racism

The Problem is White Women
by Saab Lofton

"The Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate."
--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., The Letter from Birmingham Jail

Henry Louis GatesA Better Class of Guardian
by Saab Lofton

I got a story
That's harder than the hardcore
Cost of the holocaust
I'm talkin' 'bout the one still goin' on
--Public Enemy, from the rap, Can't Truss It

As I understand it, the royal guards at Buckingham Palace are instructed to withstand any insult -- so long as you don't actually, physically touch those guards, you can call them a bunch of Satan worshiping child molesters who drink rusty buckets of maggot-ridden diarrhea ...

Rewarding Bitchiness
by Saab Lofton

"If white men in my day did badly by Negroes, white women did worse."
--page 88 of Roxanna Slade, by Reynolds Price

Ralph Ginzburg's book, 100 Years of Lynchings, compiles hundreds of horrendous newspaper articles, but this particular atrocity stands out ...

BIRMINGHAM VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
April 1st, 1916
BUMPS INTO GIRL; IS LYNCHED

Quotations on race relations in America ring true
Yael T. Abouhalkah

Today’s celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day has special significance because of what will happen Tuesday: the inauguration of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States.

It will be a magnificent step forward for this nation, although it will have come too late for some, including King, who was assassinated in 1968.

Forty years later, Obama’s campaign for the White House benefited from the leadership shown by King, other civil rights leaders, and those who have fought — often in controversial and sometimes conflicting ways — for racial equality.

Target Demographics With Disposable Income
by Saab Lofton

One of the biggest problems with Barack Obama is the problematic paradox he presents: If Obama loses this November, the claim will be that Rev. Jeremiah Wright's brutal honesty contributed to his downfall. If Obama wins, then supposedly the path to electoral success will lie in denouncing the brutally honest. In either event, those who tell the truth in this world are fucked.

Affirmative Action in Fiction
by Saab Lofton

"White fear is profitable. Bond issues for prison construction managed by major investment banks are more profitable than school construction bonds for improving the decrepit, crowded public schools like Taft High School in the Bronx. The prison construction bonds also depend heavily on a steady flow of young, brown bodies of former students of de-funded schools, as do the crowded barracks in Iraq's deserts."
--Roberto Lovato of the Pacific News Service, May 18th, 2004

"Over the past 20 years California has built 23 new prisons and only one new university."
--Workers World, May 22nd, 2003

Cartoonists to Protest Lack of Color in the Comics

By Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 6, 2008; C01

You could call it a sit-in, of sorts. Perhaps a sketch-in would be more appropriate, a comic call to arms, with cartoonists of color protesting for greater presence in newspaper pages. Protesting in the best way they know: drawing about it, en masse, all on the same day.

Because, these artists say, "Candorville" does not equal "Boondocks" or "Curtis" or "Wee Pals" or "Herb and Jamaal." And "La Cucaracha" does not equal "Baldo" or "Gordo" and especially not "Cafe con Leche."

Guess which driver's facing 21 years in prison — the drunk , rich, white one or the sober, poor, black one?
By Sarah Fenske
Published: January 24, 2008
http://phoenixnewtimes.com/2008-01-24/news/the-wrong-driver/full

Two cars collided last year on Cinco de Mayo.

Considering the date, you might assume that at least one of the drivers was drunk — and you'd be right. Laura Varker was 17 years old, and she'd been tubing down the Salt River all day with her eight best girlfriends. Their T-shirts all read "Cinco de Drinko." Even an hour after the accident, Varker's blood-alcohol level was 0.09, over the legal limit for adults. And, as an underage driver, she was in violation of the law by having any amount of alcohol in her system.

the Green LanternGreen and Black
By Saab Lofton

When the DC Comics character Green Lantern was created in 1940, he was an individual with a magic ring, but twenty years later, his back story was rewritten so that being a Green Lantern meant one was part of a collective.

The Green Lantern Corps, as it was called, could be compared to the Jedi Order from Star Wars since both organizations enlisted thousands of different aliens (and just as the Jedi had a fallen angel in the form of Anakin Skywalker, the Green Lanterns were similarly betrayed, but I'm getting ahead of myself).