”OMB Watch, a Washington-based non-profit that monitors the activities of the White House Office of Management and Budget, issued a statement calling on the CFC to ‘change its misguided policy.’ The group, a participant in the federal fundraising drive and a member of the dissenting coalition of non-profits, says in its statement that following Patermaster’s directive would ‘force America’s charities to act as police investigators and enforcers... Nonprofits may become reluctant – even if unconsciously – to hire minorities, especially those who appear to be Islamic or of Middle-Eastern descent, or whose names sound like people who might be on the blacklist.’” 

”The Lavalas party’s land reform for the peasants and universal literacy programs are ignored and dismissed as insignificant by the outside world. Financial and political isolation begins to take its toll. This becomes a period in which anything positive about Lavalas appears to be censored while anything that damages the credibility of the Haitian government is magnified. In this political climate, even former ‘leftist’ allies of Lavalas, so-called Haitian human rights organizations and members of Haiti’s press, justify accepting tours to the United States – paid for by the U.S. State Department. During these tours they are encouraged to develop contacts with the alternative media and the United States ‘Left’ as they preach the evils of Aristide and Lavalas to a largely uninformed American audience.”

”In America’s inner cities…where the ‘war on drugs’ is waged against low-income Black and Brown people, mass incarceration rather than treatment and rehabilitation guides police drug enforcement strategies.  In fact, the criminal justice system harbors a deeply held belief that, unlike many white offenders, Black and Brown offenders are beyond rehabilitation.”

”With the loss of black teachers and principals who served as mirrors in which black students, by and large, saw the ‘angels of their better nature’ reflected, a deficit was created in terms of black academic achievement. Although this deficit was by no means total in impact, it was significant. As mentioned previously in this writing, the public school system in the United States has an explicit racist, sexist and classist history. With that in mind, is it not somewhat naïve for us to believe that a system that has shown that sort of bias towards people of color, would effectively teach our children without a radical educational revolution?”

”What would become of poor black people who were abandoned by their former middle class partners?  They would slip further into the shadows of American life, suffering ever greater poverty, sickness and early death like their white, brown and yellow counterparts.  If they struck out at middle class blacks in the usual way that poor people strike at society – through crime – they would find themselves assailed by a rainbow coalition of middle class folks insisting on ‘law and order.’ Indeed, one can imagine a situation where the New Washington solution would lead to ever more punitive approaches to crime and punishment once the black middle class stopped tying the fate of the black poor to the nation’s history of slavery and apartheid.  Sympathy would shrivel still more for the poor and social outcasts, with no segment of the middle class coming to the defense of those in society’s basement.  The United States would become an even meaner place than it is now.”

”Do you really think that the God of Christianity as revealed in the Bible is unconcerned about the environment, or war and peace, and injustice and poverty?  Does God want 45 million Americans to be without healthcare and does God support the racist exclusion of people of color and other out groups?

”So we see that the deeply ubiquitous ideology of Euro-American supremacy trumps class interests and, in this instance, leads to a tragic, dangerous, and irrational choice, the election of an overtly racist, war criminal hell bent on destroying the last tattered remnants of the social safety net and seems intent on attempting to remake the world in accord with his own destructive, anti-democratic, white supremacist vision:  George Walker Bush.”

”…the rightwing use of the atavism ethos by Christian fundamentalists through Republican party modalities in the 2004 presidential election was a depressing development. It was no doubt a valid revitalization in the eyes of  rank-and-file White Protestant and Catholic Christian fundamentalists, as measured by the fact that White Protestants gave Bush some 70% and White Catholics around 53% of their votes.  But the American society-wide consequences will be something very different indeed. The consequences will be mainly anti-feminist, homophobic, anti-egalitarian in wealth and social mobility patterns, and anti-Black.”

”Cooke was one of the first R&B artists to take a stand for civil rights and Black power. He cancelled performances rather than play to segregated audiences. He was also one of the first artists to cut off his "process". He did it years before Hank Ballard came out with the 1968 song, "How You Gonna Get Respect (If You Haven't Cut Your Process Yet?)." He knew both Martin Luther King Jr. and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X). Cooke sang at King's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950s when he was a member of the Soul Stirrers. His relationships with Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali were documented in the film Ali.”

”Jim Forman did not wait for the Democratic Party to set an agenda.  He gave us a model of aggressive and militant action based on principles of equality, social justice, and non-violence.  Toward the late sixties he grew more accepting of the idea of violent struggle, and in doing so I believe he was horribly wrong.  But what he showed us through the early and mid sixties was aggressive non-violent organizing.  He organized, meaning he reached out to people, figured out what they would fight for, inspired them to fight for it, coordinated their work, found the resources to pay them for it, communicated their work to the world, and bailed them out of jail.  One of the reasons Forman is not better known is that he actively sought to avoid stardom, and one of the reasons he did so was that he wanted to develop many leaders in a grassroots movement.  Many of those he mentored are still leaders today.”

”When Hitler was busy turning Jews into handbags, lampshades and black smoke, his reason was that the world needed to be rid of them (and of blacks, homosexuals, Gypsies and others) because they threatened the purity of the Aryan master archetype. This archetype was a blue eyed, blond superman with no resemblance to Hitler himself or to most of his main assassins. They, I now realize, were a new species, Geopolitically Modified Humans – GMH – Officially  Blond.  Looking at them you wouldn’t know it. Some people even said that Hitler himself “looked Jewish” –  whatever that meant, obviously missing his essential blondness which gave him the right to talk nonsense and murder as many people as he wished.

”What I realized this week is that the Congo’s Muzungo was not crazy, simply blond. And when this thought occurred to me it cleared up a host of misconceptions in my mind.

"I had been asking myself how could Africans like Kofi Annan and Afro-Americans like Colin Powell , Canadians like Prime Minister Paul Martin, and Haitians like Gerard LaTortue not understand the appalling wickedness which their policies have created in Haiti? Or how did Tony Blair, George Bush and Malcolm Fraser of Australia not understand the primeval wickedness they had let loose in Iraq? The answer was simple.

"Like Adolph Hitler, they are GMH-Blonds and are therefore exempted from normal human feelings, duties and responsibilities. They are expected  to giggle helplessly when confronted with murdered children and dismembered teenagers, with tortured Arabs and raped Haitian women. Like the good Germans in Tom Paxton’s 1960s song – ‘We didn’t know a thing.’”

“For a considerable portion of whites in ‘post-Civil Rights’ America, black-white integration and racial equality are more than just accepted ideals.  They are also, many believe, accomplished realities, showing that we have overcome racial disparity. According to a survey conducted by the Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, and Harvard University in the spring of 2001, more than 4 in 10 white Americans believe that blacks are ‘as well off as whites in terms of their jobs, incomes, schools, and health care.’

”The 2000 US Census numbers that were being crunched as this poll was taken did not support this belief.  More than three and a half decades after the historic victories of the black Civil Rights Movement, the census showed, equality remained a highly elusive goal for African-Americans. In a society that possesses the highest poverty rate and the largest gaps between rich and poor in the industrialized world, blacks are considerably poorer than whites and other racial and ethnic groups.”

”55 percent (or 168,000) of the union jobs lost in 2004 were held by black workers, even though they represented only 13 percent of total union membership.

”More stunningly, African American women accounted for 70 percent of the union jobs lost by women in 2004. Yes, 100,000 black union women – many the sole or primary breadwinner in their households – lost their paychecks, their job security, medical insurance for their families and their retirement nest eggs in just one year. Gone!

”Compounding the disproportionate loss of union jobs in black households – especially those headed by women – are the shrinking paychecks of black union members. In 2004, federal income data ranked African American union workers last among all the major worker groups in median weekly earnings….

”The AFL-CIO’s cosmetic embrace of diversity may have sensitized to some extent, but it hardly uprooted, the white male power structure that has shaped the federation’s internal culture and dictated its policies since the merger of the AF of L and the CIO 50 years ago. In fact, many black labor leaders and union staff workers quietly chafe in the yoke of ‘official’ diversity, which merely colorizes labor solidarity within a non-inclusive framework of power relations. Or to give it a brand name, call it ‘Diversity Lite: more color, less flava.’”

”So far the Democrats have dismissed the ham-handed appeals to black churches and references to Fredrick Douglass, the Republican, as sloppy and ultimately futile.  This assessment may be correct, but the Democrats have excelled at taking the black vote for granted in recent decades.  Conversely, the Republican machine has demonstrated a remarkable effectiveness at doggedly refining their message until it strikes a chord.  They can read the demographic writing on the wall and they know to continue as the ‘white sanctuary’ may soon leave them out of power.  And there are real weaknesses within the black community for them to exploit.”

”If Terri Schiavo was a black woman named Toya Brown would she receive the same concern from white conservatives or members of the 'pro-life' movement?  For black conservatives and government grant-hungry black religious leaders concerned with gay marriage and school vouchers the answer would be “yes.”  Fortunately, those of us that live reality-based lives know that this is far from the case….

”Bush and his fellow 'Compassionate Conservatives' would do to well to realize that if they were truly 'pro-life' they would be concerned about the totality of life for all people, from birth to death. This means that they would be about the business of creating more jobs. Tax breaks for the wealthy are not a solution.”

”While some of the conservatives who regale me with their rationalizations for racial inequality manage to quote a gaggle of right wing ‘experts’ to help make their case, the claims they forward are hardly the stronger for it.

”For example, the argument that racial wage gaps merely reflect different levels of experience and qualifications between whites and blacks is simply untenable, when one examines the data.

”Fact is, earnings gaps persist at all levels of education. According to Census data, whites with high school diplomas, college degrees or Master's Degrees all earn approximately twenty percent more than their black counterparts. Even more striking, whites with professional degrees (such as medicine or law) earn, on average, thirty-one percent more than similar blacks and fifty-two percent more than similar Latinos.

”Even when levels of work experience are the same between blacks and whites, the racial wage gap remains between 10-20 percent."

”[The] author suggests that European phenotype or ancestry will no longer be prerequisites for becoming white.  While the US Census Bureau treats Latino/as as an ‘ethnic group’ of sorts by emphasizing Latin American origin, many are socially read as “brown.”  Most Asian Americans are markedly non-European in phenotype and ancestry. Nevertheless, Yancey argues that while they may experience patterns of discrimination and racism from whites, both Latino/as and Asian Americans are following the same pattern of assimilation as Europeans did before them.

”Grounding his study within the framework of noted sociologist Milton Gordon, whose work on assimilation emphasized social acceptance by the majority and identification with it from the minority, Yancey provides compelling evidence indicating that Latino/as and Asian Americans are well on their way to becoming white.  In the chapter ‘They are Okay – Just Keep Them Away from Me,’ the author analyzes survey data on racial groups’ social attitudes regarding who they approve as potential neighbors as well as marriage partners for their children. 

”Contrary to the popular image of blacks as racially restrictive, Yancey discovers that black respondents are the most open to all other races.  Yet despite being the most receptive to other groups, blacks in general are rejected by all non-black groups – whites, Latino/as and Asian Americans.  While some assume that whites will be closed off to anyone not white, Yancey’s research show that white respondents are more accepting of Latino/as and Asian Americans than they are of blacks.  In turn, Latino/a and Asian American respondents are fairly receptive to one another as well as whites.  Overall, Yancey’s findings reveal that whites, Latino/as and Asian Americans do not tend to reject one another as possible neighbors or their kids’ spouses, but all three groups show a general resistance to blacks in these social roles.”

”By fighting against desegregation and the civil rights agenda, white workers have been working hard for their own pungent mediocrity and bland homogeneity. People talk about “the politics of fear,” but the real fear is not Muslim terrorists. The real fear is an old fear, the mother of all U.S. fears: that whites will one day have to compete against equal or in many cases superior opponents, namely black folks, who have been competing intensely and without protection for the past 300 years against everyone in the entire world. Just take Tiger Woods: what nationality hasn’t he defeated already? Who will be next?

“…we need to remind white American radicals that they wouldn’t exist today had it not been for African American writers. Do they imagine they can avoid falling into the pit of U.S. mediocrity without studying systematically the work of black intellectuals? We’ll find out soon enough, for the race to the bottom is reaching the finish line."

”As our standard history books have told us, constantly reinforced during our public school education, the slaves were ‘freed’ after the Civil War ended.  Well, not exactly. After the war the South was faced with some rather serious economic, political, and social problems. Political and economic recovery was among the first priorities because the economy of the South, based as it was on a slave mode of production, was being replaced by a capitalist mode of production. Another crucial problem was what to do with the newly ‘freed’ slaves. What the white ruling class commenced to do was to begin the systematic oppression of blacks and maintain a system of caste rule that would replace a system of slavery. What happened was that the sharecropping system replaced slavery as a ‘legal’ method of controlling the labor of African-Americans.  A system of agricultural (and eventually industrial) ‘peonage’ emerged and was supported by such informal methods as vigilantism, intimidation, Jim Crow laws and the like. What became known as convict leasing was a prime example.”

”Evidently, the insanity of racism and its crippling affects have no respect for the passage of time or the birth of successor generations. You simply have to have your mind right. Be you Choochie-Boy Robinson, Coota Bug McKnight, or Congressman Harold Ford. Whether you are dressed in overalls or Brooks Brothers, you simply have to have your mind right to deal with both white people and Negroes talking backwards. And it is clear that Harold Ford's mind ain't right. He might as well be a smooth talking pimp selling his sister to the highest bidder in a urine-stained alley.

”Make no mistake, African Americans need debate, new ideas, deep think, vigorous discourse, a discussion of the merits, brainstorming (even a slow drizzle would help) and a clean break from old tired-ass, sclerotic ideas and strategies that simply won't work in a fundamentally new world.”

”The reality, not taught in American schools and textbooks, is that war – whether on a large or small scale – and domestic violence have been ever-present features of American life and culture from this country's earliest days almost 400 years ago. Violence, in varying forms, according to the leading historian of the subject, Richard Maxwell Brown, ‘has accompanied virtually every stage and aspect of our national experience,’ and is ‘part of our unacknowledged (underground) value structure.’ Indeed, ‘repeated episodes of violence going far back into our colonial past, have imprinted upon our citizens a propensity to violence.’

”Thus, America demonstrated a national predilection for war and domestic violence long before the 9/11 attacks, but its leaders and intellectuals through most of the last century cultivated the national self-image, a myth, of America as a moral, ‘peace-loving’ nation which the American population seems unquestioningly to have embraced.”

”The Afrikan Mexican presence has been relegated to an obscured slave past, cast aside in the interest of a national identity based on a mixture of indigenous and European cultural mestizaje – i.e. the idea of the goodness of being classed as racially mixed. However, in practice…this ideology of ‘racial democracy’ favors the European presence; too often, the nation’s glorious indigenous past is reduced to folklore and ceremonial showcasing. But the handling of the Afrikan ‘third root,’ which is represented by more than 200,000 Afrikan Mexicans, is even more dismissive. Since they live as their neighbors do, carry out the same work, eat the same foods, and make the same music, it is assumed that Afrikan Mexicans have assimilated into ‘Mexican’ society. But…Afrikan Mexicans are Mexican society, as the historical record offers compelling evidence that Afrikans and their descendants contributed enormously to the very formation of Mexican culture.”

”When battered and methodically beaten dead bodies started showing up in Iraq, Dr Salihee started reporting. Dr Salihee wrote about bodies in the morgue with their hands tied or handcuffed behind their backs. Bodies with their eyes blindfolded appearing to have been tortured, whipped with cords and subjected to electric shocks. Bodies beaten with blunt objects and shot to death, often with a single bullet. Bodies found in mass graves and bodies floating in rivers.

”Dr Salihee also reported that many of the members of the Wolf Brigade came from Saddam Hussein’s Special Forces and Republican Guards. Indeed, these men were decorated veterans of homicide, genocide and torture.”

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will publish again on September 8 2005