Month: July 2014

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The future of American racism

 

Note: The following is mostly based on chapter 14 of “Race in North America” (2012) by Audrey and Brian D. Smedley.


Racism in the US is always changing but changes slowly. That means the near future will be pretty much the same, but the longer term it will bring change.

 

American racism will have to somehow adjust to:

  1. Japan as a country fully the equal of the US and Britain.
  2. Asian Americans scoring higher on IQ tests.
  3. The Black middle-class and Blacks in important positions.
  4. Immigration from Asia and Latin America pouring into the US, bringing millions of people who do not fit into the old black-and-white boxes.
  5. Multiracial identities, particularly those who are half White and half Asian or Latino. It not only challenges the idea that race determines culture and behaviour, but also makes one’s “race” harder to determine and therefore less useful.
  6. Barack Obama, whose very person goes against everything most Americans think they know about race. He is multiracial. He looks Black but culturally is like Dorothy of “The Wizard of Oz”: a White person from Kansas. American racism is incapable of making sense of him – thus all the Birther and Secret Muslim stuff.
  7. The Human Genome Project – which left only 0.1% of the genome for scientific racism.

 

Click through to read more.

 

Source: abagond.wordpress.com

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Study Reveals Police Are 10 Times More Likely To Shoot African Americans

 

It’s official: African American residents are 10 times more likely than Caucasians to be shot by police. At least that’s what one study found for residents of Chicago.

In an analysis of recent data from the City of Chicago Independent Police Review Authority, “In black and Latino, lower-income neighborhoods you will see police officers who are instructed to stop and frisk and aggressively search every day,” civil rights attorney Craig Futterman told the Chicago Reporter, which first crunched the data.

 

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Source: countercurrentnews.com

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Border Angels – The Power of One

 

Since 1994, 10,000 people have died trying to cross the border between the United States and Mexico, according to Enrique Morones founder of Border Angels. Among those who attempted the journey are men, women and young children. Due to harsh weather conditions, tough terrain and often the expensive price migrants must pay to smugglers, however, many do not make it across.

Founded by Morones in 1986, Border Angels is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to undocumented immigrants. After bringing food and water to migrants who were living in the canyons of North County San Diego, Morones and the Border Angels expanded their operation by going out to the desert to place water near the recently constructed wall dividing the United States and Mexico, also known as Operation Gatekeeper.

“Before Operation Gatekeeper, one or two people died every month,” said Morones.

“After Operation Gatekeeper, one or two people die every day.”

 

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Source: misaelvirgen.blogspot.com

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Showdown: California town turns away buses of detained immigrants

National controversy over a surge of Central American immigrants illegally crossing the U.S. border establishes a new battleground in Murrieta, California.

Source: www.cnn.com

 

People don’t even have sympathy for child refugees.

 

U.S. xenophobia is out of control.

 

The city of Murrieta has an animal shelter near by – but children in need – the community has no tolerance for children.

 

And it’s usually the offspring of immigrants themselves who want to block access to those in need.

 

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Researching and Writing about Race and Sex – Hidden Power of Words Series, #10

 

Cartoon shows citizens with their heritage split down the middle.

 

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Writing about racialized and sexualized ideas, events, and peoples naturally involves sensitive language. Equally, what is considered appropriate changes over time as one term acquires negative connotations or new language is developed.
For some time now, I almost always use “racialized” or “racialization” instead of “race.” This recognizes the socially constructed nature of how people are raced. People are not White or Black but are raced/racialized as White or Black, for example.
Also, the capital “W” and “B” are deliberate. This helps us remember they are powerful—yet fully arbitrary—social categories.
More recently, I have also started capitalizing the “M” and “W” in cis-Man and cis-Woman because they are likewise powerful—yet fully arbitrary—social categories that are sexualized/genderized.
But getting back to racialized terminology, more recently I’ve wondered over the difference between Black, African American, African-American, and African-American (as an adjective).
First, regarding the hyphen between the “African” and “American,” there are three schools of thought (and the same would apply to “Mexican” and “American”):
1-    some say to always use the hyphen

2-    some say to never use the hyphen

3-    some say to only use the hyphen when the term functions as an adjective (e.g., African-American students)
There is also a debate from the Gilded Age and Progressive Era that looks at “hyphenated Americans” as less than real United Statesians (and yes, “United Statesians” is deliberate – I see ethnical dilemmas with the word “Americans”). This was an era when full assimilation was not only expected but was demanded – but only to the extent that people “looked” and “acted” like a proper White United Statesian, not to the extent that they were granted rights White individuals had.

 

Click through to read more.

 

Source: andrewpegoda.com

 

I prefer the term European-American to White. European-American explains that their heritage is foreign to the Americas.

 

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The Inherent Contradiction Between the “Constitution” and “Democracy,” More on the Hobby Lobby Decision

 

There is a deep on-going, yet unstated conflict in our nation. Upholding both the Constitution and Democracy are impossible tasks unless one has a fully homogenous nation or fully educated/open-minded/not greedy citizens.
Of course, when the nation was created, Democracy only applied to rich White cis-Men, and the Constitution was written by and for rich White cis-Men. As said from a Critical Race Theory point-of-view, this has created an on-going White-centric legacy that has infiltrated all of the nation’s laws and institutions – institutionalized racism – racism that affects and hurts all individuals but functions from a White-is-default framework.

 

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Source: andrewpegoda.com

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Children’s Books on the Refugee Experience Are Crucial Reading

 

While facts and figures are useful to understand the scale of the refugee problem, for most people it’s the personal angle that they best relate to. But this personal angle, and the sympathy and understanding that it promotes, is hard to come by, especially in young children.

Children’s literature that focuses on the refugee experience can provide just that. Books such as Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah and The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo focus on the individual’s story. They offer a voice to descriptions of suffering and resilience in the face of the huge challenges that fleeing for safety and seeking asylum bring

 

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Source: www.theepochtimes.com