Forty two years after his assassination, Martin Luther King’s dream(s) has not been fully realized. Dr. King would have turned 81 last Friday, had he not met an untimely death, courtesy of assassin James Earl Ray.
Despite solid civil rights strides over the last few decades, marching towards Dr. King’s dream, a section of Republican America is still as fucked up as they were in 1900s. Although systematically dwindling in numbers, it is unfortunate to note that quite a fairly large chunk of “conservative savages” are still roaming this land, spitting venom like trapped cobra’s.
So, where’s the racial progress Obama promised? Polls suggest that one year into the Obama presidency, the country hasn’t made much progress when it comes to views on race.
I concur ….too may tea-bagging goons still living in America.
As I have stated above, as long as race-baiting baboons in the mode of Palin, Beck, Limbaugh ….Fox News, similar Republican Scum, and despicable black apologists like Michael Steele still exist, race relations in America will remain strained for a long time to come.
“A Texas woman was given a ticket for being a non-english speaking driver, but after she got a lawyer, she found out there was no such law for ordinary drivers — only commercial truck drivers have to speak English.
Dallas police Chief David Kunkle said he was surprised and stunned when he learned his men had written such a ticket. Records show officers have written 38 similar tickets over the last three years.” — [ READ MORE ]
If Police Chief David Kunkle was unaware that his police officers have for years been issuing tickets to drivers for being unable to speak English, his incompetence knows no bounds.
The mayor of Dallas should immediately fire Chief Kunkle, he needs to empathically show that the city of Dallas doesn’t tolerate racial discrimination.
I would be surprised but not shocked to find out that one Dallas cop was an unabashed racist, but the revelation that several police officers have been issuing these illegal tickets boggles the imagination. There is a systemic problem of racism in the Dallas police department, and it must be seriously dealt with.
The victim Ernestina Mondragon will doubtless sue, and be awarded a huge sum of money. But there must be justice for all Hispanics and other minorities in Dallas. There can be no justice until Chief Kunkle and his racist officers are kicked to the curb, and are replaced by peace officers who are color blind
By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez Tom Horne to Ethnic Studies: Drop Dead!
TUCSON — Arizona is the New South and the new South Africa. It is the home of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, where racial profiling is official policy. Now, in another form of profiling, State Superintendent of Schools Tom Horne wants to eliminate ethnic studies.
At his behest and by a 4-3 Senate panel vote, an amendment to education bill S.B. 1069 was passed that emphasizes the teaching of individualism at the expense of ethnic studies. The bill would permit the department of education to withhold 10 percent of state monies if ethnic studies continue to exist. The full legislature is expected to pass it within several weeks, and Republican Gov. Jan Brewer is expected to sign it into law.
Horne has spent two-and-a-half years pushing this bill, and it will effectively send Arizona school children into the dark ages. Overriding the concept of local control, Horne wants Arizona teachers to impose one view of America upon the state’s children.
His objective, according a press release from his office, is “to prohibit ethnic studies in Arizona public schools.” But his real objective appears to be ensuring that only the nation’s sacrosanct national narrative is taught in schools.
This narrative is presumably the nation’s greatest asset. It is a compilation of foundational myths and legends that defines the United States as the New Promised Land — a nation chosen by God to essentially create heaven on earth. Its secular version is to militarily spread freedom, democracy and capitalism to the rest of the world.
Horne joins the likes of Newt Gingrich, Tom Tancredo, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs and all their talk-show brethren, in both promoting scapegoat politics and in corrupting the English language.
In Horne’s America, genocide, slavery, land theft, segregation, discrimination, extralegal brutality and racial supremacy are taught as footnotes at best, or disappeared altogether. In his America, exclusion is inclusion and ignorance is bliss. In attempting to impose his philosophy, he fancies himself as carrying on the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. He oxymoronically accuses ethnic studies educators of promoting racism and separatism.
The legislation targets ethnic studies, but exempts “classes or courses for Native American pupils that are required to comply with federal law.” Also exempted are classes for English learners. Horne’s actual target is Raza Studies at Tucson Unified School district. In his crusade, he accuses Raza Studies of promoting “ethnic chauvinism” and of being a “dysfunctional program.”
Nicollete Gomez, who was in both Native American and Raza Studies at Tucson High School, says, “The outsiders who say that we are ‘unAmerican’ and ‘dysfunctional’ obviously do not sit in these classes to experience intellectual students ready for college material.”
Horne is seemingly unaware that students from Raza Studies, who are taught about their indigenous cultures, consistently outperform students from all backgrounds at TUSD. They also have a very high college-going rate. Research by Dr. Augustine Romero, former director of Raza Studies, confirms this phenomenal success.
Facts are of no concern to Horne. Only the nation’s foundational myths/legends are important. This includes, as he told the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation in 2007, the Greco-Roman roots of western civilization.
Lecia J. Brooks, director of the Civil Rights Memorial Center and Teaching Tolerance at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the nation’s premier center for tracking hate crime, says, “The teaching of so-called ‘individualism’ is but another example of Western European cultural dominance. This is madness. Educators everywhere should declare in one voice: ‘Culturally relevant pedagogy actually improves instruction for all students?that is, if they’re allowed access to it.’”
Horne isn’t promoting sound educational policy which encourages critical thinking; he’s selling hyper-U.S. nationalism or nationalized mind control.
As University of Arizona first-year student Pricila Rodriguez, a Raza Studies alum from Tucson High, also reminds us, “People that insist that taxpayer money should not be used for ethnic studies forget that we are taxpayers, too.”
In protest, supporters in Tucson of ethnic studies will stage a two-day march to Phoenix on June 28 and 29. It’s about 90 miles through desert heat. But it’s one way to put the heat on Tom Horne.
This video exposes the relationship between Joe Arpaio and Neo-Nazis
Americans can now clearly see that the politics of Gingrich and Tancredo are the same as that of Limbaugh, Liddy, Beck, Buchanan and Dobbs. These pundits who daily rant against “illegal aliens,” and who daily clamor on the need to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border, are quoted as credible sources by the mainstream press. They are generally the same ones who promote the politics of fear and hate, who believe in the use of torture, and who also believe that the United States is endowed with the God-given right to conduct permanent war against the rest of the world.
By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez The president’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court has come during a most awkward time in the history of U.S. journalism, which many analysts claim is in serious decline, if not on life support.
What her nomination clearly shows us is that what this nation needs is more incisive journalism, not less. Yet, to be sure, the rise of right-wing media, which include FOX News and virtually all the known right-wing radio talk show hosts, is the antithesis of journalism.
Their coverage of the Sotomayor nomination points to the need for honest debate, not simply on the issues of race, but on the right wing’s aversion to truth. It also points to the right wing’s pompous beliefs, on every topic, including affirmative action, that their positions are “American.”
Extremist politicos Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo, both of whom have zero credibility but are stars of right-wing media, have led the charge that Sotomayor is a racist. They have been joined by the usual wingnuts: Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, to name a few. Even Juan Williams of NPR, has parroted the claim that Sotomayor’s (out-of-context) statements are racist. The fact that the nation’s discussion centers on whether she is a racist or not — or that she is an “affirmative action” pick (Buchanan) — points to both the power of the wingnuts and also to the virtual impotence, or complicity, of mainstream media.
Historically, mainstream journalists have been taught that critical analysis constitutes injecting subjectivity into their reporting.
All this brouhaha is based on the Sotomayor statement that the experiences of a Latina might allow her to make better judgment in court than a white male. Her detractors say that if a white male had made similar statements he would have been automatically disqualified.
They conveniently ignore the fact that the Supreme Court has been virtually all-white for most of the nation’s history. It also ignores the fact that throughout U.S. history, white males have generally not been subjected to apartheid discrimination and segregation, let alone extermination, slavery, forced removals, extra-legal brutality and false imprisonment.
The charges against Sotomayor have a familiar ring. Staunch segregationists used to charge that Martin Luther King, Jr. was both un-American and a racist. President Ronald Reagan institutionalized that kind of thinking in defense of South Africa’s apartheid regime. For him, Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, while the outlaw South African regime constituted a “democratic ally.”
Such thinking was also “normalized” during the affirmative action debate; those who attempted to dismantle the vestiges of racial discrimination were deemed “racists” or “reverse racists,” or communists by those working to maintain it (A reverse racist is precisely what Limbaugh labeled both Sotomayor and President Obama).
Those doing this labeling have well understood the nation’s changing political climate; they could no longer campaign as the defenders of white racial supremacy. Instead, they generally cloaked their views under the conservative-Republican mantle and wrapped themselves in the American flag.
They also knew that to win a debate required further subverting the nation’s political language. These same “patriots” began to reinterpret MLK Jr.’s quote about the dream of a color-blind society.
In public, they gladly accepted the “dream” without accepting the societal responsibility of dismantling and remedying centuries of institutional racism and discrimination in this country.
While the majority of Americans can see through the false arguments and the “clever” subversion of the political language by these so-called patriots, this does not hold true for the mainstream media.
As we are seeing with Sotomayor, all it takes is a handful of “extremists” to control and shape the media debate.
Perhaps the only upside is that Americans can now clearly see that the politics of Gingrich and Tancredo are the same as that of Limbaugh, Liddy, Beck, Buchanan and Dobbs. These pundits who daily rant against “illegal aliens,” and who daily clamor on the need to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border, are quoted as credible sources by the mainstream press. They are generally the same ones who promote the politics of fear and hate, who believe in the use of torture, and who also believe that the United States is endowed with the God-given right to conduct permanent war against the rest of the world.
Truthfully, who can discern a difference between these right-wing fanatics and the positions of mainline conservatives within the Republican Party?
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• Rodriguez can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com or PO BOX 85476 – Tucson, AZ 85754
NATIVISTPatrick Buchanan has “no problem” with legacy systems, says “working class whites” are “the ones discriminated most today“. He declares white firefighters victims of “Jim Crow liberalism,” admits he “may have” opposed 1964 civil rights act
