Currently, my wife and I are looking into adopting. Most likely, the child she and I would adopt would come from a foster situation. Going into it, I know that children in these situations are supposedly there because of abuse or neglect.

I also know that there are a lot of black kids in foster care. In my area of Ohio, Hamilton and Butler counties black adoption rates are so low that black kids are categorized as “special needs”.

I am, by no means, dismissive of the seriousness of the abuse and/or neglect of children. I believe that people that do this to a child should be punished and the child should be removed from the home. However, on the flip side, if you are going to remove the child from the home, you’d better be very sure of your rationale for doing so. More importantly, you’d better have an understanding of the people from whose homes you are removing a child because bad assumptions can have disastrous results.

Some foster agencies in the New England area are finding out just that.

Imagine that a social worker nearly removes your black child from your home because they mistake harmless “Mongolian spots” for bruises. This is just one example of how, because of assumptions made about poor minorities, children from such families disproprotionately end up in foster care.

Again, this is not to say that there aren’t clear cases of abuse or neglect but, a quote in this article clearly illustrates the point I am trying to convey:

“Once we are reported, we are more likely to be investigated. Once we are investigated, we are more likely to be placed in foster care. Once we are placed in foster care, we are less likely to be returned to our families,” said Sondra Jackson, executive director of Black Administrators in Child Welfare.

I am not trying to be too dramatic but, some of these examples remind me of what I read about regarding American slavery where a family can be taken apart at the discretion of the white person(s) in power.

Again, I repeat, if a child is being abused or neglected, that child needs to be in a safe, loving environment. But, it leaves one to wonder if the ignorance and prejudices of some in the field of social services is tearing poor families apart.

Popularity: 22% [?]

This is one of those, “why’d it have to by a black man?” moments. But, apparently, the “party of family values” attracts freaks of all hues.

In this episode, we go to the story of Ozwald Balfour. Balfour is somewhat of an anomaly — he’s a black Republican…in Utah. Now, you know that’s a short line. He owns a media relations company and founded the Utah Republican Black Assembly.

However, Balfour is also something else…a pure freak.

The freakiness that has him in the news these days actually stems from incidents culminating in his arrest in February 2005. The married (still married, believe it or not) Balfour was charged with “three second-degree felony counts of forcible sexual abuse and one count of attempted forcible sexual abuse, a third-degree felony.”

What did he do, you might ask. Read the following:

One woman testified Balfour came to her home in 2003 after she answered an ad about learning Web design. She said Balfour dropped his pants, began rubbing against her and tried to put his hands up her skirt.

Three other alleged victims claimed they were assaulted on Jan. 21, 2005, at Balfour’s studio, International Media Services, at 340 W. Whitney Ave. (1410 South), during purported interviews for acting jobs.

One woman testified Balfour tried to get his hands under her shirt after taking her to a dark room adjoining his office. Another woman said Balfour told her, “Show me how a love scene goes,” then kissed her neck and grabbed her breast. A third alleged victim said he unzipped her jacket and tried to lift her shirt.

Read More… »

Popularity: 32% [?]

I’ll admit it…I am more pessimistic today than I ever remember being.

Over the last several years, I have complained about what I see as a rolling-back of racial progress in the interest of right-wing political, economic and social agendas.  As a result, I find myself more and more concerned about the world my son is inheriting and whether or not he will find himself in a society in which outright racial hostility will be freely practiced with impunity.

I can’t speak for other folks about why they’re pessimistic, but a study by the Pew Research Center gives clues:

• By a ratio of 2 to 1, blacks say the values of poor and middle-class blacks have grown more different over the past decade (61 percent to 31 percent). Most blacks, 54 percent, say the values of blacks and whites have grown more alike during the same period.
• Most blacks believe racial discrimination is pervasive when applying for a job (67 percent), renting an apartment or buying a house (65 percent), eating at restaurants and shopping (50 percent) or applying to a college or university (43 percent). That’s compared with whites who, by majorities of 2-to-1 or more, said blacks rarely face bias in such situations.
• While saying prejudice is widespread, blacks were less likely to believe discrimination is the main reason they cannot get ahead. Fifty-three percent of blacks said they are mainly responsible for their situation, compared with 30 percent who blame it on racial discrimination. As recently as the mid-1990s, black opinion on this question tilted in the opposite direction.

Who knows, truly, why some of us are more pessimistic?  All I know is that America needs to pay attention to this before the pot boils over, yet again.

Popularity: 13% [?]

In a little catch-up from over the weekend, did you hear about the Louisiana state representative getting into hot water over a comment she made to the mother of a local NAACP official?

State Rep. Carla Blanchard Dartez (Democrat) had a unique way of ending a thank-you call to Hazel Boykin ( who is the mother local NAACP President Tyron Boykin) for her help in getting people out to the polls.

Dartez ending the conversation by telling Ms. Boykin, “Talk to you later, Buckwheat.”

Dartez publicly apologized and went on to cite her strong record with the African American community.

But, here’s my question — what would make you think it was okay to say such a thing to someone’s mother? Furthermore, how the hell does a reference to “Buckwheat” happen to come up when addressing a black person?

Dartez, in one sentence, might have let black voters know what she really thinks of black people. We need to be aware of the people we support politically to be sure that we are not working against our own interests by putting people in office who have issues with respecting black folks.

Popularity: 12% [?]

There’s an old saying in the world of news — “if it bleeds, it leads.” This could be the literal, as in shootings, murders, car wrecks, fires, etc. But, it could also be in regards to the stories that shock and titillate. This is why, when we deal with a story about racist rants, like those of Michael “Kramer” Richards or Duane “Dog” Chapman, or racial insults, like those of Don Imus and his on-air staff, they get plastered all over the screen. Racial animus and ratings go hand-in-hand.

DeNeen L. Brown and Darryl Fears of the Washington Post deal with the media’s preference to reduce real racial issues to mere entertainment. In a nutshell, they addresses the shamelessness with which the media presents issues of race and how, instead of providing context and education on a particular issue, they instead continue to stoke the fire for mere ratings.

Sadly, we see this in the manner in which entertainment sites like TMZ.com have come to be the first source of information when issues like this pop up, which given our fascination with entertainment over substance, is now a perfectly acceptable place to check for information.

In many ways, in regards to race relations in America, I say we are going backwards. In no small part, it is due to our fascination with the shock value of overt racism and our disinterest in really fixing this issue.

Popularity: 21% [?]

“Crank Dat Soda Boy”

Popularity: 24% [?]

Ever since the story of the Jena 6 hit the national spotlight, America has had to deal with the significance of racist symbols, particularly that of the noose. Since that time, we have seen story after story about nooses popping up in workplaces in apparent attempts to intimidate black people.

In the previous incarnation of this site, I posted many stories referencing articles about nooses turning up in workplaces. For the most part, because the stories involved working-class people, they didn’t gain much traction in the mainstream press. But, as I said previously, the happenings in Jena, Louisiana changed all that.

Now, in another part of Louisiana — New Orleans, to be exact — a supervisor has been suspended and the FBI has been called in to investigate yet another noose incident at a sewage station of the that city’s department of public works.

This came to light after an employee there, Terrence Lee, blew the whistle after his superiors did nothing about the racist symbols on display in the office of Lee’s supervisor, Bill Hartline. After being ignored, Lee went public with photos he took of the inside of his boss’s office. These photos show that, inside his office, Hartline had hung two nooses. Also, Hartline proudly displayed a bullwhip he owned, with the word’s “Bill’s Whipping Post” and, worse yet, a dartboard with a black man standing in the center and his groin as the bull’s eye.

This case has been referred to the department of Justice’s civil right division, which, sadly, is now no friend of black folks (please reference my previous posts about how Bush has gutted the civil right division). Therefore, I don’t expect too much to happen in this case…if we don’t say something.

Therefore, we need to raise enough hell that incidents like this can’t be ignored. Some say the noose is back. I say it never left but, we need to make it do so.

Popularity: 43% [?]

I don’t know much about Malcolm Nance. For all I know, we may be polar opposites on a lot of issues but, at least, we agree on one issue — torture doesn’t work.

Why should his opinion matter? Well, a quick read of this bio might cause one to pay attention. It reads, in part:

Malcolm W. Nance is a 25-year veteran of the US intelligence community’s Combating Terrorism program. He is a combat veteran who has served as an intelligence collections operator, cryptologist and interrogator. He has spent 17 years deploying on anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism intelligence operations in the Balkans, Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa in direct support to the Special Operations Command as well as assignments at the principle agencies of the Intelligence Community. In the Global War on Terrorism he served in Afghanistan where he conducted intelligence operations in Nangahar province (Jalalabad-Tora Bora) and 14 months in Iraq as a security director at the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. There he studied the Iraqi resistance and Al Qaeda’s involvement in the insurgency. He is a FOX News analyst on Al Qaeda and the Insurgency.

Additionally, he has authored five books on counter-terrorism, actually instructed aspiring Navy Seals on how to resist torture and served as Director of a D.C.-base counter-terrorism consultants group.

So, needless to say, the brother knows his stuff.

He testified today in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on torture and he, along with Colonel Steve Kleinman (who is also a veteran interrogator), are giving certain Republicans heartburn. TPMMucraker.com has been following this story as it develops and it seems that this has struck a serious blow against the right-wing spin on supporting torture. Nance stated that, as a result of what the U.S. is doing, we have virtually “guaranteed” that our own troops will be tortured. He went on to state that foreign nations now have “a legal standard to subject American soldiers to enhanced interrogations.”

Kleinman went on to deal another blow by saying that “enhanced interrogation techniques” (torture) do not work because they actually impair his ability to read body language and gestures, which help him determine if a suspect is lying, being cooperative or telling him the truth.

Up until now, Republicans have tried to silence torture critics by impugning their credibility on the issue but, when you have two experts, with long resumes and an impressive body of knowledge of and experience in counter-terrorism and interrogation, it wasn’t possible for Republicans to shoot holes in their testimony. Of course, it could also be a tinge of fear on their part about being aired out publicly by at least one of these experts.

Malcolm Nance warned would be “swiftboaters” on attacking him:

“You will see a spectacle on C-Span. I’ll impugn [my attacker's] credibility in public. Let’s see him give 20 years in the military, give up his family life, and then he can come talk. If not, shut the hell up.”

So, the hearing ending with expressions of respect for their perspective.

At least for today, Malcolm Nance is my hero.

Popularity: 29% [?]

I was watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night and he interviewed Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician. In that interview, Klein shared something that should be of grave concern to Americans that suspect that they are being spied on and don’t like the notion.

A while back, Bush had to admit that he was illegally using the NSA to spy on Americans. However, not being able to completely tell the truth, Bush told the American people that he was only spying on Americans who were contacting people internationally, with specific interest to contact to parties in the Middle East.

However, if what Klein is saying is true, this directly contradicts what President Bush is professing. According to Klein, the government, with AT&T’s cooperation, copied all internet data that flowed through AT&T’s network.

This interview followed a Capitol Hill press conference in which Klein was a participant. In his statements, Klein spoke of a secret rooms in AT&T’s San Francisco offices, as well as other AT&T locations, containing the equipment the NSA would need to copy off the data. While Klein was never allowed in the room, he was responsible for installing the “splitter” that would allow for the data to stream to two places simultaneously, one-half that was hard-wired directly into this secret room.

Consider some of what he alleges:

He said that as an AT&T technician overseeing Internet operations in San Francisco, he helped maintain optical splitters that diverted data en route to and from AT&T customers.

One day he found that the splitters were hard-wired into a secret room on the sixth floor.

Klein said only a management-level employee with NSA security clearance was allowed inside, but documents he obtained form AT&T showed that highly sophisticated data mining equipment was kept there.

Conversations he had with other technicians and the AT&T documents led Klein to believe there are 15 to 20 such sites nationwide, including in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego and Atlanta, he said.

Now, understand this. This meant that, without a warrant or even a reason to suspect those they were spying on, phone (voice-over-internet), internet, email, etc. traffic were being captured. Furthermore, since a good portion of traffic goes over AT&T’s network, you didn’t even have to be an AT&T customer to have your information captured.

All this comes on the heels of Congress considering whether or not to grant retroactive immunity to companies who participated in these illegal measures.

I say no to immunity and let the chips fall where they may for this people who violated the law and the Constitution to spy on Americans.

Popularity: 17% [?]

If a law called the “Clear Skies Act” actually results in more pollution and a Department of Homeland Security actually does little to protect America, it’s probably not a stretch to see the United States Commission on Civil Rights actually undermining civil rights.

In the land of Bush, everything is for sale and every function of government must be done based on partisan ideology instead of being based on competency and on what the mission of a particular entity is supposed to be.

This is why we now see the Civil Rights Commission actually rolling back the gains minorities have made under a system that was supposed to insure against their rights being trampled.

How did this happen? Bush violated the spirit of the charter of the Commission. The Commission’s panel was supposed to have no more than 4 members, of its 8-member panel, be of one political party. The panel already had 4 Republicans. So, he appointed another 2 Republicans who, upon receiving their appointments, re-registered as Independents, skirting the charter.

So, what did this mean? Well, since this majority has been in place, the following have taken place:

Before the changes, the agency had planned to evaluate a White House budget request for civil rights enforcement, the adequacy of college financial aid for minorities, and whether the US Census Bureau undercounts minorities, keeping nonwhite areas from their fair share of political apportionment and spending. After the appointments, the commission canceled the projects.

Instead, the commission has put out a series of reports concluding that there is little educational benefit to integrating elementary and secondary schools, calling for closer scrutiny of programs that help minorities gain admission to top law schools, and urging the government to look for ways to replace policies that help minority-owned businesses win contracts with race-neutral alternatives.

The conservative bloc has also pushed through retroactive term limits for several of its state advisory committees. As a result, some longtime traditional civil rights activists have had to leave the advisory panels, and the commission replaced several of them with conservative activists.

The commission has also stopped issuing subpoenas and going on the road to hold lengthy fact-finding hearings, as it previously did about once a year. The commission had three planned hearings in the works when the conservative bloc took over and canceled them. Instead, the panel has held only shorter briefings, all but one of which was in Washington, from invited specialists.

What this means is that civil rights enforcement has been totally gutted, much to the delight of the more racist elements of the Republican party.

In Bush-speak, this would be called “leveling the playing field”. However, in this case, leveling does not mean making things even. In this case, leveling would be its more destructive meaning, as in leveling a long-standing structure that brought some level of assurance to minority Americans that the government had their best interests in mind, as well.

So, as the t-shirt says, “Kanye was right.”

Popularity: 24% [?]