Tag: Racial Bias

The Tragedy Of Billie Holiday

Was listening to a local blues station because I had enough of Little Drummer Boy and all, and a song came on that was a favorite of my mother….she had several albums, 78s, of Holiday and her fantastic voice….this was one of her favorites…..

This lady had a fabulous voice it is a real shame that her life was so messed up and the American government was no help at all….

Despite her status as one of the world’s most influential jazz and blues singers, Billie Holiday passed away penniless and alone.

The artist rose to stardom in the 1930s with chart-topping hits such as “Strange Fruit,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” and “Gloomy Sunday.”

Her distinctive and emotive vocal delivery solidified her place among the all-time greats. However, behind the scenes, Holiday’s life was fraught with difficulties.

Throughout her career and life, she endured pervasive racism. Holiday was denied entry through the front doors of venues and faced segregation in hotels and public accommodations.

In 1938, Holiday made history by touring with Artie Shaw, becoming the first Black woman to lead a white jazz band. Yet, she was forced to find her own lodging as she was prohibited from staying in the same hotels as the rest of the ensemble.

The alleged catalyst for the racism she encountered was her performance of Strange Fruit – a potent protest song against the lynching of Black Americans.

Holiday’s struggle with drug addiction throughout her career made her a target for the US government, which reportedly hatched a scheme to ruin her career.

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, headed by the purportedly racist Harry J. Anslinger, had a particular fixation on controlling and punishing Black musicians.

https://www.the-express.com/entertainment/music/193210/music-icon-penniless-hospital-bed-government

A real shame that racism was so readily accepted…..she had more talent in her little finger than some of today’s “mega-stars’….

Not many know the whole story of Holiday only her voice and music….she deserved so much better than she ever got.

And it appears that that same destructive racism is returning….will we let it?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is There Any Doubt?

For several months there has been a meme going around that Repubs are pushing a white nationalist agenda….of course that meme has been disputed by conservs….

This is from a speech given by a MAGAt Repub rep from Missouri, Sen. Schmitt…..given to a conserv meeting….

At the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Republican Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri proposed a new direction for his party—essentially arguing for the self-styled “party of Lincoln” to abandon Lincoln for white nationalism.

Schmitt’s speech took issue with the “old conservative establishment” for embracing legal immigration, instead positing that there are select true Americans to whom the country belongs.

“That’s what set Donald Trump apart from the old conservatism and the old liberalism alike: He knows that America is not just an abstract ‘proposition,’ but a nation and a people, with its own distinct history and heritage and interests,” Schmitt said. The Continental Army soldiers at Valley Forge, Pilgrims at Plymouth, pioneers in Missouri, and “Kentucky settlers repelling wave after wave of Indian war band attacks,” Schmitt said, “believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants.”

“America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny,” the senator continued. “If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all. But we know that’s not true.”

He went on: “When they tear down our statues and monuments, mock our history, and insult our traditions, they’re attacking our future as well as our past. By changing the stories we tell about ourselves, they believe they can build a new America—with the new myths of a new people. But America does not belong to them. It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It is a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.”

…

Schmitt failed to include any nonwhite people in the true-American pile. He did, however, include his German ancestors, who came to America in the 1840s: a time when, he omitted to mention, arriving European immigrants were met with no shortage of nativist challenges to their American-ness.

(rawstory.com)

Reading what this jughead had to say leaves no doubt what he thinks of everyone that is not a W.A.S.P.

Is there any doubt?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

For Whites Only

***Let me state from the beginning that at NO point do I agree with anything about this turn of events….I offer it up solely to show just how f*cked up these douche-bags are***

I grew up in the South so at my age I am well aware of the segregation and the ‘Whites Only” signs that were plastered everywhere.

Since about 2010 there has been more harsh language from nationalism and the tearing apart the Constitution…..and now it is becoming more and more troubling since that d/bag took office.

This is a paper that won an award for content….

A white nationalist recently won an academic award for his law school paper arguing how the constitution only applies to white people.

Preston Damsky, a proud white nationalist and antisemite, garnered acclaimed from a University of Florida professor over his paper detailing his interpretation of the doctrine. Last fall, he wrote the paper on “originalism” for the law school seminar. An idea upheld by many conservatives, originalism interprets the constitution as written during its original time period.

According to the New York Times, a Trump-appointed judge who taught the class awarded Damsky the highest honor for his paper. In his assignment, Damsky argued that “We The People,” as first written on the Constitution’s Preamble, actually refers to white people. With this mindset, he defended the idea of stripping voting rights for nonwhite citizens.

He further stated his support for shoot-to-kill orders toward “criminal infiltrators at the border.” He also referred to an America where white people did not make up the majority as a “terrible crime.” Damsky later uttered that white people “cannot be expected to meekly swallow this demographic assault on their sovereignty.”

Instead of concern for his viewpoints, his professor, Judge John L. Badalamenti, congratulated him on his provocative essay. Damsky received the book award, granted to the best student in the class, for his detailed work. Badalamenti did not comment on why he chose his recipient.

The award issuance sparked controversy across the school, with opposers stating Damsky’s recognition undermines his dangerous rhetoric. Despite the calls to revoke his award, the University of Florida’s interim dean Merritt McAlister affirmed the matter, citing his “free speech rights.” McAlister also noted  “institutional neutrality,” a new term in the rise of anti-DEI policies where schools remain impartial on political issues.

However, Damsky’s academic language did not continue on the internet. Months after the dean’s decision, Damsky created an X account to further showcase his views. His post that Jewish people must be ” abolished by any means necessary,” led to his latest scandal.

The jarring remark led to the University of Florida suspending him and barring him from campus. The University even boosted police presence at the law school. However, others believe the initial celebration of his works empowered Damsky to become even louder with his racist beliefs.

The issue also comes at a time where free speech has its own interpretation in Florida public institutions. One professor called out the double standards of Damsky being able to write his essay while she had to change the name of her class over its assertion of race.

(blackenterprise.com)

To me this is clearly racist BS….truth be told if one thinks about the Founders….who were they?

A bunch of white guys most of whom owned slaves….I can see where the jump can be made….not that I would ever agree with the premise at all.

What about you?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The “Peak Of Ferocity”

The voter of this great land has gone to the edge of cruelty….we are witnessing something that has happened before but we choose to ignore the implications…

At its core, this culture strips working people, the poor, Black and Brown communities, and the marginalized of dignity, hope, and the right to a decent life. Though cruelty has long been woven into the fabric of American history, Trump’s second administration will wield it as an instrument of governance—hollowing out social bonds, eroding moral compassion, and suffocating collective resistance. In its place, it will stage an endless array of brutal spectacles, a politics of suffering in which fear and violence are both the means and the message.

Trumpism is not an aberration but the logical extension of a neoliberal system that thrives on hierarchy, disposability, and fear. The destruction of public goods accelerates the emergence of what Etienne Balibar calls “the transition from the social state to the penal state”—where repression replaces care, and policing takes the place of welfare. The gutting of federal aid programs, the assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and the defunding of institutions that support the most vulnerable are not incidental; they are central to the neoliberal strategy of dispossession. In the age of Trump, cruelty becomes an organizing principle of violence as is evident in homegrown notions of fascism that define citizenship in racist inclusive terms for white Christians only, sanctions genocide in Gaza, promotes mass poverty, and supports the ecological destruction of the planet. What we are witnessing as Pankaj Mishra notes is the emergence of a culture convulsed in hatred and rancor matched by an ongoing process of dehumanization and a “retreat into grandiose fantasies of omnipotence.”  Trump’s presence in American politics appears as the current endpoint in which hate, bigotry, and sanctioned ruthlessness “have reached a new peak of ferocity.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/17/trumps-reign-of-cruelty/

And now people are asking how did we get to this point?

That is a easy answer….we got here because the American voter is lazy and is easily influenced by bullshit.

President Trump and his MAGA Republicans and their forces are smashing American democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law, the institutions and norms. Trump has enacted over 50 executive orders since Jan. 20, the most in a president’s first 100 days in more than 40 years. Some of the most egregious ones are blatantly unconstitutional and violate current law. It has only been three weeks since Trump returned to power; these are the good times compared to what will come next.

Be very wary of any political observer or other public voice — or anyone else — who suggests that Trump and his MAGA movement are losing, in disarray, ineffective or somehow confused or weak. Such people are seeing what they want to see and not what is actually happening. Donald Trump and his MAGA movement’s strategy is chaos. Moreover, that chaos is in service to their shock and awe strategy to end America’s pluralistic democracy and to replace it with a form of autocracy if not outright fascism modeled on Viktor Orbán’s Hungary or Vladimir Putin’s Russia with Trump as de facto leader for life. As Harold Meyerson observes in The American Prospect, “As to the wider world, if we ever sought to be that beacon on the hill, we’re now the bully on the hill. America, Trumpified.”

https://www.salon.com/2025/02/09/donald-chaos-strategy-why-americans-continue-to-fall-for-his-game-of-distraction/

Hatred is another reason for Trump prayed on the fears and biases of voters to gain the upper hand.

Will this trend ever end?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A “Great Replacement Theory”

It is time to call a spade a spade.

There has been lots of typing trying to explain what is happening in this country politically….some of it is detailed and in-depth but there is a simpler explanation.

Donald Trump made clear on the Philadelphia debate stage this week, as he has throughout his three presidential campaigns, the basis of his run for office. Trump is running on the platform that non-white immigration is an existential threat to the nation. This time around, Trump has made his primary message, the so-called Great Replacement Theory(GRT), more vivid than ever. It is therefore of existential importance in understanding the stakes of this election to have clearly in mind what has happened in the past when GRT has been the central driving narrative both of individuals and of states.

According to the Great Replacement Theory, the nation’s greatness, its traditions and its practitioners, are existentially imperiled by an influx of foreign races, ethnicities or religions. The foreign elements are sometimes described in the narrative of GRT, as vermin or diseases. 

GRT was central to the official Nazi motivation for the genocide of the Jews of Europe. Hitler blamed the loss of World War I on Jewish betrayal of Germany. But this betrayal, for Hitler, was intimately connected to the Great Replacement Theory, via the introduction of Black soldiers in the French army subsequently occupying the Rhineland, the so-called “Black Horror on the Rhine.” In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes:

It was and is the Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.

With the benefit of hindsight, the idea that Jews betrayed Germany in World War I in order to use the occupying French army to bring Black Senegalese soldiers in to ruin the white race by rape and race mixing seems utterly unhinged. It is hard to fathom that this crazed conspiracy theory justified for many Germans the mass murder of two out of every three of Europe’s Jews. But our descendants will also find it hard to understand why so many Americans find Trump’s claims that non-white immigrants to the United States are savages who eat pets, criminally insane murderers and drugs dealers who nevertheless somehow manage to get it together to vote fraudulently en masse in election to be plausible. In both cases, the bizarre nature of these claims stands in stark contrast to their obvious political power.

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/13/donald-is-openly-running-a-great-replacement-theory-campaign/

All this is nothing new…..I recall when the boat people were arriving in the 70s a story locally was that pets were being eaten by them and that Vietnam had sent us criminals….any of that sound familiar?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Do NOT Talk About Race!

There is a racial divide in this country……we can pretend that it does not exist (not in this country) but sadly there is and I have written about it several times……

In case the posts were missed I will help with this issue…..

https://lobotero.com/2008/07/16/is-there-a-racial-divide/
 
Now instead of actually trying to open a conversation…..a real conversation on the issue of race states are trying to ban the very conversation is country desperately needs to have.

The absurdity of the Republican Party’s culture wars has reached new heights. A slew of GOP-led state legislatures are enacting new laws that ban teaching “critical race theory” an academic framework that has become the latest conservative boogeyman.

Do you want to learn about racism, discrimination and privilege? Well, Republicans are trying to make it really hard to do so with a slew of bills designed to muzzle educators. In Texas, House Bill 3979 would limit how teachers talk about current events and historic racism in their classrooms. It also bans schools from teaching the 1619 Project, a New York Times endeavor which investigates US history starting with the year the first slaves were brought to what would become the United States. After some political maneuvering, the controversial bill appears to be headed to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. 

But in Oklahoma, where a critical race theory ban has  taken place, the effects have already been chilling. Melissa Smith, an adjunct professor at Oklahoma City Community College, recently learned her race and ethnicity course had been “paused” for the summer. “Our history of the United States is uncomfortable and it should make us uncomfortable and we should grow from that,” Smith said in an interview with the Washington Post. But the community college has stated that since the new law “essentially revokes any ability to teach critical race theory, including discussions of white privilege” Smith’s curriculum would need substantial changes. 

Republicans Are Passing Laws to Keep Teachers From Talking About Race

Not to be outdone by Texas Florida has made a move on the race conversation…..

As dozens of bills are advancing in statehouses nationwide to ban the teaching of the basic truths of America’s racist history, DeSantis signed a bill into law this week that threatens to surveil and cut funding to public institutions of higher learning found to be on the wrong side of the Republicans’ ongoing white nationalist crusade.

https://theintercept.com/2021/06/27/desantis-florida-universities-white-supremacy-antiracism/

Here is an example of the denial that is hard wired into the education of the South….

Gather around, children. I want to tell you a tale, a story of a nation divided. A story about a war of values in the United States. A war where people were held in bondage, had suffered brutal consequences and degraded. They were unsure of the outcome of the war, and afraid for their lives. Their families separated. They faced oppression. This is the story of white southern families facing a war of northern aggression? Welcome to eighth-grade textbooks in Louisiana, and the story of poor Kate Stone, daughter of a family that once owned 150 slaves, but now would be deprived of family wealth the moment those slaves would be free.

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/6/14/2035192/-The-sad-story-of-southern-slave-owners-as-told-in-8th-grade-history-books

Then there are those that fit into the ‘Can’t Fix Stupid” Files……

Dick Morris has reached New heights of absurdity with a recent claim that Critical Race Theory would lead multiracial children to act on “Oedipal” fantasies.

During an appearance on Newsmax, Morris launched into a tirade against Critical Race Theory. His ludicrous, Freudian assertion that teaching people about systemic racism would somehow make them act on any Oedipal feelings they have is possibly the most bizarre criticism of Critical Race Theory so far.

https://www.comicsands.com/morris-critical-race-theory-oedipal-2653548800.html

What a pathetic pack of halt-witted pinheads.

What are Republicans afraid of….the truth?

The GOP is proving just what a moral degenerate the party has become…..and it just keeps getting worse.

Is there end?

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The American Racial Divide

The racial divide in this country is wider than it has been in 60+ years….here are so may reasons but the rise of all this populist and nationalistic BS has made it a driving force in American society.

But why are we still fighting this battle?

There’s been a recent flurry of studies and analyses that take a deeper look at the results of the 2020 election. These examinations don’t contradict our early interpretation of the results from the days and weeks immediately following Election Day: The overwhelming majority of voters backed the candidate from the party that they normally lean toward, though then-President Trump did slightly better with voters of color and slightly worse with white voters than he did in 2016. But the new examinations and other data tell a nuanced story about the role of race in the 2020 contest.

American voters …  

  1. Remain deeply polarized based on ethnicity and racial identity; 
  2. Were less polarized by racial identity in 2020 compared to 2016; and 
  3. Are very polarized by attitudes about racial and cultural issues. 

American Politics Now Has Two Big Racial Divides

Look at the Civil Rights Act….it became law because business people wanted it because they were suffering from boycotts and protests…..so they got LBJ to enact a law….old white guys decided to do something to protect their holdings not because it was right but because it threatened their profits.

This divide will remain with us until there is such a time that color means nothing to us….and that is not in the cards in the rest of my life.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Biden’s And Racial Justice

Pres. Biden has used his pen and signed a series of EOs that will try to reverse some of the racial inequalities….another promise he is trying to make good on…..

President Biden on Tuesday signed four executive actions meant to advance racial equity in the United States, including directing his administration to fully implement a law combating housing discrimination and another to mitigate xenophobia against Asian Americans.

Biden signed a memorandum directing the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to begin the process of rooting out systemic racism in the housing market by analyzing areas where the previous administration’s policies undermined fair housing laws, according to senior administration officials.

…

Biden also signed an executive order ending the Department of Justice’s use of private prisons, as part of the new administration’s broader criminal justice reform agenda.

Additionally, the president signed a memorandum directing federal agencies, including the departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Justice, to take steps to stop xenophobia and violence towards Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The memo also acknowledges what officials described as xenophobic behavior on the part of the previous administration.

Finally, Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to engage regularly with Tribal governments in order to strengthen the relationship between the federal government and American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/535900-biden-to-sign-series-of-executive-orders-aimed-at-racial-equity

Read the entire EO for yourself…..

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/26/executive-order-reforming-our-incarceration-system-to-eliminate-the-use-of-privately-operated-criminal-detention-facilities/

Biden is off to a good start.

How long can this last?

I would like someone from Biden’s inner circle to explain how this will solve the problems we have with racial justice….

I wish I was more optimistic.

Your thoughts will be appreciated.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Cost Racism?

This country is once again trying to have that much needed conversation on racism and as usual we are failing miserably.

For instance did you realize that the US could have been $16 trillion (yes, that is trillion with a “T”) but systematic racism deprived the nation of the money.

A report issued by Citigroup, a bastion of capitalism and not some phony Left wing think tank…..

America could have been $16 trillion richer if not for inequities in education, housing, wages and business investment between Black and White Americans over the past 20 years, new research concludes.

The study, released this week by Citigroup, is the latest in a body of research that attempts to quantify the economic impact of systemic racism. Citigroup arrived at its $16 trillion figure after estimating that:

  • Black workers have lost $113 billion in potential wages over the past two decades because they couldn’t get a college degree.
  • The housing market lost $218 billion in sales because Black applicants couldn’t get home loans.
  • About $13 trillion in business revenue never flowed into the economy because Black entrepreneurs couldn’t access bank loans.

What’s more, the U.S. could have $5 trillion in gross domestic product over the next five years if those gaps and others were closed today, the study indicated.

“Racial inequality has always had an outsized cost, one that was thought to be paid only by underrepresented groups,” Citigroup Banking Chair Raymond McGuire said in a statement.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-gdp-growth-missed-16-trillion-systemic-racism-inequality-report/

If you cannot understand the cost of racism from the point of social issues then maybe you can put your small head around the monetary cost of hatred.

Does this change anything?

Of course not.

This subject will never be settled until until people learn to talk to each instead of at each other.

Or until the country moves past the silly tribalism that is griping our society by the nuts.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–25Sep20

Every time Donald the Orange opens his mouth or picks up a pen (sorry….Sharpie) he proves what a racist pig he truly has become.

His newest Executive Order bans diversity training in corporations…..now he is telling business what to do….a dictator at heart….no a fascist dictator at heart……

Donald Trump announced that he signed an executive order prohibiting government contractors and grantees from providing racial sensitivity and diversity training to employees. In it, the President claims he is taking action to combat “harmful and offensive race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating.”

The Daily Beast reports that Trump announced the new executive order in a series of tweets, because of course he did.

“A few weeks ago, I BANNED efforts to indoctrinate government employees with divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies. Today, I’ve expanded that ban to people and companies that do business… with our Country, the United States Military, Government Contractors, and Grantees. Americans should be taught to take PRIDE in our Great Country, and if you don’t, there’s nothing in it for you!”

This executive order is similar to the one that Trump signed earlier in September which directed federal government agencies to cancel or divert funds away from any contracts for training sessions that mentioned “white privilege” or “critical race theory.” Tuesday’s executive order comes less than a week after Trump gave a speech on the importance of “patriotic education” and once again condemned critical race theory, arguing “the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together.” Well, if the civic bonds are really that weak….

https://theslot.jezebel.com/trump-signs-executive-order-banning-federal-contractors-1845149417

There can be no doubt to anyone that is NOT a racist pig that this person, Trump, is a bigot with NO empathy for anyone but himself.

All that is missing these days is a special salute to the leader.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”