More than 100 years after his championship victory, legendary boxer Jack Johnson got to the first step in the posthumous pardon proferred in Congress jointly by boxing fans Rep. Peter King and Sen. John McCain. From CBS News:
“The resolution approved by Congress says that Johnson should receive a posthumous pardon “for the racially motivated conviction in 1913 that diminished the athletic, cultural, and historic significance of Jack Johnson and unduly tarnished his reputation.” It says a pardon would “expunge a racially motivated abuse of the prosecutorial authority of the federal government from the annals of criminal justice in the United States.”
Kudos to Blackamericaweb.com for a piece today on two-year old Jada, from Portage, Indiana, a young girl of color who has gone missing but has not benefited from the national outrage that occurs when others turn up gone.
A fascinating photo essay with audio in Mother Jones magazine called Aryan Outfitters (love that title) on Ms. Ruth, a woman who hand sews the latest in fashionable garments for the KKK. I guess the David Duke line at Target must not have gone so well.
I got a note focusing my attention on an article by ultra-right columnist and professional rabble rouser Kevin Myers in The Irish Independent. Even in the face of some of the most progressive suststainable technology being created in Africa, even in the face of rapidly increasing oil wealth in places like Angola, Nigeria and Gabon. Even in the face of mutually beneficial business dealings between African Governments and China, you still get broad sweeping venom and contempt like this out of Europe.
Nothing explains away Robert Mugabe’s actions in Zimbabwe and Thabo Mbeki’s lack of forcefulness in dealing with the issue, but columns like this gives one a greater understanding of why Mbeki and Mugabe are so resistant to pressure from Europe, precisely because in that pressure they see motivations like this:
I’ll let genocide masked as conservative intellectualism speak for itself. But a question: How does this even get by an editor?
One of these, in various forms, comes at least once a day. This one I’ll let speak for itself:
“Is it my imagination or is your magazine geared towards black people?
There is a lot of mentioning black performers, musicians, politicians, but no real mention of Whitey? Would you be offended if we….the White People started Ivory magazine or White Entertainment Television? How about the NAAWP…THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF WHITE PEOPLE! Would that bother you? Would it bother you if we had the United White College Fund? I worked and paid my way through college with out the aid of the United Negro College Fund. Was that because of the color of my skin? Hey, that is discrimination! Just like your black magazine. You are promoting separatism, racism and hatred just like the beloved Jeremiah Wright. God bless him! Without his racist remarks and showing the nation exactly what goes on in black churches, Hussein Obama may have had a chance at the WHITE HOUSE! “
To make the point even more, listen to the link below of the full version of King’s anti-war speech, which won him more enemies than all of his prior civil rights activity combined.
A speech about race within the context of being under fire was a risky and brave move for Barack Obama. It could have gone horribly wrong.
It didn’t. Chalk up another very powerful speech to the Illinois senator. He effectively distanced himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright but more importantly put the subject within the broader context of how America processes the issue of race in ethnicity. More than anything, the quote above seemed to sum up Obama’s suggestions for how the country moves forward or at least approaches the start of a substantive dialogue on race.
It’s quite frankly amazing that even after the address, Jeremiah Wright not only stayed a part of the post-speech discussion, but some commentators went on the attack about Obama’s basic statement of empirical fact that anti-Black policies from Jim Crow to redlining were at least in part at the root of the disparities in American between the wealth and achievement of Blacks and whites. What is clear about the response to the speech from the pundits on CNN and MSNBC is that such a dialogue will simply never happen because the loudest voices in American discourse don’t want to hear it.
Which all goes to show that some liberals are using the Obama campaign to, as Obama suggested “purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.”
What is also clearer now than ever before is that Republicans like Pat Buchanan are dead set on having Obama lose so that Hillary Clinton can become the next candidate. It doesn’t matter what Obama says - this issue will be an albatross from now until the convention because conservatives will make it so. They can’t wait to take on Clinton directly. I guess you can call that a backhanded compliment to Obama and his strength.
The “Honorable” James David Manning, PhD, has been making these videos and sending them over YouTube for a bit. And this is one of his more tame sermons.
Don’t you love how he keeps repeating “Oh I’m not making these statements because I support Bill Clinton or anything…”
And what’s a man with the “word of God in his mouth” doing watching big breasted white women on You Tube? Clearly he doesn’t get out much. Hate to tell you, Pastor, Obama Girl is a 34C at best.
It’s the last line that’s the most scary. “Obama is an emissary of the Devil. I’m your last hope.”
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