November 15, 2015

Jake Rudock is THE MAN today!

(Whew!)

That is all.

November 13, 2015

Definitions of Racism

Really.

I have a BA in classics and was one class short of a double major in classics in English.

On my bookshelf, I can easily put my hands on a number of dictionaries, including a Latin-English dictionary, a Koine-Greek lexicon, an old Webster's Unabridged, Merriam Webster's Collegiate (10th), a dusty copy of H.L. Mencken's "The American Language" (Supplement One) and I believe that I may even have German-English and French-English dictionaries floating around somewhere in the house.

In the course of writing this post, I JUST looked up and noticed that I have a mini-law dictionary (Barron's and not Black's.

Never mind other reference materials about the English language and its evolution that I can't put my hands on at this moment.

And folks are going to come on here and think that I'm impressed that they can give the meaning of "racism" as it stands in the dictionary at this moment...as if I don't know that word meanings and language grammars don't evolve over a period of time.

And as if I don't know that if a term is used in a certain context enough, that definition will be recognized in any reliable and up to date dictionary in due course...you may want to reference recent controversies of the word "marriage."

But...no, I'm too lazy right now to do a small amount of research. So I'll link to a couple of items that I found online about the definition of the word "racism" and let y'all have at it...

Let's use Oxford:

[mass noun]

1Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior:

Let's use Wikipedia, which keeps rather up to date and is protean rather than fixed, with the many controversies surrounding the mere issue of the definition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

here's the link to an npr story

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/05/260006815/the-ugly-fascinating-history-of-the-word-racism

any other materials you might have would be welcomed.

Point being: Language is very rarely fixed and highly variable. Neither "racism" or many other words have a "fixed" definition. Preferences abound.

November 13, 2015

Dear (some) white folks: Thank you for proving my point and showing your a*s...I mean privilege

(Some of) y'all can post insensitive bullshit like this and this and it's OK.

But allow me to be the slightest bit insensitive and I get hidden...never mind all the other alert-stalking.

Thank you for proving the double standard.

November 13, 2015

White people (especially men...especially straight) seem to have lived in a bubble all their lives

and it seems as if the bubble is bursting.

You know, it's not as if POC and LGBT's never took offense at anything that was said and done...be they insults, epithets thrown, etc.

The problem always was that with white (men) in power, if any sort of complaint was made or action taken to protest anything that was said in utter disrespect, it could very well cost a POC or an LGBT their livelihood, their home, or even their life

So, yes, if a white man called his black housekeeper "gal," it wasn't as if that black housekeeper was going to say anything about it...in the old days.

Nowadays...yes, white people do have to be more respectful and considerate to "others" and frm the looks of several thread, y'all don't like it.

Granted, I do think that sometimes, the discussion of "microaggressions and "safe spaces" goes overboard on occasion, but it exists for a reason.

November 12, 2015

I've been kind of through with this for awhile

but this whole "Who was the real civil rights diva" of the 1960's BS (real answer: none of the above if Clinton and Sanders are choices) is stupid, is childish, and does little or nothing to convince me to support either candidate.

And, in fact, recycling all of this BS is turning me off even more to one candidate in particular.

EDIT: I am an undecided black voter. Given the date of my state's primary (March 15), I may not have all that much of a say in the process (at least as far as my vote is concerned) in any event.

November 5, 2015

Question submitted by Chitown Kev

October 31, 2015

Spamming Bernie to minority social media may not work, says University of California researcher

I ran across this doing research on something else and just HAD to share this little story in light of the bright ideas of some Bernie-folk

TheDailyCalifornian: Underrepresented-minority voters brought to polls by face time, not Facebook, study says by Maxwell Jenkins-Goetz

Researchers studying how to best bring underrepresented-minority voters to the polls have found that new technologies such as texting and social media are not as effective as more personal forms of outreach.

A study published earlier this month, led by professor Lisa Garcia Bedolla of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education, examined the attempts of nonpartisan organizations across the state to mobilize underrepresented-minority voters in the 2014 elections through traditional methods — such as door-to-door canvassing and phone calls — as well as new technologies, such as text messages and Facebook ads.

According to the study, social media was ineffective at bringing underrepresented minorities and youth to the polls, while texting — which has seen some success mobilizing those who already vote with greater frequency — was inconsistent. Instead, personal contact on the phone or at the door remained the most effective way to turn out California underrepresented-minority voters.

What is suggested instead?

But for Bedolla, the most important lesson of this study is one that will not likely be forgotten as technology continues to evolve. As she noted in her work’s conclusion, “this study underscores the importance of culturally competent and contextually appropriate outreach” in attempting to mobilize voters.

October 30, 2015

Hillary needs to stop with her bul**hit about DOMA

Chris f'en Geidner went into the Clinton Library and looked at the receipts.

How The Clinton White House Handled DOMA In 1996, In Their Own Words by Chris Geidner


WASHINGTON — Over the past few years, some Democrats — including the Clintons — have offered a new explanation for why they supported the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996.

The threat of a federal constitutional amendment, these Democrats have argued, motivated them to support DOMA — a law that defined marriage for federal government purposes as between one man and one woman and said states could refuse to recognize same-sex couples’ marriages from others states.

“We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary Congress,” Bill Clinton told an audience in 2009, “to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states.” Four former senators — including Tom Daschle, who made the claim in 2011 — raised the idea in a Supreme Court brief in 2013. Clinton later cited that brief when, in a Washington Post op-ed, he called for the law he signed to be struck down by the court. Hillary Clinton just last week called her husband’s decision to sign DOMA “a defensive action.”

There is no contemporaneous evidence, however, to support the claim that the Clinton White House considered a possible federal constitutional amendment to be a concern, based on a BuzzFeed News review of the thousands of documents released earlier this year by the Clinton Presidential Library about same-sex couples’ marriage rights and the Defense of Marriage Act. In the documents, which include correspondence from a wide array of White House and Justice Department officials, no one even hints that Bill Clinton’s thinking or actions regarding DOMA were animated by the threat of a federal constitutional amendment.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/how-the-clinton-white-house-handled-doma-in-1996-in-their-ow#.ttJbpB6ORe

Read it ALL. Quality research from one of the finest LGBT journalists out there.

Mind you, I am an uncommitted voter; Sanders, O'Malley, and Clinton all have issues as far as I am concerned.

But bullshit like these (ahem!) equivocations and spin of Hillary Clinton's do her no favors with me.

October 28, 2015

Please ask me what my "best interests" are.

I'm going to slightly modify a diary that I published over at DK ~ two hours ago to this board for discussion...here is a link to the diary as it stands at DK right now.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/28/1441631/-Please-ask-me-what-my-best-interests-are

Here is pretty much the same text retro-fitted to this board and things that have gone on over here at GDP.

There's a phrase that has explicitly and implicitly been making the rounds that irks the shit out of me.

It's the idea that if voter X votes for electoral candidate Y (at any level), that X is not voting "in their best interests."

This phrase is usually invoked when mention is made of poor and working-class whites that vote for Republican politicians and Republican policies.

Maybe voter X feels that the racist, homophobic, and women-hating policies of the GOP ARE in their best interests. You may not like that and I certainly don't like that but, for example, those 2008 Palin rallies and the highly charged rhetoric that GOP politicians and commentators spew on Fox News don't tell me anything different.

Maybe a prospective black voter's best interest is that the GOP nominee does not get elected President.

That doesn't mean that black voter Z thinks that the Clintons walk on water or even that Hillary Clinton will always enact policies that he or she likes or that Z has forgotten about the racism of Clinton's 2008 primary campaign.

It might mean that the most important factor for voter Z that the Democratic nominee is elected president in 2016.

Amid all the sturm und drang regarding Hillary Clinton's recent statements on the Defense of Marriage Act, the most odious implication of Secretary Clinton's statements is the idea that it was for the purpose of protecting the self-interests of LGBT's by saving the GOP (and lots of Democrats!) from writing discrimination into the Constitution.

With all due respect, Secretary Clinton, your husband's signing of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 may have been in your husband's best interests for reelection but I didn't feel then (or now) that it was in my best interests. Considering the lack of evidence that there was a movement to write LGB marriage discrimination into the federal constitution at that time, it seems a little deceitful to claim that your husband signed DOMA in the best interests of the LGBT community.

As a rule, we usually don't know what the "best interests" of another actually are. Maybe we should ask them instead of making assumptions.

While, yes, Secretary Clinton's comments w/r/t the Defense of Marriage Act was the latest irritant, some Bernie Sanders supporters (Senator Sanders himself...not so much) have used "low-information voters" in a pejorative manner that pretty seems to suggest the same thing (i.e. that "Stockholm Syndrome" thread or some comments directed at bravenak last night about how she wasn't acting in her own "best interests.&quot

This isn't simply about Clinton's DOMA comments. it's about how we talk to one another and about one another.

October 20, 2015

Since socialism is all the rage nowadays...

I thought that I would pull out this quote by George Orwell.

Granted, Orwell didn't get everything right in this installment of his famed "As I Please" column, he did realize some things that many American socialists have not (and still do not) recognize.

The coloured worker cannot be blamed for feeling no solidarity with his white comrades. The gap between their standard of living and his own is so vast that is makes any differences which may exist in the West see negligible. In Asiatic eyes the European class struggle is a sham. The Socialist movement has never gained a real foothold in Asia or Africa or even among the American Negroes: it is everywhere side-tracked by nationalism and race-hatred, Hence the spectacle of thoughtful Negroes getting ready to vote for Dewey, and Indian Congressman preferring their own capitalism to the British Labour Party. There is no solution until the living standards of the thousand million people in this world who are not "white" can be forced up to the same level as our own. But as this might mean temporarily lowering our own standards the subject is systematically avoided by Left and Right alike.

As I Please, Tribune December 10, 1943

Now Orwell doesn't get everything right in that passage, but in discussing the race/class nexus he remains more right than not right.