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    Wednesday, July 17
    · Is Tim Wise Stamping the Anti-Racist Ghetto Passes at "Teach For America"
    Monday, July 15
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    Racism Watch: Made Man in a Blue Vest: Deray McKesson
    USA
    Made Man in a Blue Vest: Deray McKesson Is Debutante At Aspen One-Percenters Coming Out Party

    By Bruce A. Dixon
    July 11, 2016 - blackagendareport.com


    It's been a good spring and summer so far for Teach For America alum Deray McKesson. After raising a ton of out of town money the dude in the blue vest finished sixth in the Baltimore mayoral election with a mere 2% of the vote. He was promptly awarded a six figure yearly salary as “interim chief of human capital,” the current term of art for personnel department directors. And last weekend, he was one of the headliners at the annual Aspen Ideas Festival.

    Made Man in a Blue Vest: Deray McKesson
    Made Man in a Blue Vest: Deray McKesson

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    Racism Watch: Muhammad Ali: My Name, Not Yours
    Muhammad Ali
    By Abby Zimet
    June 06, 2016 - commondreams.org


    A nod to the great Muhammad Ali, dead at 74, a brave black man at a difficult time who "just wanted to be free," who never knew his place and refused to be afraid when others tried to put him in it, who insisted to the world of power that first honored and then rejected him that "I don't have to be what you want me to be," who at the height of his fame and riches declared "Goddamn the White Man's money" in the name of principle, who refused to join a racist unjust war,  connected the dots of white oppression around the world and proclaimed, "The real enemy of my people is here."

    Though so many remember him for unprecedented grit and grace in the boxing ring, Ali himself chose again and again to measure his own worth in the world beyond his bloody sport. “Boxing is nothing, just satisfying to some bloodthirsty people," he said near the end of his reign. "I’m no longer a Cassius Clay, a Negro from Kentucky. I belong to the world, the black world." The final irony of Ali's political heroism, notes Dave Zirin, is that he was unequivocally hailed as a national icon only after he lost his fearless voice.

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    Racism Watch: Freedom Rider: Ahmed Mohamed and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki
    USA
    By Margaret Kimberley
    September 27, 2015 - blackagendareport.com


    “If Syrians and Libyans can have their countries torn asunder, then a precocious teenager can be hauled off by the police.”

    “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.”

    Those words came from president Obama’s twitter account after a 14-year old Texan named Ahmed Mohamed became world famous. The high school student brought his homemade clock to school but was later escorted out in handcuffs after a teacher reported that he had a bomb. Racism, Islamophobia, draconian “zero tolerance” policies, and base ignorance all played a role in the disgraceful turn of events.

    Ahmed Mohamed

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    Racism Watch: Skip Gates and Sony Exposed by Wikileaks
    Slavery
    By Margaret Kimberley
    April 29, 2015 - blackagendareport.com


    “Gates is celebrated as a role model for black success when his fame and wealth derive from currying favor with white people and demeaning black people.”

    Henry Louis 'Skip' Gates and Ben Affleck
    Henry Louis 'Skip' Gates and Ben Affleck

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    Racism Watch: Deadly Eye Contact: Freddie Gray and the Baltimore Police
    Baltimore Potests
    By RON JACOBS
    April 28, 2015 - counterpunch.org


    Like many other folks, I’ve been following the protests in Baltimore around the manslaughter of the young Black Baltimore man who “died in police custody” on April 19, 2015. Every day the protests demanding the arrest of the officers involved grow larger. Major League Baseball fans are concerned about missing their games as organizers talk about shutting Baltimore down. The suburbs in between Baltimore and its southern neighbor Washington, DC adjust their attention span to the news about this incident primarily according to the darkness of their skin. In other words, the broken spine of Freddie Gray has much more meaning to the dark-skinned suburbanites than it does to most other suburban dwellers.

    Baltimore is not a pretty town. Sure, they’ve prettied up the Inner Harbor in a very modern capitalist manner; in other words, restaurants, shopping malls and museums. These areas are primarily populated with tourists, office workers and sports fans. Outside of this zone is where the desperation of neoliberal capitalism’s castoffs is palpable. It is nothing the authorities and their supporters want to get riled up. Just like in other communities left behind by neoliberal capitalism, the means to repress and suppress the anger and desperation felt by the residents of West Baltimore (where Freddie Gray was killed) include the illegal drug business, minimum wage jobs and plain old police brutality. This vicious brew of oppression is present in other parts of Baltimore, too, but the Western District is where the repression is currently the starkest.

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    Racism Watch: The "Why": The Spectacular Media Failure on Charlie Hebdo
    France
    By Shamus Cooke
    January 15, 2015 - counterpunch.org


    A core tenet of journalism is answering the question “why.” It’s the media’s duty to explain “why” an event happened so that readers will actually understand what they’re reading. Leave out the “why” and then assumptions and stereotypes fill in the blank, always readily supplied by politicians whose ridiculous answers are left unquestioned by the corporate media.

    Because the real “why” was unexplained in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, an obviously false culprit was created, leading to a moronic national discussion in the U.S. media about whether Islam was “inherently” violent.

    For the media to even pose this question either betrays a blinding ignorance about the Middle East and Islam, or a conscious willingness to manipulate public sentiment by only interviewing so-called experts who believe such nonsense.

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    Racism Watch: L’affaire Charlie Hebdo and Western Colonialism
    France
    The Cartoons Outlawed in France

    By John Walsh
    January 15, 2015 - counterpunch.org


    To understand the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week, we need only invert George W. Bush’s 2005 mantra*, thus: “They will continue to attack us over here so long as we slaughter them by the millions over there.”

    In a word, this is one more instance of blowback, as Ron Paul tells us in his perceptive essay, “Lessons From Paris.” Among other things Paul points out: “The two Paris shooters had reportedly spent the summer in Syria fighting with the rebels seeking to overthrow Syrian President Assad. …But France and the United States have spent nearly four years training and equipping foreign fighters to infiltrate Syria and overthrow Assad! In other words, when it comes to Syria, the two Paris killers were on ‘our’ side. They may have even used French or US weapons while fighting in Syria.”

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    Racism Watch: Waistband-Reaching Syndrome Could Get You Killed
    Ferguson Police
    The Bizarre Compulsion of Black Men to “Reach for their Waistbands”

    By John Eskow
    November 30, 2014 - counterpunch.org


    If police accounts are to be believed, there is a bizarre urge among young, unarmed black men to provoke their own murder by “reaching for their waistbands” when cops are aiming service revolvers at them.

    Just this week we heard Officer Darren Wilson claim that one of the reasons he killed Michael Brown was that the young man “reached for his waistband,” and–in what I guess was just an incredibly weird coincidence–we heard Cleveland police claim they killed a 12-year-old kid with a toy gun because he also “reached for his waistband.”

    But this odd compulsion is not a new one. In 2011, fully half of all the young black men shot by LA cops were cut down because–again, if police accounts are to be believed–they too were “reaching for their waistbands.” The epidemic also spread to Houston, where multiple police accounts cite the same excuse. Oscar Grant, the young man killed by Oakland cops on a subway platform–and the subject of the movie “Fruitvale Station”–was shot for the exact same reason.

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    Racism Watch: Ferguson Reexamined
    Ferguson Police
    By Paul Craig Roberts
    November 30, 2014 - paulcraigroberts.org


    Few, if any, of the correct questions were asked in the grand jury hearing to decide whether policeman Darren Wilson would be indicted for killing Michael Brown.

    The most important unexamined question is whether police are trained to use force immediately as a first resort before they assess a situation or determine if they are at the correct address. Are the police trained that the lives of police officers are so much more valuable than the lives of possible suspects, or a houseful of people into whose residence a heavily armed SWAT team enters, that police officers must not accept the risk of judicious behavior when encountering citizens? If this is the case as all evidence indicates that it is, then the police when they gratuitously murder members of the public are merely doing what they have been trained to do. As police are trained to use violence as a first resort, the police cannot be held accountable when they do.

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    Racism Watch: Emancipate Yourself
    Black Power
    By Corey Gilkes
    August 06, 2014 - trinicenter.com


    Years ago, the late economist and social thinker Lloyd Best pondered over the question of how does one save a culture from itself. This is a question we have not collectively dealt with as we continue to entangle ourselves more and more in the destructive aspects of this culture that we’re partly responsible for creating. Somewhere along the line, Emancipation, understood as “freedom” – and I’ll come back to that later – was hijacked to become something that was tolerant of mediocrity, the spurning of ambition, industriousness and intellectual pursuits. Small wonder some people say “dey should bring back de white man” because we’ve made a mess of our Independence (and our Emancipation). I don’t necessarily subscribe to such a self-loathing sentiment but much of what we’re doing to ourselves and our space certainly gives credence to it.

    I had another piece written for Emancipation Day. But after listening to the talk shows on i95.5 and Power 102 the morning before and the comments made by some callers and the hosts – all of whom admittedly, fall well within the age group I’ve always said need to be politely eased out of any serious discourse on social transformation – I felt it necessary to write this setta ramblings instead. Besides, I always like to comment on things like Emancipation Day out of the “season.”

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    Racism Watch: Donald Sterling Thinks He Owns Basketball Players, But Really Does Own the NAACP
    National Association for the Advancement
    By Bruce A. Dixon
    May 01, 2014 - blackagendareport.com


    “Depending on the rich and powerful to pay their bills while pretending to speak for the poor and oppressed is not a mere bug in the way our 21st century civil rights organizations work”

    For us at Black Agenda Report, the most telling angle on the story of Donald Sterling, the racist billionaire owner of the LA Clippers, was that the Los Angeles NAACP, which had been about to give Sterling a second – not a first but a second “Lifetime Achievement Award” eagerly stepped forward to offer redemption and forgiveness for the small cost of a few more strategic donations from the deep pockets of Donald Sterling.

    This won't be the first time Sterling has purchased absolution for his many sins. In 2003 Sterling settled a housing discrimination lawsuit paying $5 million to plaintiff attorneys alone, and in 2006 he was accused again of refusing to rent apartments to African Americans and Latinos. But a steady stream of donations to big-name so-called civil rights organizations amounting at most to a few ten thousandths of his net worth, were sufficient to make it OK in the eyes of those outfits, and in the case of the NAACP, they were sufficient to get him that first “lifetime award.”

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    Racism Watch: Freedom Rider: Kwadir Felton and Cory Booker
    USA
    By Margaret Kimberley
    March 25, 2014 - blackagendareport.com


    “Other races and religious and ethnic groups can guarantee that no member of their community would face what Kwadir Felton has experienced without being championed by their people in power.”

    In nations around the world, thousands of people will demonstrate in anger if the police do harm to a citizen. Not so in the United States. In this country a uniform provides a license to maim and to kill. American police routinely beat, taser and shoot people and no one even knows how often these assaults take place. The same government which tells us how many times police are shot doesn’t keep statistics on how often the rest of us may become victims. An estimate from 2011 indicates that American police shot 1,100 people, killing 607 of them.

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    Racism Watch: Freedom Rider: Black Faces for White People
    Black and White
    By Margaret Kimberley
    November 06, 2013 - blackagendareport.com


    "It seems that white supremacy is the new national pastime every October."

    Black people have been stigmatized with racist caricatures from the first moment that Africans encountered Europeans. People who worked without pay at the point of a lash or a gun were called lazy. The victims of sexual assault were themselves labeled as "over sexed" perverts and freaks. This awful history isn’t dead. It is celebrated by millions of people who think that our plight and position in society is part of the natural order of the universe. At the first possible opportunity they publicly display their hatred and their determination to exult in and continue white supremacy.

    This tendency may always be present but in recent years Halloween is the moment when the ghouls show themselves. This celebration has morphed from what used to be a simple children’s holiday into a multi-billion dollar, month long event for adults. What was an enjoyable time to dress up in costume has become the white racist moment to act out sick fantasy. They do so quite publicly, with numerous examples made easily visible on social media.

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    Racism Watch: Racism ... Just Get Over It?
    Slavery
    By Onika Henry
    August 06, 2013


    Racism is oppressive, dehumanising and has been systematically put in place to keep people from achievement and advancement, based on a belief of superiority over another or "more worthy than" the other. I do not recall a time when certain groups of people EVER had the power to enforce racism. To suggest certain people practise racism and "reverse racism" when they discriminate against others, is in my opinion, an indication of ignorance of what racism really is and how it operates. To me it suggests a denial of truth and/or an inability to see and feel from another's perspective.

    Those who have never lived the life as a member of an oppressed group, or who have not inherited the sometimes intangible but real effects of hundreds of years of slavery and dehumanisation (which continues in more subtle and disguised forms today) may find it difficult to understand how the weight of racism can crush the spirit. While for some, living the life of a civil and human rights fighter or activist on a daily basis is a fine and comfortable choice, for others, the "fight" takes on the persona of a moral commitment to live life holistically and to promote well-being of self, family, friends and colleagues, which in and of itself is another way of dealing with oppression.

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    Racism Watch: Trayvon and White Madness
    Trayvon Martin
    By BAR executive editor Glen Ford
    July 22, 2013 - blackagendareport.com


    “The government would have to prove that Zimmerman was motivated by racial animus.”

    When Trayvon Martin was murdered by a “creepy-ass cracker” in February, 2012, an outraged Black America mobilized to force the State of Florida to put the perpetrator on trial. Seventeen months later, in the words of President Obama, “a jury has spoken,” affirming Florida’s original contention that Trayvon’s death was not a criminal act.

    The White House also wanted Trayvon to be forgotten. Three weeks after the shooting, speaking through his press secretary, the president declared, “obviously we're not going to wade into a local law-enforcement matter." A few days later, Obama sought to placate Black public opinion with a statement of physical fact: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

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