central.

Her third lead character in her third series was black, but not too black, Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope in "Scandal."

Her fourth lead character in her fourth series, "How To Get Away With Murder" is all the way black, dark-skinned, complete with afro hair (Viola Davis) and has other central black characters in it.

By the way, this is how black feminists and womanists roll (Shonda, Kerry, Viola)

Now that Shonda has knocked that glass ceiling out. I'm hoping steps one and two of her program for Hollywood success aren't necessary for some of the up and come-ers following in her footsteps.





 

HAS TRUMP FINALLY OUT-ED WHITE EVANGELICALS TO OTHER WHITE PEOPLE?

Lots of evangelicals — especially Trump supporters — simply aren’t that ‘religious.’

Black people have probably known this about white Christians since we first stepped off the very first boat from Africa.

The thing that irks me about these kinds of articles is that the authors nearly always leave out the word "white" And as I do understand what evangelize means (despite the pop culture rants on misinterpretations of that word) I've never understood the term "Evangelical Christian." To me this label is nearly as redundant as "Christ-Believing Christians"

The people we are now calling "Evangelical Christians" are "White Christians" who don't believe in much more than their future as part of one-percent.

White Christians, white agnostics, and white atheists justified genocide when this country was being formed. White Christians, white agnostics, and white atheists justified slavery when this country was being formed. White Christians, white agnostics, and white atheists justified the sale of children away from parents. These things that were done were not connected to "Christian" part of these human doings. These atrocities committed were connected to the "white" part, to the white supremacy and to the greed part of these human doings.

The bible was pulled out by a portion of white supremacists and used as a cover.

My questions is this: In 2016, by getting white evangelical Christians to support him, has Donald Trump have torn the cover off them? Do people with white skin still believe these people calling themselves "evangelical Christians" are observing anything more than their own whiteness and maybe their own green, money?

Trump, like all GOP candidates, has worked to court evangelicals, but also repeatedly flubbed attempts to talk coherently about religion throughout his campaign. He has been unable to name his favorite book of the Bible, said that he doesn’t ask for forgiveness from God because he’s “not making mistakes,” appeared confused about the beliefs of the Presbyterian denomination he claims, and evoked laughter while speaking at Liberty University earlier this month by referring to a book of the Bible as “two Corinthians” instead of the more common phrase “second Corinthians.”

Trump couldn’t even hide his religious illiteracy when he tweeted out the news of Falwell’s endorsement, referring to the college president as “Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr.” even though he is not an ordained religious leader or reverend of any sort.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/01/27/3743383/evangelicals-trump-are-not-religious/

Even white, atheist and/or white agnostic people should be able to see, by now, that these white "evangelical Christians" voting for Trump have very little that's Christian about them.

Even white agnostics and white atheists, who usually do their level best to blame every single white supremacy "evil" they can find on Christian hypocrisy rather than whiteness and white supremacy should be able to see that going to church every week doesn't make you a Christian any more than deciding to live in a garage makes you a car.

Even white agnostics and white atheists ought to have been forced, by now, to stop pretending that black, brown, and Asian Christians do not exist and therefore acknowledge that it is not Christianity that breeds anti-black and anti-brown racism.  

The white liberal/atheist/agnostic, thanks to Trump, should be able to stop brainwashing themselves into thinking belief in Christians and Christianity somehow enables white supremacy instead of acknowledging that white people create, protect, and enable white supremacy because they so rarely fully identify as fully human, people that do not look like themselves.

The word "white" should be in front of "evangelical Christian" almost every time that group is discussed because the common denominator shared between the WHITE right and the WHITE evangelicals should have been seen a long time ago by more than people of color in this country.

WHITE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS ARE MOSTLY FOCUSED ON THEIR OWN WHITENESS AND MONEY.

As for the poor evangelical Christians?

They are the same as most of the poor white people of 200 years ago, the ones eating grass outside the local white master's plantation where the slaves ate better than they did.  Poor white people, then and now, know their skin gives them a higher status.


Feeling superior to blacks is and was part of that higher status for poor whites and they were/are honored to align themselves with the one-percenters. That's why the white poor used to report on runaway slaves and volunteer to be on slave patrols etc. Poor white people supported the ones, the slave masters, crushing them with unfair competition. The 'cut your own nose off to spite your face' cliche has never fit any other group better.

Believe this:

Whether 2% or 5% or 10% of white people ever owned slave back in the day? Slavery absolutely does not work without poor white folks. No poor white racists using their skin color as status when they look at their reflection in the river, then there's ten million hiding places for black slaves. Ten million hiding places for black slaves = no slavery. 

Just like in the days of slavery, the one-percenters like Trump absolutely cannot function without their ignorant, white poor and white middle class support. There's nothing Christian about any of these political maneuverings on the right.

Trumps support, inside and outside the church, is 9/10ths about white supremacy and greed. The right white Christians, the right white agnostics, and the right white atheists are walking in lock step as they always have been.

SSDD

FALLING ASLEEP IN A PARKED CAR WHILE BLACK

Marquintan Sandlin and Kisha Michael made arrangements for someone to watch their kids and went out on a date. After the date, in the wee hours of the morning, they fall asleep or pass out in the car with a gun between them(?) The police spent 45 minutes trying to wake the couple up. Then military grade weapons were fired into or at the car by police, killing them both.

The mayor says one or both of them must have been awake at some point because somebody (one or more of the cops) felt threatened.

This above is an outline of the police version of this story. Does this even come close to making sense to you?

"For at least 45 minutes, police attempted "to rouse" them in an effort "to de-escalate the situation," said Butts. It is the first public explanation for what transpired early Sunday morning during the time between the initial call and the shooting.  Police previously had stated responding officers saw the woman had a gun, retreated to behind cover, and then gave orders for the couple to exit the vehicle." 

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/couple-killed-inglewood-police-shooting-asleep-mayor-butts-369902981.html

So THIS VERSION of events is actually story #2. Got it. * * * * * STORY #1

Officers said they received a call early Sunday morning of a suspicious vehicle stopped near Manchester Boulevard and Inglewood Avenue. When they approached the car, they noticed the woman in the car had a gun and ordered her and a male occupant out of the vehicle, said Scott Collins, a spokesman for the Inglewood Police Department.

Officers then took cover and opened fire, killing both people. 

However, Kisha's never owned a gun according to her twin sister. Read More: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-family-of-woman-killed-by-inglewood-police-demand-answers-20160222-story.html

HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS

In 1917, desperate times called for desperate measures. President Wilson ordered the enlistment of all able-bodied men, black or white...

Feeling Rebloggy

The first all-black fighting unit to arrive in France was New York's 369th Infantry. The Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, General John, 'Black Jack' Pershing, bowed to political pressure back home and refused to use the men in combat. He assigned the 369th to the French High Command who dubbed them 'Les Enfants Perdus.... The Lost Children.' The unit's white commander, Colonel William Hayward would later write...

The Harlem Hellfighters spent 191 days in front line trenches, more than any other American unit. There was often nothing between the German Army and Paris but these black volunteers from New York. During that time, they never had any men captured nor any ground taken. At the Battle of Belleau Wood, a French General ordered the soldiers to retreat. Their commanding officer refused.

"Turn back? I should say not! My men never retire. They go forward or they die!" (Colonel William Hayward)

The Harlem Hellfighters are featured in the documentary of Black Military History, "For Love of Liberty."

ForLoveOfLiberty.Org

http://forloveofliberty.org/overview/Harlem_Hellfighters.html

EXERCISING WITH ERNESTINE ON FACEBOOK

I thought I'd post a little cute caption about the World's Oldest Body Builder, Ernestine Shepard, and show her video.

But then I watched her video and was like, Wait! I can build my arm strength up while doing a real push up position? I can do it without killing myself? I can do that part gradually? Really?

Good morning everyone! Well you have been asking me for years and I've finally done it.... a Facebook Video! I'm very excited about it and starting next week, I am going to do my best to post one video per week so you can actually hear me talking to you. I speak to you via written word but I want to connect with you more via the spoken word. Let me know what you think of my first video. I don't think it is too bad for my first one. :) Have a great day and continue being determined, dedicated and disciplined to be fit! I love you and God bless. Love, Ernestine
Posted by Ernestine Shepherd-World's Oldest Female Body Builder on Saturday, February 20, 2016

Ernestine says she is going to be popping out a video per week.  I think I'm going to follow her and let her inspire me because I've finally had to completely give up aerobic type workouts. My joints won't take the repetitive motion for an hour any more. Even if I break the aerobics down into 4 different non-impact exercises, I'm still rotating through the damaged knee 800 times in that hour.

Body Building. Hmmm. I've done it before. But it was like the side salad, not the meal. It'll be interesting to see if I can do weight lifting as "the main course" I can do anything for an hour for so long as the music in my headphones is right.

WHITE ON WHITE CRIME

People kill (and rob) who they live and work near. And this country is still fairly (very) segregated. The chart below shows who killed white murder victims It is usually near-ish 84% white murderers that white people every year.

It really irritates me that the "black on black" crime statistic has been repeated over and over again BY ASHAMED BLACK PEOPLE since the Reagan Era AS IF "white on white" crime doesn't exist.

And yes, white on white crimes levels were the same back in the 1980s too:

White and White crime and Black on Black crime usually keep pace with one another. Of course the absolute numbers are different due to differing levels of race based poverty but the only time these ONE-SIDED, horrific percentages seem to separate by more than a percentage or three is when there is an economic downturn.
----------------

LOOK IT UP YOURSELF 
FBI UCR DATA
2013http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/violent-crime/violent-crime-topic-page/violentcrimemain_final






Creating the "black on black crime" label without ever acknowledging that "white on white" and "latinx on latinx" and "asian on asian" crime don't exist was a way of making black people appear pathological -- when most crime is INTRA-racial.

If you EVER see a statistic about black people and can't find one on white people, you need to sit back and ponder who put the statistic out and who benefits.

Creating the "Black on Black Crime" label has to be one of the more genius dog whistle racism maneuvers of 20th century.  And I think Ronald Reagan deserves the credit even if he didn't invent it. He used it "masterfully."

BROWN RIBBONS AT THE OSCARS THIS WEEKEND

"Attendees at the 88th annual Oscars are being asked to wear a new colored ribbon."

Eva Longoria's Brown Ribbon Campaign

Feeling Rebloggy

"In past Oscar ceremonies, attendees have worn colored ribbons to outwardly show their support for various causes, including red ribbons to raise consciousness about AIDS, pink ribbons for breast cancer and black ribbons honoring the tragic death of Sarah Jones.

This year, a new color is entering the rainbow of Hollywood causes: Eva Longoria is supporting the Brown Ribbon Campaign, which asks those attending Sunday's ceremony to wear brown ribbons to bring awareness to the lack of Latino representation in films."

~Hollywood Reporter 

Read More:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/oscars-eva-longoria-supports-brown-869572

I'm guessing Ruben Blades will support this campaign too.  I'm hope many stars of many varying hues will.  
Read more Blades' take on #OscarsSoWhite here:
http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/02/ruben-blades-on-oscars.html

WHY BLACK LIVES MATTER FORCING CLINTON'S APOLOGY IS BIG NEWS

Feeling Rebloggy

Black Lives MatterAshley Williams reminded Americathat the reasons the old tough-on-crime thing so dominated 1990s politics is not simply that crime was far higher than it is today.

Talking tough and advocating for long, mandatory prison terms; and denigrating and dismissing the humanity of those involved, has been a valuable political tactic deployed by politicians in both major parties. And, that’s been a particularly effective tactic with white voters, because in the United States there are a whole host of  persistent stereotypes about race and criminality.

Those notions have long served as justification for all manner of injustice, exclusion and exploitation. And that, in turn, has helped to maintain a very real relationship between poverty and race, seeded elevated crime in some communities and helped to justify even more, and possibly less thoughtful, “lock them up and throw away the key” public policy. In essence, those very stereotypes have both helped to rationalize and create the undeniably massive and racially disproportionate incarceration that exists in the United States today.

That last bit is not an opinion. That's among the conclusions reached in a huge, many-year National Academy of Sciences study published in 2014. 

Read More On This Black Lives Matter Successhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/26/why-hillary-clintons-super-predator-apology-is-such-a-big-moment-for-political-protest/

EVERYDAY POLICE BRUTALITY

So many people think that black and brown folk are afraid of police because of what happened to Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and Sam DuBose. And we are, no doubt. But it occurs to me that white and/or class privileged people don't hear stories like this too often.

This is a twitter essay written by a man, an attorney, who defended a young, black, male who got sucked into the jaws of the criminal justice system simply because a cat crossed his path at exactly the wrong moment.



When you read this story, please remember that the officer that lied will never look in the mirror and see a racist or a racist's best enabler. He'll never hear himself teaching his children racism either.

The witnesses that lied will never look in the mirror and see racists or racist enablers. They'll never hear themselves teaching racism to their children and their grand children. People like the cop involved, who did no jail time, and the lying witnesses, who did no jail time, will always be horrified when they managed to create, nurture, and raise someone like Dylann Roof -- who is only different from them by one or two loose screws.



READ THE ESSAY HEREhttp://fusion.net/story/272058/43-tweetsttorm-race-criminal-justice/?



The cop and witnesses involved in this non-case nearly destroyed a young man's life, probably without even thinking about it consciously.  They saw a lesser being in human skin and acted on their prejudices on automatic pilot.

BOOKER T WASHINGTON'S 1895 SPEECH AND MISS EVERS' BOYS

1895, BOOKER T WASHINGTON'S ATLANTA EXPO SPEECH A.K.A. "THE ATLANTA COMPROMISE" SPEECH

"To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race,“Cast down your bucket where you are.” 

...Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. 

Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, 

-tilled your fields, 
-cleared your forests, 
-builded your railroads and cities, 
-and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, 
-and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South... 

you will find that they will 
-buy your surplus land, 
-make blossom the waste places in your fields, 
-and run your factories. 

While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most 
-patient, 
-faithful, 
-law-abiding, 
-and unresentful people 

...that the world has seen. 

As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, 

-in nursing your children, 

-watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, 

-and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, 

-so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, 

-ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours,

- interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. 

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
(Support for the founding for Jim Crow?)

* * * * *

Did you know that it was W.E.B. DuBois is the one that re-named Booker T. Washington's speech "The Altanta Compromise?"  Many people think the revised title fit well. 

I do.

Washington essentially promised white people that black people would not try to rise above their station in life by voting; or by aspiring to jobs too high (into jobs like Washington himself already possessed); or by failing to perform that loving subservience that white people had come to expect during slavery such as the nursing of babies and the nursing of ancient white people with one foot in the grave. All was to continue as it had.

The most important thing Washington promised was Jim Crow.

Keep in mind during the times of slavery, whites and blacks saw each other all the time because white people were keeping a close eye on their property. Black people were under constant scrutiny.

Post-slavery white people were afraid of the resentment that leads to revenge. So whites wanted a new distance from black people

More than that poor white people who had never slaves lost the only thing they possessed when slavery ended. They lost the status of not being a slave due to having white skin.

Some slaves ate better than poor whites during slavery, for example. Of course, they might be whipped to death for nothing. But their owners did need them healthy enough to work. Poor white farmers might be eating grass out of their front yard. The only thing they could be proud of was their white skin making them socially higher than a slave. When slavery ended that status was gone. 

Lower class whites didn't want to be poor people together with poor black people. Poor whites wanted their comparative higher status based on whiteness back. Jim Crow was a method of creating that comparative higher status. 

When Booker T Washington said, "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers..." he may have inadvertently laid the foundation for segregated buses, lunch counters, schools, water fountains, bathrooms at gas stations, etc. I don't know if that's literally what he had in mind, if he understood how violent the black codes could become (once they became Jim Crow after his death)

Today, I don't think we have an appreciation for just how violent this group of lower class white people could get, would get, half a century later, while trying to create these artificial markers of white superiority.

Clearly, Booker T Washington didn't either.

I recently read a memoir that included the story of a black woman, a mother, getting on a bus and sitting her infants down on "the white seats" while digging out change for the bus driver. I could expect a violent verbal reaction from the white bus driver after reading so much history. But I nearly vomited when I read he stepped on the gas and stomped the breaks hard enough to throw the babies to the floor. My grandmother had told me of witnessing white bus drivers doing this to black women, adults. But it was beyond my imagination to imagine someone deliberately hurting infants.

But then there WAS the 16th street church bombing where little girls were going to Sunday School wasn't there?

I don't think Booker T Washington understood what kind of acquiescence he built into his legacy.

I also don't think Washington understood just how firmly he believed in US vs THEM within the black community either. Or maybe he did. I haven't read a biography on "The Wizard" yet. In my mind though, he clearly believed in the superior black people (the few of us that should go on to be professors, lawyers, and doctors) who were very different from the blacks he spoke of in his speech, those black people that should just let white folks drop their buckets where they live. Oh yes, white folks should drop that bucket where they are and let that bucket fill up with black people who do not aspire to be much different than they were during slavery.

You could almost believe Booker T Washington was putting on a show for the white folks if you don't read some of the battles he had with W.E.B DuBois. Even if you think W.E.B. DuBois was biased, and he surely was, his separation of black people into US and THEM is the only way for me to explain to myself at least some of his arguments with Dubois in addition to the fact that the Tuskegee Experiment took place at Booker T Washington's Tuskegee.

There's so much talk about what the white folk did during the Tuskegee Experiment. And that white racism was terrible. But what is even more heartbreaking to read is that black doctors and black students at Tuskegee, "the black haves", participated in the experiments on "the black have-nots," the rural black men that lived in the area. In the movie about the Tuskegee Experiment called "Miss Evers Boys," Joe Morton represents several black men who experimented on other black men at the behest of white men.

I'm not sure the Tuskegee Experiment could ONLY have happened at Tuskegee but sometimes I feel so very certain that Booker T Washington's classist(?)/elitist(?) attitudes were built into the foundation of Tuskegee. And I'm not talking about the building. 

I appreciate the fact that, just coming out of slavery, many black people felt they could behave their way into peace with white people. The Cherokees tried the same thing just before white people put them on the trail of tears. But some people managed to get over themselves. They looked around and saw they'd have to demand their rights and cut off white folks sources of money. Ida B Wells probably paid the highest price I heard of to get over being self-righteous about how to behave as a black person. It sounds like Ida B put somebody else's business out in the street and then a killed herself. The who-is-sleeping-with-who thing wasn't exactly a respectability politics situation itself.*  But it made Ida B rethink her judgmental attitudes, period. And she was a much better woman for it. She broke with classist attitudes that her contemporaries, heroes and heroines of ours, did not.

It doesn't sound like Booker T Washington ever had such a come Jesus moment. Ida B Wells' error makes me wonder what would have been different if Washington had been different, less focused on his own prestige, a little less focused on money as power, quite a bit more focused on political power.

Differences of opinion, "beefing with one another,"  is only "good" if you can learn from the person you are arguing with. I'm not sure Booker T Washington and W.E.B. DuBois ever really did that. Then again, the rest of us who read history have benefited from reading about their arguments tremendously. We need to see multiple views of single events or a flow of single events, right?

The biggest lesson I get out of reading about Booker T Washington, so far, is that wealth builders shouldn't always be speakers, influence-ers, and representatives. Sometimes wealth builders should build the wealth and power, hand a bunch of that wealth over to the activists better at thinking and representing, take a bow, then find someplace to sit down and be quiet.

But there's really no place or time in America where a man does that is there? 


http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/
http://www.history.com/interactives/black-history-timeline


*As I recall, Ida B Wells was outing a white man and black woman for sleeping together. She was pointing out black and white people sleep together voluntarily when it's not labeled as "rape" She was just beginning to talk about the justifications for rape....in her newspaper. Not cool. I can't remember if she named-names. She did a lot of innuendo in her early writing. But towns were so small...

STOP BERNIE SPLAINING TO BLACK VOTERS

Sanders is a solid candidate and his integrity and earnestness are admirable, but that can get lost in the noise of advocacy.

Tucked among all this Bernie-splaining by some supporters, it appears to me, is a not-so-subtle, not-so-innocuous savior syndrome and paternalistic patronage that I find so grossly offensive that it boggles the mind that such language should emanate from the mouths — or keyboards — of supposed progressives.

 The level of condescension in these comments is staggering

~Charles M. Blow, NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/opinion/campaign-stops/stop-bernie-splaining-to-black-voters.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

HOW JAZZ BROKE THE KKK AND HELPED PAVE THE WAY FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

Feeling Quasi-Rebloggy 

In the 1920s,[]the evolution of jazz music and culture into a societal revolution elevated aspects of African American popular culture. For the first time in the U.S. History the culture of a minority became the desire of the majority.

Black Jazz musicians started getting PAID. 

Jazz in New Orleans elevated the status of African Americans there. Not surprisingly, there was a very serious white reaction to these black successes.

Image Jazz Music by chriskronen on DeviantArt

The member rolls of formal White Supremacy Groups were already at record highs in the 1920s. The KKK, for example, was 4 million members strong all by itself and there were plenty of other white citizens groups as well. In 1919, white supremacists even managed to gain control of New Orleans, Louisiana (the birth place of jazz).

.

For many years, Creoles had held positions of power and respect in the city. And Jazz put money in the pockets of all sorts of black people.  But soon a series of new laws made New Orleans a very difficult place for any man or women with African blood to [continue to] prosper.Some African Americans fled North.  However, others who enjoyed elevated status due to the income generated by African American Jazz, were able to stay and protest the unjust treatment they were receiving from racist whites due to color of their skin

.

Enraged by black demands for fair wages and the popularity of African American Jazz music with white youths, the Klan decided to go on a nationwide campaign to "Americanize Americans."

Some white musicians began to deny that jazz was African American by origin, instead choosing to label the Original Dixieland Jazz Band as the genesis of jazz music...

But white youths preferred African American Jazz over the Dixieland music now being called "jazz" too.

.

While trying to destroy true Jazz culture, the KKK (feeling themselves?) also decided to go on nationwide tirades about the evils of Catholicism and other aspects of popular culture managing to alienate a large percentage of people that may have shared their views of white supremacy.

By expanding the scope of their "vision," the Klan planted the seeds of its eventual disintegration.As a result the Klan lost membership remained relatively dormant until the controversy of equal rights reached its zenith in the 1960s.

http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/tbacig/studproj/is3099/jazzcult/20sjazz/race.html

In other words, Jazz helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Movement by reducing formal white supremacy groups numbers before the civil rights battle surged forth again.

The Klan was weak and had to organize when 1950s "mass protests"  began adding people power to NAACP legislative victories within the Supreme Court. Changing the laws on paper only began to have meaning when ordinary black people demanded  --in huge numbers in full sight of these new things called "television" cameras, broadcasting world wide-- that white people stop ignoring the new laws, doing and hating as they pleased. 

As horrific as the civil rights battle was against racist whites was in the 1950s and 60s, imagine what the battle could have been for Thurgood Marshall, Pauli Murray, Jo Ann Robinson, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King, and Malcom X. They would have had with a highly organized, high intact membership of white racists that remained popular, millions of members strong for close to 100 years before the modern civil rights movement really began ramp up again INSTEAD OF dealing "only" having to deal with groups like the KKK that had to regroup in response to the Civil Rights progresses that had already passed them by, leaving them eating dust.
Yes, the KKK hit it's zenith in the 1960s. But black and brown people had won some very public victories by the time they reached white supremacy groups got their highest membership numbers. By the time the KKK hit their full strength, black people were already a solid wall.

4 little girls lost to 16th Street Church Bombing

Yes, we lost Martin, Medgar, Denise, Cynthia, Addie Mae, and Carol a whole host of others before the Black Power Movement would have us surging forward again. But we might have lost Jo Ann Robinson and Rosa Parks before they had a chance to start the Montgomery Bus Boycott. We might have lost Thurgood Marshall before he got to be a supreme court justice. Without Thurgood Marshall, we might not to have gotten to have a first black president yet.  Who knows how many times Marshall voted on key legislation that edged us all forward, just the tiniest bit, that we didn't even notice-- leaving just enough behind him to give Barack Obama a little more traction than he would have had.

I don't think the KKK throwing itself against Jazz and breaking is nothing. I really don't. The KKK had to have been one of the most prominent white supremacy groups. When the KKK went down in 1920s, it probably took the general popularity of overt white supremacy groups down with it.

That's all it probably was too. Jazz disrupted the type of white supremacy that was popular at the time. Jazz made it lay low for a bit, maybe?  Maybe Jazz loosened white racists' ties to one another for just long enough.

GET INSTANT DIVERSITY NOW!!!

INSTANT DIVERSITY CAN BE YOURS 

FOR A PRICE!!!

JUST CALL RENT-A-MINORITY

Is your all white executive board about to be interviewed on television?

Give Rent-A-Minority a call!
.

Is every last one of your Brazilian runway models paler than a paper bag?
Give Rent-A-Minority a  call!
.
Are you biting your nails bloody, worrying about #OscarsSoWhiteIII?
Call Rent-A-Minority NOW! I mean literally call us TODAY!  You need to get some black and brown voting members on that Oscar Panel NOW DUDES and DUDE-ETTES.  CALL US NOW!!! December 2016 will be too damn late to undo the damage done by the 100 year old, one foot in the grave, white MoFos that voted for the Oscar contenders THIS YEAR. 





The jokes above are mine. The website is not. It's hilarious!!! I can't believe I didn't think of this FIRST!



But you know WHITE FOLK AND THE WANNA BEs, right?

You KNOW, 
they didn't KNOW 
it was a joke,
Right?

You knew that already right?

I'm totally serious here.

Totally.

From the Article

"You know, at the beginning, I got a few emails where people were asking me, "Is this available in Singapore yet?."..from, like, big banks. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but there are definitely a few people who, I think, thought it was a genuine business. And then there was one person I saw on Twitter who was like, don't join this rent-a-minority site; it's a scam. You won't make any money. "

Read Morehttp://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/02/18/467253401/rent-a-minority-promises-a-satirical-solution-to-diversity-problems



* * * * *

WHITE FOLK AND THE WANNA BEs. 
There's got to be a joke music video in there somewhere. Somebody come up with something. We could sing it to Hey, Hey We're The Monkees from that 1960s television show. 

RADICAL BROWNIES

For those not in the know, when a girl says she is a "brownie"  she means she's in the pre-girl scout. "Brownies" are to girl scouts as cub scouts and the boy scouts.

But the Radical Brownies are something a little different. Radical Brownies are a social justice oriented group. Instead of girls getting something like a "hostess badge" they can get a "Black Lives Matter" badge or an "LGBT Ally" badge.

[Radical Brownie] Co-founder Anayvette Martinez says the idea stemmed from her own daughter: “I saw the need for a group that would empower and encourage her to form bonds of sisterhood with other girls in her community. I began to imagine what a radical young girl’s social justice troop looked like; a group that centered and affirmed her experiences as a beautiful and brilliant brown girl against so many societal pressures to conform to mainstream ideals of girlhood.”

The stories you need to read, in one handy email

 

Read more

The group also arrives at a time when non-white girls in the US find their identities policed on multiple axes. In schools, they already face disproportionate (and stratified) discrimination and are suspended at rates that far eclipse those of their white peers. Studies repeatedly show that suspensions can serve as a gateway in the “school-to-prison pipeline”, and often they are issued for reasons that boil down to the girls not being “ladylike” enough.

Radical Brownies teach girls to value themselves just as much as they value others. Sexism is real and it's real from a young age. This is an idea that should have come along a long time ago.  Put Anayvette Martinez on your list of heroes. 
Right now this seems like it's only located in Oakland. May this idea spread across the land.  Black and Brown girls need this. 



The link to an article on school discipline for girls again.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/us/school-discipline-to-girls-differs-between-and-within-races.html?_r=0