All About Race - Latest Comments

Re: Black Conservatives Assemble to Affirm Glenn Beck – First Part

sheajustice — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:04:46 -0000

Re: No Wedding No Womb: Open Letter to Young Black Girls Thinking about Having Sex

Supporter — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:38:41 -0000

Thanks so much Joan. I can't agree with you more. I cried my eyes out when I read this letter. It is so moving, so touching, so honest and so raw. Moreover, I appreciate the fact that it addresses young girls and provides a candid and relevant message. Some people have criticisized the letter for not addressing boys even though by its own definition the letter is not meant for boys. Some have criticisized as shaming girls. But I see zero shame, only love and concern.

Re: Afros: A ‘Glamour’ Don’t?

Cheesy1107 — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 07:28:04 -0000

WOW, i am an 16 year old African American teenager. I find it very upsetting that someone would tell me not to sport the afro that i have now. just because it doesnt adhere to your personal standards. An afro defines a black women's identity, and actually it is her hair that defines her.Now for someone who does not understand our kind of hair, and why we do what we do with it. its quite offending that you would tell us not to wear our hair a certain way. Simply because it is not straight, spritzed, long, and flat. I wouldnt necessarily speak to much on an african american's volumous hair. Black is truly beautiful, and if you dont understand then well dont talk about it.

Re: Obama! A Modern U.S. President (musical spoof)

Guest — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:09:02 -0000

Politics on a stick: http://goo.gl/kivxA

Re: No Wedding No Womb: Open Letter to Young Black Girls Thinking about Having Sex

Joan — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:56:01 -0000

Mrs. Melton,

If only you would open up your mind a bit more to what the author is trying to convey regarding her mother and her grandmother. Her reverence of these women in her life is not to condone single motherhood and to praise single motherhood in itself---it's in lifting up these women who have made everything possible for their children despite the lack of strong men in their lives. Yes, these women most likely had the choice to wait to have children with men who would be capable fathers, yet despite the choices that they had made and the circumstances that they found themselves in, they were able to overcome stigma and evade being statistics, not joining the stereotype of the insufficient single mother. It's the maturing of these "little girls" and their realization that their child(ren) need their total attention that makes these individuals strong women. Instead of judging single mothers based on their decisions, we should praise the ones who despite their standing can still learn what it is to be a mother/parent and sacrifice themselves for the nurture and development of their children. My mother herself was a teen mother who had to give up a huge college scholarship in order to have and raise me. But that didn't stop her from working hard to send me to the top private schools in our area (and no we weren't born with silver spoons in our mouths) while she worked hard to work her way up through a business which she's been at for almost 20yrs. I can proudly say that we now have our degrees and I have grown to be a respectful and diligent young woman with integrity thanks to the will of my mother.

So, Mrs. Melton (and others who share the same view) before you take the ignorant stance of condemning a mother based on her connection to the child's father, look at the love and compassion that that mother has for her children and then decide whether or not anyone it's even your business to judge who is deserving of motherhood. There are many children who are raised in a mother-father household and still don't receive the necessary attention/moral upbringing that many children raised in single-parent households do receive. It's not who the person is statistically, it's who they are and what they offer to their child(ren).

To the author of this post, I applaud your message and I hope that it reaches and affects as many young girls at it can.

Re: Faith in Color: Racism and Atheism

Drupal web developers — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:35:59 -0000

These crimes against humanity are not the perversion of the bible, they are the fulfillment of the bible. Christianity helped inform and create a racist imperialist setting, it is not simply the result of it...Thank you for sharing this article.

Re: Black Crime Silence Diminshes Arguments Against White Law Enforcement: Faith Dow, Guest Contributor

Drupal web developers — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:28:43 -0000

I really like this blog. In light of the article and the comments posted I would say that this blog reinforces Lacewell's findings.

Re: Oscar Grant: Face down and shot in the back

GRANDMANATURE — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:01:29 -0000

Plaese check out the web site joeypinasco.com Civil Trial January 2012 in Sacramento.
JUSTICE FOR JOEY!

Re: Precious from Vienna

ERICA — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:38:46 -0000

Awesome, Precious:-) My mother is from the Philippines and my father is African-American. Yes, I know how it feels to get it from both sides of the fence but either way I am proud of my heritages. My Daughter's father is white...lol She is a much lighter version of me. Yes, got the hospital jokes, too. She is 18 now and has been raised to remember that she is a beautiful rainbow from God. I want to see Vienna and I came upon your post...it does not deter me to continue my desire to see this place. Race issue is everywhere but I just want to enjoy God's gift to mankind---LIFE:-) Hope to bump into you there, Precious. God bless you and your family!

Re: Faith in Color: Racism and Atheism

Word — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 01:06:13 -0000

Yeah, good point. It's not like science has ever been used to suggest that races are biologically different, or that certain races are inherently less intelligent than others.

Re: Black voices & White voices

Mrs. Melton — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:35:15 -0000

I am a pale-skinned woman raised in an indigenous culture with black family.

What color am I?

Re: No Wedding No Womb: Open Letter to Young Black Girls Thinking about Having Sex

Mrs. Melton — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:34:02 -0000

I agree with you on all points. I am always deeply concerned when the impression is left that it's women's role to police something that is men's responsibility: where, when, and under what conditions they ejaculate. It is MEN who start pregnancies, not women.

Unfortunately, and I think CarmenD is right about this, since men mature much later than women, a young woman seeking to explore her sexuality often ends up with a male partner who lacks the maturity to interact in a way that could lead to such complex and important consequences as a pregnancy. But I sense Carmen is trying to hearten women to stand up and take that power, which is very feminist indeed. Even as I agree that it should be boys who get some share of pushback each time they impregnate a girl as proof of their virility.

Carmen, I think Brittany is saying to you that at some level, men have got to take more responsibility, and in our black families and communities we need to stop nudging and winking and encouraging when boys are using their sexuality in such immature ways. This is where the lack of strong dad figures comes in. Boys raised without father figures are usually desperate to have someone with authority set boundaries (and usually react badly, and escalate confrontation when they do). If all they ever knew was female authority, then they are likely to act out against that in the person of their female sex partner. The "beautiful sexual exploration" becomes a profound power struggle. If the young woman is of lower intelligence or emotionally stunted then SHE turns to the boy for the father figure she never had...and what a mess it all turns into!There are many forms of beautiful sexual sharing that a woman can enjoy without locking themselves in the pathologies of sexual frustration. Clearly we need a more mature, nuanced, and experience-based view of all this. I am of the view that many of the boys in my family/neighborhood developed pathological sexualities because their moms--having lacked the opportunity to healthfully and explore their own sexuality--raised them in an atmosphere of creepy boundaries and images. We all have a lot of growing up to do, and hot words don't help.

Re: No Wedding No Womb: Open Letter to Young Black Girls Thinking about Having Sex

Mrs. Melton — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:24:20 -0000

bb I do agree with you...but the problem I see from experience is that boys mature much later than girls do. Many girls in my black family/community have no idea what a mature man is, never having spent much time in the presence of one. So they have their heads turned by posturing, rooster mode, bling, and sweet words/strokes.

It is entirely possible for young people of some intelligence to explore, in affection, respect, and with responsibility, their own sexual identity without it turning into chaos and tragedy. It is also the sad case that there are many girls of fairly low intelligence, not seeing any way to proceed in a complex and confusing world. Unfortunately, an entire industry has grown up around telling them they're queens for managing to get pregnant.

http://www.city-journal.org...

As ever, the truth is in the middle of a lot of polarized complexities. I personally chose not to have sex till I was with a young man to whom I was engaged, and we both were savvy about sexual health and contraception, and also were committed to having only each other as partners. I was 20, which was very late for my generation, which seemed to start in its early teens. I wanted to do the best I could for myself, complete my education (Ivy League Ph.D.) and establish my career, before I started considering what was the best I could do for a child.

Re: No Wedding No Womb: Open Letter to Young Black Girls Thinking about Having Sex

Mrs. Melton — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:18:50 -0000

So you were raised to believe that the only sexual pleasure involves a man ejaculating inside a woman's vagina? Seems like a pretty polarized and power-grubbing view.

But I do agree with you that women in general--not just black women--have to figure out that while it's men who start pregnancies, it's women who have the choice of deciding when and under what conditions. Ignoring the choice, or throwing it over in a moment of...whatever...is the action of little girls, not strong women.

As for "single mothers," I revile that utterly where women chose not to ensure their children would have a father. I understand entirely, and empathize with, and have helped, women who have lost their husbands through, for instance, military service, accidents, illness, etc. But we are too quick to worship at the altar of The Divine Goddess Single Mother.

In my view we need to de-romanticise the begetting of children, single motherhood, and especially--dear heaven ESPECIALLY--teen pregnancy, around which an entire industry has built itself.

Anyone here read this?

http://www.city-journal.org...

Thank you for listening to my words.

Re: Oscar Grant: Imperfect Emblem

Mrs. Melton — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:12:20 -0000

I have an idea. If you're a young man with a rap sheet and jail time out to here, and a long history of pathological behavior, and you're going to get all doped up on New Year's, don't go out, and don't start a brawl with a cop.

You think we black people are too primitive or stupid or oppressed or backward to run the math on that?
\
You're constantly criticizing Ofc. Mehserle for not being well enough trained. Where was Oscar Grant trained, that he was supposedly a "peace officer" for his "bros"?

Re: Oscar Grant: Imperfect Emblem

Mrs. Melton — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:09:54 -0000

Glocks are the worst for accidental discharge. The only reason so many LE carry them is they're cheaper than better firearms, like SIG or FN, which increasingly beleaguered safety departments cannot afford.

Re: Oscar Grant: Imperfect Emblem

Mrs. Melton — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:06:41 -0000

Oh please. Nothing LE does can keep the sociopaths of Oakland--hiding behind the banner of skin color and maternal victimization-outrage--from acting like sociopaths.

What appalls me is that BART cops are put in the position of having to risk their lives every day to keep the peace on PUBLIC transit. Not thug transit, gangsta transit, the Dope Express, or the Testosterone Train. PUBLIC TRANSIT. Acting civil and law abiding should be the absolute MINIMUM for being allowed to use this PUBLIC system. Yet people like you and Oscar Grant and his friends excuse sociopathic behavior that puts others at risk and in fear, and requires intervention with force.

Ofc. Mehserle didn't shoot at will. Your bias is showing, as is your belief that black men and families are not capable of being, or acting like, something better than Oscar Grant. You have an internal apartheid that coats itself with PC and victimization so you don't have to face the fact that in our black communities there are people who are dangerous, pathological, and losers. They usually lack appropriate parenting, especially fathering, so run around the world spitting in the face of every rule, every law, and every individual with authority. Ofc. Mehserle got the brunt of this...but somehow you blame him instead of Oscar Grant, who CHOSE not to be at home at 2 a.m., being a father to his own child.

All this simple reality conflicts with your own racism, which says that the cop is always wrong and the criminal always right (if he's black), and all you want is a caste of LE that will save you from having to face your own racism, and your failure to demand that black communities start centering on philosophies of achievement, excellence, and effort, rather than acting out and blaming others for rotten choices.

You hold yourselves over the LE workers in your economically apartheided community (the Bay Area having one of the biggest divides between rich and poor in the US). You have no idea what it is like to constantly be out there protecting the better off and law abiding from the sociopaths who come out of sociopathic families.

I call your attitudes racist because you believe something that many blacks in my neighborhood came to internalize: that they are capable of nothing better than depraved, low intelligence, low quality lives...precisely because they are black. You say, and they believe, that it's because they're victims. But what you're really saying is no different than what people said about blacks in the South for a century. It's just now, this view of the world is called liberal, rather than right wing.

Shame on you for selling me and my people so short, and for excusing the worst in humanity as the best blacks can do.

Re: Racially Segregated Prom Nights: 2009

CarmenD — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:55:34 -0000

Approved

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Re: Racially Segregated Prom Nights: 2009

bear — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:27:27 -0000

I think we need to be clear about the difference between "segregation" and "strategic exclusion."
"Segregation" describes an institutional system based on white supremacist values that encodes into law and culture, the notion that it is okay to keep whites and blacks separate, as long as blacks remain less than. And eventually, this type of racism becomes just "common sense." Then we call it "tradition.""Strategic exclusion," on the other hand, describes a practice by members of marginalized groups to create spaces of their own where they can interact without the interference of members of dominant groups. So, in the example of the "Asian club", the Asian students form a club for Asian students because they know that white students can join any club but that Asian students are made to feel unwelcome in many student clubs because of racism.Getting back to the segregated prom in Georgia -- did you notice how the white parents are holding a whites-only prom, while the other prom is open to both black and white students? Notice that the white kids are welcome at both proms but the black students are only welcome at the integrated prom. And although they are unwelcome at the white prom, they still choose NOT to hold a blacks-only prom.

Re: Faith in Color: Racism and Atheism

True Freethinker — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 16:21:34 -0000

What do you expect from an atheist? They constantly preach their superiority to the rest of us.

Re: Faith in Color: Racism and Atheism

True Freethinker — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 16:16:42 -0000

What created the racist imperialist setting of the Pagan Roman, Greek, Persian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Chinese and Indian Empires? None of them were Christian. Christianity fought against slavery throughout history. From freeing the slaves of Pagan Rome to John Wesley, William Wilberforce, Charles Spurgeon and Charles Finney fighting against slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Why did race based slavery and imperialism emerge after the emergence of Deist and Atheist thought in Europe? Thomas Jefferson is hailed by Atheists as being hostile to Christianity. He also owned slaves. Are Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins Christian just because they have white skin?

Re: Black Crime Silence Diminshes Arguments Against White Law Enforcement: Faith Dow, Guest Contributor

Tonythetiger421 — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 02:12:36 -0000

I really liked seeing a different prospective on these issues. It was very informitive and truely spoken.Being an African American male i have to agree that we need to get our act in order on protecting our women and our communities.Thanks for your post ,once again it was really informitive.

Re: Oscar Grant: Face down and shot in the back

What23 — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:06:27 -0000

Wake Up

I really do not understand how sheeple react to death, and clearly injustice. Oscar Grant was shot in the back, period. Cold blooded. Cop lied saying he saw a gun, and then mistook a tazer.

Next, the police lied, and killed a little girl, Aiyana Jones, with no care in Detroit. First the little girl was lit up with a incendiary device, and then shot from outside. The police lied about this, and it would have been interesting if the video crew were not there to see them lie like usual.

The disregard for safety because these people are poor or black. We are the same people, and 1% DNA different from a chimp. Still there should be an eye for an eye, to quote the bible. In old wild west movies, people got revenge and killed those that killed their loved ones. The police have snipers, and so do the supposed villains. You have people with high powered rifles that shoot from huge 1 mile distances, and are never found. One example is the DC sniper. In other words, anybody can kill anybody else right or wrong, and yet there are many that don't exercise your right to bear arms, or get revenge for the wrongs done to them. What do people have to lose anymore. I am really trying to understand this world, so please tell me what I am missing.

Look at those that have been wrongfully accused and sentenced for 30 plus years, and then are released. Their lives are over, and they do nothing. Psychologically there should be reactions from going postal to running away from the US after winning a hefty settlement. Instead they stay here afraid and allow the system to keep them beat down. They cannot even find jobs even though they are innocent because they are part of the system, ridiculous. Keep marching and protesting America, those that are in power are really listening to you.

Now I am not condoning violence here, but I am tired of bloggers just talking their problems to death. You never do anything. What about when killers like Columbine happened. Why did none of the parents go after the parents when they lost their children. Why is not everyone armed, and if police or anyone tries to infringe on your rights in the name of whatever you make them think twice even if you have to die in a shootout. Why do some people own guns, but never fully practice with them. If you do not even the playing field, or at least protect yourself, you deserve to die like rats. We all have the right to bear arms, and you need to start protecting yourselves. If cops do not fear your, they will keep abusing you.

At least cost your corrupt city money until it goes bankrupt, or each election vote to remove police, politicians and city workers. You could even vote that they have no firearms. Wow, corrupt cops without guns what a concept. If they want the job, they can take it or leave it. There is no reason that police cannot use non-lethals, and take their toys away. It is your city. Force your police to have cameras on them 24-7, and do cop watches of police until they are cleaned up. It is a coward who goes into a profession to bully people. It is also ungodly to treat another human being like you are playing a video game.

You people need to really start thinking for yourself. I am leaving this country since we are laughing stock of the world with the highest prison rate in the world. Economy is shot. Our government is lying from Osama Bin Laden to the Fed. I really do not care anymore who inherits this God Forsaken America.

Aside from how pissed off I am, my heart truly goes out to the family of the little girl, and I saw the grandmother crying her heart out. She definitely wanted revenge, and I am sure this tragedy will destroy what life she had left. I also feel bad for the family of Oscar Grant.

Justice

Re: Oscar Grant: Imperfect Emblem

Littlemt — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:00:31 -0000

Mehserle had a felony?? of what? where did you find that??

Re: Oscar Grant: Imperfect Emblem

Lisa Jaramillo — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 05:29:21 -0000

YOU KNOW WHAT SUCKS??? the fact that Johannes Mehserle also had a felony..
I don't understand how he passed a criminal background check..
In the State of California, the law says felony=not a job where you are allowed to have a gun..or a taser....

THIS ANGERS ME SOOOO MUCH!!!! somewhere along the way, Oscars family was given some VERY BAD legal advice on how to proceed with their case....

according to what I have found, the bringing up of Mehserle's felony, and the fact that BART hired him anyways, was traded off because of the fact that Oscar Grant had some legal issues..
I assume it was told to Oscar Grants family to not bring it up because there would be less empathy for him....

THE REAL ISSUE HERE is NOT what Oscar Grant had or hadn't done...The issue here is why did BART hire him??? as an aspiring lawyer..I can see that this case was sooo carelessly strategized..

Mehserle should have gotten life..And someone should be suing the crap out of BART..