USA Radical Black

Black Power’s Gonna Get You Sucka: Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism

By Tim Wise who is the author of five books and over 250 essays on race. His latest is Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2010).

Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism.

Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad.

What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past?

Was it the research indicating that job applicants with white sounding names have a 50 percent better chance of being called back for an interview than their counterparts with black-sounding names, even when all qualifications are the same?

No.

Was it the study that found white job applicants with criminal records have a better chance of being called back for an interview than black applicants without one, even when all the qualifications are the same? Read More »

Tags: Conservatives, Racism, Tim Wise

Black elementary students told to act like slaves – in 2009

By Matt Roberts, November 13 (originally posted 11/8) New Orleans News – The Examiner

WAXHAW, N.C. — A history lesson that asked black elementary students to act like slaves has sparked protests from parents and teachers at a North Carolina school Wednesday.

During a field trip to Latta Plantation, three students from Rea View Elementary in Waxhaw were chosen by tour guide Ian Campbell to wear bags and mimic picking cotton while their white classmates looked on, WSOC-TV, Charlotte, reported Friday.

Many of the teachers and parents from the elementary school said they plan on writing the leaders of the plantation regarding the racially insensitive history lesson.

Campbell said “I was trying to be historically correct not politically correct,” Campbell adds, “I am very enthusiastic about getting kids to think about how people did things in 1860, 1861 — even before that period,”  who added he has been a historian for 15 years.

Kojo Nantambu, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, criticized the lesson.

“There is a lingering pain, a lingering bitterness, a lingering insecurity and a lingering sense of inhumanity since slavery. Because that’s still there, you want to be more sensitive than politically correct or historically correct,” he said.

Tags: Education, Racism, Slavery

Who’s Afraid of the Big Black Republican – Racism in the Republican Party

By Conor Friedersdorf – The Daily Beast

The GOP chairman’s comment that some white Republicans are afraid of him is just the latest reminder that our politics are hardly post-racial. Conor Friedersdorf on how the GOP can repair its image—and the myths the left perpetuates.

Did you hear the one about the Republican National Committee Chairman who agreed that whites in his party are afraid of talking to black people?

No joke.

“I’ve been in the room and they’ve been scared of me,” Michael Steele said. His unusual remark is the latest instance of Republican attitudes toward race making national headlines—and causing a headache for GOP officials, who are constantly trying to reverse the perception that their party is hostile to minorities.

The right should rethink its ideological commitment to the notion that racism isn’t a real problem in America anymore, even if they disagree about how it should be fought; and the left should alleviate suspicion that race is being used as an ideological cudgel by helping to stigmatize those who frivolously play the race card.

The single time the news media obsessed about racism in the Democratic Party came during the Election ‘08 primary, when several Hillary Clinton supporters in states like West Virginia were seen on YouTube, during television interviews, and on The Daily Show saying bigoted things about Barack Obama. Soon Bill Clinton himself, sometimes praised in liberal circles as “our first black president,” found himself accused of racially questionable remarks. I wouldn’t put any politically advantageous trick past Slick Willie, but I never imagined that I’d see him being called on multicultural in-sensitivities as though he were a Republican pol. Read More »

Tags: Racism, Republican Party, RNC