race Archives - Page 7 of 12 - Ramblin' with Roger

Major Taylor

On a library listserv a couple months ago, someone was looking for specific information about a French journalist and sports promoter by the name of Robert Coquelle. “Coquelle,” she wrote, “is known for having brought the African American cyclist, Major Taylor, to Europe to race.” Now I’m intrigued, not only by Coquelle, who interviewed the Wright Brothers early on, but mostly Who is Major Taylor?

Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor was a champion cyclist in a period of American history when cycling was very big. Major, who got the nickname from wearing a uniform in his early teens has a society named for him and has a pretty decent write-up in (shudder) Wikipedia. There’s a guy in Rochester who has put together an extensive timeline including his burial in a pauper’s grave in the early 1930s, despite making some serious money, arranged by Coquelle and others.

But it’s this story that most intrigued me. It suggests that Major Taylor was trying to be white, not as in passing for white – he was too dark for that – but rather hoping for a raceless society, recognizing that his blackness was a hindrance. Here’s a poem from this piece by Taylor:
As white as you are, and black as I be
Still it was nature’s Decree
For black as I be, and white as you are
I can be white though blacker than tar (Taylor 418) Apparently, he had hoped his “inner whiteness” would save him from Jim Crow segregation; it did not.

Whatever his racial ambivalence, he is now considered a African-American hero, and, I believe, rightly so. I encourage you to read more about him at the links I’ve provided, but also here and in Google books.

ROG

The Black Candidate

I was shocked – SHOCKED! – to discover that race has actually been integrated into the Democratic Presidential primary race. I kid. I’m only surprised it didn’t come up sooner.

This got me to thinking about the black people who ran for President in my recollection. In all cases except the first, I’ll limit the discussion to the major-party candidates.

1968: I couldn’t vote yet, but my mother and father asked me whether they should vote for Dick Gregory, who was running on the Freedom and Peace Party, or to vote for Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey. Being a pragmatist at the time, I suggested the latter, but I did recognize the attractiveness about the idea of voting for a black man for President.
1972: Or black woman. If Shirley Chisholm had been on the ballot in my district, surely I would have voted for her in the Democratic primary. But getting on the ballot in New York was/is complicated, requiring getting delegates in each of the Congressional districts and evidently, the Congresswoman failed to garner enough support in my upstate New York region.
1984: I was ready to vote for Jesse Jackson in the Democratic primary until I heard about the disparaging remarks he made about Jews and New York City. I guess I was holding a civil rights leader to a higher standard. I didn’t vote for him in 1988, either.
1996: Alan Keyes was running in the Republican primaries, and in New York, there is no crossover voting, as there is in Michigan, e.g. Still, I wouldn’t have voted for him anyway. He ran in 2000 as well, and I understand he’s running again, presumably as an independent.
2004: Both Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley-Braun were running in the Democratic primary. The preacher I didn’t particular trust, though occasionally at the debates, he made the most sense, and the former senator from Illinois never got any traction.

Which brings me to this year. Yeah, I still like Dennis Kucinich, but recognize that a snowball in Hades will get better odds than DK becoming POTUS. Anyway, he’s “transitioning out of” the presidential race. Edwards losing badly in his home state of South Carolina didn’t speak well of his chances, and now he’s done, too.

About a month ago, I took a test here. I’d taken other tests before, with varying results. What I found was that the pencil point touched the bottom left of Barack Obama’s picture.
“What does the pencil indicate?
The point of the pencil is the exact average of your answers. This is YOUR POSITION in the political landscape.”

Of course, Edwards, Clinton and Bill Richardson, who was still in the race at that point, were all in the area around my pencil point.
“What is the ellipse around the pencil?
The ellipse surrounding your position is the standard deviation. The standard deviation indicates to what extent your answers differ mutually. The standard deviation is the average deviation of the mean, one could say.”

I don’t want to vote for “the black candidate” or “the woman candidate”. But, I don’t NOT want to vote for them based on race or gender. The pencil mark across Obama’s face was almost like marking a ballot.

Shelby Steele was instructive. The author of A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win was on Bill Moyers a few weeks ago. He spoke almost as much about why Obama SHOULDN’T win as why he COULDN’T win – that all things for all people thing he does – but it had the opposite effect on me, making Obama a more attractive candidate.

I think that Osama/Obama spam mail has also solidified my intent. So, even though I have my reservations – that he’s still as beholden to corporate America as most of the others – I’ll vote for Barack Obama in the NYS primary on February 5.
***
From the NYS Board of Elections re: the February 5 (Presidential) and September 9 (unofficial date for other offices) New York State 2008 primaries.

In New York City and the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Erie, POLLS OPEN AT 6 AM – CLOSE AT 9 PM. In all other counties, POLLS OPEN AT 12 NOON and CLOSE AT 9 PM.

Here’s a list of candidates’ delegates.
***
My friend Dan sent it to me, and it’s also on Boing Boing, but has Hillary Clinton REALLY adopted an obscure Golden Earring song as one of her official campaign songs? If so, as Dan said, “Clearly, she has not seen the video.

ROG

Musing about February

February? It’s not even Christmas yet!

But February is Black History Month, and I’m always looking for a new angle to tackle the subject in my church . I think the topic’s still important, and that was before I skimmed the US Human Rights Network finding that “the US Report On Race Covers Up Reality of Discrimination in America”.

I’m interested in the New Demographic workshops. I’m intrigued by the titles. As important as I think the topic is, quite often, diversity training DOES suck. The core beliefs work for me. I’ll have to price these seminars. I’m also intrigued by a recent report which indicates that We’re ALL prejudiced; Now what? Some New Demographic article I can’t puts my hands on addresses this as well in a different light. To say one does not see color, usually in some hyperbolic terms such as “I don’t care if he’s black, white, red, yellow or purple polka-dots, because I don’t see color” is insulting. It’s insulting because virtually ALL of us see color, just as we see gender and age and hair color and height and weight. (So, Lefty, I WAS kidding when I “confused” you with the musician Chris Brown.)

So if you’ve come across a fresh way to talk about race, racism, racialism in America, please let me know.
***
I don’t know what “liberal” and “conservative” mean. Listening to the Writer’s Guild, I’d find the six big production companies to be conservative, trying to maintain the status quo. But I get regular e-mails from self-proclaimed conservative groups, and Human Events writes: “liberal media giant Time Warner lobbied the federal government’s taxpayer-subsidized mail-delivery monopoly, aka the United States Postal Service, to hit us with a postal hike that will cost us an extra $120,000 per year to deliver HUMAN EVENTS — a shocking sum we simply cannot afford to pay.

“Our subscribers and supporters are rightly outraged about liberal Time Warner’s machinations that can put smaller competitors such as HUMAN EVENTS out of business.” By liberal, the group means that…well, I’m not sure. Limiting access to a variety of forms of information – where exactly does that fit on the political spectrum?

ROG

Big Media Consolidation and Why You Should Hate It

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL|FCC Update|PBS November 16, 2007
On November 2, 2007, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin announced that the Commission would hold the sixth and final public hearing on media consolidation November 9, 2007 in Seattle, Washington. Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein blasted the Chairman’s decision to give the public only five business days notice before the hearing: “With such short notice, many people will be shut out … This is outrageous and not how important media policy should be made.”
The video’s eight and a half minutes, but if you care about American media, it’ll be worth your time.
Then you can watch this 23 minute piece from earlier in the month.
Read FCC (Democratic) commissioner Michael Copps vs. “Big Media”.
While the issue on the FCC is a Republican (3) vs. Democrat (2) issue, the fear of media consolidation runs from the Christian Coalition to MoveOn.

Contact the FCC before December 11. Then, because reaching out to the FCC probably won’t matter, contact your federal legislators.
***
Top 10 Christmas Gifts for Conservatives in 2007 from the Human Events Book Service

The usual suspects (Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck), a Reagan bio, Clarence Thomas’ autobiography. AND The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris:
“Are these the most ‘politically incorrect’ children’s stories ever written?
Perhaps. But they’re also among the most delightful and moral. Now they’re back – with the original artwork
Isn’t it just like liberals to diminish genuine racial and cultural diversity in the name of respecting it?”
That last line was almost enough for a spit take.
ROG

When Black Friday Comes…

Got this e-mail this week:

This is of utmost important to our communities.

Friday after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year, It is the day that most retailers make enough money put them in the Black for the whole year. We as Black People are consistently getting the bad end of the stick. Our children are being terrorized each and everyday by the police across the country. Nooses are being hung around everywhere. We are being disrespected in all places. Our men and children are being killed by police, stopped and searched, new prisons are being built for our children, there is big business in investing in private prisons and they must keep them filled up. We are terrorized on our jobs with constant threats of being written up and fired, losing our livelihood, our homes and just feeding and taking care of our children. We are treated in a dehumanizing manor on these jobs. So many of our people who have worked for the city for decades are being pushed out with trumped up charges, criminalized, degraded, insulted and threaten and some are even losing their pensions.

Brothers and Sisters we must act! It will visits your door, it is coming! We must stand together to say NO JUSTICE! NO PROFIT! This has got to be the new battle cry of our people. Our elders stood together during the Montgomery bus boycott in order to get some form of justice for our people. We must do it again!

If we stand together and sacrifice one day Friday November 23, 2007 and DO NOT SHOP! DON”T BUY ANYTHING ON THAT DAY! We will send out a message. Things will have to change. Let this country feel what it feels like to not have our dollars. If you buy something, buy from your own people. Please pass this message to everyone on you e-mail list. No Justice! No Profit! If you do not know what I am talking about remember:
Noose Epidemic
Racist Mob Attacks
14 yr old stripped and left in swamp by police
5 yr old hand cuffed
Va. woman kidnapped, stabbed, raped, made to eat vomit, blood, feces
35 students arrested for attending funeral of classmate, who had parents permission
6 month pregnant Principal stopped by police and made to lie face down on ground in front of her small children
Jena 6
Police Terrorism
Michael & Evelyn Warren attorneys assaulted by terrorist cops
Sonny Carson Avenue
Viola Plummer
Sean Bell
Katrina
Health Care Crisis
Land Grab of the Black Community
The list goes on and on and on

TAKE THE BLACK OUT OF BLACK FRIDAY
NO SHOPPING THE FRIDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING – NOV 23
ECONOMIC SANCTIONS ARE THE ANSWER TO RACISM!

My reaction: Eh. I don’t know how this particular boycott – and I’m in favor of strategic boycotts – has any effect on the issues mentioned.

Last year, I got e-mails that led me to Buy Nothing Day, A 24 hour moratorium on consumer spending – participate by not participating.

Here’s the real deal: I’m not buying anything today, not because of some political agenda – I happen to think, if anything, that people should be out supporting SMALL businesses today, and every day. I’m not shopping today because I HATE shopping today.

One year this century, I got talked into doing the 5 a.m. thing. At the end of the three hours, I was exhausted, not from getting up early, but from that crush of humanity. In fact, the only time I ever enjoyed shopping on Black Friday, it was at a department store in a little town called Delhi, NY, probably the size of two Wal-Mart departments; it was warm and friendly and not crowded at all.

Oh, I heard on NPR this morning two things. One was that the shopping season will be “soft:”, so that time for other bargains will likely pop up. The second is that one should avoid SUI, shopping under the influence; otherwise, you might bring home that dancing Santa you REALLY don’t need.
***
The lyrics to some Steely Dan song.

ROG