racism Archives - Page 9 of 33 - Ramblin' with Roger

August rambling: a word with no meaning

keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom

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The NRA and the Long Con.

There’s No Such Thing as Family Secrets in the Age of 23andMe.

Telehealth Boom Misses Older Adults.

Don’t Blame Colleges for the Coming Fall Debacle. This is just what higher education looks like in a failed state.

Google Voice deserves your attention (again).

The Anonymous Professor Who Wasn’t.

Urban Dictionary TOP Definition: Literally – a word with no meaning in today’s USA.

Webwaste: The Web is Obese.

Vlogbrothers (Hank Green): Ideas are absolutely a kind of magic and It seems like content is now infinite and internalizing the reality that critique is vital…but so is knowing when you think it’s wrong.

A Tale of Two TV Producers and How They Switched Places (Gene Roddenberry and Jack Webb).

Ken Levine interview of Debbie Gibson: Part 1 and Part 2.

Songwriter Ashley Gorley Becomes First with 50 Number One Songs.

Double-O Thoughts.

Octothorpe – another term for the pound, number, or hashtag symbol (#).

Race

John Oliver: US history books and racism.

How Stephen Miller Molded the GOP to His Anti-immigration Agenda.

Pitfalls Black Lives Matter must avoid to maintain momentum and achieve meaningful change.

A Rare Recipe From a Talented Chef, Enslaved by a Founding Father.

A historical reckoning for the global slave trade including the database Legacies of British Slave-ownership.

I’ll have to read Isabel Wilkerson’s important new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. She makes unsettling comparisons between India’s stigmatizing treatment of its untouchables, Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews, and America’s treatment of African-Americans, the social systems that “keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom.”

Now I Know

The Color of Fraud and The Holbrook Holiday and The Horseless Headsman and The TV That Needed Help and Kindergarten Crabs?

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IMPOTUS

His Threat to Press Freedom Is Global.

Weekly Sift: The Election: Worry or Don’t Worry?

The Lincoln Project: Wake Up.

Yes, Kanye Is Trying To Help Trump Win By Spoiling Biden’s Chances with some help.

MUSIC

Lookin’ For a Leader 2020 – Neil Young.

Global Warming by Michael Abels.

The Ordering of Moses by Robert Nathaniel Dett.

Stevie Wonder music featuring Rebecca Jade and Leonard Patton on vocals, Tripp Sprague on sax and flute, Mack Leighton on bass, Duncan Moore on drums, and Peter Sprague on guitar. The Prayer featuring Rebecca Jade and Chris Walker.

AGO Organfest: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday

Concerto for Left Hand in D Major by Ravel, performed by Leon Fleischer, who died at the age of 92.

16, Going On 17 – Laura Benanti and Christopher Fitzgerald

You’ll Be Back, priest’s viral ‘Hamilton’ video.

Brandy – Elliot Lurie. and friends, a cappella (and an Evanier story).

Electric Avenue – The Last Bandoleros and SHAGGY.

William Tell Overture finale, played by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

Coverville 1319: Covers of Public Enemy, RUN-DMC and LL Cool J.

Have I lived the life I wanted?

Canaan’s descendants settled in the land of Canaan!

canaan In the Boston Globe recently, there was an interesting title. “If I die now, have I lived the life I wanted to?” The subtitle: “The pandemic has people examining their lives. Some don’t like what they’re seeing.”

“Spouses are being left, retirements pushed up, friends dropped. People are moving to rural spots and strengthening their faith, and those fortunate enough to have a choice are saying ‘no’ to commuting.”

But I don’t think it’s just the pandemic. As the article noted, “A married couple have taken stock of their lives… They have been hanging out with the wrong people — friends who were nice to their faces, but, they now realize, are selfish. The friends refuse to wear masks or support Black Lives Matter, stances that rule out any further relationship.”

So it’s all of it: IMPOTUS, COVID-19, George Floyd and all of the ramifications of each. It’s certainly true for me.

Let me let you in on a little secret. I hate writing about race and racism in America. The only thing that I hate more is NOT writing about it. There is a hole in my stomach, probably from acid reflux, when I don’t write what I am feeling.

So I have come to a conclusion. There’s a woman in my life who is really upset with me. It is because I told her, in an email discussion in late June, that IMPOTUS was a bigoted person. Therefore, her support of him appeared racist to me. She says she’s “devastated.”

Old Testament

My realization, my culpability in this, is that I held back in the past. For instance, when she laid out to me that black people became slaves in America because of the curse of Canaan. I wrote about this theory five years ago.

From here: “Canaan’s descendants, however, did not settle in Africa, but in the land to which they gave their father’s name—the land of Canaan!… Later, Joshua conquered this land and placed the Canaanites under forced slave labor (Josh. 9:23)…. Thus, the prophetic curse of slavery was literally fulfilled on the Canaanites. The curse, therefore, applies to no ethnic group in existence today. The mistaken idea that Ham’s African descendants are cursed is a myth too often repeated even to this day!” And it’s out there a lot.

When I finally did figure out the absurdity that she was talking about – even assuming that the Bible is literally true, which she does – I might have called her out about it. But I didn’t, in the name of peace. But, as it states in Jeremiah 6:14-15:

They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say,
when there is no peace.
Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct?
No, they have no shame at all;
they do not even know how to blush.

My disservice to her, then, was not saying something sooner. It’s not her support for IMPOTUS that is the reason I believe her views are racist; that just codifies it. It’s because of her views on the curse of Ham, and the seeming glee she had sharing this with me five or six years earlier. And some other things too.

“Get in good trouble” – John Lewis

“necessary trouble”

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

John Lewis, who died July 17, tweeted that in 2018. But he used the term “good trouble” a lot. I heard him recite it on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart back in 2015. In fact, there’s a new documentary, John Lewis: Good Trouble. It has been streaming since July 3, though I’ve not seen it yet.

I HAVE read March, Books 1-3, a series of graphic novels with Lewis as a co-author. It covers his life up to the twin victories of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. Then it fast-forwards to the inauguration of one Barack Obama.

A casual reading would suggest that Rosa Park refused to stand, Martin Luther King gave a speech, Obama was elected, and voila! We HAVE overcome. Of course, this was not true for a variety of reasons, including the mass incarceration fueled by the drug wars.

The war on voting

Worse, there has been a real retrenchment of voting rights. In 2013, the Supreme Court eviscerated a key provision of the VRA. Section 5 of the law required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to obtain approval before changing voting rules.

The Court held in Shelby County v. Holder “since the coverage formula was last modified in 1975, the country ‘has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.'” In other words, IMO, the Court decided that America was post-racial.

Just this week, SCOTUS allowed limits on felon voting in Florida. This action was taken in spite of the wishes of a majority of Sunshine State voters.

Google voter suppression 2020. In Rolling Stone, read The Plot Against America: The GOP’s Plan to Suppress the Vote and Sabotage the Election. The Minnesota Daily reminds us that in 2018, “gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, then Georgia’s Secretary of State, was blocking 53,000 voter registrations in Georgia,” and essentially stole the election.

Wisconsin voters in 2020 were forced to cast their ballots in the midst of a pandemic. Long voter lines, often in communities of color, are the result of selectively closing polling booths. It’s critical to continue to fight for the right to vote and run for office.

I just sent some money to FairFight.com. Also, I’m supporting the HEROES Act to safeguard our elections regardless of the pandemic. This will allow millions of voters to vote safely this November. Related, support the United States Postal Service from someone’s personal animosity.

As someone once said, “If voting weren’t important, they wouldn’t spend so much time keeping us from doing so.”

Fortunately…

Right now, there are groups of people recognizing the systemic injustices that continue to take place in the United States. Many are young, though there are a few gray hairs among them. They are every racial and ethnic grouping you can imagine. The timing couldn’t be better. I’m sure they’ll easily be able to find their own issues to address.

As friend Arthur wrote: “To really honour the man, the country should rededicate itself to finishing Lewis’ life’s work. That’s not just the good and right thing to do, but a moral imperative, too.”

In his 2017 memoir, Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America, John Lewis wrote something we need to remember about the struggle. “Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.”

GWTW, Song of the South, and race

the highest-grossing movie ever

Song of the South.Aunt Tempy — Hattie McDaniel as Aunt Tempy

When Gone With the Wind was temporarily shelved by HBO Max before returning with an intro by a black scholar, I knew I had to make a confession. I have actually never seen the movie. Ever.

Oh, I tried a couple times. After all, adjusting for inflation, the 1939 film is the highest-grossing movie ever. Its appearance on commercial television, in two parts in 1976, were both in the Top 10 of the highest-rated broadcasts of all-time.

But nope. It was frankly boring to me. I just didn’t give a damn about watching it.

The GWTW news reminded some of us about the indignities faced by Hattie McDaniel. She played “Mammy” in the movie, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Know that she became the FIRST African American to win an Oscar. “She and her escort were required to sit at a segregated table for two… The discrimination continued after the award ceremony as well as her white costars went to a ‘no-blacks’ club, where McDaniel was denied entry.”

She was philosophical about her movie roles. “Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn’t, I’d be making $7 a week being one.”

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

Now, this very year, I DID finally see Hattie McDaniel in the movie Song of the South (1946), in which she played Aunt Tempy. “The kindhearted storyteller Uncle Remus tells [children] stories about trickster Br’er Rabbit, who outwits Br’er Fox and slow-witted Br’er Bear.”

Its controversial history is well known. Walter Francis White, the Executive Secretary, said in 1946 that the organization “recognizes in Song of the South remarkable artistic merit in the music and in the combination of living actors and the cartoon technique. It regrets, however, that in an effort neither to offend audiences in the north or south, the production helps to perpetuate a dangerously glorified picture of slavery. Making use of the beautiful Uncle Remus folklore, Song of the South, unfortunately, gives the impression of an idyllic master-slave relationship which is a distortion of the facts.”

A couple of clarifications. I never got the sense that the story took place during slavery, but rather during Reconstruction. Yes, Uncle Remus does the Magic Negro thing near the end, but it was the times. And the film itself was well done, as the NAACP chief noted, with the usual solid Disney animation and fine acting by James Baskett.

While the narrative of the Uncle Remus stories in cartoon form made me uncomfortable, I’ve seen so much worse. The Abraham scene in Holiday Inn (1942), which I wrote about seven years ago. Alas, the link no longer works. But A.O. Scott in his 2008 Critics’ Picks for the New York Times, provides a snippet.

Here’s something awful: Judy Garland in blackface in Everybody Sing (1938). Chuck Miller notes Warner Bros. cartoons that should stay out of circulation.

In that context, I didn’t find Song of the South nearly as offensive as I had built it up in my mind. Judge for yourself.

June: Trauma of Systemic Injustices

no conception of a public good, common wealth, shared interest.

a-century-of-progress — **A Century of Progress: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 Unported License**

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: shady uses of facial recognition and Prisons & Jails and coronavirus could turn into ‘a full-blown homelessness crisis’.

How loneliness could be changing your brain and body.

The Oatmeal: Compliments

The Benefits Of Fasting.

Useful Resources from Family Hype

Internet basics for seniors.

The Pirates of the Highways.

Edward Everett Horton Finds A Place to Relax in the North Country.

Solutions to The Circuit Breaker Riddle and the The Pickleball Puzzle.

Now I Know

How Dead Rabbits and Cocaine Saved Thousands of Lives and Why You Shouldn’t Always Read Between the Lines and How to Lose the Lottery Without Even Playing and How to Punch Your Way Out of Prison.

Race and America

How to Support Black-Owned Small Businesses.

Why Now, White People? and Here come the white people — a new antiracist movement takes flight. Can ‘deep canvassing’ and other tactics better support Black activists and produce real change? and The emotional impact of watching white people wake up to racism in real-time.

Angela Davis interview.

Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman on race, injustice, and protest.

A letter to Roy. He’s the black guy in my pictures.

Black Clinicians on the Trauma of Systemic Injustices.

What’s in a Slogan?

I’m Protesting for a World That Affirms My Black Son’s Life Matters.

Ottowa W. Gurley was the Bezos of Black Wall Street.

A White Woman, Racism, and a Poodle.

Native Americans Need More Funding to Battle COVID-19.

Wikipedia: Rubber bullets.

Amaury Tañón-Santos sermon:Choose the Jesus option.

IMPOTUS

“HE’S THE CHOSEN ONE TO RUN AMERICA” : INSIDE THE CULT, HIS RALLIES ARE CHURCH AND HE IS THE GOSPEL.

He Says Masks Are Worn to Spite Him.

EPA will no longer regulate toxic compound in drinking water.

How Mary Trump’s Bombshell Was Built.

Tulsa, Oklahoma Rally Speech Transcript

For the Greeks, “idiot” carried a precise and special meaning. The person who was only interested in private life, private gain, private advantage. Who had no conception of a public good, common wealth, shared interest. To the Greeks, the pioneers of democracy, the creators of the demos, such a person was the most contemptible of all. Because even the Greeks seemed to understand: you can’t make a functioning democracy out of…idiots.”

The Lincoln Project ads: Chyna and truth (testing to be slowed down).

Seth Meyers Finds Bolton — And Trump — Despicable.

Pence Denies djt Ever Downplayed the Coronavirus.

Sarah Cooper’s Tulsa Takedown.

MUSIC

Old Man Trump – Ryan Harvey, ft. Ani DiFranco & Tom Morello.

Old Man Trump (Ain’t My Home) – Middle-Class Joe.

Ethiopia’s Shadow in America by Florence Price.

I Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere – Rick Moranis.

We Need a Little Christmas – Nancy Sinatra.

March, March – the Chicks.

Ray of Hope – the Rascals.

Exhuming McCarthy – REM.

Live From SpragueLand:Episode 2 with Peter Sprague and Rebecca Jade , the niece (start at 8:15).

Mr. J’s Lockdown – The Penny Sue Wilson Birthday Special On Smart Radio GY 29/06/20.

The Curse of Ham – Buggy Jive.

Lola – MonaLisa Twins.

Summer means new love – Variaxgery (Beach Boys cover).

5 Seconds of Summer.

Charles Dickens 150th anniversary projections, Westminster Abbey.

Dame Vera Lynn has died at the age of 103.

THE WHO REHEARSE FOR ’89 TOUR IN GLENS FALLS (Listen! four hours!)

A Clear Head in Troubling Times: Why We Need to Listen to Bob Dylan.

Coverville: 1312: The John Fogerty & Creedence Clearwater Revival Cover Story II and 1313: The Pointer Sisters Cover Story.

Under a Violet Moon – Blackmore’s Night.

K-Chuck Radio: One Less (dumb) Bell to Answer.

Help – Beatles.

I Love the Lord – Richard Smallwood Singers.

Talking to your 2019 self: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 Unported License