A black bourgeoisie perspective on U.S. politics
More pics from the Ohio Rally yesterday with POTUS AND FLOTUS. These pics with this little girl will go into the nominees for best pics of Obama with Kids group.
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The President and First Lady both rallied the voters of Ohio in Columbus. The President AND First Lady doing a rally of over 30,000 in a swing state - AND NOT ONE NETWORK COVERED IT LIVE.
THINK.ON.THAT.
Thank goodness we live in times where the word can be spread without them.
From zizi2:
zizi2
The Corporate media showed their boil-pimped asses today. This is the tack they are taking; blackout on the President. In their mind if no-one hears him did he speak? Their ploy is so transparent you could construct a greenhouse with it.
I called them up and let them have an earful. You can too. Here are their #s
Phone numbers:
CNN: 404-827-1500
MSNBC: 212-664-4444
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The President and First Lady are holding the latest in a series of rallies Sunday evening in Columbus, Ohio, at the campus of Ohio State University. The rally includes some special guests including one of my favorities, soul singer John Legend. It should be a high-energy affair and the Prez should take the stage at 8pm EST with festivities beginning around 6:30pm EST.
Here’s the live stream. We’ll try to put up the archive when it’s available. Enjoy!
Football – BEST.SPORT.EVER.
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President draws contrast with Republicans on jobs at home vs. overseas
President Obama used this week’s address to draw a sharp contrast between his policies and those of the Republicans on corporate tax breaks. President Obama argued that tax breaks should be directed at driving job growth here at home rather than encouraging companies to create jobs overseas. However, President Obama warned that Republicans have a history of supporting the opposite by voting for tax breaks that encourage companies to create jobs out of the country:
“Over the last four years alone, Republicans in the House voted eleven times to continue rewarding corporations that create jobs and profits overseas – a policy that costs tax payers billions of dollars every year. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. It doesn’t make sense for American workers, American businesses, or America’s economy.”
In contrast, the President offered the recent Jobs Bill as a better fit for our economy:
“It eliminated the capital gains taxes for key investments in small businesses. It increased the deduction to defray the cost of starting a company. And it’s freeing up credit for folks who need it. In fact, in just the first two weeks since i signed the bill, thousands of business owners have been able to get new loans through the SBA.”
In addition to the recently passed Jobs Bill, the President explained that he wants to close the tax loopholes that support businesses that create jobs overseas instead of here in the United States. Instead, as an attempt to spur job growth at home, the President wants to give businesses a tax break that would allow them to write off all new equipment that they purchase next year. President Obama also stated that he wants to make the Research and Experimentation tax credit permanent as well as give a tax cut for clean energy manufacturing that takes place in this country.
The President’s Weekly Address:
hat tip-3CHICSPOLITICO
FLOTUS speaks at a fundraiser for Senator Russ Feingold.
Part I
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Photo credit: kevindooley via FlickrPhaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO of Green For All, is part of Change.org’s Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Her contribution today is part of Blog Action Day 2010, a day for bloggers around the world to raise awareness about a single topic—”water.”
Since we launched the Drop the I-Word campaign, thousands of people and numerous media outlets have pledged not to label immigrants criminals and to affirm their humanity and dignity. Of those thousands, some are immigrants, both undocumented and with papers, who are asking us to stand up for our values, not just bear witness to their demise. Others are allies who recognize that this is an historic moment to support a resilient community. Still others are motivated by the simple recognition that journalists and everyday people alike can no longer allow fear mongers to dictate the parameters of our conversation.
We have also encountered skepticism, notably from progressive reporters. While our colleagues agree that “illegals” is a slur, they’re okay with its longer version, “illegal immigrant.” Ezra Klein at the Washington Post, for instance, dismisses “word games” that “paper over” the issue. But Klein picks the wrong target. As long as we use the word “illegal” in connection with immigration or immigrants, it papers over the fact that our laws are unjustly applied. It creates the illusion of simplicity, when that could not be further from the case. The only thing that should be simple is that immigrants are real people, not problems.
There’s no conflict between honest reporting and dropping the i-word. I use ‘undocumented’ and ‘unauthorized’ regularly, as this is a matter of permission represented by a piece of paper. I never obfuscate how a source came to be in the United States, whether they overstayed a visa or crossed a border. Dana McCourt weighs in on the debate with a call for more precision, not less, by recognizing that the U.S. government treats immigrants differently based on their specific situations. McCourt avoids the term “largely because the bare ‘illegal’ is used as a slur and the longer ‘illegal immigrant’ doesn’t reliably pick out a specific class of people or what’s wrong with their legal status.” In other words, because it’s imprecise.
At The American Prospect, Adam Serwer calls the phrase a “facially neutral term that advocates don’t like.” But if we agree that reducing a person to a crime is racist and dehumanizing in one form, isn’t it so in all forms? We have to look at the framework from which the term emerges.
Serwer has reported a lot on the ways in which race gets manipulated in our nation’s politics, so I was surprised to see him exempt the language of immigration from its political context. That context, simply put, is this: authorized immigration is impossible for some people, yet those same people are regularly hired as cheap, exploited labor with a limited ability to protect their own rights. That cheap labor is comprised almost entirely by people of color, not because they just happen to be the ones overstaying visas and crossing borders, but because the system is fundamentally rigged against them. No one else who benefits from the set up, including the employers who recruit and hire these migrants, is slapped with a similar label. Reason.org illustrates this well with a chart of “Our Nation’s Broken Immigration and Naturalization System.”
The repetition of the i-word in conjunction with images of brown-skinned people, particularly Latinos, popularizes the notion that individuals are to blame for our systemic challenges. It reinforces racial fear and economic anxiety, creates a hateful environment, and increases the American public’s tolerance for daily violations of human rights. The i-word limits the conversations we are able to have about immigrants, their rights and their mobility in this globalized economy.
In Operation Gatekeeper, geographer Joe Nevins points out that language matters in immigration and always has. “Wetback” was the preferred official term in the 1950’s. When it fell out of favor, “illegal” took its place. The word, whether as a noun or a modifier, was the rhetorical core of a discursive shift on immigration. News outlets increasingly reported that immigrants were flooding the border and overwhelming services, and began coupling immigration with criminality.
All of this drove a policy shift, too. Over the last 30 years, legislatures have stripped most immigrants of access to vital social programs, built up the enforcement infrastructure to unprecedented proportions and ultimately brought us to a point where the country deports a record 393,000 people a year. In this politically charged environment, even green-card holders are swept up in the deportation dragnet. As Serwer himself notes in his analysis of Arizona’s SB 1070, there has been a severe impact on communities of color: “The reason you can pass a law that encourages racial profiling in spirit while prohibiting it in letter is that everyone has a concept in their head of what an ‘illegal immigrant’ looks and sounds like.”
So the problem is not that the discourse makes the work of pro-immigrant advocates harder, but that it renders untenable the lives of people who contribute to American culture and economy, along with those of the people who love them and look like them. At the center of this debate are human beings. Not illegal beings, but human beings. Discourse reflects the way that people think about themselves and the country thinks about us.
The word ‘homosexual,’ for example, is clinically correct but experienced as dehumanizing by gay and lesbian people, and so they pushed for journalists to drop it. As the discourse changes, so does the culture and policy affecting gay people–not nearly fast enough, but significantly nonetheless. Some may say, “But being gay isn’t a choice.” Well, neither is escaping poverty, drought or war. That millions of people wind up in the country without permission comes about for many reasons, only a very few of which have to do with the choices individuals made.
In the end, every journalist and media outlet has to decide which language to use. I once interviewed a source related to the Federation of American Immigration Reform who insisted that I use ‘illegal immigrant’ throughout my story, not just when quoting him. Well, I get to choose my own words, and for all the reasons above, I choose not to use FAIR’s language.
I’d encourage others also to consider their language, and its source. Where did it come from? What is the effect, intentional or not? How does a reductionist and biased lexicon thrive? There are alternatives that meet our needs, not just for varied vocabulary, but also for thoughtful, accurate journalism that recognizes the fundamental humanity of the people about whom we are reporting.
hat tip-The Obama Photo and Video Diary
President Obama and students from the film Waiting for Superman
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Yeah, you heard me. Sounds crazy as hell, don’t it? But at a time when GOP candidates who dress up in their spare time like Nazis have a shot at getting elected in Ohio, nothing should surprise us. The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait recently said about a week ago:
“Hear me now and believe me later, if Republicans win and maintain control of the House of Representatives, they are going to impeach President Obama.”
Evidence of any wrong-doing? Well, obviously they’ll start with the premise that that Kenyan Muslim Marxist somehow faked his birth certificate and birth announcements in Hawaii. If you don’t vote in this election, this is the kind of nonsense we might be forced to fight. Think it can’t happen? Think I’m just tryin’ to spook ya? Think again.
From The Atlantic’s list of people salivating over the prospect of lynching that nigger good impeaching President Obama:
- Me Too, With a Caveat Goldberg’s National Review colleague Daniel Foster tosses “five dollars or a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon” on the pile, with the addition of an adverb: “I’ll bet that the Republicans will not unsuccessfully impeach Obama.” Huh?
The question of the bet, I take it, is whether the Republicans will frivolously impeach the president. But I want insurance against some kind of Watergate-scale infraction that shocks the nation and obviously calls for dramatic action.
- Could Obama Pull a Watergate? Andy McCarthy joins the National Review debate by wondering what “Obama would have to do at this point to shock the nation.”
- Pros and Cons Though House Republicans might “please their constituents” with an impeachment move, and “it’s going to be open season for investigations,” Politico’s Ben Smith points out that “Republicans may recall that the Clinton impeachment worked out poorly.”
Do We Have the Right Personalities for This? “Neither John Boehner nor Eric Cantor are Gingrich-style bomb throwers,” comments James Joyner at Outside the Beltway, and “Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton.” True, he says: “American politics has become more absurd theater than rational debate,” but all the same, “if the GOP is going to take down Obama, politically or legally, it’s going to have to be something much more serious than what the Sean Hannity’s of the world have been complaining about so far.”
Let em try, I say. In the absence of manufactured scandal, the Obama Administration is untouchable, I believe. I think I agree with Ben Smith. This gambit would likely backfire — investigations can be launched in both directions plus I think the American appetite for a witch hunt with racial overtones at a time when so many are struggling economically is pretty low. And hopefully, reasonable Republican minds will hold sway. What say you?
On the one hand, Barbara Walters is right: adults who are professionals should be able to have a grownup discussion about the hot topics of the day. And it’s clear if you watch the rest of the segment that Bill O’Reilly was goading both Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to push their buttons, setting the stage for a blowup that will no doubt be beneficial to O’Reilly’s languishing cred and flat ratings.
He’s gotta do something to keep up with Glenn Beck, right?
On the other hand, what Racist O’Reilly said was beyond the pale and I’m glad that Walters, with help from Behar and Goldberg, was able to bring him to heel. He repeated over and over again that “Muslims killed us on 9/11″ — a bigoted view that has no place in modern American discourse. This pervasive fear-fueled ignorant bigotry that sadly too many people share is causing widespread discrimination against American Muslims. The Restore Fairness campaign has just released a video “Face The Truth: Racial Profiling Across America”, produced by Breakthrough’s and the Rights Working Group, showcasing the devastating impact of racial profiling on communities around our country, including the African American, Latino, Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities.
The documentary accompanies a new report by the Rights Working Group released along with 275 local and national partners on the one year anniversary of the Face the Truth campaign to end racial profiling. Both the video and report urge Congress to pass the End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA).
Face the Truth: Racial Profiling Across America from Breakthrough on Vimeo.
O’Reilly’s persistence in spreading hatred impacts real people’s lives. In the video above, a grown up man literally breaks down because he was driving while Muslim in “the wrong neighborhood” & profiled (sound familiar?) and a Latino woman talks about her experience of being profiled while 9 months pregnant.
It’s got to stop and while Whoopi and Joy’s behavior was extreme, so too were the hateful, ignorant words of O’Reilly who has a long, rich history of divisiveness behind him. Their walkout forced us all to stop and confront the issue. And that’s not a bad thing. I hope O’Reilly’s words will be condemned by all media for what they are — racist, bigoted hate speech that divides, not unites us as one nation, under God.
Bill: “Muslims” didn’t kill “us” on 9/11. Decode: “Rag-headed darkies who are different than us” didn’t kill “God-fearing wealthy white people” on 9/11. That’s not what happened.
Extremist terrorists killed Americans from all walks of life and of many different ethnicities & religions including Muslims, Christians and Jews in NY, DC and PA on 9/11. It’s a tragedy ALL Americans shared that day. Let’s remember that — and not compound that tragedy with a million more small ones through racial & ethnic profiling.
hat tip-lamh32
This is why Sesame Street continues to rock after 40 years.
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I read some of the comments on the New York Times blog post: White House Online Summit for African-American bloggers, but a commenter named Mike Green of Portland, OR does a real good job in calling out what’s really going on, especially re: the NYT Media Decoder’s subtext:
You buried the lede. In any other publication that’s forgiveable, but not in the NY Times. The point you made in the final paragraph of this post is the real story. Mainstream news media, including the New York Times, allowed this story to go unnoticed and languish, despite its circulation across Black America. The racial fault lines in media play out on the American landscape. And that’s a story. (emphasis mine)Instead of that story being told, you decided to tell your own biased rendition: Black media and bloggers didn’t follow the rules, you say. The rules? Your point is made strongly at the beginning and again in the midst of this post, that traditional majority media (see White),have willingly followed White House rules for years. (emphasis mine) (One of the many reasons why news consumers cannot trust such media, especially when it becomes a cohort in covering up the foibles of leaders). Yet, Black media, when given its first chance to dance in the corridors of the White House, failed to follow the rules and keep the silly non-threatening secrets that White, ahem! I mean traditional media have always willingly kept.
Your subtle lambasting of Black media is the point of this post. The highly important issue of the separation of White and Black media, and the lack of access by Black media, and the disparity of recognition seems lost at the very bottom of your post. But then again, that’s where you relegated the issue, beneath your diatribe about how unruly Black media are.
Your post is essentially a reflection of the hostile attitudes that are pervasive in the media industry and politics toward Black media.
And if President Obama had NOT been elected, would Black media have ever been given this opportunity? And would have been given this opportunity to tear them down on a public stage?
It is our dirty little secret that racism prevails in media, isn’t it? And even when media personalities like Rick Sanchez seek to point it out, they, too, are roasted across the spit of media backlash. I suppose your rant about Black media not following protocol in the sacrosanct White House is merely a slap on the hand that Black media are to accept with humble and contrite spirits?
CPL’s take on Rick Sanchez (Sorry, while Rick Sanchez was an employed media pundit who lost his cool when referencing who runs what at CNN and incorporating a hatefest against Jon Stewart in the mix – I distance myself from any rantings with ethnic slants like that. There were ways Rick could have brought out his points and in the past, he has successfully done so.) Meanwhile, Mr. Green continued to break it down into fractions:
The inherent audacity in White Privilege is hidden behind the facade of your holier-than-thou condescension toward Black media. Thanks for pulling aside the facade of “fair and balanced” media to show the ugly face of racism. Oh, wait! You’re not Fox News. Sorry, I got you mixed up for a moment. You’ll forgive my error, given that your post reads exactly like something I would see on the Fox News site.
Cheryl Contee aka "Jill Tubman", Baratunde Thurston aka "Jack Turner", rikyrah, Leutisha Stills aka "The Christian Progressive Liberal", B-Serious, Casey Gane-McCalla, Jonathan Pitts-Wiley aka "Marcus Toussaint," Fredric Mitchell
Special Contributors: James Rucker, Rinku Sen, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, Adam Luna, Kamala Harris
Technical Contributor: Brandon Sheats
