As concern grows over social media, U.S.Here is more info in regards to eVDEn EvE naKliYat look at the page. lawsuits stack up * Surge in mental health problems worst among girls * Lawyers zone in on algorithm designs, whistleblower leaks * Others see platforms as scapegoat for society’s woes...
Racism
In 2018, while he was running for Governor of Florida, DeSantis faced controversy over his use of the phrase “monkey this up” in reference to his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, who is Black. This led to accusations of racism and criticism from civil rights groups. In 2019, DeSantis signed a...
Brittney Griner and her wife Cherelle are an American love story. Let us try a thought experiment. Instead of being a 6’9” basketball player and black lesbian, Brittney Griner is a five-foot-two (eyes of blue) white evangelical named Buffy with a business that refuses to serve the LBGTQ+ community. Further,...
Yet another mass shooting happened overnight near my sister’s home in Virginia. After the body counts, the gnashing of teeth, and the solemn looks of talking heads interviewing the survivors and grieving family members, the right-wingers will step in and victim blame. The Alex Jones(s), Marjorie Taylor Greene(s), and Lauren...
I often use a three-word idiom to explain human behavior; accident, coincidence, and trend. The current anti-Semitic controversy surrounding the demonstrations of ignorance by NBA star Kyrie Irving makes my point. His accidents of language have stopped being funny, are not a coincidence, and have become a trend. In 2017...
Beetle-Juice Three Times. Thank Jeebus that cheesehead is not banned from primary and secondary schools in Wisconsin. Because nothing says “Freedom” and “Liberty” like being the language police. If you talk about “spirit murdering” and “action civics” they might even exist. Better to be “un-woke”, because you might develop an “unconscious-bias”. Darn...
With roughly a third of Americans who identify themselves as Republicans, the party bombards us with the term American People at every utterance. With almost 60% of the country fully vaccinated, Republicans say the American People have doubts. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell, in response to questions about the insurrection, said the...
I share an important date with former basketball coach the late Don Haskins, March 14, our birthday. Haskins led the then Texas Western Basketball team to the 1966 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball championship against the vaunted and famed Kentucky Wildcats, led by legendary coach Adolph Rupp. Coach Rupp...
Paraphrasing Pvt. Sam Watkins, 1st Tennessee, Co. H. ‘America has no north, no south, no east, no west,’ those words could apply to the pandemic. Watkins was lamenting brother against brother killing each other in the American Civil War. All of America is watching the unvaccinated kill each other and...
I tried sitting through FOX News’ commentary/critique yesterday, following Joe Biden’s report on the status of the nation, and in particular the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. After a few minutes, and when one of the conservative panelists had the temerity and amnesia to call Joe Biden a liar, I...
When I was a boy and strayed way, way past the rules of behavior set by my great-grandmother, she would say, “ enough is enough, and too much (sic) stinks.” Well, we reached that point in Afghanistan on Sunday. From the time then-National Security Director Zbigniew Brzezinski convinced then-President Carter,...
From that moment in November of 1969, when former President Richard Nixon asked for a “silent majority” to support his ‘Vietnamization’ effort, utilizing the peace with honor strategy; America’s shotgun wedding to the GOP marriage of silent loyalty and moral obedience was consummated. Between the Nixon and Reagan administrations, Republicans...
Women and people of color had a unique experience that ended yesterday in Tokyo, Japan. The controversial Summer Olympics closed with America at the top of the medal leader board despite some members of the team having barbs and sticks hurled at them from the right-wing. Lots of conservatives and...
Democrats, since the time of Franklin Roosevelt, have fought the accusation of wanting a Nanny State; equal access to housing, healthcare, fair wages, and education have been guiding tenets of the Democrats since the New Deal, the War on Poverty through the Covid Recovery Act—not always successful—but good principles, nonetheless....
Layaway, on-time, and paying-something-down-on-it have been very familiar phrases in black, brown, and poor neighborhoods for generations; credit was for the people who did not need it. Financial freedom because of race, religion, and status was prohibitive for countless numbers of Americans and immigrants. The constant pressure of having to...
Burned out at the end of the Joy-Ann Reid hour on MSNBC, I am ready for mindless tv. By that time, my intellectual palette is dulled by the talk of the continuous meal foisted on me of tasteless conservative ambrosia. A nice, seared steak of the NBA playoffs or a good...
In a 5-4 Supreme Court decision supported by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice William Brennan wrote in part: [Gregory Lee] “Johnson was convicted for engaging in expressive conduct. The State’s interest in preventing breaches of the peace does not support his conviction because Johnson’s conduct did not threaten to disturb...
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words, terrorism? 9/11? ISIS? The Taliban? While these examples are certainly just, they don’t always represent terrorism in its entirety. Dan Brown said, “History is always written by the winners”. Stereotypes and generalizations often cause the public...
Florida bans its schools from teaching critical race theory On Thursday, Florida’s State Board of Education unanimously voted in favor of an amendment banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools throughout the state. The theory, according to PolitiFact, is a collection of ideas about systemic bias and privilege...
Living with the nagging uncertainty of being racially discriminated against and worst not being believed shatters the psyche. The most devastating effects are that people of color start to accept their treatment as their unchangeable fate. Asking white friends to hail a cab at night, telling one’s kids to keep...
If it were a perfect world, I would like to think that the most recent attacks on young black millionaires are just a coincidence. In a perfect world, the success of blacks would be applauded as a plus for the country. Unfortunately, American history is littered with incidents of racial...
These are days fraught with political battles over cultural histories abjuring complexity. Today it’s The Wall Street Journal and the reactionary path to critical race theory, the latest bit of Trumpist ignorance now projected into personnel policies and the larger revisionist history project that would deny the historical relevance of slavery...
Oklahoma’s right-wing politicians would like to erase history because that’s what they do, whether it’s the omission of facts or rewriting them to favor those in power. Historical guilt and its associated media effects cooties can’t be part of public school curricula. H.B. 1775 implies that the past prior to 1776...
Repost: Fordham Political Review. No one issue in politics today causes greater polarization than the issue of abortion. I remember sitting down with my mother in high school, nerves fluttering in my stomach as I asked her, “What do you think about abortion?” I was thinking about the fact that...
Voter rights legislation is winding its way through Congress with the foregone conclusion that Senate Republicans will scuttle it. Equitable voting rights legislation for blacks in America has been a 400-year exercise in hypocrisy. One man, one vote has been turned on its head so often, Ringling Bros. should have...
Some historical terms should not be used lightly. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used the term Apartheid to describe the Israel/Palestine reality, this shocked some people. I hate the word Apartheid as it brings back to too many precise historical racial connotations with respect to South Africa. The term segregation holds similar memories...
Most things in America are solved by either common sense, solemnity, or time. The one exception is race. Historically both the Democratic and Republican party has used race as a means of power and control. Although the Federalist Party is long dead, the current Republicans are fighting, legislating, and restoring...
Have you ever asked yourself, why are so many GOP political theories race and gender-based? The latest is that voter ballots in Arizona were smuggled in from China. The GOP has decided the best way to expose this absurd idea is to exploit a silly stereotype and check the ballots...
If you take a moment and listen to the so-called moderate wing of the Republican party, they are as extreme as the rest. This weekend Utah Senator Mitt Romney was roundly booed by members of his party at the Utah GOP convention. The crime that elicited the verbal censure from...
A new book suggests now the necessity of reexamining the historical materialist project of Walter Benjamin recognizing those moments of historical contact as acts of recognizing the constructed historical object. “Historicism tends to be hermeneutic because it values cautious, rigorous, and contextualized interpretation of information; or relativist, because it rejects notions of universal, fundamental...
I watched the celebration of former police officer Derek Michael Chauvin’s conviction of three various counts of murder yesterday, and my feelings were mixed. No, no, I felt no sorrow for the man who not only took George Floyd’s life away but broke the hearts of countless Americans, both black...
Derek Chauvin has been found guilty on all three counts of murdering George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds, knowing that people were filming him doing so, looking at those cameras with his hands in his pockets and no expression on his face. “Depraved...
“Today, a jury did the right thing. But true justice requires much more.“ x Opinion | Caught on camera Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is found guilty of all three counts of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd.https://t.co/Wi66rRx6iO pic.twitter.com/alUPrS7W4u— Ann Telnaes (@AnnTelnaes) April 20, 2021 The...
Apparently the spree killer in Indianapolis was also a “Brony”, a follower of My Little Pony as reported by the Wall Street Journal. We are in our pandemic (l)anguish, even more confused by a sad shape for online culture. Not unlike the infantile imagery used by Boogaloo Boys, racism and sexism filter into...
Minnesota law enforcement, at its based level exhibits some intersectional issues often represented in fictional culture products like Fargo. Their police forces haven’t learned very much since the death of George Floyd. So many examples of bad faith below:
The Trump administration—the malignant milieu of racism, bad ideas, and bad, racist ideas—had, for the past two-plus years, limited the use of consent decrees in holding police departments accountable for abusive (read: racist) behavior. Now, Attorney General Merrick Garland is reversing that Trump-era policy.
Finally! A voice for white people in the United States! I’ve felt like a second-class citizen ever since … okay, I’ve never felt that way. Nevertheless, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, who might be able to cobble together a fully functioning brain between them if it doesn’t have to be...
I’m not sure if I liked Republicans better when they were secretly racist or if it’s better now that they’ve decided to wear their racism on their sleeves. Seriously, the way Tucker Carlson is going lately, I expect him to show up on the air in a Waffen SS uniform any...
The Black Codes of the late 1800s are making a comeback in America. These ordinances were meant to control the free movement of people of color using minor infractions as the reasoning, which was a literal attempt to keep black people in their place. The beginnings of policing in America...
White America has been made aware there is a conversation black parents have been compelled to have with their children, literally, for centuries. The conversation, as it were, was thought to be a necessary evil to keep our children alive. Survival was always thought to be based on complying and...
My father helped run a construction company when I was a kid, and he was pretty hands-on with his work. While he was perfectly at home in the office drawing up plans (or whatever construction guys do; I never had much interest in his profession, though I know he was...