Disinformation » Racism

All I Saw On Australia Day Was Police Aggression; How About You?

Wei Ling Chua — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:45:45 +0000

The 26 January 2012 incident where Australia’s Prime Minister Gillard was dragged away by security forces to a car and speeded away has been portrayed by the media as an attack or riot on Australia Day.

Selective scenes have been used to give people the impression of a violent mob threatening the Prime Minister and the opposition leader. When the video footage failed to display evidence of such violence, they then replaced some video footage with photo images of the Prime Minister dragged almost on the ground by the security officer to create the right atmosphere to justify their narration.

The police said that they will not charge anybody over the incident, and some writers begin to compare the Australia Day incident with the 2005 racially motivated Cronulla Riot; and then believe that it is unfair not to arrest the “rioters” over the incident.

The truth is that while the protesters may be noisy by chanting slogans with a small number patting on the restaurant glass window, they are not violent at all and I cannot see any video footage presented by the Australian media showing any evidence of protesters slamming or smashing the glass window.

Unfortunately, to find out the truth, we have to move away from the mainstream media in Australia for an answer. This Washington Post video shows footage of the Prime Minister being rushed from the restaurant to the car without any sign of aggression by protesters:

The Juice Media has produced a video on YouTube showing police aggression instead of violence by the protesters:

Anybody who comes by any video footage showing protesters violence please let everybody know by adding a link at the end of this article in the comments.

Colonialism has been resented by the world after the Second World War. It is unwise to continue to celebrate Australia Day based on the arrival of the British Colonistd on 26 January 1788; the feeling of our First people have to be respected. Australia Day should be an inclusive day that represents all Australians in this country. It is time to remove the Union Jack from our flag and change Australia Day to another date.

Written on 30 Jan 2012 by Wei Ling Chua, author of the book: Racism in Australia—The Causes, Incidents, Reasoning and Solutions.

A Black Man’s View of Schroedinger’s Rapist

Good German — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:31:42 +0000

Crommunist writes at the Freethought Blogs:

This morning I made a reference to the fact that men are often assumed to be potential rapists as an example of how sexism negatively affects men as well as women. The argument, commonly referred to as “Schroedinger’s Rapist”, goes something like this: because you can’t know for sure if the stranger approaching you in a dark alley or other unsafe place is a rapist or not, it is generally a good idea to be on your guard. Men can enhance their interactions with women by being aware of this mindset, and adjusting their own behaviour accordingly.

I have often heard from people making an anti-feminist argument that Schroedinger’s Rapist is profoundly sexist and unfair. After all, most men do not rape – why should every man be treated like a rapist? Isn’t that discrimination? How can you claim to be opposed to sexism, yet promote a fundamentally sexually prejudicial idea? The next step is often to draw parallels to racism – is it fair to treat all black people as potential criminals simply because, statistically speaking, there are more black criminals than white ones? Isn’t that racist?

As much as I hate it when white people use anti-black racism as a cudgel with which to beat other people, I can understand the conundrum as it is expressed. The problem with it (and the reason why it’s so bothersome to hear white people talk about anti-black racism) is that it fails to address the question in a meaningful way…

Read more here.

Hacked Emails Show Closer Ties Between Ron Paul And Neo-Nazis, Anonymous Claims

JacobSloan — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:29:23 +0000

The hackers group Anonymous has hacked and defaced the website of the American Third Position Party, a Neo-Nazi organization attempting to foment a “white revolution”. Anonymous says emails reveal that Ron Paul regularly holds conference calls with A3P’s board of directors, and that members hold key posts in Ron Paul’s campaign. Is this a smear job based on guilt by association, or outright lies? Or an ugly side of Ron Paul revealed? The International Business Times reports:

Members of the nationalist American Third Position Party (A3P), whose website was defaced by Anonymous, organised Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s meetings and campaigns, according emails hacked by the collective. Chairman of the British National Party (BNP) Nick Griffin also took part in meetings with Paul and other representatives of A3P.

“According to these messages, Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors,” read a statement from Anonymous.

Paul’s connections with racist supporters have been highlighted by the media in America. Bill White, a former member of the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Movement, became disillusioned with Paul after a spokesman for the Republican candidate called white supremacy “a small ideology”.

Following the incident, he wrote on a popular white supremacist website: “Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays,” he said. “I have attended these dinners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invited to his offices in Washington to discuss policy.”

“Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position,” he added.

Low Intelligence & Conservative Beliefs Linked To Prejudice & Racism

majestic — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:22:03 +0000

It took a team of crack scientists to reach this shocking conclusion, reported at Live Science via Yahoo News:

There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario.

Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

“Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood,” he said.

Controversy ahead
The findings combine three hot-button topics.

“They’ve pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics,” said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. “When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it’s bound to upset somebody.”

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience…

[continues at at Live Science via Yahoo News]

I Am A Racist. Deal With It.

Good German — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 20:09:39 +0000

Saumya Arya Haas writes at the Good Men Project:

We never think we’re the problem.

When a Kentucky church briefly banned interracial couples, the (sad) punchline was that the church leader who pushed for the ban stated ”I am not racist” .

What? How can you ban interracial couples and not recognize or admit that this is a racist action? What reality does this guy live in?

He lives in the same reality the rest of us do: an internal reality.

♦◊♦

In our own stories, we are beleaguered heroes with complicated histories. We seldom see ourselves as the aggressor or oppressor. When we act against other people, we aren’t able to see it in the context of a greater social issue. Our actions seem reasonable. We are not acting out of racism or sexism. We have our reasons.

Sometimes, we are simply outraged by injustice. Other times, what we are most ashamed of in ourselves is what we find the most intolerable in others. So the church leader’s racism, and obliviousness (or disingenuousness) hits close to home. We’re all guilty. When someone sets themselves up with such offensive, unlikeable behavior as I am not racist after clearly demonstrating they are, it’s a magical moment: such a luscious scapegoat just begs to be chased out to the wilderness.

Public shaming is powerful, and sometimes necessary. I believe that the ban was lifted due to public pressure, and that makes me feel good about our country. But when we all fall in line behind the scapegoat, yelling and waving, it starts look like we’re letting it lead us: the hypocrite parade.

Read more here.

Was 14-Year-Old Executed By South Carolina Innocent?

JacobSloan — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 18:09:41 +0000

The saddest part is that I’m not 100 percent certain that something like this could never happen again today. Raw Story writes:

Over 67 years after 14-year-old George Junius Stinney Jr. was put to death by the state of South Carolina, he may soon be cleared of the crime that people familiar with the case say he never could have committed.

A lawyer and an activist both told Raw Story recently that new evidence will show that the black boy could not have possibly murdered two white girls, 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and seven-year-old Mary Emma Thames.

Stinney, the youngest person to receive the death penalty in the last 100 years, was executed on June 16, 1944. At five feet one inch and only 95 pounds, the straps of the electric chair did not fit the boy. His feet could not touch the floor. As he was hit with the first 2,400-volt surge of electricity, the mask covering his face slipped off, “revealing his wide-open, tearful eyes and saliva coming from his mouth.”

Less than three months earlier, Stinney, who had no previous history of violence, had been accused of the crime after he admitted speaking to the girls when they stopped by a field in Alcolu where he was grazing his cow to ask where they could find maypops, a type of flower. Authorities alleged Stinney had used a railroad spike to shatter both of the girls’ heads. The boy was taken into a room with several white officers and within an hour, they said he had confessed. Because there were no Miranda rights in 1944, Stinney was questioned without a lawyer and his parents were not allowed into the room.

No written confession exists, only a few handwritten notes a deputy who was present during the interrogation. They claimed that Stinney had said he killed Mary Emma because he wanted to have sex with Betty June. When Betty June resisted his advances, authorities said, he murdered her too. Reports said that the officers had offered the boy ice cream for confessing to the crimes.

A mob of about 40 angry white men showed up at the jail, demanding to lynch Stinney, but he had already been moved about 50 miles away to Columbia. Even though Stinney’s father had helped search for the girls when they went missing, he was fired and forced to leave the home provided by Alderman’s Lumber Mill where he worked.

The trial was over two hours after it began. A jury of twelve white men deliberated for 10 minutes before convicting Stinney. Plowden later told the judge that there was nothing to appeal, and the Stinney family could not afford to continue the case. A one-sentence notice of appeal would have automatically stayed the case for a year.

Attorney Steve McKenzie told Raw Story that he has no doubt this case was an injustice. McKenzie said that the lack of preserved evidence made clearing Stinney’s name difficult, but he hoped that the affidavits of three new witnesses, one of which could provide an alibi, would be enough to re-open the case.

Read the rest at Raw Story

Photos Of Child Slaves, 1863

JacobSloan — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:55:08 +0000

Via How To Be A Retronaut, scans of a series of collectible cards, sold to raise awareness of the anti-slavery cause, with photos of slave children whom abolitionists had brought North and freed. It’s an interesting glimpse into how widely “blackness” could be defined in the slave-era South:

‘Slave children, freed and brought North by abolitionists to emphasize the plight of slaves. The proceeds from sale of the photographs were to be used to educate freed slaves who had come under the jurisdiction of the Union Army in the New Orleans area. A caption on one of these photographs points out that the children had been turned out of a hotel in Philadelphia because of their “color.”’

The Racism of the Reptilians

James Curcio — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 01:02:13 +0000

Many comments in ‘Elite Reptilians Like Eating Our Brains Cold,’ much to my surprise, jumped to the defense of David Icke and ilk, claiming that there is no racist agenda behind the reptilian one.

Here’s an article from Wes Unruh on Modern Mythology, demonstrating quite the opposite:

Years ago, my first thoughts upon encountering the ‘reptilian agenda‘ (or reptilian mythic framework) was to think of it as A Case of Conscience meets Darker Then You Think, although the more obvious mythic maps you as a media consumer might be familiar with are Land of the Lost plus V. Imagine a race of lizard men who are always watching from the edges of society, like predators, feeding on misery. The reptilian narrative has it that an intergalactic race, the Draconis, has been interbreeding with humans since ancient times, and those bloodlines are responsible for manipulating events throughout history. And these reptilians and half-humans need to eat people to maintain their human appearance.

Certainly there have been plenty of historical accounts of tiny people eaters (tiny, as in very small humanoids, people eaters, as in they were killing people with poison arrows then devouring them). In Idaho the problem got so bad that a local medicine man went out to parlay with the spirits. Wolf, Fox, Bobcat and Cougar met with him, and agreed to kill all the little people so long as none of the tribes would hunt any of their own people. After some negotiating, including bringing the entire tribes back to the spirits to verify the terms of the contract, Wolf, Fox, Bobcat and Cougar lived up to their obligation and wiped out all of the tiny people eaters in the area. Rumor has it that some of these little people still haunt parts of Wyoming. Lizard people are rumored to live on the East Coast as well, and should I encounter something as vicious as the Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp is alleged to be, I suspect I will act to defend myself as I best see fit.

In Jon Ronson’s book Them: Adventures with Extremists, Jon does an excellent job of tackling the question ‘Is David Icke an anti-Semite’ in the chapter There Are Lizards and There Are Lizards, which I highly recommend you read. David Icke is an individual on an evangelical mission — I do not wish to review his entire back catalog of books and videos to establish whether or not his intent is to cast Jews in a bad light by labeling the most powerful part of a larger interstellar conspiracy. It is enough to point out that he is racist, in the literal sense, as castigating as he is about the Draconis race of aliens. It is enough hopefully to show this selection from ‘The Reptilian Agenda’ where Credo Mutwa explains that these reptilian aliens are the same thing as ‘the Illuminati’…

Read full article on Modern Mythology

New Study Reveals Whites Feel More Discriminated Against Than Minorities

TunaGhost — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 22:39:51 +0000

In my newspaper, the headline would have been “Whites Feel Racism Is Worse For Whites Than Minorities; Minorities Stare Open-Mouthed In Stunned Silence.” A new study on perceived racism coming from Harvard Business School and Tufts University has yielded surprising results. Whites are reporting that they feel racism is “worse for white people than black people” in modern western society, despite statistics showing that social inequality between ethnicities is still rampant and still very much in the favor of white people. So if the actual racism is still directed at minorities, why are whites suddenly feeling so discriminated against? (More on the Telegraph)

Is Anders Behring Breivik A Dominionist?

Good German — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 03:49:16 +0000

Leah L. Burton writes on PoliticusUSA:

In regards to Dominionist linkages to the bloody slaughter in Norway, here are our findings so far:

a) In particular, with a video manifesto (which has been linked on YouTube until it was pulled there, and which has since shown up on LiveLeak) the shooter makes some very specific references that show he has familiarity with, and probably shares terminology with (if not overtly sharing intel with) “Christian patriot” militia groups in the US (including material that has been posted on racist and far right-wing forums in the US, use of particular catch phrases associated with the “Christian Patriot” movement in the US, and others). I’ve just spent nine hours typing up an extensive analysis of the video; he is clearly connected with religious-nationalist groups in Europe and in the US. The degree of references to material originating in the US, in fact, indicate he has been in somewhat regular contact with anti-Muslim racists in the “Christian Patriot” movement in the US, rather than obtaining racialist material from racist groups elsewhere in the world.

b) One thing that stands out (if one is unaware of racialist movements in Europe)–most racist activity in Europe so far has been from “Odinists” and “Satanists” in the black-metal community (and are largely doing it in a pattern of occasionally bloody attention-whoredom) or from blatantly neo-Nazi groups. A group or person claiming a “Conservative Christian” basis for this, especially in Europe, stands out like a sore thumb; generally (unlike the US) there has not been a tradition of “racist right” churches like Christian Identity that claim to be “Bible-based”.

c) One thing that stands out in the killer’s videos and writings is a certain obsession with the Knights Templar, the Third Crusade, and the idea of setting up what amount to European “Christian Patriot militias” (often using the very same terminology, of note, as “Christian patriot” groups associated with Dominionism and the racist right use in the US) to foment a revolution in the same way as planned by “Christian Patriot militias” here in the US.

d) In particular, the killer is a known guest writer on the site “Jihad Watch”, which has had very close linkage with Dominionist groups (including NAR groups). Jihad Watch is sufficiently infamous (and sufficiently tied to Dominionist activity, particularly among the NAR) that it is one of those groups that Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a very careful watch on (and is on verge of listing it formally as a hate site), and writers to that site almost inevitably have ties to NAR groups.

e) There is a known NAR movement in Norway, which is similar in extremism to the US and which has known linkage to NAR extremists in the US, particularly in C. Peter Wagner’s network (in particular, Jan Torp who has known linkage to Sarah Palin via the Wagner NAR network among others); Norway, a relatively religiously conservative country, has been aggressively targeted by the NAR in an effort to establish a bench-head in Scandinavia. (Of note–Wagner’s lineage of NARasites is the most closely connected to the “racist right” along with Christian Reconstructionists; there is clear evidence that Christian Identity groups and NAR groups have traded theological terminology related to domestic terrorism as recently as the late 1980s and early 1990s.) I wrote about Torp’s connection to Sarah Palin at God’s Own Party? in November 2008.

It is important to recognize that C. Peter Wagner who we are speaking of is one of the main endorsers of Governor Rick Perry’s “The Response” event in Houston.

Read more here.

Evidence of Murdoch’s Newspapers Distorting News to Fuel Racism

Wei Ling Chua — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 04:23:47 +0000

Media disinformation and negativity against non-Western cultures in Australia is a terminal disease spreading into the bloodstream of the mainstream media industry in Australia. The following incident demonstrated how easy it is to demonize a Chinese restaurant in Melbourne through the manipulation of news using the techniques of factual omission, misleading heading, misleading bullet-point-highlight, misleading bold-highlight and the editorializing of content using a series of subjective and strong wordings to sell the personal opinion of the journalist or editor as news.

How did Murdoch’s Newspapers demonise a Chinese Restaurant in Melbourne?

Can you tell the problem with the following report by the Herald Sun?

St Kilda Chinese restaurant food bill handed to man in ambulance

By Jessica Craven From: Herald Sun April 26, 2011 7:21PM

Man suffered seizure while dining at Chinese restaurant
Man given bill as he was being loaded into ambulance
Restaurant manager said someone had to pay for meal

A CHINESE restaurant that slapped a customer with the bill as he was being loaded into an ambulance has defended its actions.

Onlookers called paramedics when the man fell to the ground suffering an apparent seizure while enjoying dumplings with his friend at Shifu Dumpling Express in Acland St, St Kilda, at about 4.30pm today.

As the man was being loaded into the ambulance and his friend was climbing in to join him, a waiter came and handed the friend the bill.

Bella, who did not want her surname used, said she was disgusted at the restaurant’s actions.

“I was so incredulous that it had happened,” she said.

“It wasn’t the most expensive restaurant in town, it’s a dumpling house and their bill would not have been more than $30.

“It was just so inappropriate, I will never go there again.”

Manager Kevin Tian was remorseless about the gaffe and said he did not regret the money grab.

“My opinion is that they ate in our restaurant, they have to pay,” he said.

An Ambulance Victoria spokesman confirmed a man in his 30s was taken to the Alfred Hospital in a stable condition.

______

The exact copy of the content of the above Herald Sun story was reported nation-wide by News Limited, Courier Mail, Daily Telegraph, Perth Now, Adelaide Now and The Australian just to name a few.

I personally find this story is particularly biased, vicious, unfair, inconsiderate, misleading and possibly racist. The reasons as follow:

1) The name of the restaurant and location has been clearly identified and the story may affect the restaurant’s business;

2) The news heading, bullet-point-highlight and bold-highlight of the story are misleading. They gave people an impression that the restaurant handed bill to a injured customer loaded into the ambulance, but the fact is, the bill was handed to the friend of the injured man who had eaten the dumplings and tried to walk away with a free meal, perhaps.

3) The report then exclusively cited a few negative comments by Bella (without surname) who was “disgusted at the restaurant’s actions,” and claimed that the value of the meal would have being less than $30 and then said, “I will never go there again.”

The Herald Sun’s “Journalist” then editorialising the restaurant manager responded with this statement: “Manager Kevin Tian was remorseless about the gaffe and said he did not regret the money grab,” followed by ending the story with, “An Ambulance Victoria spokesman confirmed a man in his 30s was taken to the Alfred Hospital in a stable condition”. (Author note: this statement has again reminded readers the story is about a bill being handled to an injured man in the ambulance.)

Whether or not Bella is a real person or imaginary person in this report, the way this “journalist” reported the story with a misleading heading, bullet-point-highlight and bold-highlight and editorialising the manager’s reply with the use of three subjective and strong words: “remorseless”, “the gaffe” and “money grab” tell a lot about the quality of journalism in this country. The fact that it has became a nation-wide story with exactly the same content being published word by word by those major states and national newspapers tell us the kind of editorial standard in this country as well. In fact, to be fair to the “Journalist”, the News heading, bullet-point highlight and bold highlight may be done by an editor or sub-editor.

The overall impression I had with this report is that, the friend of the injured man has the right not to pay for the meal in the restaurant; and that the restaurant as a business entity with an overhead to maintain such as rent, wages and outgoing expenses does not deserve the right for payment to their products and services even if the owner of the restaurant may need the money to pay his mortgage, feed his family, finance his children’s education and may be struggling to stay in business due to the current economic climate.

What information has being deliberately omitted by the Murdoch’s newspapers?

As a result of my suspicion of the accuracy of the above report, I search the Internet for related story and find that Nine MSN reported the same story with a bit of extra information – the whole picture is now clear to me: that is, Bella is the lady whom the Chinese restaurant handed the bill to. This is exactly how Nine MSN reported:

“As he was getting into the ambulance, and his friend climbed in to join him, a waiter came out and handed her the bill. The man’s companion, Bella, who did not want her surname used, said the restaurant’s actions “were just so inappropriate.”I was so incredulous that it had happened,” she said. ”It wasn’t the most expensive restaurant in town, it’s a dumpling house and their bill would not have been more than $30”. However, restaurant manager Kevin Tian told the newspaper he did not think it was inappropriate. ”My opinion is that they ate in our restaurant, they have to pay,” he said.”

The fact that Nine MSN claimed in their report that their source of the news is from the Courier Mail indicted that all the above named Murdoch’s Newspapers have no reason to publish the above news in such distorting manner. This is the second paragraph of Nine MSN report:

“Paramedics were called to the restaurant when the unidentified man fell to the ground after suffering an apparent seizure at St Kilda’s Sifu Dumpling Express on Tuesday afternoon, the Courier Mail reports.”

By comparing the content of the Nine MSN and those other reports, it is not hard for us to draw a conclusion that: Nine MSN has being truthful with the story whereas Herald Sun (the original source of the report) deliberately failed to disclose who Bella really is. They went to the extent to editorialising the restaurant manager’s reply with highly subjective and strong wording such as “remorseless”, “the gaffe” and “money grab” with the intention to demonise the Chinese restaurant. The rest of Murdoch’s Newspapers including the Courier Mail, despite knowing the truth, simply copied Herald Sun report word by word. Why?

Conclusion

I believe that, unnecessary on-going negativity against minorities in this country by our media has definitely contributed to racism in Australia. Why can’t those elites in the Australian media industry find peace in their little brains without smearing against other cultures or countries?

The following are my earlier articles on media fuels racism in Australia:

Evidences of Australia Media fuelling Racism against Minorities
Another case of media fuelled racism in Australia
Why are the Australian media and politicians totally silent on the latest ABS crime figures? (This article come with a series of examples showing how our media smearing against non-Western countries whenever our criminals committed crimes there and was prosecuted under their laws.)

May the world find peace with each other with a socially more responsible media industry. Can we trust the current media culture in Australia?

Written by www.outcastjournalist.com

North Carolina To Compensate Thousands Of Forced-Sterilization Victims

JacobSloan — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 22:30:34 +0000

The North Carolina Eugenics Board was created in 1933 and operated for decades with little public scrutiny. It used rudimentary IQ tests and gossip from neighbors to justify sterilization of young girls from poor families.

Many people don’t realize that portions of the U.S. South had eugenics programs that operated through the 1970s. NPR reports on some horrifying fairly-recent history:

Barely 40 years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for a single mother on welfare, or a patient in a mental hospital in North Carolina, to be sterilized against her will.

But North Carolina wasn’t alone: More than half of states in the U.S. had eugenics laws, some of which persisted into the 1970s.

North Carolina is now considering compensating its sterilization victims. A state panel heard from some of them Wednesday. They were mostly poor and uneducated — both black and white — and often just girls when it happened.

Elaine Riddick says she was sterilized at the age of 14. The state of North Carolina said Riddick was promiscuous and didn’t get along well with others. “I couldn’t get along well with others because I was hungry. I was cold. I was a victim of rape,” Riddick says.

Nearly 7,600 men, women and children as young as 10 were sterilized under North Carolina’s eugenics laws. While other state sterilization laws focused mainly on criminals and people in mental institutions, North Carolina was one of the few to expand its reach to women who were poor. Sterilization was seen as a way to limit the public cost of welfare.

The North Carolina Eugenics Board was created in 1933 and operated for decades with little public scrutiny. It used rudimentary IQ tests and gossip from neighbors to justify sterilization of young girls from poor families who hung around the wrong crowd or didn’t do well in school.

If North Carolina lawmakers decide to pay victims, it could be costly. While the number of sterilizations in other states slowed down after the Nazi atrocities of World War II came to light, North Carolina’s eugenics program ramped up. An estimated 3,000 victims are still living and could qualify for compensation.

For Women, Darker Skin Tone Means Longer Prison Sentences

JacobSloan — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 18:59:07 +0000

Racial bias in our criminal justice system isn’t a binary matter, with different treatment for blacks versus whites — rather, a new study suggests that it is a sliding scale, in which severity of punishment increases proportionally as skin color becomes darker. Via the Root:

Villanova researchers studied more than 12,000 cases of African-American women imprisoned in North Carolina and found that women with lighter skin tones received more-lenient sentences and served less time than women with darker skin tones.

The researchers found that light-skinned women were sentenced to approximately 12 percent less time behind bars than their darker-skinned counterparts. Women with light skin also served 11 percent less time than darker women.

The study took into account the type of crimes the women committed and each woman’s criminal history to generate apples-to-apples comparisons. The work builds on previous studies by Stanford University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and other institutions, which have examined how “black-looking” features and skin tone can impact black men in the criminal-justice arena.

Researchers say this is the first study to look at how colorism affects black women and how long they may spend in jail. Part of the reason may simply come down to how pretty jurors consider a defendant to be, and that being light-skinned and thin (also a factor studied in the research) are seen as more attractive, says Lance Hannon, co-author of the Villanova study.

Would You Buy A License Plate With A Confederate Flag On It?

majestic — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 16:09:55 +0000

If you live in Texas, you might have that choice quite soon. CBSDFW.com reports:

Would you buy a license plate with a Confederate flag on it? State officials are looking at possibly launching a new Texas state license plate honoring veterans of the War Between the States.

Mr. Hilary Shelton, with the NAACP in Washington, D.C., said that the Civil War may not be something we want to celebrate.

“When many look at that history, we think about it in terms of secession, that is we were seceding from the Union in the southern parts of the country,” explained Shelton. “Many would view that, quite frankly, as treason, because they meant to actually destroy the existing governmental structure. But when we dig deeper, the issue becomes even more offensive to many African Americans and those that sought freedom for those of darker skin in our country.”

“When you understand the Confederate history, and what it stood for,” said Dallas resident Mark Jones, “it’s directly slapping African Americans in the face.”

In terms of the Civil War, Shelton said that the Confederate flag was actually very un-American. “It was the flag that was flown during a war to actually tear the nation apart,” Shelton explained.

“I don’t think that this will unify us,” said Carrollton resident Carolina Arreola. “Our patriotism is to the Unites States flag.”

But the Texas Sons of Confederate Veterans have renewed their push for a Texas license plate that includes the rebel flag in its design…

[continues at CBSDFW.com]

Are The Smurfs Racist, Sexist Fascists?

BananaFamine — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 04:20:19 +0000

Meaghan Murphy writes on Fox News:

Sacre bleu! The Smurfs may not be as innocent as they look.

The tribe of little blue creatures who live peacefully among the mushrooms are “steeped in Stalinism and Nazism,” according to a French sociologist.

“Collective work always focuses on self-sufficiency for food and energy,” Antoine Buéno states in Le Petit Livre Bleu (The Little Blue Book). “The Smurfs do not have private property; their leader is Papa Smurf who shows very authoritarian and paternalistic characteristics.”

Buéno also makes the connection that the little blue men’s biggest enemy, the magician Gargamel, seems to have a Jewish background — citing similarities to the anti-Semitic images of the World War II era.

The French writer also claims that the Smurfs do not just resemble Nazis, but sexist Nazis to boot! Smurfette—traditionally the only woman living in the Smurf’s village — allegedly meets the Aryan ideal of beauty with her blonde hair and refined features.

For more information, see original article.

Is Tony Kushner The New Helen Thomas?

Danny Schechter — Thu, 12 May 2011 21:52:11 +0000

Playwright Tony Kushner. Photos: Timothy Herrigan/Courtney Hamilton (CC)

Jewish Playwright has honorary degree restored by City University of New York after it had been stripped because he was labeled too critical of Israel.

First, it was Helen Thomas.

After the veteran White House correspondent spoke inelegantly once about her feelings about Israel—and apologized, but to no effect—she was blackballed at the instigation of strident Israeli supporters and her career achievement-standing journalism awards were stripped. She became persona non-grate with many media outlets joining in the denunciations of a colleague they honored for decades.

Many at the time suspected the wrath was especially severe because she is an Arab-American. Right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter even asked if “that Arab” should be allowed near the President.

Now a new flap driven by some of the same issues involves a Jewish Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and a leading academic institution in New York.

His name, Tony Kushner, best known for the brilliant Angels in America plays that bravely took on AIDS and the hypocrisy, if not criminality, of a the prominent Jewish lawyer Roy Cohen who was an aide to the late fanatically anti-communist symbol, Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Now McCarthy’s name has been introduced into a debate following a decision by a City University of New York to strip Kushner of an honorary degree after one conservative pro-Israel trustee took umbrage at his criticisms of the Israeli government and convinced his colleagues to take action.

Supporters of Israel have been primed by their lobby and the Israeli government to confront and all attempts to “ deligitimate” Israel and even criticize its government.

Kushner became the symbol of those closet anti-Semites or self-hating Jews bashing Israel, so a group of trustees turned him into an Israel hater. He became a new Helen Thomas even though he is Jewish.

But in New York, unlike Washington which seems ruled by a conservative media elite that is frequently intimidated, if not directed by the Israel Lobby, there was a cultural push back against what was seen as an act of intolerance that violated freedom of thought.

Soon the New York Times was making it a big story with strong statements against the efforts of conservative Republican trustee Jeffrey S.  Wiesenfeld, to blackball plans to honor Kushner by  John Jay College, one of the system’s schools. Wiesenfeld did not win much sympathy when he was quoted as questioning whether Palestinians were human.

Blogger MJ Rosenberg offered insight into Wissenfeld’s didactic views:

“Here is his Wiesenfeld’s rationale for his actions, which he offered in a telephone call with the Atlantic’s Jeff Goldberg:

“My mother would call Tony Kushner a kapo,” he said in a telephone conversation earlier this morning. “Kapos” were Jews who worked for the Germans in concentration camps.

Pretty amazing likening criticizing Israel to working with the Nazis to kill Jews. But Wisenfeld, has some strong views.” He was also aligned with Pam Geller, the Muslim hater who led the fight against the so-called Ground Zero mosque. He was an active supporter of AIPAC, the Israel lobby.

His diatribe was seen as too severe and inflammatory by many civic leaders. Prominent supporters of Israel were soon supporting Kushner, including former Mayor Ed Koch, newspaper Publisher Mort Zuckerman and a who’s who of cultural figures.

Enter the top officials at the City University who agreed to review the decision and vowed to reverse it. On May 9^th, they did so, voting unanimously to restore the award.”

The Guardian reported:

“The chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, addressing the board on Monday night, said he had supported the original recommendation of the award and praised Kushner’s ‘extraordinary body of work’. He urged the board to overturn last week’s decision and to support the award.”

Some members of the board spoke, all of them voicing support for Kushner. One of them described the row as a “blemish” on the university’s reputation as an upholder of freedom of expression.

Tony Kushner had told the Times,

“I have been honored many times by prominent Jewish organizations, proudly identified as a Jew and maintained a passionate support for the continuous existence of the State of Israel,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “An apology should come from the Board of Trustees for not following the dictates of simple fairness and decency when this happened, and allowing someone who deserved better treatment to be treated shabbily.”

Since the CUNY board’s action, he has received an outpouring of support from peace groups, friends, and intellectual and artistic groups. “It’s completely overwhelming,” he said.

The City University’s leaders rushed to restore its honor and on Monday Night, May 9^th, reversed the Trustee’s decision, reinstating Kushner’s award.

Here’s how the Times put it:

“Having embarrassed themselves more than was absolutely necessary in the eyes of many New Yorkers, trustees of the City University of New York are … to undo the damage.”

In an earlier statement, Kushner, who has edited a collection of essays critical of Israel said:

“It’s been my experience that truth eventually triumphs over SoundBits spin and defamation, and that reason, honest inquiry, and courage, which are more appealing and more persuasive than demagoguery, will carry the day.”

His story went from the Jewish press to the pages of the New York Times, and quickly became an international free speech issue.

But even if his status is rehabilitated, The Times asks, “Will a reversal end the affair? Not necessarily. Closing a self-inflicted wound can be tough.”

The problem, of course, is that Kushner’s status earned him reconsideration; other less well-known personages critical of Israel, including academic and political analysts, are often targeted in ways that generate less attention and debate. Many conclude it’s just not worth it to speak up about Israeli policy less they became targeted and smeared, and even lose their jobs.

Meanwhile, Helen Thomas continues to live defensively as an exile in the straitlaced Washington Media world in which she was once a luminary. A group of journalists are now lobbying The Society of Professional Journalists to reinstate her status but, at age 90, she has no major newspapers or high-profile politically-acceptable people behind her.

Perhaps Tony Kushner could do a play about how Thomas has suffered the slings and arrows of unfair slurs and demonization.

Filmmaker and News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org.

For more on his film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time and companion book The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big To Jail, visit plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.

Texas Teacher To 9th Grade Student: “I Bet You’re Grieving About Your Uncle (Bin Laden)”

BananaFamine — Fri, 06 May 2011 12:16:03 +0000

ABC 13 reports:

HOUSTON (KTRK) — The death of Osama bin Laden is related to an investigation of a teacher at Clear Brook High School. The teacher is accused of making a racially insensitive comment to a student in front of the entire class.

A Friendswood mom says she was offended by what her daughter says happened Monday in ninth grade algebra.

She said, “The teacher told the student that ‘I bet you’re grieving.’ And she basically looked at him and said what are you talking about? And he said I heard about your uncle’s death and she said wow, because she understood that he was referring about Osama bin Laden being killed and was racially profiling her.”

The remark was made to a classmate, an American-born girl of Muslim faith. It happened at Clear Brook High School in the Clear Creek Independent School District. The mom wanted to speak out about the incident but wanted us to protect her identity, saying she doesn’t want any retaliation against her daughter or the girl who experienced the inappropriate comment.

For more information, see original article.

Department Of Justice Declares New Orleans Police Force “A Threat To The Safety Of The Public”

JacobSloan — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:16:39 +0000

“Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists as the greatest threat to the American public.”

Yes, there are bad cops everywhere, but the corrupt, racist, and violent New Orleans police department — in which officers engage in rape, arson, kidnapping, bank robberies, and murder, and citizens are arrested for little or no reason, held without charges for months, and routinely brutalized and tortured — is a different matter altogether. It is little exaggeration to say that the NOPD has become a criminal gang terrorizing the city’s residents. The New Statesman reports:

Something terrible lies at the heart of New Orleans – a rampant, widespread and apparently uncontrollable brutality on the part of its police force and its prison service. The horrors of its criminal justice system from decades before Hurricane Katrina and up to now lie somewhere between, with little exaggeration, Candide and Stalin’s Gulags.

Spit on the sidewalk here, and you may be arrested – New Orleans has the highest incarceration rate of any city in the United States – and if you’re poor and black and can’t pay bail, you will enter a place where any protection under the American constitution and the Bill of Rights is stripped away. You will wait weeks or months to be charged, whether innocent or not, and in the meantime you will be subjected to foul, overcrowded jail conditions, prisoner-to-prisoner violence and the brutality of the deputies who guard you.

On 17 March this year, the federal department of justice (DoJ) decided that enough was enough and it has made moves to have the New Orleans police department (NOPD) placed under the supervision of a federal judge. The New Orleans jail system will likely follow.

The department released a report covering only the past two years and ignoring several current federal investigations of police officers for murder. It says, more or less, that the NOPD is incapable on any level; that it is racist; that it systemically violates civil rights, routinely using “unnecessary and unreasonable force”; that it is “largely indifferent to widespread violations of law and policy by its police officers” and appears to have gone to great lengths to cover up its shootings of civilians. “NOPD’s mishandling of officer-involved shooting investigations,” the report says, “was so blatant and egregious that it appeared intentional in some respects.”

Why Do White People Stink On Twitter?

majestic — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 02:43:16 +0000

Paul Carr asks the question that most Twitter followers have been pondering all day (at TechCrunch):

“What Does It Say About The Wisdom Of The Crowd That “White People Stink” Has Been Trending On Twitter For Almost 24 Hours?”

And helpfully supplies the answer:

“Everything.”

CNN Attributes ‘Mainstreaming Of Conspiracy Theories’ To Rise In U.S. Hate Groups

BananaFamine — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:42:59 +0000

While “hate groups” undoubtedly can be a problem for a civil society, I believe this article is awfully biased against those who are rationally weary of Big Gov.

CNN reports:

The number of radical right groups in America — including hate groups, “Patriot” groups and nativist groups — increased in 2010 for the second year in a row, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The organization’s quarterly publication, Intelligence Report, said the growth was “driven by resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the government’s handling of the economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at various minorities.”

The SPLC documented 1,002 hate groups operating in the United States in 2010, a 7.5% increase from the year before. It was the first time that more than 1,000 hate groups were recorded since the organization started tracking them in the 1980s.

But the biggest growth was in so-called “Patriot” groups, which the organization described as conspiracy-minded groups that see the federal government as their primary enemy. There were 300 new groups like this, an increase of more than 60% from the year before, the report said. A lot of the growth in the Patriot groups came from an increase in the number of militias recorded.

Article continues at CNN.com

Muslim Prejudice Becomes ‘Socially Acceptable’ in UK

BananaFamine — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:44:45 +0000

BBC News reports:

Prejudice against Muslims has “passed the dinner-table test” and become socially acceptable in the UK, a senior Conservative is to say.

Baroness Warsi, co-chairman of the Tory Party, will warn against dividing Muslims into moderates and extremists.

The baroness, the first Muslim woman to serve in the cabinet, will say such labels fuel misunderstanding.

She will use a speech at Leicester University to accuse the media of superficial discussion of Islam.

Baroness Warsi will say anti-Muslim prejudice is now seen by many Britons as normal and uncontroversial, and she will use her position to fight an “ongoing battle against bigotry”.

In extracts of the speech, published in the Daily Telegraph, the peer blames “the patronising, superficial way faith is discussed in certain quarters, including the media”, for making Britain a less tolerant place for believers.

She is expected to reveal that she raised the issue of Islamophobia with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Britain last year, urging him to “create a better understanding between Europe and its Muslim citizens”…

For more information, see original article.

Study: Confederate Flag Triggers Anti-Black Mindset

JacobSloan — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:25:58 +0000

Shocking discoveries: apparently, symbols from the past can retain a potent negative impact, and the Confederate flag is definitely racist. In two studies, after being exposed to a subliminal image of the Rebel flag, whites (of all political affiliations) displayed increased animosity towards black people. Miller-McCune reports:

The Confederate flag, which continues to fly on buildings throughout the American South 150 years after the Civil War, is a potent symbol. But of what? Cultural heritage, answer many Southern whites. Lingering racism, insist many blacks.

Newly published research provides evidence supporting the latter view. It suggests exposure to the flag evokes anti-black sentiments among whites, regardless of their stated beliefs on racial issues.

Specifically, white students at a large state-supported Southern university who were exposed to images of the still-ubiquitous battle flag judged a fictional black character more harshly. They expressed less willingness to vote for presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

“Whether or not the Confederate flag includes other nonracist meanings, exposure to this flag evokes responses that are prejudicial,” a research team led by Florida State University psychologist Joyce Ehrlinger writes in the journal Political Psychology. Displays of the flag, the researchers assert, “may actually provoke discrimination — even among those who are low in prejudice.”

“Whether or not the Confederate flag includes other nonracist meanings, exposure to this flag evokes responses that are prejudicial,” a research team led by Florida State University psychologist Joyce Ehrlinger writes in the journal Political Psychology. Displays of the flag, the researchers assert, “may actually provoke discrimination — even among those who are low in prejudice.”

“White participants exposed to the Confederate flag reported a significantly lower likelihood of voting for Obama than those exposed to the neutral symbol,” the researchers report. (No similar impact was found for black participants.) Exposure to the flag had no effect on their self-reported measures of liberalism or conservatism; this suggests the flag’s psychic impact was on racial rather than ideological attitudes.

The second study featured 116 white students, half of whom were exposed to the Confederate flag via a sticker attached to a folder that sat upon their desks. They read a story about “a young man named Robert who engaged in ambiguously negative and aggressive behavior.”

Specifically, Robert — a young black male whose picture was provided — “refused to pay his rent until his landlord painted his apartment, and demanded his money back from a store clerk.” The results: Those exposed to the flag, which was sitting on the corner of their desks while they took the test, rated Robert more negatively than the others.

Shocking KKK Snowman Video

majestic — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 16:23:57 +0000

A Ku Klux Klan snowman in 2010? It’s not even in the South…

[More details at KXLY]

George Soros: ‘Why I Support Legal Marijuana’

majestic — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 20:12:26 +0000

Billionaire hedge fund manager and liberal philanthropist George Soros clearly doesn’t care what his establishment peers think any more — but he can still get his opinions published in the Wall Street Journal:

Our marijuana laws are clearly doing more harm than good. The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.

Law enforcement agencies today spend many billions of taxpayer dollars annually trying to enforce this unenforceable prohibition. The roughly 750,000 arrests they make each year for possession of small amounts of marijuana represent more than 40% of all drug arrests.

Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually. It also would reduce the crime, violence and corruption associated with drug markets, and the violations of civil liberties and human rights that occur when large numbers of otherwise law-abiding citizens are subject to arrest. Police could focus on serious crime instead.

The racial inequities that are part and parcel of marijuana enforcement policies cannot be ignored. African-Americans are no more likely than other Americans to use marijuana but they are three, five or even 10 times more likely—depending on the city—to be arrested for possessing marijuana. I agree with Alice Huffman, president of the California NAACP, when she says that being caught up in the criminal justice system does more harm to young people than marijuana itself. Giving millions of young Americans a permanent drug arrest record that may follow them for life serves no one’s interests.

Racial prejudice also helps explain the origins of marijuana prohibition. When California and other U.S. states first decided (between 1915 and 1933) to criminalize marijuana, the principal motivations were not grounded in science or public health but rather in prejudice and discrimination against immigrants from Mexico who reputedly smoked the “killer weed.”

Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade—and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity. Some claim that they would only move into other illicit enterprises, but they are more likely to be weakened by being deprived of the easy profits they can earn with marijuana…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

Obama Derangement Syndrome: Yes It’s Racist

Good German — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:48:40 +0000

Here’s a sort of follow up to two earlier posts about subconscious racism and Obama Derangement Syndrome. Ira Rosofsky writes in Psychology Today:

Pollster Stanley Greenberg and political operative James Carville, last year, reported on a series of focus groups with older, white Republicans in Georgia. They were on a quest to understand the hardcore opposition to Obama. Is it racist?

They concluded no. They admonished us to “Get over it.” The animus to Obama, they claimed, is “based in the same unwavering, bedrock conservative principles that have always led them to oppose liberal policies. Some of their subjects even claim to be post racial-”proud” there is an African-American president.

I have my own informal focus group, and I’m not buying it.

I work as a psychologist in nursing homes, and I talk daily to the older salt of the earth. The other day I assessed the cognitive status of an 87-year-old male member of the Greatest Generation, and realized yet again how enmeshed racism is in our cultural DNA.

He seemed reasonably reasonable, only his toe dipping in the pool of mild dementia. He still recognized everybody. Could name all his grandchildren, outline his work history, and share anecdotes about the war. So what if he couldn’t exactly remember exactly which day it was in October. He remembered it was October. I dare you to try to keep track of the day of the week if you are in an institution and don’t find the newspaper on your doorstep every morning to begin your day. Not as easy as you think.

Read more here.

Pollster Stanley Greenberg and political operative James Carville, last year, reported on a series of focus groups with older, white Republicans in Georgia. They were on a quest to understand the hardcore opposition to Obama. Is it racist?

They concluded no. They admonished us to “Get over it.” The animus to Obama, they claimed, is “based in the same unwavering, bedrock conservative principles that have always led them to oppose liberal policies. Some of their subjects even claim to be post racial-”proud” there is an African-American president.

I have my own informal focus group, and I’m not buying it.

I work as a psychologist in nursing homes, and I talk daily to the older salt of the earth. The other day I assessed the cognitive status of an 87-year-old male member of the Greatest Generation, and realized yet again how enmeshed racism is in our cultural DNA.

He seemed reasonably reasonable, only his toe dipping in the pool of mild dementia. He still recognized everybody. Could name all his grandchildren, outline his work history, and share anecdotes about the war. So what if he couldn’t exactly remember exactly which day it was in October. He remembered it was October. I dare you to try to keep track of the day of the week if you are in an institution and don’t find the newspaper on your doorstep every morning to begin your day. Not as easy as you think.

Then I asked this standard question:

“Who is the president of the United States ?”

“That n*gg*r.”

And there you have it. Hitting me like a slap across the face in the privacy of the consultation room I uncover the racism left out of the polite society of focus groups.

Sure it’s anecdotal, but I believe it.

One of the effects of a little dementia is that it disinhibits. It’s like you’re in that movie where they put the spell on you, and you are compelled to say whatever’s on your mind.

Find a Therapist

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Being not always recognizable as a Jew, I get my share of anti-Semitic outbursts too.

I have to believe that the n-word, and its more gentile variants, is on the minds if not the tongues of older Georgians, younger Georgians, and millions of other Americans.

I’m not saying it’s the whole stew of Obama derangement, but it’s surely a condiment.

Whom Would You Tolerate As Your Neighbor? Global Edition

JacobSloan — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 20:01:59 +0000

The Globe and Mail has an intriguing survey of levels of tolerance in countries around the world. Specifically, people in various nations were polled on whether they would dislike having neighbors who were of a different race, a different religion, spoke another language, were gay, etc. In most categories, the United States falls into the middle region between very tolerant and intolerant locales, suggesting we’re not as open-minded and live-and-let-live as one would expect of a “nation of immigrants.”

Below, places where the most citizens say they would object to having a neighbor of another race:

NZ TV Host Resigns After Ridiculing Sheila Dikshit

majestic — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:36:10 +0000

Sheila Dikshit. Photo: Jackbandjack (CC)

No doubt he and his mates thought he was being really funny — right up until he got fired! From Reuters:

A New Zealand television host has quit after sparking a diplomatic row when he ridiculed the name of Sheila Dikshit, the chief minister of the Indian capital, New Delhi.

Television station TVNZ came under heavy criticism after its “Breakfast” show host Paul Henry mispronounced Dikshit, despite being told by the lead anchor that it is pronounced “Dixit.”

India summoned New Zealand’s high commissioner on Thursday to formally protest against what it said were “racial remarks” involving Dikshit who was asked last month to take charge of the floundering Commonwealth Games preparations.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said on Monday that Henry had resigned after several hundred complaints to the broadcaster regarding his Dikshit comments and questioning whether the nation’s Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand, who is of Indian descent, was “even a New Zealander.”…

[continues at Reuters]

You Might Be Racist and Not Even Know It

Good German — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:56:48 +0000

From ScienceDaily:

A new study from the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis looks at how much African Americans and whites favor or prefer their own racial group over the other, how much they identify with their own racial group, and how positively they feel about themselves.

The work, by Leslie Ashburn-Nardo, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in the School of Science at IUPUI, looked at both consciously controllable sentiments and gut feelings about social stigma and found a significant difference in both groups between what people say they feel and their less controllable “gut feelings.”

“The Importance of Implicit and Explicit Measures for Understanding Social Stigma” appears in the current (September 2010) issue of the Journal of Social Issues.

Many studies of stigma have been conducted since the end of World War II but until recently they have looked primarily at explicit (recently learned) attitudes and did not include implicit measures of deep seated feelings acquired earlier in life and not consciously accessible.

To explain the difference between explicit and implicit measures, Ashburn-Nardo uses an illustration from everyday life. “You may be asked how you feel and you respond, “I’m okay,” yet your body is showing signs of distress (e.g., high blood pressure or fast pulse rate). You’re not necessarily lying when you say ‘I’m okay.’ It’s more likely that you just may not realize how stress is affecting you. Explicit measures are much like your ‘I’m okay’ response to how you are whereas implicit measures are like the blood pressure cuff or stethoscope findings. It’s important that we don’t rely exclusively on the asking and neglect the less easy to access information if we hope to increase our understanding of stigma and be in a position to help people.”

In her study Ashburn-Nardo found that African Americans consciously reported that they favored their own race, identified with their own race and felt very good about themselves at a rate much higher than whites. However when tested on non-conscious feelings, that was not the case. African Americans favored their race less and less strongly identified with their own race than whites.

Read more here.

France Bans Burqas

majestic — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:21:08 +0000

I suppose it’s somewhat comforting to know that the United States is not the only country with xenophobic pastors and politicians who want to burn Korans, or in the case of France, ban women from wearing burqas (those head-veils) in public — but it’s not exactly going to make life any easier for the French, who have already seen a threat to the Eiffel Tower as a result!

Chic Neo-Nazis In Mongolia

JacobSloan — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:01:26 +0000

The Guardian reports on the emergence of a neo-Nazi movement in Mongolia. The groups hate the Chinese and post disturbing videos on YouTube of women having their heads shaved against their will. The Nazi identification is surprising, to put it lightly, considering Mongolia’s own history, but the followers have definitely taken fascist fashion to a new level:

A new strain of Nazism has found an unlikely home: Mongolia.

Once again, ultra-nationalists have emerged from an impoverished economy and turned upon outsiders. This time the main targets come from China, the rising power to the south.

Groups such as Tsagaan Khass, or White Swastika, portray themselves as patriots standing up for ordinary citizens in the face of foreign crime, rampant inequality, political indifference and corruption.

Dayar Mongol threatened to shave the heads of women who sleep with Chinese men. Three years ago, the leader of Blue Mongol was convicted of murdering his daughter’s boyfriend, reportedly because the young man had studied in China.

Though Tsagaan Khass leaders say they do not support violence, they are self-proclaimed Nazis. “Adolf Hitler was someone we respect. He taught us how to preserve national identity,” said the 41-year-old co-founder, who calls himself Big Brother.

“We don’t agree with his extremism and starting the second world war. We are against all those killings, but we support his ideology. We support nationalism rather than fascism.”

It is, by any standards, an extraordinary choice. Under Hitler, Soviet prisoners of war who appeared Mongolian were singled out for execution. More recently, far-right groups in Europe have attacked Mongolian migrants.

Disinformation » Racism

All I Saw On Australia Day Was Police Aggression; How About You?

A Black Man’s View of Schroedinger’s Rapist

Hacked Emails Show Closer Ties Between Ron Paul And Neo-Nazis, Anonymous Claims

Low Intelligence & Conservative Beliefs Linked To Prejudice & Racism

I Am A Racist. Deal With It.

Was 14-Year-Old Executed By South Carolina Innocent?

Photos Of Child Slaves, 1863

The Racism of the Reptilians

New Study Reveals Whites Feel More Discriminated Against Than Minorities

Is Anders Behring Breivik A Dominionist?

Evidence of Murdoch’s Newspapers Distorting News to Fuel Racism

How did Murdoch’s Newspapers demonise a Chinese Restaurant in Melbourne?

St Kilda Chinese restaurant food bill handed to man in ambulance

A CHINESE restaurant that slapped a customer with the bill as he was being loaded into an ambulance has defended its actions.

What information has being deliberately omitted by the Murdoch’s newspapers?

Conclusion

North Carolina To Compensate Thousands Of Forced-Sterilization Victims

For Women, Darker Skin Tone Means Longer Prison Sentences

Would You Buy A License Plate With A Confederate Flag On It?

Are The Smurfs Racist, Sexist Fascists?

Is Tony Kushner The New Helen Thomas?

Playwright Tony Kushner. Photos: Timothy Herrigan/Courtney Hamilton (CC) Jewish Playwright has honorary degree restored by City University of New York after it had been stripped because he was labeled too critical of Israel.

Filmmaker and News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org.

For more on his film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time and companion book The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big To Jail, visit plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.

Texas Teacher To 9th Grade Student: “I Bet You’re Grieving About Your Uncle (Bin Laden)”

Department Of Justice Declares New Orleans Police Force “A Threat To The Safety Of The Public”

Why Do White People Stink On Twitter?

CNN Attributes ‘Mainstreaming Of Conspiracy Theories’ To Rise In U.S. Hate Groups

Muslim Prejudice Becomes ‘Socially Acceptable’ in UK

Study: Confederate Flag Triggers Anti-Black Mindset

Shocking KKK Snowman Video

George Soros: ‘Why I Support Legal Marijuana’

Obama Derangement Syndrome: Yes It’s Racist

Related Links

Find a Therapist

Find Local:

Whom Would You Tolerate As Your Neighbor? Global Edition

NZ TV Host Resigns After Ridiculing Sheila Dikshit

You Might Be Racist and Not Even Know It

France Bans Burqas

Chic Neo-Nazis In Mongolia

Playwright Tony Kushner. Photos: Timothy Herrigan/Courtney Hamilton (CC)

Jewish Playwright has honorary degree restored by City University of New York after it had been stripped because he was labeled too critical of Israel.