All Things American Xenophobia & White Supremacy

[LFC]

[LFC]

[pnwguy]

Too much melanin to be trusted

www.rawstory.com/florida-trooper-tases-black-teen-at-his-girlfriends

[LFC]

Jun 24, 2021 17:29:47 GMT pnwguy said:

Too much melanin to be trusted

www.rawstory.com/florida-trooper-tases-black-teen-at-his-girlfriends

This old officer needs to be sent to pasture, and by "pasture" I mean "jail."

[pnwguy]

Jun 24, 2021 17:58:32 GMT LFC said:

Jun 24, 2021 17:29:47 GMT pnwguy said:

Too much melanin to be trusted

www.rawstory.com/florida-trooper-tases-black-teen-at-his-girlfriends

This old officer needs to be sent to pasture, and by "pasture" I mean "jail."

But only after a few rounds of tasering before his arrest.

[LFC]

Iowa Republicans are trying to muzzle both teachers and students on the topic of racism. It's both an attack on discussing reality as well as an apparently incompetently written bill. What a shock. Sounds pure Republican.

The Iowa legislature has just passed a new law on teaching about racism in the Iowa schools. It is long, vague, and contradictory. It is a confusing, poorly drafted piece of legislation. It is clear, though, that it drastically restricts speech on the part of students and teachers. It is now law, but unlikely to have much legal impact as it is almost certainly unconstitutional and does not include tough enforcement measures.

Yet it still matters. We are losing many of our best college graduates to places like Chicago, Minneapolis, and Texas. Our civic leaders try to win new businesses in the state yet employers are unlikely to invest in a state that looks like Mississippi, only with cold weather.

Reading this new law felt like skimming the Terms of Service on a commercial website, or carefully reading the warranty on a new toaster oven. It left me wondering how such a mess received the support of GOP leaders.

Sadly, this law is purely political. It has arrived in the midst of a larger movement against Critical Race Theory (CRT) a doctrine almost solely taught in law schools. Yet it will damage faculty governance over teaching in universities, and, along with recent threats to academic tenure, make it difficult to recruit the best professors to our state. However, it meshes well with current Republican thinking in the age of Trump. Iowa has a long tradition of local control of education. However, this law gives most power to the legislature. On a variety of issues, from hog lots to COVID-19 masking, the Iowa GOP believes in local control, except when it doesn't.

The law seems to protect students against discrimination based on their "political ideology." That sounds laudable, but it does not effectively define "ideology," creating confusion. Other elements of the law seem equally problematic. For example, it prohibits teaching anything with the consequence that "any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of that individual's race or sex."

I'm not a lawyer, but it appears that the legislature has just passed a law against hurt feelings. My students are adults, and I love hearing their varied opinions. But when they learn about slavery, Indian removal, or the Vietnam War, it might be distressing. Feel good history, which celebrates great men, might sound fine. Unfortunately, it obscures the fact that disagreement and dissent are crucial to our country's past.

[LFC]

Dan Crenshaw let's his white supremacy flag fly, not that he'd describe it that way.

After winning the bronze medal in the hammer throw at the Olympic trials, and qualifying for Team USA, Berry turned away from the flag during the anthem, before covering her head with a T-shirt saying "Activist Athlete."

Berry, who has long been outspoken about racial injustice, said later she felt the timing of the anthem had been a "setup," because she was told it would be played before the medal winners took the podium, ESPN reported.

In an appearance on Fox & Friends on Monday morning, Crenshaw was asked about Berry's protest — which by then had become the outrage du jour for some conservatives, complete with tweets from the likes of Rep. Jim Jordan , Sen. Ted Cruz and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

"We don't need anymore activist athletes," Crenshaw responded. "She should be removed from the team. The entire point of the Olympic team is to represent the United States of America. That's the entire point, OK? So, you know, it's one thing when these NBA players do it. Fine, we'll just stop watching. But now the Olympic team? And it's multiple cases of this. They should be removed. That should be the bare minimum requirement, that you believe in the country you're representing."

Crenshaw also blamed Berry's protest on U.S. schools teaching critical race theory.

"This is the pathology that occurs when we're teaching critical race theory into our institutions, because critical race theory, again, basically teaches that our institutions are racist, that our systems are deeply racist," he said. "You can't see the racism, because it's subtle, and if you deny it, it's because of you teaching people this constantly, and this is what it results in, in these displays of hatred towards our own country, and it's got to stop."

On Twitter, numerous commenters noted that Crenshaw voted against an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 pro-Trump insurrection at the Capitol — during which, among other things, rioters used American flags to attack Capitol Police officers. Others pointed out that Crenshaw has long been a critic of so-called cancel culture, and that he supported a legal effort to overturn the 2020 election results.

[Bact PhD]

From the Iowa piece LFC quoted:

We are losing many of our best college graduates to places like Chicago, Minneapolis, and Texas. Our civic leaders try to win new businesses in the state yet employers are unlikely to invest in a state that looks like Mississippi, only with cold weather.

OK, if that statement about losing out to Texas isn't mere hyperbole, Iowa really IS in deep doo-doo.

it meshes well with current Republican thinking in the age of Trump. Iowa has a long tradition of local control of education. However, this law gives most power to the legislature. On a variety of issues, from hog lots to COVID-19 masking, the Iowa GOP believes in local control, except when it doesn't.

Pffft. Flori-DUH GOP-ers have been perfecting that nuance of governing for the last decade or so.


Can you say "Race to the bottom?"

I knew you could.

[Deleted]

Yes, representing the United States of America firming involves affirming its values. One such core value is freedom of expression, codified as freedom on speech in the constitution of this country. It is first, and probably superior among all rights exercised by an American. Dan Crenshaw has been educated at Tufts and Harvard. He know better. He can stuff it!

[LFC]

The majority of House Republicans are, as you'd expect, dug in to protect the Confederate statues (i.e. the statues of traitors to America) from the Capitol. They're spouting their usual catch-phrases at Democrats without acknowledging the actual history of the people depicted by these statues, not even in the slightest. Here's Kevin McCarthy lying effortlessly as they all do.

House Republicans on Tuesday viewed the chamber’s upcoming vote on legislation to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol as an opportunity to accuse Democrats of trying to “erase history” and boost their hysteria over so-called “Critical Race Theory.”

Amid throwing his support behind the bill, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gleefully remarked that the Confederate statues in the Capitol are “Democrats.”

“Let me state a simple fact,” McCarthy said. “All the statues being removed by this bill are statues of Democrats.”

McCarthy quipped that the bill “should go further” before bringing up the right-wing outrage over “Critical Race Theory” — an academic and legal term that conservatives have appropriated and hijacked as part of the GOP’s culture wars.

“They continue to look at race as the primary means of judging a person’s character,” McCarthy said, referring to Democrats. “By advocating for it, Democrats continue to fuel hatred and division across the country.”

The House tried this before but Moscow Mitch's Senate majority blocked a vote.

The legislation passed in the House in 2020 in a 305-113 vote, with 72 Republicans joining Democrats. The measure then stalled in the GOP-majority Senate.

This time there were 120 House Republicans proudly displaying their racism with their votes.

The vote was 285-120. All the “nays” were from Republicans, including House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY).

[LFC]

Speaking of Congressional Republican racists let's take a look at who Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZzhole) is pal'ing around and raising money with.

In a clip from his web show uploaded online Monday, the racist and anti-Semitic media personality Nicholas Fuentes said that if “Finnish fishermen” replaced Black Americans in Chicago’s south side, “it would probably look a lot more like America than it does now” and “they wouldn’t litter, and they wouldn’t be shooting each other, and they wouldn’t selling drugs.”

Also on Monday: An advertisement circulating online announced that a sitting congressman, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), would appear at a fundraiser with Fuentes in Arizona this week.

Neither Gosar’s congressional nor his campaign office responded to TPM’s request to confirm that the congressman would actually be showing face with Fuentes this week. And Gosar himself, within minutes of this article’s publication, told a reporter, “I have no idea what was going on. I’ve never heard anything like that. I have nothing on my schedule.”

But the congressman seemed to nod at the event on his personal Twitter account, referencing “America First” — the name of Fuentes’ show and self-styled political clique — and saying, “We will not let the left dictate our strategy, alliances and efforts. Ignore the left.”

Paul Gosar
@drpaulgosar
Not sure why anyone is freaking out. I’ll say this: there are millions of Gen Z, Y and X conservatives. They believe in America First. They will not agree 100% on every issue. No group does. We will not let the left dictate our strategy, alliances and efforts. Ignore the left

And it wouldn’t be the first time: In a major coup for Fuentes and his America First Political Action Conference, a far-right alternative to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Gosar appeared at AFPAC in February.

Here's video of Fuentes grinning as he spouts off some of his Holocaust denial. As Josh Marshall says:

Classic joking, smiling denial of the death of six million Jews and being endorsed by a Republican member of Congress in good standing – committee membership, campaign support, the whole deal.

There really is no bottom for Republicans anymore. None.

[LFC]

There are only two explanations for this. Either the police chief in question is a f***ing racist and is therefore not fit to hold his position or he is a f***ing idiot and is therefore not fit to hold his position.

A white police chief in Ohio has resigned after placing a "Ku Klux Klan" sign on a Black officer's desk, in what he claimed was a prank.

Sheffield Lake police chief Anthony Campo, who had been with the department for 33 years, stepped down Tuesday after city officials got wind of the incident that occurred last Friday, according to Cleveland.com.

A surveillance video from inside the police station shows the chief printing out the sign, before placing it on top of a yellow jacket laid out to resemble a KKK hood and robe. When the Black officer discovers the sign, he appears to smile before engaging in conversation with the chief, but there is no audio. The officer later told the mayor he smiled because he was taken aback and didn't know what to do.

[goldenvalley]

Jul 2, 2021 21:08:29 GMT LFC said:

There are only two explanations for this. Either the police chief in question is a f***ing racist and is therefore not fit to hold his position or he is a f***ing idiot and is therefore not fit to hold his position.

Could be both!

[LFC]

A white supremacist, neo-fascist group came to Philadelphia to put on their little show. Bad move. They're lucky they were just chased off.

Members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front marched in Philadelphia Saturday night, leading to scuffles with bystanders and, at one point, a quick retreat into rental box trucks.

Patriot Front is known for these sorts of events: Members mask up, scurry into town, set off some smoke bombs, wave flags bearing fascist symbols and then scurry away.

But theirs plans in Philadelphia were interrupted by heckling and the occasional shove from residents.

Photos from The Philadelphia Inquirer showed the group being confronted by locals and retreating to two rental box trucks, and separately exiting the trucks with their hands up after being stopped, and then briefly detained, by police. (Penske, the rental truck company the white supremacists were seen using, was none too happy about the situation.) The Inquirer reported that the men were searched by police and then released.

Law enforcement told ABC affiliate WPVI that none of the group were from Philadelphia.

“An NBC10 photographer had his cellphone taken from him by members of the group, before recovering it,” Local NBC affiliate WCAU reported.

“They started engaging with citizens of Philadelphia, who were none too happy about some of the things they were saying,” Philadelphia Police Office Michael Crum told WPVI. “Apparently, these males felt threatened, and at one point, somebody in their crowd threw a type of what we believe is a smoke bomb, to cover their retreat, and they literally ran away from the people of Philadelphia.”

Pictures and video from the scene showed the group receiving a warm welcome from the City of Brotherly Love.

[LFC]

Can you say "cancel culture?" Sure you can.

New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones on Tuesday announced that she rejected the University of North Carolina’s offer of tenure, and has decided to join Howard University’s faculty instead.

Hannah-Jones became a target of right-wing grievance after she created the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” which argues that the founding of the United States happened in August 1619, when the first slave ship arrived in the country. Hannah-Jones won the 2020 Pulitzer Price for Commentary for the “1619 Project.”

Trustees at UNC, her alma mater, initially denied Hannah-Jones tenure in her appointment as a professor at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media — despite having the support of faculty and students — following an outbreak in right-wing hysteria over her hiring. UNC instead opted to offer Hannah-Jones a five-year fixed term with eligibility for tenure review at the end.

Following protests at UNC over Hannah-Jones’ tenure process, university trustees voted last week 9-4 to approve her tenure.

Hannah-Jones, however, did not take UNC up on its offer that, she said, was granted “at the last possible moment” and after “it became a national scandal” fueled by conservative fear mongering over her work. The “1619 Project” has become a boogeyman for the GOP as conservatives hype unfounded fears about the teaching of critical race theory in American schools.

Appearing on CBS on Tuesday morning, Hannah-Jones explained why UNC’s tenure offer became “just not something that I want anymore.”

“It’s pretty clear that my tenure was not taken up because of political opposition, because of discriminatory views against my viewpoint, and, I believe, my race and my gender,” Hannah-Jones said.

In a statement announcing her rejection of UNC’s tenure offer, Hannah-Jones detailed her dismay over its trustees initial decision to cave to bad faith outrage over her hiring.

[LFC]

Is it any wonder the Republican Party is so dead set against the nation actually looking at our history of racism? It offends a core portion of their base. It's a bit long but shows how some of the most racist of ideas just refuse to die among those in the right-wing base.

It was an email so racist it might make a ku klux klansman blush.

An advisor for the influential conservative youth organization Turning Point USA recently published an essay for subscribers of his personal newsletter that, among other things, said Black people have “become socially incompatible with other races” and “American Black culture has evolved into an un-fixable and crime-ridden mess.”

It also said white people aren’t racist but “just exhausted” with Black people. It portrayed post-Civil War America as a 150-year-long “experiment” to see whether Black people could be “taken from the jungles of Africa,” enslaved, and then integrated into a majority-white society. It said that experiment had failed.

The email, which included Turning Point’s logo and a fundraising appeal for the group, was sent out on April 29 by Rip McIntosh, an 85-year-old white Florida man who sits on the organization’s advisory council, a board that includes the likes of former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and, until his recent death, GOP mega donor Foster Friess. The newsletter, which McIntosh says has more than 25,000 subscribers and which he sometimes publishes as often as five times a day, is frequently filled with culture war rants, conspiracy theories, racism, and other types of bigotry, but this email stood out even among that toxic stew.

In an interview, McIntosh said neither Turning Point nor its co-founder Charlie Kirk, whom he considers to be a personal friend, has any role in the publication of his newsletter. McIntosh also denied writing the essay, which was published under the fictitious byline “E.P. Unum.”

“That’s a nom de plume of a friend,” McIntosh told TPM and The Informant. “He doesn’t want his name out there because he’s a teacher. He doesn’t want to be canceled.”

The essay, titled “On the Question of Systemic Racism in the United States,” was emailed out just hours after Sen. Tim Scott, a Black Republican from South Carolina, gave a nationally televised speech on behalf of the GOP in which he said “America is not a racist country,” a claim that was debated for days afterward. The essay made no direct mention of the speech, but it closed with a similar phrase: “America is not a racist nation.”

[pnwguy]

Jul 12, 2021 15:24:34 GMT LFC said:

Is it any wonder the Republican Party is so dead set against the nation actually looking at our history of racism? It offends a core portion of their base. It's a bit long but shows how some of the most racist of ideas just refuse to die among those in the right-wing base.

Your link was a circle-back to this post.

[LFC]

Jul 12, 2021 16:13:09 GMT pnwguy said:

Jul 12, 2021 15:24:34 GMT LFC said:

Is it any wonder the Republican Party is so dead set against the nation actually looking at our history of racism? It offends a core portion of their base. It's a bit long but shows how some of the most racist of ideas just refuse to die among those in the right-wing base.

Your link was a circle-back to this post.

Fixed.

[LFC]

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Loving v Virginia of 1967 have a place on this. I'm probably missing a more recent event that would intrude upon the green slice even further.

[LFC]

[Bact PhD]

Jul 12, 2021 17:43:26 GMT LFC said:

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Loving v Virginia of 1967 have a place on this. I'm probably missing a more recent event that would intrude upon the green slice even further.

In many places, ACTUAL desegregation of public schools didn’t occur until 1970 or so. Case in point, the county where I live: It took a court order saying (in so many words) “Do it, and do it NOW!!” for it to happen. Unfortunately, the “NOW” was smack in the middle of the spring semester, resulting in upheavals for White and Black students alike.

[LFC]

Jul 12, 2021 18:17:44 GMT Bact PhD said:

In many places, ACTUAL desegregation of public schools didn’t occur until 1970 or so. Case in point, the county where I live: It took a court order saying (in so many words) “Do it, and do it NOW!!” for it to happen. Unfortunately, the “NOW” was smack in the middle of the spring semester, resulting in upheavals for White and Black students alike.

I see the Fair Housing Act became law in 1968. It was literally a week after MLK's assassination.

[AnBr]

Jul 12, 2021 17:43:26 GMT LFC said:

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Loving v Virginia of 1967 have a place on this. I'm probably missing a more recent event that would intrude upon the green slice even further.

Perhaps not much more recent, but the Voting Rights Act. A Johnson said, the passage of the Civil Rights Act was meaningless without the right to vote, too.

[Bact PhD]

Apr 26, 2021 21:42:32 GMT LFC said:

Here's a pretty good summary of the Republican push towards white supremacy. Some of it is a little overstated but the core of it is pretty solid. Here's the part about the fight against constitutionally protect anti-racism riots and the increasing Republican support of Derek Chauvin's videotaped murder of George Floyd. It's sickening.

In Oklahoma and Florida, Republicans have passed new laws making it legal for motorists to run over protesters, so long as they claim that they felt afraid of a "riot." The laws are clearly meant to give cover to people who attack anti-racist protesters, a trend that started with Fields murdering Heyer but has spread rapidly on the right. Over the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, there were a whopping 104 incidents — including 8 by police — of motorists hitting protesters with cars. The 2017 video of Fields slamming his car into a crowd was a genuine shock, but similar images became sadly common in 2020. Now Republicans want to make it legal.

Such laws are part of a larger push to use violence and threats to silence anti-racism.

The pro-vehicular homicide law in Florida, for instance, is part of a larger package signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that redefines "rioting" in order to make it easier for police to shut down anti-racism protests. DeSantis has explicitly tied the bill to the conviction of former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd, insisting that the conviction was because "the jury is scared of what a mob may do" and not because of the evidence — including a video of the murder, which happened in broad daylight — of Chauvin's guilt..

That’s becoming even more patently obvious, as Cuban demonstrations that happen to block roads are given all but a free pass.

www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/14/desantis-calls-cuba-black-lives-matter-protests-much-different-situations/7972276002/

Crowds in Florida cities rallying and blocking roadways in support of anti-government protests in Cuba may be putting Gov. Ron DeSantis at odds with a tough new law he championed following last year’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Large crowds closed Miami’s Palmetto Expressway and hundreds demonstrating blocked major streets this week in Orlando, Tampa and across Southwest Florida, leading to a handful of arrests, at least two for battery on law enforcement officers.

[snip]

Driskell and others said they were not advocating for use of the new law against the current demonstrators but instead argued that the governor’s response further clouded a standard already being challenged as unconstitutional in federal court by civil rights organizations.

Micah Kubic, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, one of the groups suing over the law, said "Floridians' right to protest should not be subject to Gov. DeSantis' wavering politics."

With any luck, the new law gets tossed pretty soon.

[LFC]

Jul 15, 2021 14:16:01 GMT Bact PhD said:

That’s becoming even more patently obvious, as Cuban demonstrations that happen to block roads are given all but a free pass.

This could have even gone in the Republican fascism thread. Creating laws which are then selectively used to punish only your political enemies is Fascism 101.