links for 2011-05-16
May 16th, 2011 by Andrea
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"CNN’s weekend anchor Don Lemon has come out publicly this weekend as gay with a new book about his life titled Transparent expected to hit the shelves next month. Lemon who has candidly spoken about his childhood abuse before will go into even greater depth in his new memoir. The announcement this evening on his twitter feed was met with support from his nearly 87,000 followers. "Lemon acknowledges that coming out as gay has special challenges as a black man in particular and that some may judge him negatively."
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"Most Southern states followed a one-quarter or one-eighth rule: anyone with a black grandparent or great-grandparent was legally black, and those with more remote ancestry were legally white. Antebellum South Carolina, though, never had a legal definition of race. 'It may be well and proper,' a state judge and leading defender of slavery wrote in 1835, 'that a man of worth, honesty, industry and respectability, should have the rank of a white man, while a vagabond of the same degree of blood should be confined to the inferior caste.' Preserving the institution of slavery mattered far more than preserving the purity of white 'blood.' As long as people who claimed to be white were productive members of society — in effect, supporting the prevailing order — it made little sense to mandate a stricter measure of race."
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*TRIGGER WARNING* "'I looked at it, and what it brings back to me more than anything else is that I got so much notoriety because I was white,' he says. 'I looked at that picture and I thought of all the people that never get their names in a book, never get interviewed but literally had given their lives. Who the hell am I to have my picture up there?' "He was suddenly flooded with guilt. He started bawling during the ceremony as startled people looked on. Then another Freedom Rider veteran, a strapping black man named Jim Davis, walked over to Zwerg. "Zwerg's voice trembles with emotion as he recalls what Davis said. "'He said, 'Jim, you don't realize that it was your words from that hospital bed that were the call to arms for the rest of us.'"
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"Gingrich sought to lay blame for the recession, as well as the economic and social upheaval in Detroit, on Obama and his policies. 'President Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history,' Gingrich said. 'I would like to be the most successful paycheck president in American history.' "Clearly an attempt to tag Obama as an effete, latte-sipping liberal. Or foreign. Or Clintonesque. Or something. Anything but race. "Move along…
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"A majority of those swept into our nation’s prison system are poor people of color, but the sudden shift away from the 'get tough' rhetoric that has dominated the national discourse on crime has not been inspired by a surge in concern about the devastating human toll of mass incarceration. Instead, as Professor Bell predicted, the changing tide is best explained by perceived white interests. In this economic climate, it is impossible to maintain the vast prison state without raising taxes on the (white) middle class. "Given this political reality, it is hardly a surprise to read a headline that says, 'N.A.A.C.P. Joins With Gingrich in Urging Prison Reform,' rather than the other way around. If there were ever an illustration of Professor Bell’s theory that whites will support racial justice only to the extent that it is in their interests, this would seem to be it."
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"Last month, Ms. Ortega and eight other plaintiffs sued San Mateo County in an effort to change the way voters elect the powerful Board of Supervisors. Latinos and Asians make up half of the county’s population, yet they rarely hold high-ranking elected offices. Ms. Ortega and her fellow plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that the county is in violation of the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, which outlawed at-large voting in places with histories of racially polarized voting or where minority groups are 'too geographically dispersed to elect their candidate of choice from a single member district.' "The lawsuit — and its implied suggestion of racism — has struck a nerve in a county that considers itself solidly liberal. County officials say going to a district system would promote provincialism, while others point to San Francisco’s polarized Board of Supervisors."
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"The South Carolina Senate late Wednesday passed legislation that will require voters to show photo identification in order to cast a ballot. South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicle statistics show that nearly 180,000 voters in South Carolina – most of whom are elderly, student, minority or low-income voters – will be disenfranchised as a result of this discriminatory bill. Proponents of the bill claim the voter ID requirement will curb in-person election fraud. The South Carolina Election Commission, however, reports that no cases of fraud exist."
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"Federal officials issued a memorandum to the nation’s school districts on Friday saying it was against the law for education officials to seek information that might reveal the immigration status of children applying for enrollment. "Last year, Ms. Lieberman’s group found that 139 districts in New York State — about 20 percent of the total — were requiring children’s immigration papers as a prerequisite to enrollment, or asking parents for information that only lawful immigrants could provide."
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