Dear Barry,

Crackers get to vote too.

Apollo

Apollo posted this at 5:12 PM HKT on Monday, April 26th, 2010 as CHANGE!, Race

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Some white racist in Mississippi got killed by a black guy he underpayed for day labor.

How low-level is racial hatred in America today? The Telegraph story has a quote that about gets it. In 1963, Byron de la Beckwith murdered Medgar Evers, who had been a prominent NAACP activist in the Emmet Till murder and in James Merdith’s enrollment in Ole’ Miss. As those who are familiar with the Civil Rights Movement, or with Bob Dylan well know, it was a Big Deal. A Really Big Deal. Twice in 1964 Beckwith was tried for Evers’s murder, and both times the all-white jury hung. In 1994, he was tried before a multi-racial jury using nearly identical evidence as was used in 1964, and he was convicted. After his conviction, one Richard Barret, the white racist who was murdered this last Wednesday, led an [unsuccessful] effort to get the governor of Mississippi to pardon Beckwith, who was obviously and undeniably guilty.

So what is the great quote The Telegraph has? It comes from Medgar Evers’s brother, Charles:

Evers’ brother, Charles Evers, said Thursday he has long thought that Barrett didn’t really believe the things he said, but used them to entice people to donate money to his cause.

‘I think it was just a way he had to live,’ Evers said. ‘He made a living talking all that racist talk.’

And that’s about the truth of it. Whether it’s Sharpton and Jackson on the one side, or any number of low-level white supremacists on the other, the whole thing is pretty much nothing more than a money racket. God bless Charles Evers for all that he’s gone through, and for speaking the truth.

Apollo posted this at 11:53 PM HKT on Saturday, April 24th, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, Race

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It’s been probably a decade since I voluntarily gave an honest answer when asked for my race. I will be listing my race as “American” for the Census, and I wholeheartedly encourage everyone else to do so as well. We can’t make the racial bean counters stop their counting, but we can deprive them of beans.

Apollo posted this at 9:52 PM HKT on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, Race

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• From the confirming-stereotypes files and via Ann Althouse, African American magazine The Root recently published a list of black people so awful, that they’re an embarrassment to all black people and shouldn’t count as part of Black History. As distasteful as the concept is — and it’s pretty bad — their execution is even worse.  The list includes horrible dictators like Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, the Duvaliers of Haiti (okay), murders O.J. Simpson, John Allen Mohammad (still okay, I guess), scandal-prone celebrities like Dennis Rodman, Wesley Snipes, and R. Kelly (on the same list as dictators and murders?  Really?), and — of course — conservatives/republicans like Alan Keyes*, Michael Steele, and Clarence Thomas:

Although he’s only the second man of color to serve in the Supreme Court, the Backstreet Boys have more standing in the black community than Clarence Thomas. That’s because he looks to the Constitution as “colorblind,” says he’s a man who just happens to be black and opposes government programs intended to help minorities. I’m not sure if the late Thurgood Marshall would want to pop Clarence ’side his head with his gavel, but there are plenty of blacks who would volunteer to do it for him.

Yeah, they went there.

• There was a mild scandal at CPAC involving a gay conservative group called GoProud.  First, Liberty University pulled it’s sponsorship of CPAC — but still attended — when they learned GoProud would also be sponsoring.  Then, things got really interesting when one of it’s members gave a short, libertarianish speech at a panel discussion, which earned a few boos and a fair number of cheers:

This sparked some jackass from the California YAF to make this speech:

It gets better: after the speech, one of the attendees confronted said jackass — Ryan Sorba — about his comments.  Some ugly words  followed between them, which ended with Sorba physically threatening his opponent.

As others have noted, this is rather incredible, and in a good way: CPACers just booed a homophobic jerk off the stage, though whether it was for his homophobia or his jerkitude remains unclear (I’m guessing, but the boos in the first speech sure sound like they could be Sorba’s and they would certainly be consistent with his behavior in his speech).  Still, it’s heartening to see CPACers of all people — the same folks who, a few years ago, thought it was hilarious when Anne Coulter called John Edwards a faggot — to reject some homophobic jerk in favor of a liberty-loving gay group.

* Alan Keyes certainly is embarrassing, but that feeling shouldn’t be limited to Black folks.

Tom posted this at 1:49 PM HKT on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 as Ladies, Gentlemen, and the Rest of us, Race

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Powerline has an interesting discussion of “racism” in modern America. Paul Mirengoff has this truism:

[T]here’s a scam being played out here, and at several levels. At the first level, conduct that isn’t really racist is sucked into that category. This increases the reach of political correctness and the ability of the likes of President Obama and Jesse Jackson to pass judgment on whites who aren’t sufficiently careful. At the second level, the useful liberal is absolved of “racism,” where the conservative would not be.

I’ve got a pretty low opinion of the Senate, and a pretty high threshold for people saying stupid crap. The comparison between Reid and Lott is useful, insofar as neither of them said anything racist, but at most said something insensitive or stupid. I liked seeing Lott lose his leadership position in 2002 mostly because I didn’t like Lott to begin with.* Reid’s comment is more directly racial than was Lott’s, but it’s main sin is using a word of questionable taste. Honestly, I think Reid’s comment that Obama has “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” is hilarious, as it attempts to describe the way that Obama changes his manner of speech depending on whether he’s speaking to a largely black or a largely white audience.** “Negro dialect” isn’t the phrase I’d use, but we all know what he meant, and it’s true.

*Knowing what we know now of how terribly the Republicans would fumble their majority in 2003-06, particularly during and after 2005, “Would we be better off if Trent Lott had remained the Republicans’ senate leader”? is the most interesting hypothetical I’ve thought of in ages. I’d actually forgotten about Trent Lott’s existence until the past day or two. But I think it’s indisputable that Bill Frist was, at best, no better than Lott. I think Lott might have done more to beat back the judicial fillibusters in 2005-06. Having a Senate majority leader whose house was destroyed in Katrina would have been a small boon during a time when small, stupid stories held sway in politics. Mitch McConnell strikes me as, more or less, Trent Lott with ever so slightly more scruples but significantly worse hair. They’re about the same, though, in terms of leading people to believe that Senate Republicans are mostly white guys who sound like Foghorn Leghorn.

**Q: Who’s the racist here – the guy who literally speaks to people of different races in different tones of voice, or the guy who points it out using a word that some don’t like? A: Rush Limbaugh. I hear he favors slavery.

Apollo posted this at 2:24 AM HKT on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 as Race, Running with the antelope, Walking the Cat Backwards

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Don’t try to join all the different metaphors in this Shelby Steele column, but it’s very much worth reading. A few excerpts:

Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him. As providence would have it, this was a very effective symbiosis politically. And yet, without self-disclosure on the one hand or cross-examination on the other, Mr. Obama became arguably the least known man ever to step into the American presidency. . . .

I think that Mr. Obama is not just inexperienced; he is also hampered by a distinct inner emptiness—not an emptiness that comes from stupidity or a lack of ability but an emptiness that has been actually nurtured and developed as an adaptation to the political world. . . .

He has not had to gamble his popularity on his principles, and it is impossible to know one’s true beliefs without this. In the future he may stumble now and then into a right action, but there is no hard-earned center to the man out of which he might truly lead. . . .

I’m not going to exert the effort required to search for all the posts, back in 2007 and early 2008, where I observed that Obama was an empty suit. But I thought it and said it quite frequently. I’ve admired Steele for a long time, but, obviously, Steele’s column neither proves nor disproves my point. Still, I’m extremely pleased to see that a year into the Obama administration, Steele and I are on the same wavelength. If I’m right, I’m right. But if I’m wrong, I’m hard pressed to think of better company.

Apollo posted this at 2:49 AM HKT on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 as CHANGE!, Race

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Look I’m not one of the knee jerk “dissident” conservatives who believe everything wrong with the right can be traced back to Rush Limbaugh.

But seriously?

Is there any way to construe that other than naked racism? Did anyone here listen to the full context of the quote? Maybe HuffPo is taking it out of context? (Which would not be shocking in the least.)

Jamie posted this at 11:27 AM HKT on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 as Buffoon Watch, Race

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While I generally can’t bring myself to care about the couple that crashed a party at the White House, their latest party crash is worth noting. Rich white people using the bus boy’s entrance to sneak into a meeting of black people. I’m not saying that it’s the fulfillment of Rev. King’s dream, but it’s something.

Also worth noting in the story is this great moment in comma usage: “Photos show the couple among the likes of Senator Roland Burris and his wife, Patrick Kennedy, and Star Jones.” Paging Jane Austen.

Apollo posted this at 11:47 AM HKT on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 as Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Race

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Thank you, Jonah.

Jamie posted this at 2:09 PM HKT on Friday, September 18th, 2009 as Race, There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet

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This is one of the most blatant, dangerous lies ever committed on cable TV.  And that’s really saying something.

H/T: Radley

Tom posted this at 8:58 AM HKT on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 as Journalism, Race

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Next time somebody tells me how wonderful and sincere our president is, I’m going to point him to this:

On the meeting’s being dubbed the “Beer Summit,” Obama said, “It’s a clever term, but this is not a summit, guys. This is three folks having a drink at the end of the day, and hopefully giving people an opportunity to listen to each other, and that’s really all it is.

“This is not a university seminar. It is not a summit. It’s an attempt to have some personal interaction when an issue has become so hyped and so symbolic that you lose sight of just the fact that these are people involved,” he said.

He said he would be surprised if the media makes the meeting out to be more important than his meeting Thursday with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, president of the Philippines, but “the press has surprised me before.”

Here’s the accompanying picture:

Tom posted this at 8:39 AM HKT on Friday, July 31st, 2009 as Race, That's Not Change!

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For the supposed greatest public speaker of his generation, our president sure has to apologize for his word choice pretty frequently. But what does this mean?

“Because this has been ratcheting up and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically. And I could have calibrated those words differently.”

He doesn’t actually apologize for what he said, or even imply that he actually did anything wrong. It is indeed unfortunate that he maligned the police with his words (”gave an impression” – he said they acted “stupidly” and then went on a rant about racism). And he indeed could have chosen his words differently. But he stands by the position that it’s his job to run off at the mouth about these sorts of matters. And he continues with his old shtick that this isn’t about him or about any particular incident, it’s about America’s race problem.

My hope is is that as a consequence of this event, this ends up being what’s called a teachable moment, where all of us, instead of pumping up the volume, spend a little more time listening to each other and try to focus on how we can generally improve relations between police officers and minority communities, and that instead of flinging accusations, we can all be a little more reflective in terms of what we can do to contribute to more unity.

So we should learn from what he did. He shouldn’t have done anything differently. He could have done something differently, but he wasn’t wrong to do what he did. We’re all just wrong to have made a big deal about it.

Apollo posted this at 2:42 PM HKT on Friday, July 24th, 2009 as Fake Apologies, Race

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On the Dish, Conor posts the following from a reader, who argues Gatesgate will wake-up white America to black victimization:

White Americans don’t necessarily relate to the young men who are arrested for driving while black, walking while black, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time while black. You can’t convince white Americans that the law is biased against blacks because whites believe (without necessarily admitting it to themselves) that young black men get arrested so disproportionately and go to prison more often because they deserve to.

And by whites, I don’t mean just Neanderthals. I mean most of the people you will ever run into. They assume that black men are more disposed to crime and so they don’t have to pay attention when you or Radley Balko or someone else points out how many have been railroaded.

This is patently absurd.  However much sympathy Gates deserves — and I think he deserves some — there should be little question that he’ ended up in jail primarily because of his own belligerence and assumption that Sgt. Crowley was a racist.*  As Apollo points out, that conclusion is based as much on Gates’ own comments about the incident as Crowley’s police report.

Contra Conor’s reader, the Gates case is a terrible example of the kind of police abuse that Radley Balko has brought to light, especially those with a racial angle.  What pains me about this is that the next time Radley writes about something genuinely horrific, a lot of people are going to roll their eyes and assume it’s just another story about a whining black guy with a chip on his shoulder.  Cory Maye deserves better.

* I’m more than willing to consider that Crowley’s behavoir was less than exemplary and I confess I’m sketpical as to whether or not Gates should have been arrested.

Tom posted this at 8:45 AM HKT on Friday, July 24th, 2009 as Race

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This account of his own arrest from Henry Gates is impressive. He’s correct about one thing: the degree of open racial animosity and stereotyping that occurred during this engagement is shocking.

Apollo posted this at 9:15 PM HKT on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 as Race

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Make it this one:

As someone who hates the stupid show of fealty to racial interest groups, and as someone who suspects Barbara Boxer’s middle name rhymes with Witch, that was thoroughly gratifying.

Apollo posted this at 1:15 PM HKT on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 as Race

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