Racism // Current

Do Colleges Red-line Asian-Americans?

SAT scores aren’t everything. But they can tell some fascinating stories.... more

micromermaid
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6 hours ago
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Psst! Mamasita Presidente! Laura Chinchilla strikes a blow for Ticas everywhere

In the U.S. we’ve come to understand that, despite the best efforts of clever... more

hoosierdaddy
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18 hours ago
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0 comments

Meghan McCain: Tea Party represents ‘innate racism’

The daughter of former presidential candidate John McCain has sharply criticized the... more

bansheewail
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21 hours ago
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2 comments

Spitting-in-Food Complaint at Burger King, may be Racially Motivated

A Burger King spokeswoman says the fast-food chain is investigating allegations that a... more

jmsrmy
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3 days ago
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0 comments

Iraq War Vet: "....truly embarrassed of the man I became."

10,000 U.S. veterans of the Iraq war have committed suicide, more than twice the... more

JonRaymond
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4 days ago
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The Thin and the White: Vanity Fair Announces “New Hollywood” – WMC Blog

WTF?

LilyBixler
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4 days ago
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0 comments

A Brief History of the United States of America [video]

This video explains the historical and intimate relationship between guns, freedom and... more

GrrlScientist
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5 days ago
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0 comments

Midnite Snackin News- February 4, 2010

Is Vanity Fair racist? Will Mancrush.com ever get to run their commercial nationally?... more

MidniteSnackinNews
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5 days ago
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I am a living Weapon

Hip Hop Artist Jon Henry lets his voice be heard for many who are unable to speak.

gregmonte
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5 days ago
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Longest Serving Black Political Prisoner: Black History Month

February is black history month and so I will dedicate this piece to the longest serving black political prisoner in the world and to the many others who are prisoners in Cuba's jails....

Institutionalized racism was abolished in Cuba thirty years before Rosa Parks was thrown off that Montgomery bus. The government Castro helped overthrow had included blacks as president of the Senate, minister of agriculture, chief of the army, and Head of state, Fulgencio Batista.

Batista grabbed power in a (bloodless) coup in 1952, but in 1940 he had been elected president in elections considered scrupulously honest by US observers. So whatever racial barriers existed in Cuba at the time did not prevent a country that was 71 percent white from voting in a black president (Batista was mulatto, just like Barack Obama) - and electing him almost twenty years before Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock to enforce legislation and 68 years before the first black man was elected president in the United States.

Today, Cuba's jail population is 85 percent black. The regime Castro founded holds the distinction of having incarcerated the longest serving black political prisoner of the twentieth century, Eusebio Peñalver, who was holed up and tortured in Castro's jails longer than Nelson Mandela languished in South Africa's.

Peñalver was bloodied in his fight with communism but unbowed for thirty years in its dungeons. "Nigger!" taunted his jailers. "Monkey! We pulled you down from the trees and cut off your tail!" snickered Castro's goons as they threw him in solitary confinement.

His communist jailers were always asking Eusebio Peñalver for a "confession," for a signature on some document admitting his "ideological transgressions." This would greatly alleviate his confinement and suffering, they assured him.

They got their answer as swiftly and as clearly from Peñalver as the German commander who surrounded Bastogne got from the 101st Airborne. Eusebio scorned any "re-education" by his Castroite jailers. He knew that it was they who desperately needed it. He refused to wear the uniform of a common criminal. he knew that it was they who should don it. Through thirty years of hell in Castro's dungeons, Eusebio Peñalver stood tall, proud, and defiant.

Ever hear of him? He lived in Miami (died in 2006). Ever see a CNN interview with him? Ever see him on 60 Minutes? Ever read about him in the New York Times? The Boston Globe? Ever hear about him on NPR, or during Black History Month? Ever hear the NAACP or Congressional Black Caucus mention him?

He was a Cuban political prisoner. And as we all know, with the mainstream media and academia, that form of opposition doesn't count. Today. Castro's police bar black Cubans from tourist areas. Cuba's prominent political prisoner, Elias Biscet, is black (I won't bother asking if you've heard of him either). And exactly, 0.8 percent of Cuba's communist rulers are black. In other places they called this "apartheid."February is black history month and so I will dedicate this piece to the longest... more

UrbanGypsy
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6 days ago
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10 comments

Border staff humiliate and trick asylum seekers

Claims that asylum seekers are mistreated, tricked and humiliated by staff working for the UK Border Agency are to be investigated in parliament.

The home affairs select committee chairman, Keith Vaz, has called for an investigation following allegations that officials at one of the government's major centres for processing asylum seekers' claims express fiercely anti-immigration views and take pride in refusing applications.

Louise Perrett, who worked as a case owner at the Border Agency office in Cardiff for three and a half months last summer, claims staff kept a stuffed gorilla, a "grant monkey", which was placed as a badge of shame on the desk of any officer who approved an asylum application.

Perrett, 29, also alleges that one official boasted to her that he tested the claims of boys from African countries who said they had been forcibly conscripted as child soldiers by making them lie down on the floor and demonstrate how they shot at people in the bush. One method used to determine the authenticity of an asylum seeker claiming to be from North Korea was to ask whether the person ate chop suey.

Perrett, whose claims will become the basis for parliamentary questions from Jenny Willott, the Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Cardiff Central MP, said interviews were conducted without lawyers, independent witnesses or tape recorders. If a case was difficult, Perrett claims, she was simply advised to refuse it and "let a tribunal sort it out". Only cases raised by MPs appeared to be dealt with properly.

Perrett said she was given the power to make legally binding decisions on whether asylum seekers were granted or refused asylum after just five weeks' training. She also had the power to detain individuals and families for up to 28 days. Like her colleagues, she was obliged to sign the Official Secrets Act. She took legal advice before deciding to speak out publicly.

She claims the tone was set on the first day when one manager said of the asylum-seeker clients: "If it was up to me I'd take them all outside and shoot them." Another told her this was to be expected, adding: "No one in this office is very PC. In fact everyone is the exact opposite."

She told the Guardian: "I witnessed general hostility, rudeness and indifference towards clients. It was completely horrific. I highlighted my concerns to senior managers but I was just laughed at. I decided to speak out because nobody else was saying anything and major changes are needed at senior management level."

One of her cases involved a Congolese woman who had the right to remain in the UK. Perrett says a superior nevertheless decided the woman and her children should be removed, and asked officials whether there were any grounds to remove them. Frustrated, she approached a member of the legal department. His reply, according to Perrett, was: "Umbongo, umbongo, they kill them in the Congo."

Vaz said: "I am deeply concerned by a number of ex-UKBA workers who have spoken out about flaws in the points-based system and behaviour such as this. I will be writing to the chief executive, Lin Homer, to discover what steps are being taken to remedy this culture of disbelief and discrimination."

Willott said she was tabling a series of parliamentary questions. "Some of the cases which seem obvious to me are refused. UKBA has a responsibility to treat people as human beings, but from Louise's experience it seems that this does not always happen."

Matthew Coats, head of immigration at the UK Border Agency, disputed Perrett's claim that she raised concerns and the department declined to respond to her specific allegations. But he said the agency "expects the highest levels of integrity and behaviour from all our staff," adding: "We take all allegations of inappropriate behaviour extremely seriously."Claims that asylum seekers are mistreated, tricked and humiliated by staff working for... more

Phoenix234
added this
7 days ago
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1 comment

"I am a Living Weapon"

No Shaking asses were shot in the making of this music video. Hip Hop artist Jon... more

gregmonte
added this
8 days ago
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0 comments

Claiming Whites' Possessions For Slavery Reparations Black History Month 2010

OMG: (BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2010) THIS FEBRUARY: PICK IT, CLAIM IT & TELL THEM ABOUT... more

randypotter
added this
10 days ago
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0 comments

Mayor Wants Jesus Prayers and Christian Community - Lancaster, California (L.A. County) - Updates

Mayor and city council member alienate Muslims in Lancaster

Updated 1:38 PM PST, Sat, Jan 30, 2010

The mayor of Lancaster has urged its residents to approve specifically-Christian prayers at public meetings, in an effort to "grow" the sixth-largest city in Los Angeles County into a "Christian community," it was reported today.

Lancaster residents were urged by Mayor R. Rex Parris in a state of the city speech to support a city ballot measure that would authorize daily prayers at city council meetings.

In his speech, Parris said "we are growing a Christian community, and don't let anybody shy away from that," according to the Antelope Valley Press.

In a later interview with the Daily News, Parris expressed surprise that some religious leaders object to prayers to Jesus at city meetings, and blamed opposition on activists who "want a fight," the newspaper reported. "They want their 15 minutes of fame."

Kamal Al-Khatob, head of the Islamic Institute of the Antelope Valley, told the Daily News that the mayor's belief that Lancaster is a Christian community alienates Muslims. "This is not what America is all about. America is for everybody."

One week ago, Lancaster city council member Sherry Marquez wrote on her Facebook page that the beheading murder of an Islamic woman by her husband in New York shows that vicious murders are what Muslims embrace.

"This is what the Muslim religion is all about -- the beheadings, honor killings are just the beginning of what is about to come to the USA," she reportedly wrote on the Web Jan. 23. "We are told this is a small minority of Muslim's (sic) in America, but it is truly what they are all about."

Activists were quoted as equating that murder with the tenets of Islam is as wrong as saying all Christians are murderers because an extremist was convicted of murdering an abortion doctor.

The Lancaster mayor is running for re-election, and supporting placement of the prayer ordinance on the April ballot, the newspaper reported. The city council has already placed a large "In God We Trust" motto across the wall in the city council chambers, part of a national movement by evangelists to bring religion into civic affairs.Mayor and city council member alienate Muslims in Lancaster Updated 1:38 PM PST,... more

EthicalVegan
added this
10 days ago
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82 comments

New Mel. Same smell

Mel Gibson still reeks of antisemitism

jimmysemens
added this
12 days ago
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0 comments

Calling Cornish "Inbred" is Allowed

The Human Rights Commision has ruled that it is not punishable to call Cornish people... more

sophosthegreat
added this
12 days ago
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0 comments

Immigration / Breeders

Expanding U.S. economy through immigration beats shrinking -( or is it a scam?)-... more

remanns
added this
13 days ago
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3 comments

Former NBA Player: Haitians Are An Embarrassment & They Should Have Used Condoms.

Paul Shirley, the former NBA player who still plays pro basketball, penned a long... more

keithponder
added this
14 days ago
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3 comments

AKAKA BILL HAWAI`I HEARINGS CALLED FOR

http://StopAkakaBil.com Honolulu Star-Bulletin - January 23, 2010 Although its... more

FreeHawaiiTV
added this
15 days ago
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0 comments

Teen beat by police over Mountain Dew bottle

Jordan Miles, Teen Violinist: Beat By Police Over Mt. Dew Bottle... more

animalia_libero
added this
15 days ago
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108 comments

TAGS

tagged w/ Racism

Do Colleges Red-line Asian-Americans?

Psst! Mamasita Presidente! Laura Chinchilla strikes a blow for Ticas everywhere

Meghan McCain: Tea Party represents ‘innate racism’

Spitting-in-Food Complaint at Burger King, may be Racially Motivated

Iraq War Vet: "....truly embarrassed of the man I became."

The Thin and the White: Vanity Fair Announces “New Hollywood” – WMC Blog

A Brief History of the United States of America [video]

Midnite Snackin News- February 4, 2010

I am a living Weapon

Longest Serving Black Political Prisoner: Black History Month

Border staff humiliate and trick asylum seekers

"I am a Living Weapon"

Claiming Whites' Possessions For Slavery Reparations Black History Month 2010

Mayor Wants Jesus Prayers and Christian Community - Lancaster, California (L.A. County) - Updates

New Mel. Same smell

Calling Cornish "Inbred" is Allowed

Immigration / Breeders

Former NBA Player: Haitians Are An Embarrassment & They Should Have Used Condoms.

AKAKA BILL HAWAI`I HEARINGS CALLED FOR

Teen beat by police over Mountain Dew bottle

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