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“Niomi Daley, the British hip-hop star better known as Ms Dynamite, travelled to her ancestral land Jamaica to make a documentary about slaves who fought back, as part of the BBC’s season marking Britain’s abolition of the slave trade.”
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Thx aaronkorea! “A generation into blind auditions, African-American and Latino classical musicians remain few and lonely. The New York Philharmonic has exactly one black member: horn player Jerome Ashby…”
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Thx Umm Ali! “In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family’s home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it `a signal to black folks.’ “
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Thx Jason! “I will say publicly what many people are whispering privately in barbershops, soul food restaurants… If relations don’t improve between African Americans and Latinos in Southern California, we are headed for a major racial conflict.”
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“The fact that this playful dig at her second hometown was written in English and Spanish certainly adds to its effect. But Los Abandoned don’t limit their bilingual lyrics to any subject matter; like many bands, they also sing about relationships, curren
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Thx Kimberly! “A judge gave a 240-year prison sentence Wednesday to a black man who took hostages in an East Village bar, injuring several with bullets and kerosene, while telling the patrons that “white people are going to burn tonight.”
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Thx Myra! “A controversy involving offensive Asian stereotypes is simmering in Christian publishing…In some of the dialogue, a Chinese restaurant deliveryman uses language that portrays Asian people in exaggeratingly stereotypical ways.”
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Thx Wendi! “The way history has long been taught here, Britain’s abolition of the slave trade on March 25, 1807, allowed it to claim the moral high ground in the struggle to end slavery in the New World…perceptions may be about to change.”
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Thx Wendi! “Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes.”
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
mtevc wrote:
I know little Spanish, but went to see the Mars Volta not that long ago…and have all their work. They are amazing, and the mix of English and Spanish lyrics makes sense for these guys, given their background. Just really great rock music all around. Now, Ozomatli are wonderful too! Check them out, if you haven’t.
Posted 24 Mar 2007 at 8:09 am ¶
kim wrote:
240-year prison sentence: whoa. This is terrorism, this is horrifying.
Given the laws as we know them, this does seems excessively harsh. Emotionally, I am not torn as to the nature of the terror the victims felt and underwent.
But I am dubious of what would have happened had this been tried as a murder trial, and not something else. The hate aspect of it makes this man’s actions more heinous, and would tack on time, to be sure.
Is it right that people do less time for actually killing others? NO. Yet the law stands by its statutes. Is it right to disregard that someone would have to be ‘off’ to do such a thing as this defendant?
Posted 24 Mar 2007 at 6:45 pm ¶
kim wrote:
Black child gets 7 year(s): This is ridiculous. The main point I would like investigated is whether the school nurse was expecting the young lady, and intended to administer the medications Shaquanda required.
I don’t care what type of pushing the girl did, even if it were manslaughter in the second degree, due to the victim hitting his head and incurring a fatal blow, this is extreme under the law, under any precedent I’ve ever heard about.
I know about comments from school district administrators, and the process of towing the line when it comes to school district administrators reprimanding, or curbing, the behaviors of principals and schoolroom teachers.
I know about taking things to the level of the Department of Education, and being unyielding in that regard, until a school official and EVERYONE involved has to face questions raised by the level of inquiry, demand and complaint in a formal complaint.
I know people will lie, and that sometimes people will recognize they’ve been caught in the lie, and only under duress of losing their damned jobs will come forward with the truth.
This girl must be released from prison. PRISON. I am going to write to her until that happens.
Posted 24 Mar 2007 at 7:26 pm ¶
Brad wrote:
There is a very similar town like Paris right here in FL called Dixie county. Very Pro-white, Violently Racist. My uncle told me a horror story where he was driving through there in the late 70’s where he found a black man lying on the side of the road. When he went to check on the man he found his face had been mutilated, he was dead. When my uncle went to reprt this at a local bar all he got were very threatening glares. Needless to say he got back in his car and drove as fast as he could out of town. Years later my sister was in a chearleader competition when a bus they were on went through Dixie. When the coach realized where they were at, told the bus driver not to stop for any reason what so ever. According to my sister, every house and business they drove by were decorated with Nazi and confedrate symbols. Even the high-school had instead of the American Flag had the stars and bars of the Confederate flag flying high in front of its property.
Posted 25 Mar 2007 at 12:55 pm ¶
James wrote:
Senator Obama, the Magic Negro? Wow. I mean, the columnist isn’t incorrect; it goes without saying that the Obama campaign actively cultivates the professionally unthreatening Sidney Poitier image for the Senator to appeal to mainstream Americans who fear most publicly accessible forms of Black masculinity, but where this column really shines is it’s acknowledgement that people who gravitate toward the Senator to excise their own racial hangups, who support the Obama campaign out of some need to move America (or themselves) into a post-Civil Rights, post-racist era, must ignore the Senator’s writing and public statements, moderate though they may be, to indulge their “I support Barack, I’m not racist!” fantasies.
In essence, this op-ed, much like the Debra Dickerson piece that sadly questioned Senator Obama’s racial identity, serves more as an indictment of present-day White American racism than it comments on the Senator’s public image. Consider the power dynamic: Obama supporters who consider the Senator a harbinger of a anti-racist American tomorrow must in their own minds completely ignore and silence the Senator’s intellectual and creative expression, all his foreign policy proscriptions and domestic policy perceptions, and replace his voice with their own biased and prejudiced hopes. It’s the very essence of racism to erase a person of color’s voice and replace it with a narrative of another’s choosing.
Posted 25 Mar 2007 at 9:15 pm ¶