Louisiana Judge Who Denies Interracial Marriages So Totally Not Racist

(The story was found linked by Exiled Online, and can be found directly by the Associated Press, hosted by Google.)

The story can be summed up in one line from the article:

“Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.”

Money, money, money quote from the not-racist Louisiana judge, Keith Bardwell:

“I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

Anyone used to hearing people say that they aren’t racist recognize the tells in this defensive statement pretty quickly… The “I’m not a racist! Look, I even treat them like human beings!” argument.

… and the cow goes moo

District 9: Worst movie about race since Crash

I’m about as pessimistic as can be about Hollywood features in general, even when they garner near-universal acclaim like District 9 — the very mediocre Slumdog Millionaire comes quickest to mind — so maybe I only have myself to blame for setting myself up for this disappointment.

But hot fuck, was I offended by the rank stupidity of District 9.

Even by Independence Day-level summer sci-fi blockbuster conceits (big splosions, bravado, and black and white divisions between good and bad, blue-collar miners installing nukes into an asteroid to save the world, etc., etc.), District 9 tests the limits of plausibility within the first few minutes of the film.

Aliens coming to the Earth and, in an interesting change from the standard fare, NOT blowing up the White House?  Fine.  Great, even.

Aliens coming to the Earth as refugees, able to transport a million of their kind to another occupied planet and getting stuck with apparently only 1.5 members of the race having the sparsest trace of intellect (actually, have 1,000,000+ depicted-as-retards aliens, and 1.5 super geniuses)?  That’s just silly.

Huddled masses of refugee aliens being put into internment camps on Earth, and somehow having being allowed to bring their weapons and whiz-bang-super-robots-that-only-aliens-can-operate with them?  Holy fuck, man.

I’m trying not to spoil too much of the story, but these are all key factors in the foundation of the story and certainly do not approach the logic required of science fiction, hardly come close to the amount of reason required of a summer popcorn flick, and barely meet the standards of the horror franchise “[Once Profitable Horror Franchise]… In Space!” movie-making (think Jason X, Leprechaun In Space, among I’m sure countless others).  And at least in horror movies like those, there are tits by the end of the first hour.  And even the appearance of said tits are better explained in Leprechaun in Space than the appearance of Alien death rays in the camps.

If District 9 were supposed to be a simple popcorn feature, you could almost condone the suspension of disbelief required (thankfully, most of your disbelief need be exercised in the first half-hour or so.  Sadly, that is when the movie is creating the ridiculous world in which its characters are to exist for the next 90 minutes.)

But District 9 — from what I could glean from the buzz, effectively-discrete marketing, and early reviews — was supposed to be much more than that: A fantastical science fiction movie like Blade Runner, that intended to entertain as well as provide some thoughtful illustration of all-too-real issues we face today, and seem likely to continue to face at the limits of imagined time.

And here is where it fails most unforgivably:  District 9 provides no observations worth repeating that could improve the understanding of conflict over race for anyone over the age of twelve.  Thankfully, the filmmakers provide enough innuendo and imagery to reach even members of that demographic.

First, the villains:  Every single unforgivably bastardy character in the film (and there are many) are white, and bald.  That’s right.  Skinheads picking on poor aliens, expressing absolute uncaring towards Aliens being treated to concentration-camp conditions, or even describing how much they relish administrating the tortures directly.

The imagery of the concentration camps (think a garbage dump densely laden with shacks build of refuse) should easily trigger sympathetic feelings, staged in the especially relevant South Africa, no less; but I felt nothing.  999,998.5 Aliens in the film are depicted as violent, dim to the point of actually being an insult to the real ‘prawns’ which they are disparagingly referred as in slang, drug-addicted, and even lacking in the barest sense of community with their own, or shared understanding of the predicament of their entire community.  When [heroic stuff that we can all pretty much guess, but I'll try to avoid spoiling] happens, it is not due to broader sympathy engendered among humans, or some sort of understanding by even one human, or a rising up of this apparently spacefaring race in unity:  [heroic stuff] takes place only because of the 1.5 non-retarded members of the alien race and the one selfish human.

The remaining 999,998.5 members of the Alien race are literally depicted less sympathetically than the trash in which they reside.  Was that the purpose of the film?  Was that the message?  That even in a species comprised largely of trash, there are maybe 1.5 members per million that are worth not making delicious cocktails out of?

It’s either District 9 was a really bad movie about race, or I’m just way too racist to sympathize with any of their touch-feely, alien-loving arguments.

Oh, and by the way, to those who wonder about the 1.5 smarter-than-your-average-prawn Aliens and don’t mind a bit of a spoiler?  Two words:  Super Baby.

Jesus Anakin-in-The-Phantom-Menace Christ.

… and the cow goes moo

Why They Hate Us: Part MMXVIII. CIA Super-Rapist

You know how some people think everything the CIA does is to create this world order under US hegemony, destroying regimes and economies willy-nilly, while spiriting away innocent dissidents on the behest of sympathetic and docile-to-American-power totalitarian regimes?

Well, apparently even the CIA takes their Sundays off.  And what do they do to relax?  Why, rape the wogs, of course!

The opening paragraph at ABC News:

“The CIA’s station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.”

Although the article/blogpost (?) is replete with typos, it’s definitely a good read.  Let’s see what slap-on-the-hand treatment this American civil servant receives for his globetrotting date-rape video-making.  Let’s see if they lighten his sentence in light of his achievements fighting the Global War on Terror.

Full disclosure of my massive prejudices:  The second I opened that page and saw Andrew Warren’s picture, I thought “date rapist”.  Really, I don’t know what it is exactly, but Andrew Warren looks like the dictionary definition of a date rapist to me.  The shaved-head jock stuffed in a suit look, with the shit eating grin?  I’m not sure what it is exactly.  He’s like a Botticelli.  I don’t know why I love the look of The Birth of Venus exactly, but something about it is supremely beautiful.  And I don’t know why Andrew Warren looks like such a rapist to me exactly, but just looking at him makes me 100% convinced that he absolutely raped those two women.  And that he has probably been drugging and raping women all his life.  Honestly.  I’m not sure why I feel that way.

… and the cow goes moo

BART shooting videos at KTVU

For those who haven’t heard, a Bay Area Rapit Transit (San Francisco area mass transit system) officer apparently shot and killed a young man while the young man was lying prone, defenseless, on his stomach.

Polizeros has been all over this case, with a large collection of videos linked to in multiple posts.

The description sounds like another gruesome example of law enforcement excess and violence, and perhaps even racism (the officer appears to be a caucasian male in the videos; articles and reports listing his name suggest he may be hispanic.  I am not sure.  The victim is black though).  Watching several of the muted videos at Polizeros, I came to a similar conclusion.

Upon viewing the videos available at KTVU.com, however (also linked to from Polizeros), it becomes more revealing the environment the officer’s were in.

The atmosphere emerges in the audio and chaos of this video (direct link to .asx, which can be found at this page), showing the press of young people, apparently bystanders, taunting, baiting, and apparently threatening the officers forming a perimeter around the scene where the shooting is about to take place.

No doubt these drunken revellers early on New Year’s Day morning saw the situation much as I did: Overly aggressive police unfairly prosecuting young males for no real offense (nothing can be seen in the videos that I viewed of what was actually done to cause the officers’ involvement in the first place).  The atmosphere appears to approach near-riot levels as young revellers seem to congregate directly around the perimeter, with a few intermittently approaching the officers (eventually one of these young men are taken down, coinciding almost exactly with when the shooting takes place).

Theories are being tossed around as to why the more-or-less neutralized victim, Oscar Grant, was shot as he was lying on his stomach with the shooting officer literally kneeling on him.  Some have said the officer was attempting to tase him but confused his taser and his pistol (unlikely, in my opinion, as I doubt they could be easily confused even in a tense situation such as the one they were in, although I have never handled a taser before.  I have seen them and handled firearms before, and I cannot imagine they would be easily confused).

It seems more likely to me that the BART officer may have been readying his weapon to brandish it in a threatening manner to Oscar Grant (who may have been offering limited resistance at the time, it is unclear from the videos) or the encroaching mob.  And, with the sudden activity around him from the young man who appeared to get too close or draw the ire of the officers in some manner, and with his safety off for some reason, he accidentally pulled the trigger.  He barely unholsters his weapon by the time the shot is fired and his reaction afterwards clearly indicates it was inadvertent or perhaps done extremely impulsively.  It seems to be, from what little I can see in the videos, a case of firearm misuse with tragic consequences.  As opposed to police overvigilance, or racial violence.

To add to the tragedy, according to this article and the accompanying TV news report, 22-year old Oscar Grant was the proud father of a four year old girl.

The officer, 27-year old Johannes Mehserle, became a father the very next day when his girlfriend gave birth to a baby on January 2, 2009.

Effectively six young lives were ruined or ended in what appears to be the chaos  and belligerence of a drunken mob and and a poorly trained, haphazardly gun-wielding transit cop.

… and the cow goes moo

UPDATED – NYT’s Kristof: Torture forces the smile on the faces of Asian sex tourism workers

(for more of my comments on the subject, and links to an earlier article on the subject by Nicholas Kristof, please follow this link)

One of the unenviable area of focus of Nicholas Kristof’s writings is one of the most overlooked atrocities occurring on a daily basis, combining slavery, kidnapping, rape, torture, murder, and pedophilia into one act of human degradation.  As heinous as each of those acts are to Western, and I’d assume, all observers and the strong reaction any one of these acts would produce should it occur to a middle-class blond from Ohio, the well-practiced and almost perfected business of sex slavery, combining all of these crimes, goes largely unnoticed by all but Kristof readers.

His latest article can be found here, continuing on the article I mentioned in a previous post linked to above, follows yet another victim/survivor of the Cambodian sex trade.  Not content to add just one more personal story and one more name to the list of victims of the deviancy and perversions of Asian and Western businessmen and women, Kristof focuses on the ongoing threat and use of torture that is practiced to create the veneer of coquettishness and willingness of the captives of Cambodian brothels.

Those of us who are disgusted by torture and condemn acts such as waterboarding may have a more intense reaction to the acts described by Kristof and perpetrated on not suspects of terrorism, but kidnapped children who resist to selling their bodies to strange men for money they never see (please skip the following quote if you intend to read the entire article as it is perhaps the key anecdote in the article.  Otherwise, HIGHLIGHT the blank space to see the text):

“As in many brothels, the torture of choice was electric shocks. Sina would be tied down, doused in water and then prodded with wires running from the 220-volt wall outlet. The jolt causes intense pain, sometimes evacuation of the bladder and bowel — and even unconsciousness.

Shocks fit well into the brothel business model because they cause agonizing pain and terrify the girls without damaging their looks or undermining their market value.

After the beatings and shocks, Sina said she would be locked naked in a wooden coffin full of biting ants. The coffin was dark, suffocating and so tight that she could not move her hands up to her face to brush off the ants. Her tears washed the ants out of her eyes.”

We know these things happen, in great numbers, and continue on a daily basis.  We know that a large part of the problem is on the demand side, contributed to but not exclusively by Western businessmen (likely reasonably wealthy travelling businessmen travelling alone to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and other Asian nations).  And we know, and I believe can agree on without equivocation, that the act may not be the most pervasive, but is certainly among the most perverse and heinous of any act being perpetrated on this Earth today or that has been in the past hundred years.  Then why can’t we make an effort to stop it at least on our side of the equation, where we have a right and responsibility to control it?

There seems to be a ununanimous but significant passive support for screening terrorism suspects and restricting their travel.  Even mideastern friends of mine exhibit a fair level of acceptance to the reality (I am paraphrasing, but one response I received from an ethnic Persian friend a few years ago, during the height of the War on Terror, was: “we know who is responsible for the attacks, so of course Mideasterners are going to be targeted.  What else can you do?”).

I don’t necessarily condone this or would support such a policy being enacted, but why isn’t a similar profile being used to stamp out the supply-side of sex slavery?  Is it because sex slavery didn’t cause towers to fall on national television?  The nation has not be adequately scarred to disband civil liberties for this particular offense and criminal group?

Is it because the victims of this act are not Americans, but brown-skinned Asians, dying out of sight in brothel dungeons, on motel room beds at the hands of an abusive John, or quietly of AIDs on the other side of the world?

Or is it because the ‘victims’ of this profiling would perhaps be overwhelming white and well-to-do males, pillars of local business communities, family men, and otherwise known to be respectable folk who have the courtesy to practice their most profligate sexual deviancy on dark-skinned children?

Or another reason entirey?  I hope Kristof and others who live wholly or halfway in this world of medieval bondage continue to explore this topic and demand an answer.  No doubt those who enslave these girls and pay for their services are the most vile.  But I would like to know how disgusting the rest of us are for being less than outraged.

UPDATE:  Kristof has a new article up continuing on the travails of sex slaves in Cambodia, detailing more gruesome tortures inflicted on the teenage captives.

… and the cow goes moo

This Day in Racism History – Berlusconi’s ‘Suntanned’ Gaffe

When I first heard of this, I thought it was just another awful overreaction where nothing can be at all funny or spoken lightheartedly if it had any vague reference to race.

I just thought Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was trying to be funny (and failing) and being an overall jackass.  As my only real knowledge of Silvio were from videos of ‘him’ (not really him, but I thought it was him at the time I first saw the video) eating boogers and making humping gestures at a male traffic cop (I think that one actually is him), his ’suntan’ comment seems positively restrained.

Judging by the reaction described in this New York Times article (the article is actually from yesterday), and the litany of slightly-beyond-just-stupid acts and remarks of his in the past, I think I’ll reserve judgment.  Maybe his comment was racist, maybe not.  Silvio Berlusconi certainly does seem like a huge dumbass though.

… and the cow goes moo

Desperate Appeals to Rabid Right Endangering Discourse, and Obama

I was watching Bill Moyers Journal last night and his guest, Glenn Loury, Professor of Social Sciences and Economics at Brown University, touched on a point that has been bothering me for some time but I am not sure if I have mentioned:

“Should Obama win, now you have a president of the United States who a lot of people think is illegitimate as a person who consorts with murderers, as a person who’s sympathetic to terrorists. It’s de-legitimating of the president of the United States. It’s poisoning the well in a certain way.

You do what you have to do to win an election. But then after the election the person has to govern. And now what has been said about that person continues to echo in the minds of citizens. And I’m worried that in this case the suggestion that Obama is somehow going to get in the White House and, you know, sell out the country will hurt all of us should he win and need to govern.”

I actually was quite fond of John McCain before this election started, personally, and to an extent, as a politician (“to an extent” is just about as far as I’ll go to saying I like any Senator).  I have been saddened to watch his decline to desperation in attempts to win an unwinnable election (nothing short of a miracle could have re-elected a Republican President, post-Bush).

That he has gambled and been desperate in his campaign seems understandable.  That he has resorted heavily to negative campaigning and attacking his opponent is only typical for an underdog (and he has been the underdog for nearly the entire campaign).  Even his nomination of Sarah Palin was understandable to me at the time (though I was unable to imagine how dim the Governor of Alaska could be).

But his campaign’s attempts to associate Barack Obama with terrorism and anti-Americanism go beyond the pale.  I may hate it, but I do understand the role lies, obfuscations, and suggestion serve in a campaign.  But there exists a large number of Americans who feel that those are capital crimes.  And who might go as far as to believe Sarah Palin or John McCain’s suggestions of such are tantamount to a fair trial, short of an executioner.

And John McCain cannot plead ignorance to the existence of the monumentally stupid (on the left and the right) as he still holds the belief the rumours of his “illegitimate black child” (The Nation reflected on this episode recently) had an impact on his loss in the 2000 South Carolina primary.

In his all-out bid to win, John McCain has actively or acquiesced to (I question his judgment, but I still do have some faith in his character) replicating this brand of lies and even heightening them by charging Obama with a much greater crime, in the eyes of the dimmest Americans, than miscegenation:  Treason.

That it has failed to sufficiently slow Obama’s campaign says very little, but is at least a positive.  As Glenn Loury suggests, that Barack Obama will have to govern with a small number of citizens who actively believe a man is in office who actively conspires to destroy the nation is now the reality.

In efforts to win this election, John McCain has destroyed any faith those who supported him in the past had in his judgment, and most any trust we had in his character.  I dearly hope this is enough for him to lose re-election in the Senate in the near future, beyond his loss in tomorrow’s election.

At the same time, through his most dangerous accusations, he has literally endangered the life of his competitor.  This seems to be a bit of a taboo topic, but Barack Obama (or the First Black President in general) was going to be faced with threats to his life beyond that faced perhaps by any previous president regardless (four of whom were assassinated, and six of whom had attempts made on their lives.  I include Theodore Roosevelt, which that link does not).

Not only are those who are racially motivated likely to threaten Barack Obama, but due to the implicit support offered by the flagbearers of the Republican party and the associations they have created and nurtured, American ‘patriots’ will be after him as well.

That John McCain was willing to trade in the past 20 years or so of goodwill he engendered with Independents, Democrats, and some Republicans in seeking the highest office in the land is a personal failure of his own choosing.  That he has chosen, actively or through ignorance, to endanger the life of his opposition to increase his own chances is a trade he had no right to make.

Regardless of what may happen in the coming eight years, I hope John McCain reflects on his actions and understands that his lies may have been justified and limited to the campaign in his mind, but they are certainly not limited to the campaign by many of those who will vote McCain/Palin tomorrow.

… and the cow goes moo

T-Shirts poised to decide 2008 Election

Are t-shirts more reflective of voting habits than national polls?  John McCain might have a chance after all…

As an addendum to the previous posts regarding the Florida social studies teacher and his witty definition of ‘C.H.A.N.G.E.’ and the unfortunate Londoner who was shot three times for wearing an Obama tee-shirt, I thought I’d post on a few related stories.  On with the Racism Roundup!

Nigger Please!! It’s a White House

I noticed a number of people who reached my site searching for some version of “racist motorcycle Obama t-shirt”.  Well, as far as I can tell, this seems to be it.  Quick comments:

• As I’ve said before, when someone uses a racial slur, it’s usually to be translated as “can you kick my ass?”  Well, that dude on the bike looks pretty huge.  So my answer is ‘no’ for this one.
• I hope people don’t use this as an example of racism coming from John McCain’s campaign.  I can certainly see how the argument could be made, but I do feel it would be a stretch.  There’s certainly a large component of xenophobia-stroking in the McCain/Palin campaign, but I have not seen much outright racism against blacks encouraged by the leaders of the campaign (not including some of the state-level RNC entities which appear to have substantial independence in action).  A strong argument can be made for racism against Arabs though, with the constant use of Barack Obama’s middle name (that could just as easily be an attempt trigger associations with Saddam Hussein, which would not be racist).
• I hope people DO see this as yet another example of how large a part race plays in this election, and how racism in the most familiar sense still finds a home in the minds of millions of Americans.
• Isn’t it strange I’m far more outraged with the fact that he’s riding a motorcycle without a helmet and positioning himself in the middle of the lane, leaving no avenue for escape should the car behind him decide to run him over, than I am with the t-shirt?

Obama Is My Slave

This one is just ridiculous (more so than the previous one).  Apparently a lady got her ass kicked for wearing an (and I hesitate to give any ‘designer’/retailer attention for this) Apollo Braun “Obama is my slave” t-shirt.  I refer to the shirt as that because it says on the front… “Obama is my slave”.  I don’t know if a level of irony has yet been discovered that would make that shirt funny, so I’ll assume any purchasers (including the aforementioned ass-kicked lady) wore the shirt with the intention of being a part of the anti-abolitionist vangaurd.

And for anyone wondering, it costs about $69 to look really stupid.  $89 to look stupid and irritate your primary school English teacher.  And people claim there’s no inflation!

As always, I try to avoid using the example of one (or two: producer and consumer) clear-cut idiots as evidence of a larger population, but when someone feels comfortable wearing a t-shirt with such a slogan in public and seems to be surprised at the obvious-to-non-idiots reaction, that suggests to me they hang in groups where such a t-shirt would fail to illicit shock.  Which is shocking.

Obama: A Terrorist’s Best Friend

Out in Denver, we have the Children’s T-Shirt Crusade.  An 11-year old was suspended from school because he refused to flip his ‘patriotic’ (that was the apparent intended message) t-shirt inside out or remove it for a less inflamatory shirt after it stared a bit of a shouting match.  See, the kids were told they would not get any homework if they were something patriotic for an assembly to recognize Medal of Honor winners.  Apparently, the young man’s father, Dann Dalton, thought that having his son (I’ll assume that’s not Dann’s writing) put red (orange?) and blue magic markers to a white tee-shirt to proclaim “Obama: A Terrorist’s Best Friend” would be suitably congratulatory for Medal of Honor recipients.  As can be expected, Mr. Dalton is considering a lawsuit against the schools for violating his (and his son’s) first amendment rights.  Quick thoughts:

• Damn.  I think I’m on Mr. Dalton’s side here.  If Sarah Palin can say it in front of thousands, and then have it broadcast to millions on television, why can’t a kid wear a t-shirt with it?  At the same time, the school certainly has understandable reason to enforce their non-crazy-stupid dress code, but there is a sliver of a rational point reflected in Mr. Dalton’s lawsuit threat.  Of course the lawsuit would be a certain failure, but that’s up to him and his attention-seeking lawyer to discover.
• “At school, one kid called [the student] a racist and others didn’t like the shirt, [the student] said, while some “were proud of me” for wearing it.” This is clearly not limited to just one kid and his dad who believe Obama is some sort of terrorist Trojan horse.
  
• This is a direct product of the dangerous (and I do mean literally dangerous, as in life or death) lowering of the dialogue that is taking place this election cycle.  Many of the people who are dim enough to believe that Barack Obama’s association with William Ayers, and his “Muslim-sounding name” makes Obama a terrorist-sympathizer or a terrorist himself are likely to believe that any one who is a terrorist-sympathizer or worse deserves to have harm done upon him (to put it lightly).  When those accusations are blithely made and repeated on television, people assume it has validity as it wouldn’t be on television if it didn’t have some merit.  By reneging on their responsibility to scrutinize events (at the risk of appearing to have an opinion), the media has given the same voice to the stupidest comments as to the most thoughtful.  And by the millions that now hold these opinions, we can see how tragic the abuse of public airwaves has been.  It is odd to say, but any violence that is commited upon Barack Obama in the future will be primarily the responsibility of the actors directly involved, but the RNC and the media who amplified (and added to) their incendiary accusations are equally accountable.

Even after the Republicans are done losing the White House and a few additional seats in Congress, this will be their legacy: By their pandering to the dimmest and angriest in America with false accusations and insinuations, they have revealed the shear mass of Extremely Dim Americans and how easily their votes are purchased with superficial commitments to their favorite hatreds.  I honestly believe John McCain has no more respect for these Extremely Dim Americans than I do (what has always made McCain appealing and appear to be a ‘Maverick’ is his inability to tell a baldfaced lie without looking like someone farted… He lies as much as any politician, he just makes it very clear when he does), but he has decided to unleash them for the sake of his campaign and is now seeing how their enflamed rage has, to an extent, hijacked his campaign.

The major challenge over the next four years for the Republican party will be how to deal with this powerful force within their party, and how the image of Republicans has changed to one that is anathema to any intellectual substance.  The weight of the Extremely Dim Americans is too great to ignore, now that it has manifested itself publicly in such numbers and with such easily-exploited vehemence.  There will always be politicians within the Republican party that will see this group as a shortcut to political advantage.  But will Republicans allow their party’s face to become that of the Extremely Dim American?

I foresee, and hope for, a Republican schism in the next four to eight years.  Let’s hope Sarah Palin is running for the Extremely Dim American’s presidency rather than for the Republican party then.

… and the cow goes moo

Racist shoots man three time for wearing Obama t-shirt; in other news, race still irrelevant to election

Though I understand when people downplay the role of race in this election, and can agree with it to an extent and actually hope they’re right, but the news makes it difficult to be optimistic.

Crooks and Liars found an article at the Daily Mail (a UK paper) about a black gentleman wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt.  Apparently the t-shirt (more than Dube Egwuatu’s ethnicity) drew a Caucasian man’s ire, and led to Mr. Egwuatu absorbing a barrage of racist verbal attacks, and then being shot and struck three times with a “gas-powered ball-bearing pistol” (an airgun with metal rounds?) in broad daylight by this Caucasian man.

This took place in London.  That place where we think everyone is really classy and if racist, probably really polite about it.  For a white guy in LONDON to get so upset about Barack Obama’s face on a t-shirt absolutely boggles the mind.  As I’ve said before in my most recent post about Barack Obama’s race and the hatred (and stupidity) it seems to incite, I don’t feel shocked by the presence of a nut here and there.  I expect that with over six billion successful births walking the streets, at least a few thousand have to be fucked up beyond words.  But it does worry me immensely how polific even these very extreme manifestations of racial hatred against Barack Obama are.  I always assumed that the First Black President, whether in 2008 or 2080, would be assassinated.  I more or less have accepted the idea, I have to admit with no small amount of guilt.  And I imagine even Mr. Obama accepts the idea that he may be killed, but will serve to make it possible that the Second Black President could live to see the end of his term.

As much as I’d like to believe that race doesn’t play a major role in the vote, I have earned the confidence of enough people (myself included) to know how large a role race plays from the most menial to the most important decisions that can be made.  Barack Obama will win the election by the sheer extraordinary magnitude of President Bush and Senator McCain’s incompetence, Barack and Michelle Obama’s like will be constantly at threat, and Joe Biden is more likely to end up as the President than Sarah Palin.  I don’t wish this to occur in the least, but I honestly do expect it to.  And it saddens me to no end that America, and the world, remains so racist to its core, and that our best coping method is to act as if the world is a bit less racist than it really is.

… and the cow goes moo

UPDATE: C.H.A.N.G.E. = Come Help a Nigger Get Elected, according to a Florida 7th grade teacher

I noticed this originally at Crooks and Liars but this link to their source article appeared to be down.  The JC Floridan has a working article though with a bit more depth than I found at a few other articles, indicating that Mr. Greg Howard not only provided his translation for “CHANGE” on the blackboard, laughed about it (ruling out the likelihood he was making some comment about racism in the election), but also did so multiple times in multiple classes.  He is a Social Studies teacher, apparently.

He had been given a written reprimand and is suspended without pay, but I had read in another article that he will continue to teach, but with an adult education program as opposed to being with children.

I had originally that there MUST be more to this story, judging by how foolish the act seemed prima facie.  This sort of behaviour always shocks me.  For that to be said in private or online is expected, but that someone would come to the conclusion that this joke would be appreciated or tolerated in a public setting (in front of at least one class with black students, no less) boggles the mind.  Either he did not care about the repercussions, or the environment he works and lives in was so conducive and accepting to comments like the one he made, he believed there would be no consequences.

One idiot is never going to surprise me, but I am worried that there might be a much larger concentrated population of idiots around Greg Howard that allows this behaviour to come to light.

(I know I’m phrasing thing as if only the act and not the thought are worth criticism in this post, but it isn’t meant to condone his joke in a different setting.  I just am not surprised at all for racism to manifest itself in private.  It’s the public occurence that provides condemning evidence to a society at large, rather than just an individual with individual prejudices)

MINOR ADDITION:

I noticed some news reports had the abbreviation expanded to “Can you help a Nigger get elected” and “Can help a nigger get elected”, I believe.  So I’m adding it to catch the searches for those slightly different phrases.  The ‘Come…’ one makes the most grammatical and euphonic sense to me.  And say what you want about racists, they are not prejudiced against grammar or euphony.

UPDATE:

I have a slightly more recent related post here also related to Barack Obama and the virulent racism that some possess against him, even on the other side of the Atlantic.  And it resulted in a man actually being attacked for wearing an Obama t-shirt.  This isn’t quite a trend, thankfully, but this is hardly an isolated phenomena.

… and the cow goes moo