Records that pertain to American Slavery and the International Slave Trade
The following is information found in the records of the National Archives and Records Administration. It identifies the record group and series, with brief descriptions and locations. It does not provide the actual documents online. Some of the records are microfilmed, and have been noted.
http://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/slavery-records.html
A Must Read & Research
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
What the Hell???......Another Convenient 'Natural Catastrophe'?
Bush Weighs Strategies to Counter Possible Outbreak of Bird Flu
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
Published: October 4, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 - President Bush said today that he was working to prepare the United States for a possibly deadly outbreak of avian flu. He said he had weighed whether to quarantine parts of the country and also whether to employ the military for the difficult task of enforcing such a quarantine.
"I am concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world," he said at a White House news conference.
The president emphasized that he was not predicting such an outbreak. "I'm just suggesting to you that we better be thinking about it," he told reporters, "and we are. And we're more than thinking about it, we're trying to put plans in place."
Since 2003, the avian flu has killed about 65 people in Southeast Asia who had been in contact with infected fowl. So far the virus has not mutated into a strain capable of transmission from one human to another.
If it does, scientists say that it could kill millions of people worldwide, reminiscent of the 1918-19 Spanish-flu pandemic, which claimed more lives than World War I. Because the virus is new, humans have little or no defense against it. It kills about half of those infected, and an outbreak could spread around the world in days.
Up to now, bird flu has not received extensive public attention in the United States. But Mr. Bush, in devoting a long and detailed reply to the subject, appeared intent on raising public awareness and promoting readiness, as well as demonstrating his own.
He referred to the "H5N1 virus," said he had read a book by John M. Barry on the 1918 pandemic, and had been briefed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the infectious disease unit at the National Institutes of Health.
An outbreak would pose difficult policy decisions for a president, Mr. Bush said, including the question of imposing a regional quarantine.
"It's one thing to shut down your airplanes, it's another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu," he said. Doing so, Mr. Bush said, might even involve using "a military that's able to plan and move."
The president had already raised, in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the delicate question of giving the military a larger role in responding to domestic disasters. His comment today appeared to presage a concerted push to change laws that limit military activities in domestic affairs.
Mr. Bush said he knew that some governors, all of them commanders of their states' National Guards, resented being told by Washington how to use their Guard forces.
"But Congress needs to take a look at circumstances that may need to vest the capacity of the president to move beyond that debate," Mr. Bush said. One such circumstance, he suggested, would be an avian flu outbreak. He said a president needed every available tool "to be able to deal with something this significant."
While in New York last month to address the United Nations General Assembly, President Bush proposed an "international partnership" to combat the disease.
He said today that he had spoken "privately to as many leaders as I could find" at the United Nations about raising public awareness and ensuring maximum efforts to quickly report any instances of the disease to the World Health Organization.
The W.H.O. and the European Union have been urging countries for months to prepare for a possible pandemic.
The president said he had spoken to Dr. Fauci about development of a vaccine, but added that "we're just not that far down the manufacturing process." He said he wanted to encourage potential vaccine manufacturers to be poised to react urgently.
The United States last month ordered $100 million worth of a promising vaccine from the French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis.
When the secretary of health and human services, Tommy Thompson, resigned in December, he was asked what health threat worried him most. He cited the avian flu.
"This is a really huge bomb," he said, "that could adversely impact on the health care of the world," killing tens of millions.
Are they preparing for PLAN B ?
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
Published: October 4, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 - President Bush said today that he was working to prepare the United States for a possibly deadly outbreak of avian flu. He said he had weighed whether to quarantine parts of the country and also whether to employ the military for the difficult task of enforcing such a quarantine.
"I am concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world," he said at a White House news conference.
The president emphasized that he was not predicting such an outbreak. "I'm just suggesting to you that we better be thinking about it," he told reporters, "and we are. And we're more than thinking about it, we're trying to put plans in place."
Since 2003, the avian flu has killed about 65 people in Southeast Asia who had been in contact with infected fowl. So far the virus has not mutated into a strain capable of transmission from one human to another.
If it does, scientists say that it could kill millions of people worldwide, reminiscent of the 1918-19 Spanish-flu pandemic, which claimed more lives than World War I. Because the virus is new, humans have little or no defense against it. It kills about half of those infected, and an outbreak could spread around the world in days.
Up to now, bird flu has not received extensive public attention in the United States. But Mr. Bush, in devoting a long and detailed reply to the subject, appeared intent on raising public awareness and promoting readiness, as well as demonstrating his own.
He referred to the "H5N1 virus," said he had read a book by John M. Barry on the 1918 pandemic, and had been briefed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the infectious disease unit at the National Institutes of Health.
An outbreak would pose difficult policy decisions for a president, Mr. Bush said, including the question of imposing a regional quarantine.
"It's one thing to shut down your airplanes, it's another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu," he said. Doing so, Mr. Bush said, might even involve using "a military that's able to plan and move."
The president had already raised, in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the delicate question of giving the military a larger role in responding to domestic disasters. His comment today appeared to presage a concerted push to change laws that limit military activities in domestic affairs.
Mr. Bush said he knew that some governors, all of them commanders of their states' National Guards, resented being told by Washington how to use their Guard forces.
"But Congress needs to take a look at circumstances that may need to vest the capacity of the president to move beyond that debate," Mr. Bush said. One such circumstance, he suggested, would be an avian flu outbreak. He said a president needed every available tool "to be able to deal with something this significant."
While in New York last month to address the United Nations General Assembly, President Bush proposed an "international partnership" to combat the disease.
He said today that he had spoken "privately to as many leaders as I could find" at the United Nations about raising public awareness and ensuring maximum efforts to quickly report any instances of the disease to the World Health Organization.
The W.H.O. and the European Union have been urging countries for months to prepare for a possible pandemic.
The president said he had spoken to Dr. Fauci about development of a vaccine, but added that "we're just not that far down the manufacturing process." He said he wanted to encourage potential vaccine manufacturers to be poised to react urgently.
The United States last month ordered $100 million worth of a promising vaccine from the French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis.
When the secretary of health and human services, Tommy Thompson, resigned in December, he was asked what health threat worried him most. He cited the avian flu.
"This is a really huge bomb," he said, "that could adversely impact on the health care of the world," killing tens of millions.
Are they preparing for PLAN B ?
9th Ward: History, Yes, but a Future?
Race and Class Frame Debate on Rebuilding New Orleans District
By Ceci ConnollyWashington
Post Staff WriterMonday,
October 3, 2005; Page A01
NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 2 -- No one here wants to say it aloud, but one day soon the bulldozers will come, shoving away big hunks of a neighborhood known for its poverty and its artists, its bad luck and its bounce-back resilience.
It is likely to be the largest demolition of a community in modern U.S. history -- destruction begun by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and finished by heavy machinery. On Saturday, firefighters put red tags on hundreds of homes deemed "unsafe," the first step in a wrenching debate over whether the Lower Ninth Ward should be rebuilt or whether, as some suggest, it should revert to its natural state: swamp.
A neighborhood tucked into a deep depression between two canals, railroad tracks and the Mississippi River, New Orleans's Lower Ninth has spent more of the past five weeks underwater than dry. Entire houses knocked off foundations. Barbershops and corner groceries flattened. Cars tossed inside living rooms. What remains is coated in muck -- a crusty layer of canal water, sewage and dirt. Mold is rapidly devouring interiors.
The question now is whether the Lower Ninth Ward, which was devastated 40 years ago by Hurricane Betsy, should be resuscitated again. The debate, as fervent as any facing post-hurricane New Orleans, will test this city's mettle and is sure to expose tensions over race, poverty and political power. The people willing to let the Lower Ninth fade away hew to a pragmatist's bottom line; the ones who want it to stay talk of culture and tradition.
The flooded sections "should not be put back in the real estate market," said Craig E. Colten, a geography professor at Louisiana State University. "I realize it will be an insult [to former residents], but it would be a far bigger insult to put them back in harm's way."
The notion is not without precedent. In the 1800s, cities such as New York, Boston and Chicago rebuilt on filled-in marsh. More recently, the federal government has paid to relocate homes destroyed by the Mississippi River floods of 1993; the Northridge, Calif., earthquake; and the Love Canal environmental disaster in Upstate New York.
But never on the scale being contemplated here. And never in a predominantly black, low-income community already smarting from previous wrongs, perceived or real.
"This is a natural disaster; it's nobody's fault," said Lolita Reed Glass, who grew up in the Lower Ninth with her parents and 10 siblings. "My daddy worked. He did not sit on his bottom. You're not giving us anything. What we rightfully deserve as citizens of this country is the same protection we give to other countries."
Of the 160,000 buildings in Louisiana declared "uninhabitable" after Katrina, a majority are in the New Orleans neighborhoods that suffered extensive flooding. Mayor C. Ray Nagin, an African American who worked in the private sector before entering politics, has spelled out plans to reopen every section of the city -- except the Lower Ninth. His director of homeland security, Col. Terry Ebbert, said in an interview that most homes in the Lower Ninth "will not be able to be restored." Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson told the Houston Chronicle he has advised Nagin that "it would be a mistake to rebuild the Ninth Ward."
The mayor himself has spoken ominously about the need for residents to come in, "take a peek," retrieve a few valuables and move on. Historic preservation advocates fear that the city will capitalize on a program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that pays to tear down damaged buildings but not to repair historic private properties.
"There is a built-in incentive to demolish," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "The first instinct after natural disasters is almost always to demolish buildings. It is almost always wrong."
New Orleans, with 20 districts on the National Register of Historic Places covering half the city, has the highest concentration of historic structures in the nation, Moe said. That includes the Lower Ninth's Holy Cross section, with its shotgun houses and gems such as the Jackson Barracks, the Doullut Steamboat Houses and St. Maurice Church.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/02/AR2005100201320.html
By Ceci ConnollyWashington
Post Staff WriterMonday,
October 3, 2005; Page A01
NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 2 -- No one here wants to say it aloud, but one day soon the bulldozers will come, shoving away big hunks of a neighborhood known for its poverty and its artists, its bad luck and its bounce-back resilience.
It is likely to be the largest demolition of a community in modern U.S. history -- destruction begun by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and finished by heavy machinery. On Saturday, firefighters put red tags on hundreds of homes deemed "unsafe," the first step in a wrenching debate over whether the Lower Ninth Ward should be rebuilt or whether, as some suggest, it should revert to its natural state: swamp.
A neighborhood tucked into a deep depression between two canals, railroad tracks and the Mississippi River, New Orleans's Lower Ninth has spent more of the past five weeks underwater than dry. Entire houses knocked off foundations. Barbershops and corner groceries flattened. Cars tossed inside living rooms. What remains is coated in muck -- a crusty layer of canal water, sewage and dirt. Mold is rapidly devouring interiors.
The question now is whether the Lower Ninth Ward, which was devastated 40 years ago by Hurricane Betsy, should be resuscitated again. The debate, as fervent as any facing post-hurricane New Orleans, will test this city's mettle and is sure to expose tensions over race, poverty and political power. The people willing to let the Lower Ninth fade away hew to a pragmatist's bottom line; the ones who want it to stay talk of culture and tradition.
The flooded sections "should not be put back in the real estate market," said Craig E. Colten, a geography professor at Louisiana State University. "I realize it will be an insult [to former residents], but it would be a far bigger insult to put them back in harm's way."
The notion is not without precedent. In the 1800s, cities such as New York, Boston and Chicago rebuilt on filled-in marsh. More recently, the federal government has paid to relocate homes destroyed by the Mississippi River floods of 1993; the Northridge, Calif., earthquake; and the Love Canal environmental disaster in Upstate New York.
But never on the scale being contemplated here. And never in a predominantly black, low-income community already smarting from previous wrongs, perceived or real.
"This is a natural disaster; it's nobody's fault," said Lolita Reed Glass, who grew up in the Lower Ninth with her parents and 10 siblings. "My daddy worked. He did not sit on his bottom. You're not giving us anything. What we rightfully deserve as citizens of this country is the same protection we give to other countries."
Of the 160,000 buildings in Louisiana declared "uninhabitable" after Katrina, a majority are in the New Orleans neighborhoods that suffered extensive flooding. Mayor C. Ray Nagin, an African American who worked in the private sector before entering politics, has spelled out plans to reopen every section of the city -- except the Lower Ninth. His director of homeland security, Col. Terry Ebbert, said in an interview that most homes in the Lower Ninth "will not be able to be restored." Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson told the Houston Chronicle he has advised Nagin that "it would be a mistake to rebuild the Ninth Ward."
The mayor himself has spoken ominously about the need for residents to come in, "take a peek," retrieve a few valuables and move on. Historic preservation advocates fear that the city will capitalize on a program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that pays to tear down damaged buildings but not to repair historic private properties.
"There is a built-in incentive to demolish," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "The first instinct after natural disasters is almost always to demolish buildings. It is almost always wrong."
New Orleans, with 20 districts on the National Register of Historic Places covering half the city, has the highest concentration of historic structures in the nation, Moe said. That includes the Lower Ninth's Holy Cross section, with its shotgun houses and gems such as the Jackson Barracks, the Doullut Steamboat Houses and St. Maurice Church.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/02/AR2005100201320.html
Who is this program designed to help?
A Wise Brother asked me a question:
Since the 'experts' say Nawlins will never be Black again i.e. former residents won't be returning and new prospectors will be directed elsewhere........Who will receive the Vouchers?
Vouchers for New Orleans
Children need to be rescued from their failing schools
There is a second rescue urgently needed in the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and one that is long overdue: saving New Orleans school kids from their broken public-school system. The tragedy of the storm provides America with a golden opportunity, and the answer lies in the tens of billions of dollars of federal emergency spending. Let's create emergency school-choice vouchers for the children displaced by Katrina.
The New Orleans public-school system has been failing its kids for years. Fully 73 of its more than 120 schools are considered to be "failing" according to the state's educational accountability standards. On one 2004 measure, the GEE test of high schoolers, 96 percent of Orleans Parish students were below basic on English and 94 percent were below basic in math.
That is an appalling performance; these kids do not stand a chance in a global, information-age economy. Not surprisingly, there is no local leadership and the system has had eight different school superintendents in the past seven years.The fiscal situation is just as bad. Millions have been stolen over the past decade. An August 2005 federal audit determined that $69 million in Title I funds weren't properly accounted for and that further grants are "high risk."
Because of multiple ongoing fraud investigations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation actually has an operations field office in the New Orleans school-district headquarters. In fact, the New Orleans school system doesn't even know how many employees it actually has on payroll, just rough estimates of between 7,000 and 8,000 people.
That's one reason, in June of this year, the state of Louisiana forced the system to accept oversight from the New York investigative accounting firm Alvarez & Marsal. Last month, before the storm, Alvarez & Marsal disclosed that the rate of payroll errors is around 20 percent, and one of the investigators told the New Orleans Times Picayune, "I'm a CPA doing this 20 years.
This is the absolute worst I've ever seen. Anyone can bend any rule around here."Given this situation, New Orleans public-school administrators should not be trusted with a penny of federal educational aid. If they have been this irresponsible and abusive before Katrina, imagine the official looting that will occur with federal emergency aid money. Congress should not let that happen with our tax dollars.As part of the overall aid plan, Congress is contemplating billions in educational assistance.
With so much at stake, Congress must get this right, and there is an obvious solution: The U.S. Department of Education should administer an "Emergency School Voucher" program. School vouchers get aid directly to the student, and empower parents and children take real control over their education. The federal voucher could follow each young evacuee student to their new school, whether they are settled in a district in northern Louisiana or Texas or beyond.
A lot of these students need immediate assistance, but they're not located in a permanent home yet, and vouchers will give each individual student maximum flexibility as their circumstances warrant. The program could be a powerful example of connecting students and educational dollars and giving true educational choice. In fact, if the voucher were large enough, we could even see school districts across the country actively competing to attract evacuee students.
That would be a pleasant irony after so much neglect in their own failing public schools. Further, federal emergency school vouchers are an excellent way to aid the large number of Catholic-school kids displaced by the storm. The Archdiocese of New Orleans serves more than 50,000 students, and many of these kids are now displaced. School vouchers are the best way to accommodate the obvious separation of church and state issues that will arise from aiding the Catholic Church directly.
Individual vouchers give students and their parents the ability to choose any school, parochial or public, and thus pass constitutional muster. Emergency school vouchers are the most effective and constitutional way to aid parochial-school kids displaced by Katrina. Overall, there is already a working federal administrative model in the successful targeted school-choice program in Washington, D.C. Obviously, an emergency school-voucher program would be a temporary measure for the next two years while the city is rebuilt.
But once families see the power and benefits of school choice, it is unlikely that they will want to return to the old, failed system. Emergency school vouchers, with federal support, could even provide a path to a permanent local school-choice program throughout New Orleans. The New Orleans public-school system has failed its children and cannot even determine who is on their payroll.
Let's complete the Katrina rescue for the children of New Orleans and create an emergency school-voucher program. It is the responsible policy approach and it is the right thing for these kids and their families.
Chris Kinnan is the director of public affairs for FreedomWorks, an advocacy group favoring lower taxes, less government, and more freedom.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/kinnan200509150849.asp
Asante Sana: It Can Be If U Will It
Since the 'experts' say Nawlins will never be Black again i.e. former residents won't be returning and new prospectors will be directed elsewhere........Who will receive the Vouchers?
Vouchers for New Orleans
Children need to be rescued from their failing schools
There is a second rescue urgently needed in the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and one that is long overdue: saving New Orleans school kids from their broken public-school system. The tragedy of the storm provides America with a golden opportunity, and the answer lies in the tens of billions of dollars of federal emergency spending. Let's create emergency school-choice vouchers for the children displaced by Katrina.
The New Orleans public-school system has been failing its kids for years. Fully 73 of its more than 120 schools are considered to be "failing" according to the state's educational accountability standards. On one 2004 measure, the GEE test of high schoolers, 96 percent of Orleans Parish students were below basic on English and 94 percent were below basic in math.
That is an appalling performance; these kids do not stand a chance in a global, information-age economy. Not surprisingly, there is no local leadership and the system has had eight different school superintendents in the past seven years.The fiscal situation is just as bad. Millions have been stolen over the past decade. An August 2005 federal audit determined that $69 million in Title I funds weren't properly accounted for and that further grants are "high risk."
Because of multiple ongoing fraud investigations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation actually has an operations field office in the New Orleans school-district headquarters. In fact, the New Orleans school system doesn't even know how many employees it actually has on payroll, just rough estimates of between 7,000 and 8,000 people.
That's one reason, in June of this year, the state of Louisiana forced the system to accept oversight from the New York investigative accounting firm Alvarez & Marsal. Last month, before the storm, Alvarez & Marsal disclosed that the rate of payroll errors is around 20 percent, and one of the investigators told the New Orleans Times Picayune, "I'm a CPA doing this 20 years.
This is the absolute worst I've ever seen. Anyone can bend any rule around here."Given this situation, New Orleans public-school administrators should not be trusted with a penny of federal educational aid. If they have been this irresponsible and abusive before Katrina, imagine the official looting that will occur with federal emergency aid money. Congress should not let that happen with our tax dollars.As part of the overall aid plan, Congress is contemplating billions in educational assistance.
With so much at stake, Congress must get this right, and there is an obvious solution: The U.S. Department of Education should administer an "Emergency School Voucher" program. School vouchers get aid directly to the student, and empower parents and children take real control over their education. The federal voucher could follow each young evacuee student to their new school, whether they are settled in a district in northern Louisiana or Texas or beyond.
A lot of these students need immediate assistance, but they're not located in a permanent home yet, and vouchers will give each individual student maximum flexibility as their circumstances warrant. The program could be a powerful example of connecting students and educational dollars and giving true educational choice. In fact, if the voucher were large enough, we could even see school districts across the country actively competing to attract evacuee students.
That would be a pleasant irony after so much neglect in their own failing public schools. Further, federal emergency school vouchers are an excellent way to aid the large number of Catholic-school kids displaced by the storm. The Archdiocese of New Orleans serves more than 50,000 students, and many of these kids are now displaced. School vouchers are the best way to accommodate the obvious separation of church and state issues that will arise from aiding the Catholic Church directly.
Individual vouchers give students and their parents the ability to choose any school, parochial or public, and thus pass constitutional muster. Emergency school vouchers are the most effective and constitutional way to aid parochial-school kids displaced by Katrina. Overall, there is already a working federal administrative model in the successful targeted school-choice program in Washington, D.C. Obviously, an emergency school-voucher program would be a temporary measure for the next two years while the city is rebuilt.
But once families see the power and benefits of school choice, it is unlikely that they will want to return to the old, failed system. Emergency school vouchers, with federal support, could even provide a path to a permanent local school-choice program throughout New Orleans. The New Orleans public-school system has failed its children and cannot even determine who is on their payroll.
Let's complete the Katrina rescue for the children of New Orleans and create an emergency school-voucher program. It is the responsible policy approach and it is the right thing for these kids and their families.
Chris Kinnan is the director of public affairs for FreedomWorks, an advocacy group favoring lower taxes, less government, and more freedom.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/kinnan200509150849.asp
Asante Sana: It Can Be If U Will It
Monday, October 03, 2005
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Black Opposition to Forced Citizenship is Growing
By
Roger RootsJubilee Correspondent
As reported in The Jubilee more than 2 years ago (Vol. 7, No. 2,3), the IRS and Justice Department are facing a legal challenge from growing numbers of Blacks based on their forced U.S. citizenship status. Dr. Robert Brock, longtime President of the Washington, D.C.-based Self Determination Committee, filed a federal lawsuit in April of 1993 on behalf of slave-descended Africans in America who refuse to pay income taxes.
The challenge was based on well founded principles of law: How can African Nationals be citizens of the United States when they never agreed to be governed by the United States? Their forced enlistment as U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment was just another type of slavery, according to Brock. Brock outlined four main issues on which the refusal of Blacks to pay taxes was based:
A. There was no MUTUALITY of agreement to partake in the citizenship of the 14th Amendment.
B. There was no opportunity for DISCLAIMER on the part of Blacks who wished to decline forced citizenship.
C. The legal DOMICILE OF black ex-slaves was and continues to be in Africa, according to all the rules of legal construction. (The domicile of origin is the domicile of every person until it is abandoned freely. The domicile gained by free birth in Africa cannot be changed by a slave birth in the United States.)
D. JURISDICTION based on Slavery.
Brock's legal analysis is as logical as his conclusion is inescapable. The forced citizenship of Blacks was the product of completely unilateral acts by others against them. No vote was ever taken, no petitions were ever signed, and no polls were ever conducted to indicate that African Nationals in America wanted to live under the White-created Constitution.
The case was originally dismissed by the federal district court in Los Angeles. Brock has appealed and petitioned for rehearings over a 4-year period. The U.S. Attorney's Office finally responded in April, 1994 but did not dare broach the specific allegations of Brock's action.
"It is clear that [Brock's] constitutional challenges to the income tax on his wages are nothing more than the usual garden-variety tax-protestor-type arguments that have time and again been rejected by all courts to have considered them," wrote the assistant U.S. Attorney.
The case has now wound its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has denied certiorari. Brock is currently petitioning for a rehearing, but views the case as having reached the end of the line in U.S. courts. Brock has been busy trying to gather 2-1/2 million signatures of Blacks who vow to stop paying income tax. "in view of the fact that the United States after 4 years has not come forward with an answer to the 4 questions," Brock told The Jubilee, "2-1/2 million Blacks are not going to pay any more taxes to the U.S. and will take direct action to obtain reparations and self-determination."
While it is unknown how many Blacks will actually follow up on their vows to refuse to volunteer income tax payments, it is certain that the petitions serve another purpose. They are disclaimers of mutuality and stand as evidence that the signor does not consent to citizenship. And because all legal remedies have been exhausted, Brock said, "We [Blacks] will be forced to take direct action or seek redress under international law."
http://www.directblackaction.com/blackop.html
THE SELF DETERMINATION COMMITTEE
Dr. Robert L. Brock, President
Very Comprehensive Site
The Self Determination Committee was born for one reason, to Educate The African of Slave Descent on how to become self determined.
This is the Center for a meaningful demand for Black Reparations in The United States of America.
The Demand for Black Reparations is based on four things:1. An understanding of your Citizenship status as Africans of Slave Descent2. An understanding of the U.S. Laws and Statutes which were written for the Africans of Slave Descent3.
An understanding of the history of slavery in the U.S. and other European Nations4. An understanding of the Work which the Self Determination Committee has completed.
http://www.directblackaction.com/
Roger RootsJubilee Correspondent
As reported in The Jubilee more than 2 years ago (Vol. 7, No. 2,3), the IRS and Justice Department are facing a legal challenge from growing numbers of Blacks based on their forced U.S. citizenship status. Dr. Robert Brock, longtime President of the Washington, D.C.-based Self Determination Committee, filed a federal lawsuit in April of 1993 on behalf of slave-descended Africans in America who refuse to pay income taxes.
The challenge was based on well founded principles of law: How can African Nationals be citizens of the United States when they never agreed to be governed by the United States? Their forced enlistment as U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment was just another type of slavery, according to Brock. Brock outlined four main issues on which the refusal of Blacks to pay taxes was based:
A. There was no MUTUALITY of agreement to partake in the citizenship of the 14th Amendment.
B. There was no opportunity for DISCLAIMER on the part of Blacks who wished to decline forced citizenship.
C. The legal DOMICILE OF black ex-slaves was and continues to be in Africa, according to all the rules of legal construction. (The domicile of origin is the domicile of every person until it is abandoned freely. The domicile gained by free birth in Africa cannot be changed by a slave birth in the United States.)
D. JURISDICTION based on Slavery.
Brock's legal analysis is as logical as his conclusion is inescapable. The forced citizenship of Blacks was the product of completely unilateral acts by others against them. No vote was ever taken, no petitions were ever signed, and no polls were ever conducted to indicate that African Nationals in America wanted to live under the White-created Constitution.
The case was originally dismissed by the federal district court in Los Angeles. Brock has appealed and petitioned for rehearings over a 4-year period. The U.S. Attorney's Office finally responded in April, 1994 but did not dare broach the specific allegations of Brock's action.
"It is clear that [Brock's] constitutional challenges to the income tax on his wages are nothing more than the usual garden-variety tax-protestor-type arguments that have time and again been rejected by all courts to have considered them," wrote the assistant U.S. Attorney.
The case has now wound its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has denied certiorari. Brock is currently petitioning for a rehearing, but views the case as having reached the end of the line in U.S. courts. Brock has been busy trying to gather 2-1/2 million signatures of Blacks who vow to stop paying income tax. "in view of the fact that the United States after 4 years has not come forward with an answer to the 4 questions," Brock told The Jubilee, "2-1/2 million Blacks are not going to pay any more taxes to the U.S. and will take direct action to obtain reparations and self-determination."
While it is unknown how many Blacks will actually follow up on their vows to refuse to volunteer income tax payments, it is certain that the petitions serve another purpose. They are disclaimers of mutuality and stand as evidence that the signor does not consent to citizenship. And because all legal remedies have been exhausted, Brock said, "We [Blacks] will be forced to take direct action or seek redress under international law."
http://www.directblackaction.com/blackop.html
THE SELF DETERMINATION COMMITTEE
Dr. Robert L. Brock, President
Very Comprehensive Site
The Self Determination Committee was born for one reason, to Educate The African of Slave Descent on how to become self determined.
This is the Center for a meaningful demand for Black Reparations in The United States of America.
The Demand for Black Reparations is based on four things:1. An understanding of your Citizenship status as Africans of Slave Descent2. An understanding of the U.S. Laws and Statutes which were written for the Africans of Slave Descent3.
An understanding of the history of slavery in the U.S. and other European Nations4. An understanding of the Work which the Self Determination Committee has completed.
http://www.directblackaction.com/
Friday, September 30, 2005
John Roberts on Crime
Supreme Court Justice (nominated by Pres. George W. Bush 2005)
No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation," Roberts acknowledged in the decision, but he ruled that nothing the police did violated the girl's Fourth Amendment or Fifth Amendment rights.
Roberts joined the decision in FLETCHER v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA:
Roberts authored the decision in INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER v. UNITED STATES:
John Roberts on other issues:
http://www.issues2000.org/Court/John_Roberts_Crime.htm
Read on his decisions on everything from abortion to welfare and poverty
No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation," Roberts acknowledged in the decision, but he ruled that nothing the police did violated the girl's Fourth Amendment or Fifth Amendment rights.
Roberts joined the decision in FLETCHER v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA:
Roberts authored the decision in INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER v. UNITED STATES:
John Roberts on other issues:
http://www.issues2000.org/Court/John_Roberts_Crime.htm
Read on his decisions on everything from abortion to welfare and poverty
Freakonomics
Abortion and crime: who should you believe?
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Two very vocal critics, Steve Sailer and John Lott, have been exerting a lot of energy lately trying to convince the world that the abortion reduces crime hypothesis is not correct. A number of readers have asked me to respond to these criticisms.
First, let's start by reviewing the basic facts that support the Donohue-Levitt hypothesis that legalized abortion in the 1970s explains a substantial part of the crime decline in the 1990s:
1) Five states legalized abortion three years before Roe v. Wade. Crime started falling three years earlier in these states, with property crime (done by younger people) falling before violent crime.
2) After abortion was legalized, the availability of abortions differed dramatically across states. In some states like North Dakota and in parts of the deep South, it was virtually impossible to get an abortion even after Roe v. Wade. If one compares states that had high abortion rates in the mid 1970s to states that had low abortion rates in the mid 1970s, you see the following patterns with crime. For the period from 1973-1988, the two sets of states (high abortion states and low abortion states) have nearly identical crime patterns. Note, that this is a period before the generations exposed to legalized abortion are old enough to do much crime.
So this is exactly what the Donohue-Levitt theory predicts. But from the period 1985-1997, when the post Roe cohort is reaching peak crime ages, the high abortion states see a decline in crime of 30% relative to the low abortion states. Our original data ended in 1997. If one updated the study, the results would be similar.)
3) All of the decline in crime from 1985-1997 experienced by high abortion states relative to low abortion states is concentrated among the age groups born after Roe v. Wade. For people born before abortion legalization, there is no difference in the crime patterns for high abortion and low abortion states, just as the Donohue-Levitt theory predicts.
4) When we compare arrest rates of people born in the same state, just before and just after abortion legalization, we once again see the identical pattern of lower arrest rates for those born after legalization than before.
5) The evidence from Canada, Australia, and Romania also support the hypothesis that abortion reduces crime.
6) Studies have shown a reduction in infanticide, teen age drug use, and teen age childbearing consistent with the theory that abortion will reduce other social ills similar to crime.These six points all support the hypothesis. There is one fact that, without more careful analysis, argues against the Donohue-Levitt story:
7) The homicide rate of young males (especially young Black males) temporarily skyrocketed in the late 1980s, especially in urban centers like Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, DC, before returning to regular levels soon thereafter.
These young males who were hitting their peak crime years were born right around the time abortion was legalized.If you look at the serious criticisms that have been leveled against the Donohue-Levitt hypothesis, virtually all of them revolve around this spike in homicide by young men in the late 1980s-early 1990s. (There are also some non-serious criticisms, which I will address below.)
This is the point that Sailer is making, and also the point made far more rigorously by Ted Joyce in an article published in the Journal of Human Resources.So, a reasonable thing to ask yourself is: Was there anything else going on in the late 1980s that might be causing young Black males to be killing each other at alarming rates that might be swamping the impact of legalized abortion over a short time period?
The obvious culprit you might think about is crack cocaine. Crack cocaine was hitting the inner cities at exactly this time, disproportionately affecting minorities, and the violence was heavily concentrated among young Black males such as the gang members we write about in Freakonomics. So to figure out whether this spike in young Black male homicides is evidence against legalized abortion reducing crime, or even evidence legalized abortion causes crime, one needs to control for the crack epidemic to find the answer.
This is the argument that I have been making for years. First in the Slate exchange with Steve Sailer back in 1999, then in the Donohue and Levitt response to Ted Joyce, and now in a recent paper by Roland Fryer, Paul Heaton, me, and Kevin Murphy.The key points I mentioned in Slate five years ago in debating Sailer are reprinted below:
Your hypothesis that crack, not abortion, is the story, provides a testable alternative to our explanation of the facts. You argue:The arrival of crack led to large increases in crime rates between 1985 and the early '90s, particularly for inner-city African-American youths. The fall of the crack epidemic left many of the bad apples of this cohort dead, imprisoned, or scared straight. Consequently, not only did crime fall back to its original pre-crack level, but actually dropped even further in a "overshoot" effect.
States that had high abortion rates in the '70s were hit harder by the crack epidemic, thus any link between falling crime in the '90s and abortion rates in the '70s is spurious. If either assumption 1 or 2 is true, then the crack epidemic can explain some of the rise and fall in crime in the '80s and '90s. In order for your crack hypothesis to undermine the "abortion reduces crime" theory, however, all three assumptions must hold true.So, let's look at the assumptions one by one and see how they fare.
1)Did the arrival of crack lead to rising youth crime? Yes. No argument from me here.
2) Did the decline in crack lead to a "boomerang" effect in which crime actually fell by more than it had risen with the arrival of crack? Unfortunately for your story, the empirical evidence overwhelmingly rejects this claim. Using specifications similar to those in our paper, we find that the states with the biggest increases in murder over the rising crack years (1985-91) did see murder rates fall faster between 1991 and 1997.
But for every 10 percent that murder rose between 1985 and 1991, it fell by only 2.6 percent between 1991 and 1997. For your story to explain the decline in crime that we attribute to legalized abortion, this estimate would have to be about five times bigger. Moreover, for violent crime and property crime, increases in these crimes over the period 1985-91 are actually associated with increases in the period 1991-97 as well. In other words, for crimes other than murder, the impact of crack is not even in the right direction for your story.3) Were high-abortion-rate states in the '70s hit harder by the crack epidemic in the '90s?
Given the preceding paragraph, this is a moot point, because all three assumptions must be true to undermine the abortion story, but let's look anyway. A reasonable proxy for how hard the crack epidemic hit a state is the rise in crime in that state over the period 1985-91. Your theory requires a large positive correlation between abortion rates in a state in the '70s and the rise in crime in that state between 1985 and 1991. In fact the actual correlations, depending on the crime category, range between -.32 and +.09 Thus, the claim that high-abortion states are the same states that were hit hardest by crack is not true empirically.
While some states with high abortion rates did have a lot of crack (e.g., New York and D.C.), Vermont, Kansas, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Washington were among the 10 states with the highest abortion rates in the '70s. These were not exactly the epicenters of the crack epidemic. So, what is the final tally? Two of the key assumptions underlying your alternative hypothesis appear to be false: The retreat of crack has not led to an "overshoot" in crime, causing it to be lower than 1985, and even if it had, the states with high abortion rates in the '70s do not appear to be affected particularly strongly by the crack epidemic.
Moreover, when we re-run our analysis controlling for both changes in crime rates from 1985 to 1991 and the level of crime in 1991, the abortion variable comes in just as strongly as in our original analysis.Re-reading this response five years later, it still sounds pretty good to me. Interestingly, at the time, Sailer refused to respond directly to my arguments.
His response in Slate completely side-stepped the fact that I had destroyed his core argument. He wrote, for instance, "...rather than mud wrestle in numbers here, I'll privately send you my technical suggestions. In this essay I'll step back and explain why this straightforward insight [that abortion reduces crime] might not work in practice." I should note that I am still waiting for those technical suggestions he promised to arrive!! And if you compare his Slate arguments to his "new" article in the American Conservative, you will see that his thinking has not progressed very far on the issue.
In contrast, I spent two years working on that paper on crack cocaine, which provides hard, quantitative evidence in favor of those earlier conjectures I had made.Now let's talk about John Lott for a minute. Along with John Whitley, he wrote a paper on abortion and crime. It is so loaded with inaccurate claims, errors and statistical mistakes that I hate to even provide a link to it, but for the sake of completeness you can find it here.
Virtually nothing in this paper is correct, and it is no coincidence that four years later it remains unpublished. In a letter to the editor at Wall Street Journal, Lott claims that our results are driven by the particular measure of abortions that we used in the first paper. I guess he never bothered to read our response to Joyce in which we show in Table 1 that the results are nearly identical when we use his preferred data source. It is understandable that he could make this argument five years ago, but why would he persist in making it in 2005 when it has been definitively shown to be false?
(I'll let you put on your Freakonomics-thinking-hat and figure out the answer to that last question.) As Lott and Whitley are by now well aware, the statistical results they get in that paper are an artifact of some bizarre choices they made and any reasonable treatment of the data returns our initial results. (Even Ted Joyce, our critic, acknowledges that the basic patterns in the data we report are there, which Lott and Whitley were trying to challenge.)
To anyone who actually made it this far, I applaud you for your patience. Let me simply end with an analogy. Let's say that we are living in a world in which global warming is taking place, but also a world in which El Nino occasionally leads to radical, short run disruptions in normal weather patterns. You wouldn't argue that global warming is false because for a year or two we had cold winters. You'd want to figure out what effect El Nino has on winter weather and then see whether controlling for El Nino it looks like global warming is taking place.
http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you.html
Read the Journal Article
THE IMPACT OF LEGALIZED ABORTION ON CRIME*
by
JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITT
http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you.html
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Two very vocal critics, Steve Sailer and John Lott, have been exerting a lot of energy lately trying to convince the world that the abortion reduces crime hypothesis is not correct. A number of readers have asked me to respond to these criticisms.
First, let's start by reviewing the basic facts that support the Donohue-Levitt hypothesis that legalized abortion in the 1970s explains a substantial part of the crime decline in the 1990s:
1) Five states legalized abortion three years before Roe v. Wade. Crime started falling three years earlier in these states, with property crime (done by younger people) falling before violent crime.
2) After abortion was legalized, the availability of abortions differed dramatically across states. In some states like North Dakota and in parts of the deep South, it was virtually impossible to get an abortion even after Roe v. Wade. If one compares states that had high abortion rates in the mid 1970s to states that had low abortion rates in the mid 1970s, you see the following patterns with crime. For the period from 1973-1988, the two sets of states (high abortion states and low abortion states) have nearly identical crime patterns. Note, that this is a period before the generations exposed to legalized abortion are old enough to do much crime.
So this is exactly what the Donohue-Levitt theory predicts. But from the period 1985-1997, when the post Roe cohort is reaching peak crime ages, the high abortion states see a decline in crime of 30% relative to the low abortion states. Our original data ended in 1997. If one updated the study, the results would be similar.)
3) All of the decline in crime from 1985-1997 experienced by high abortion states relative to low abortion states is concentrated among the age groups born after Roe v. Wade. For people born before abortion legalization, there is no difference in the crime patterns for high abortion and low abortion states, just as the Donohue-Levitt theory predicts.
4) When we compare arrest rates of people born in the same state, just before and just after abortion legalization, we once again see the identical pattern of lower arrest rates for those born after legalization than before.
5) The evidence from Canada, Australia, and Romania also support the hypothesis that abortion reduces crime.
6) Studies have shown a reduction in infanticide, teen age drug use, and teen age childbearing consistent with the theory that abortion will reduce other social ills similar to crime.These six points all support the hypothesis. There is one fact that, without more careful analysis, argues against the Donohue-Levitt story:
7) The homicide rate of young males (especially young Black males) temporarily skyrocketed in the late 1980s, especially in urban centers like Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, DC, before returning to regular levels soon thereafter.
These young males who were hitting their peak crime years were born right around the time abortion was legalized.If you look at the serious criticisms that have been leveled against the Donohue-Levitt hypothesis, virtually all of them revolve around this spike in homicide by young men in the late 1980s-early 1990s. (There are also some non-serious criticisms, which I will address below.)
This is the point that Sailer is making, and also the point made far more rigorously by Ted Joyce in an article published in the Journal of Human Resources.So, a reasonable thing to ask yourself is: Was there anything else going on in the late 1980s that might be causing young Black males to be killing each other at alarming rates that might be swamping the impact of legalized abortion over a short time period?
The obvious culprit you might think about is crack cocaine. Crack cocaine was hitting the inner cities at exactly this time, disproportionately affecting minorities, and the violence was heavily concentrated among young Black males such as the gang members we write about in Freakonomics. So to figure out whether this spike in young Black male homicides is evidence against legalized abortion reducing crime, or even evidence legalized abortion causes crime, one needs to control for the crack epidemic to find the answer.
This is the argument that I have been making for years. First in the Slate exchange with Steve Sailer back in 1999, then in the Donohue and Levitt response to Ted Joyce, and now in a recent paper by Roland Fryer, Paul Heaton, me, and Kevin Murphy.The key points I mentioned in Slate five years ago in debating Sailer are reprinted below:
Your hypothesis that crack, not abortion, is the story, provides a testable alternative to our explanation of the facts. You argue:The arrival of crack led to large increases in crime rates between 1985 and the early '90s, particularly for inner-city African-American youths. The fall of the crack epidemic left many of the bad apples of this cohort dead, imprisoned, or scared straight. Consequently, not only did crime fall back to its original pre-crack level, but actually dropped even further in a "overshoot" effect.
States that had high abortion rates in the '70s were hit harder by the crack epidemic, thus any link between falling crime in the '90s and abortion rates in the '70s is spurious. If either assumption 1 or 2 is true, then the crack epidemic can explain some of the rise and fall in crime in the '80s and '90s. In order for your crack hypothesis to undermine the "abortion reduces crime" theory, however, all three assumptions must hold true.So, let's look at the assumptions one by one and see how they fare.
1)Did the arrival of crack lead to rising youth crime? Yes. No argument from me here.
2) Did the decline in crack lead to a "boomerang" effect in which crime actually fell by more than it had risen with the arrival of crack? Unfortunately for your story, the empirical evidence overwhelmingly rejects this claim. Using specifications similar to those in our paper, we find that the states with the biggest increases in murder over the rising crack years (1985-91) did see murder rates fall faster between 1991 and 1997.
But for every 10 percent that murder rose between 1985 and 1991, it fell by only 2.6 percent between 1991 and 1997. For your story to explain the decline in crime that we attribute to legalized abortion, this estimate would have to be about five times bigger. Moreover, for violent crime and property crime, increases in these crimes over the period 1985-91 are actually associated with increases in the period 1991-97 as well. In other words, for crimes other than murder, the impact of crack is not even in the right direction for your story.3) Were high-abortion-rate states in the '70s hit harder by the crack epidemic in the '90s?
Given the preceding paragraph, this is a moot point, because all three assumptions must be true to undermine the abortion story, but let's look anyway. A reasonable proxy for how hard the crack epidemic hit a state is the rise in crime in that state over the period 1985-91. Your theory requires a large positive correlation between abortion rates in a state in the '70s and the rise in crime in that state between 1985 and 1991. In fact the actual correlations, depending on the crime category, range between -.32 and +.09 Thus, the claim that high-abortion states are the same states that were hit hardest by crack is not true empirically.
While some states with high abortion rates did have a lot of crack (e.g., New York and D.C.), Vermont, Kansas, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Washington were among the 10 states with the highest abortion rates in the '70s. These were not exactly the epicenters of the crack epidemic. So, what is the final tally? Two of the key assumptions underlying your alternative hypothesis appear to be false: The retreat of crack has not led to an "overshoot" in crime, causing it to be lower than 1985, and even if it had, the states with high abortion rates in the '70s do not appear to be affected particularly strongly by the crack epidemic.
Moreover, when we re-run our analysis controlling for both changes in crime rates from 1985 to 1991 and the level of crime in 1991, the abortion variable comes in just as strongly as in our original analysis.Re-reading this response five years later, it still sounds pretty good to me. Interestingly, at the time, Sailer refused to respond directly to my arguments.
His response in Slate completely side-stepped the fact that I had destroyed his core argument. He wrote, for instance, "...rather than mud wrestle in numbers here, I'll privately send you my technical suggestions. In this essay I'll step back and explain why this straightforward insight [that abortion reduces crime] might not work in practice." I should note that I am still waiting for those technical suggestions he promised to arrive!! And if you compare his Slate arguments to his "new" article in the American Conservative, you will see that his thinking has not progressed very far on the issue.
In contrast, I spent two years working on that paper on crack cocaine, which provides hard, quantitative evidence in favor of those earlier conjectures I had made.Now let's talk about John Lott for a minute. Along with John Whitley, he wrote a paper on abortion and crime. It is so loaded with inaccurate claims, errors and statistical mistakes that I hate to even provide a link to it, but for the sake of completeness you can find it here.
Virtually nothing in this paper is correct, and it is no coincidence that four years later it remains unpublished. In a letter to the editor at Wall Street Journal, Lott claims that our results are driven by the particular measure of abortions that we used in the first paper. I guess he never bothered to read our response to Joyce in which we show in Table 1 that the results are nearly identical when we use his preferred data source. It is understandable that he could make this argument five years ago, but why would he persist in making it in 2005 when it has been definitively shown to be false?
(I'll let you put on your Freakonomics-thinking-hat and figure out the answer to that last question.) As Lott and Whitley are by now well aware, the statistical results they get in that paper are an artifact of some bizarre choices they made and any reasonable treatment of the data returns our initial results. (Even Ted Joyce, our critic, acknowledges that the basic patterns in the data we report are there, which Lott and Whitley were trying to challenge.)
To anyone who actually made it this far, I applaud you for your patience. Let me simply end with an analogy. Let's say that we are living in a world in which global warming is taking place, but also a world in which El Nino occasionally leads to radical, short run disruptions in normal weather patterns. You wouldn't argue that global warming is false because for a year or two we had cold winters. You'd want to figure out what effect El Nino has on winter weather and then see whether controlling for El Nino it looks like global warming is taking place.
http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you.html
Read the Journal Article
THE IMPACT OF LEGALIZED ABORTION ON CRIME*
by
JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITT
http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you.html
Productive Citizens?
Bill Bennett: "[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down"
Addressing a caller's suggestion that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then added again, "but the crime rate would go down."
Bennett's remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett's race-based argument.
From the September 28 broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America:
CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all.
BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?
CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.
BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.
CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.
BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --
CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.
BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.
Bill Bennett's Morning in America airs on approximately 115 radio stations with an estimated weekly audience of 1.25 million listeners.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280006
My question is "What are the Productive Citizens like Bennett Producing?"
Please Post a Comment at the site posted below
http://mediamatters.org/comments/latest/200509280006
Addressing a caller's suggestion that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then added again, "but the crime rate would go down."
Bennett's remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett's race-based argument.
From the September 28 broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America:
CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all.
BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?
CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.
BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.
CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.
BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --
CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.
BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.
Bill Bennett's Morning in America airs on approximately 115 radio stations with an estimated weekly audience of 1.25 million listeners.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280006
My question is "What are the Productive Citizens like Bennett Producing?"
Please Post a Comment at the site posted below
http://mediamatters.org/comments/latest/200509280006
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Death Sentences
Death Sentences Linked to History of Lynching in States
Mon Sep 26 09:42:46 2005 Pacific Time
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 26 (AScribe Newswire) -- States that sentence the most criminals to death also tend to be the states that had the most lynchings in the past, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that the number of death sentences for all criminals -- black and white -- were higher in states with a history of lynchings. But the link was even stronger when only black death sentences were analyzed.
The results may be shocking to many people, but they aren't surprising to sociologists who study the racial aspects of the death penalty, said David Jacobs, co-author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State University.
"Our results suggest that the death penalty has become a sort of legal replacement for the lynchings in the past," Jacobs said. "This hasn't been done overtly, and probably no one has consciously made such a decision. But the results show a clear connection."
Another study finding reinforces this idea. Results showed that the number of death sentences in states with the most lynchings increased as the state's population of African Americans grew larger, at least to a certain point. The researchers believe that is because, as their numbers increase, blacks are seen by the white majority as a growing threat.
Jacobs conducted the study with Jason Carmichael, a graduate student at Ohio State, and Stephanie Kent, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Their results were published in the most recent issue of the American Sociological Review.
For the study, the researchers examined the number of death sentences handed down in each of the mainland 48 states in 1971-72, 1981-82 and 1991-92. They computed lynching rates with data on state lynchings from 1889 to 1931 provided by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
In their analysis, the researchers used a widely accepted statistical technique that allowed them to take into account the fact that the death penalty is not legal in all states and, even where it is legal, it is not always used.
They also took into account a wide variety of factors that also affect the number of death sentences given in a state, such as the overall crime and murder rates, unemployment rates, and fundamentalist church memberships.
To confirm their findings, the researchers repeated their analyses using a separate, and perhaps more reliable, data set on the number of lynchings that occurred in 10 Southern states.
In both cases, the findings showed a clear link between the number of lynchings, the proportions of African Americans in the states, and the number of death sentences.
"We found that violent acts in the distant past still seemed to be linked to current legal decisions about who will live and who will die," Jacobs said.
Why do the number of death sentences increase for white criminals as well as blacks in states with a history of lynching?
"If there was clear discrimination against blacks in death penalty sentencing, then the Supreme Court might again rule that the death penalty is unconstitutional," Jacobs said. "So there may be an effort to not discriminate when imposing the death penalty.
While the connection between lynchings and death sentences is strongest when only black death sentences are considered, the connection between lynchings in the past and contemporary death sentences is present for both blacks and whites."
The findings also showed that the number of death sentences increases in states after a growth in the population of blacks. But the number of death sentences begins to go down once the population of African Americans reaches a threshold of about 20 to 22 percent.
"Probably at that point, blacks have enough votes and political influence within states to reduce the number of death sentences," Jacobs said.
The results of the study suggest that the United States is still a product of its past, Jacobs said.
"Historical events continue to influence the current behavior of important social institutions.
But the main point is that our findings do not support claims that the death penalty is administered in a color-blind fashion."
- - - -
CONTACT: Jeff Grabmeier, Ohio State Research Communications, 614-292-8457, Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
Media Contact: Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457, Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
History of Death
Mon Sep 26 09:42:46 2005 Pacific Time
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 26 (AScribe Newswire) -- States that sentence the most criminals to death also tend to be the states that had the most lynchings in the past, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that the number of death sentences for all criminals -- black and white -- were higher in states with a history of lynchings. But the link was even stronger when only black death sentences were analyzed.
The results may be shocking to many people, but they aren't surprising to sociologists who study the racial aspects of the death penalty, said David Jacobs, co-author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State University.
"Our results suggest that the death penalty has become a sort of legal replacement for the lynchings in the past," Jacobs said. "This hasn't been done overtly, and probably no one has consciously made such a decision. But the results show a clear connection."
Another study finding reinforces this idea. Results showed that the number of death sentences in states with the most lynchings increased as the state's population of African Americans grew larger, at least to a certain point. The researchers believe that is because, as their numbers increase, blacks are seen by the white majority as a growing threat.
Jacobs conducted the study with Jason Carmichael, a graduate student at Ohio State, and Stephanie Kent, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Their results were published in the most recent issue of the American Sociological Review.
For the study, the researchers examined the number of death sentences handed down in each of the mainland 48 states in 1971-72, 1981-82 and 1991-92. They computed lynching rates with data on state lynchings from 1889 to 1931 provided by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
In their analysis, the researchers used a widely accepted statistical technique that allowed them to take into account the fact that the death penalty is not legal in all states and, even where it is legal, it is not always used.
They also took into account a wide variety of factors that also affect the number of death sentences given in a state, such as the overall crime and murder rates, unemployment rates, and fundamentalist church memberships.
To confirm their findings, the researchers repeated their analyses using a separate, and perhaps more reliable, data set on the number of lynchings that occurred in 10 Southern states.
In both cases, the findings showed a clear link between the number of lynchings, the proportions of African Americans in the states, and the number of death sentences.
"We found that violent acts in the distant past still seemed to be linked to current legal decisions about who will live and who will die," Jacobs said.
Why do the number of death sentences increase for white criminals as well as blacks in states with a history of lynching?
"If there was clear discrimination against blacks in death penalty sentencing, then the Supreme Court might again rule that the death penalty is unconstitutional," Jacobs said. "So there may be an effort to not discriminate when imposing the death penalty.
While the connection between lynchings and death sentences is strongest when only black death sentences are considered, the connection between lynchings in the past and contemporary death sentences is present for both blacks and whites."
The findings also showed that the number of death sentences increases in states after a growth in the population of blacks. But the number of death sentences begins to go down once the population of African Americans reaches a threshold of about 20 to 22 percent.
"Probably at that point, blacks have enough votes and political influence within states to reduce the number of death sentences," Jacobs said.
The results of the study suggest that the United States is still a product of its past, Jacobs said.
"Historical events continue to influence the current behavior of important social institutions.
But the main point is that our findings do not support claims that the death penalty is administered in a color-blind fashion."
- - - -
CONTACT: Jeff Grabmeier, Ohio State Research Communications, 614-292-8457, Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
Media Contact: Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457, Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
History of Death
KATRINA AND RACISM: The World View
Sept. 19, 2005 -- In the initial aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, U.S. journalists may have been largely silent on issues of race and poverty, but the international press was not. Here's a sampling of commentary from media around the world, all drawn from the initial coverage of Hurricane Katrina:
"Already the finger of racism is being pointed at official Washington for the slowness of federal agencies in responding to the disaster. Especially in New Orleans, the city hardest hit by the hurricane, which is 67 percent black ... Such is the legacy of racism that to this day haunts the American psyche, despite desegregation." — Manila Standard Today, Philippines
"America's old racial demons have been reawakened by the crisis unfolding in a city that is 67 per cent black, and where almost a third of the population already lived below the poverty level." — The Independent, UK
"Washington, in a bizarre display of uncaring aloofness in their hour of need, appeared unable to respond to the crisis until days later. The disaster also revealed the racial fissures in American society. Most of the hapless survivors who filled New Orleans Superdome were black, with the more affluent white residents able to flee in their sports utility vehicles before Katrina brought her misery." — The Star, South Africa
"Many things about the United States are wonderful, but it has a vile underbelly which is usually kept well out of sight. Now in New Orleans it has been exposed to the world." —
The Mirror, UK
"The ever-sensitive question of race in the United States has exploded into the furious debate over the government's handling of the disaster unfolding in New Orleans." —
Aljazeera.net, Middle East
"When I see poor blacks, whites, Latinos and other ethnic groups crying out for help in an undignified manner it is sad and shameful when we recognize something could have been done earlier, something is wrong with the social and ethnic fabric of the United States. It is clear that this group of people is very much removed from the suburban white middle class." —
The Bahama Journal, Bahamas
"The fact that New Orleans is a southern town predominantly populated by African Americans ... explains why President George W Bush did not see the need to cut short his holiday.... (B)eing in America does not make a black man an American." —
The Herald, Zimbabwe
"Hurricane Katrina has come and gone — leaving behind one strong message — Racism still exists in America." — Hindustan Times, India
Compiled by Tolerance.org staff.
http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_tol.jsp?id=1291
"Already the finger of racism is being pointed at official Washington for the slowness of federal agencies in responding to the disaster. Especially in New Orleans, the city hardest hit by the hurricane, which is 67 percent black ... Such is the legacy of racism that to this day haunts the American psyche, despite desegregation." — Manila Standard Today, Philippines
"America's old racial demons have been reawakened by the crisis unfolding in a city that is 67 per cent black, and where almost a third of the population already lived below the poverty level." — The Independent, UK
"Washington, in a bizarre display of uncaring aloofness in their hour of need, appeared unable to respond to the crisis until days later. The disaster also revealed the racial fissures in American society. Most of the hapless survivors who filled New Orleans Superdome were black, with the more affluent white residents able to flee in their sports utility vehicles before Katrina brought her misery." — The Star, South Africa
"Many things about the United States are wonderful, but it has a vile underbelly which is usually kept well out of sight. Now in New Orleans it has been exposed to the world." —
The Mirror, UK
"The ever-sensitive question of race in the United States has exploded into the furious debate over the government's handling of the disaster unfolding in New Orleans." —
Aljazeera.net, Middle East
"When I see poor blacks, whites, Latinos and other ethnic groups crying out for help in an undignified manner it is sad and shameful when we recognize something could have been done earlier, something is wrong with the social and ethnic fabric of the United States. It is clear that this group of people is very much removed from the suburban white middle class." —
The Bahama Journal, Bahamas
"The fact that New Orleans is a southern town predominantly populated by African Americans ... explains why President George W Bush did not see the need to cut short his holiday.... (B)eing in America does not make a black man an American." —
The Herald, Zimbabwe
"Hurricane Katrina has come and gone — leaving behind one strong message — Racism still exists in America." — Hindustan Times, India
Compiled by Tolerance.org staff.
http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_tol.jsp?id=1291
EMPOWERMENT
Breaking Free: A Plan For Black Empowerment
If Katrina did not awaken Black America to the weaknesses of Government and the continual dependency on American politics, then the next disaster could be deadly enough to wipe us off the map of the continental United States. If the perks of the Civil Rights Movement was to empower us on the political front, and all we got are mayors scattered throughout the US without a pot or window, meaning powerless, then maybe we should have followed the Black Panther's plan of action, which was self-empowerment and defense.
This should be the focus of Black leaders from this point on. The crisis of Katrina and what pissed Black America off the most - whether they could express themselves correctly or not - was the fact that our people were helpless when left to fend for themselves. There was no Black Power structure to come to our aid, this is a major wake-up call.
There should have been a Black security/rescue squad to descend upon New Orleans like flies coming from all over the United States. From cities like LA, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta. There should have been brothers and sisters there the next day with artillery, rescue equipment, and food and water from reserves mounted over the years. Instead what did we have to fall back on...the freakin US political system. To hell with Civil Rights, Black Empowerment and Power is needed NOW!
Where were the Crips and the Bloods. Where were the gangster OG's of the Rap world and their hardcore styles? Where were the hundreds of thousands of Nation of Islam brothers seen in every major urban city when we really needed them. If the US Army or National Guard is not willing to help then we should help our damn selves and they should have no reason to complain or be afraid, especially if we are in the "help ourselves" mode.
Now, there needs to be a solid structure set into place in case something like this was to ever happen again. Now, there must be at least 7-12 Black men and women sitting at a table to take control of Black America. Where are the best and the brightest of Black America to prepare for our collective future, now is the time to bring forth these Black leadership roles:
1. Security and Rescue Operations - to be there the next time something like this happens
2. Political and International Affairs - to strike alliances with other African countries
3. Minister of Health and Well-being - to enlighten our Black women and children on health
4. Educational Expert - to regulate the learning process of our children
5. Business and Economics - to gather the rich and prosperous of our people and invest in our
future
6. Community Squads - to protect our young brothers and sisters from dope and trigger happy
white-boy cops
7. Family Affairs - to break free all brothers and sisters subject to the US courts and train them
in family
8. Media and Entertainment - to control our national image and regulate our sports contracts
9. Spiritual Leader - to put faith, identity and hope back into our Black minds instead of taking
our money
10. Legal Advisors - one who can keep us out of the white man's prisons and from his debt
There should be leaders taken from the above who can put together a team of Black talent and brains that will see these things through. No more should we depend on this system to direct our paths, for we see what 40 plus years of Civil Rights Legislation has gotten us...humiliation and broken hearts, dreams, and dependency.
Is this a Democrat / Republican thing? Hell no...this is a Black thing. Why should we continue to enslave ourselves and our future and our children's future to political madness and believe in a half-baked Democracy that really (and I mean really) does NOT have their Black constituency at heart, or any constituency for that matter. How can government help us?
We need our own political party. We need to break free from dependency and begin a life for ourselves and tie it to our mother land. There are many African nations willing to help us in America, why do we continue to put our faith and money into the hands of whites? Someone explain the hell out of that to us at Afromerica.
It is time to Empower ourselves!
© September 2005 by CR Hamilton
http://www.afromerica.com/knowledge/politics/thirdparty/breakingfree.php
If Katrina did not awaken Black America to the weaknesses of Government and the continual dependency on American politics, then the next disaster could be deadly enough to wipe us off the map of the continental United States. If the perks of the Civil Rights Movement was to empower us on the political front, and all we got are mayors scattered throughout the US without a pot or window, meaning powerless, then maybe we should have followed the Black Panther's plan of action, which was self-empowerment and defense.
This should be the focus of Black leaders from this point on. The crisis of Katrina and what pissed Black America off the most - whether they could express themselves correctly or not - was the fact that our people were helpless when left to fend for themselves. There was no Black Power structure to come to our aid, this is a major wake-up call.
There should have been a Black security/rescue squad to descend upon New Orleans like flies coming from all over the United States. From cities like LA, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta. There should have been brothers and sisters there the next day with artillery, rescue equipment, and food and water from reserves mounted over the years. Instead what did we have to fall back on...the freakin US political system. To hell with Civil Rights, Black Empowerment and Power is needed NOW!
Where were the Crips and the Bloods. Where were the gangster OG's of the Rap world and their hardcore styles? Where were the hundreds of thousands of Nation of Islam brothers seen in every major urban city when we really needed them. If the US Army or National Guard is not willing to help then we should help our damn selves and they should have no reason to complain or be afraid, especially if we are in the "help ourselves" mode.
Now, there needs to be a solid structure set into place in case something like this was to ever happen again. Now, there must be at least 7-12 Black men and women sitting at a table to take control of Black America. Where are the best and the brightest of Black America to prepare for our collective future, now is the time to bring forth these Black leadership roles:
1. Security and Rescue Operations - to be there the next time something like this happens
2. Political and International Affairs - to strike alliances with other African countries
3. Minister of Health and Well-being - to enlighten our Black women and children on health
4. Educational Expert - to regulate the learning process of our children
5. Business and Economics - to gather the rich and prosperous of our people and invest in our
future
6. Community Squads - to protect our young brothers and sisters from dope and trigger happy
white-boy cops
7. Family Affairs - to break free all brothers and sisters subject to the US courts and train them
in family
8. Media and Entertainment - to control our national image and regulate our sports contracts
9. Spiritual Leader - to put faith, identity and hope back into our Black minds instead of taking
our money
10. Legal Advisors - one who can keep us out of the white man's prisons and from his debt
There should be leaders taken from the above who can put together a team of Black talent and brains that will see these things through. No more should we depend on this system to direct our paths, for we see what 40 plus years of Civil Rights Legislation has gotten us...humiliation and broken hearts, dreams, and dependency.
Is this a Democrat / Republican thing? Hell no...this is a Black thing. Why should we continue to enslave ourselves and our future and our children's future to political madness and believe in a half-baked Democracy that really (and I mean really) does NOT have their Black constituency at heart, or any constituency for that matter. How can government help us?
We need our own political party. We need to break free from dependency and begin a life for ourselves and tie it to our mother land. There are many African nations willing to help us in America, why do we continue to put our faith and money into the hands of whites? Someone explain the hell out of that to us at Afromerica.
It is time to Empower ourselves!
© September 2005 by CR Hamilton
http://www.afromerica.com/knowledge/politics/thirdparty/breakingfree.php
And for other purposes....??? S. 517: A Bill
A bill to establish a Weather Modification Operations and Research Board, and for other purposes.
Introduced:
Mar 3, 2005
Sponsor:
Sen. Kay Hutchison [R-TX]
Status:
Introduced (By Sen. Kay Hutchison [R-TX])
Last Action:
Mar 3, 2005: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. (text of measure as introduced: CR S2025-2026)
109TH CONGRESS
S. 517
1ST SESSION
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Weather Modification Research and Technology Transfer Authorization Act of 2005'.
SEC. 2. PURPOSE.
It is the purpose of this Act to develop and implement a comprehensive and coordinated national weather modification policy and a national cooperative Federal and State program of weather modification research and development.
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) BOARD- The term `Board' means the Weather Modification Advisory and Research Board.
(2) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR- The term `Executive Director' means the Executive Director of the Weather Modification Advisory and Research Board.
(3) RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT- The term `research and development' means theoretical analysis, exploration, experimentation, and the extension of investigative findings and theories of scientific or technical nature into practical application for experimental and demonstration purposes, including the experimental production and testing of models, devices, equipment, materials, and processes.
(4) WEATHER MODIFICATION- The term `weather modification' means changing or controlling, or attempting to change or control, by artificial methods the natural development of atmospheric cloud forms or precipitation forms which occur in the troposphere.
SEC. 4. WEATHER MODIFICATION ADVISORY AND RESEARCH BOARD ESTABLISHED.
(a) IN GENERAL- There is established in the Department of Commerce the Weather Modification Advisory and Research Board.
(b) MEMBERSHIP-
(1) IN GENERAL- The Board shall consist of 11 members appointed by the Secretary of Commerce, of whom--
(A) at least 1 shall be a representative of the American Meteorological Society;
(B) at least 1 shall be a representative of the American Society of Civil Engineers;
(C) at least 1 shall be a representative of the National Academy of Sciences;
(D) at least 1 shall be a representative of the National Center for Atmospheric Research of the National Science Foundation;
(E) at least 2 shall be representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Department of Commerce;
(F) at least 1 shall be a representative of institutions of higher education or research institutes; and
(G) at least 1 shall be a representative of a State that is currently supporting operational weather modification projects.
(2) TENURE- A member of the Board serves at the pleasure of the Secretary of Commerce.
(3) VACANCIES- Any vacancy on the Board shall be filled in the same manner as the original appointment.
(b) ADVISORY COMMITTEES- The Board may establish advisory committees to advise the Board and to make recommendations to the Board concerning legislation, policies, administration, research, and other matters.
(c) INITIAL MEETING- Not later than 30 days after the date on which all members of the Board have been appointed, the Board shall hold its first meeting.
(d) MEETINGS- The Board shall meet at the call of the Chair.
(e) QUORUM- A majority of the members of the Board shall constitute a quorum, but a lesser number of members may hold hearings.
(f) CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR- The Board shall select a Chair and Vice Chair from among its members.
SEC. 5. DUTIES OF THE BOARD.
(a) PROMOTION OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT- In order to assist in expanding the theoretical and practical knowledge of weather modification, the Board shall promote and fund research and development, studies, and investigations with respect to--
(1) improved forecast and decision-making technologies for weather modification operations, including tailored computer workstations and software and new observation systems with remote sensors; and
(2) assessments and evaluations of the efficacy of weather modification, both purposeful (including cloud-seeding operations) and inadvertent (including downwind effects and anthropogenic effects).
(b) FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE- Unless the use of the money is restricted or subject to any limitations provided by law, the Board shall use amounts in the Weather Modification Research and Development Fund--
(1) to pay its expenses in the administration of this Act, and
(2) to provide for research and development with respect to weather modifications by grants to, or contracts or cooperative arrangements, with public or private agencies.
(c) REPORT- The Board shall submit to the Secretary biennially a report on its findings and research results.
SEC. 6. POWERS OF THE BOARD.
(a) STUDIES, INVESTIGATIONS, AND HEARINGS- The Board may make any studies or investigations, obtain any information, and hold any hearings necessary or proper to administer or enforce this Act or any rules or orders issued under this Act.
(b) PERSONNEL- The Board may employ, as provided for in appropriations Acts, an Executive Director and other support staff necessary to perform duties and functions under this Act.
(c) COOPERATION WITH OTHER AGENCIES- The Board may cooperate with public or private agencies to promote the purposes of this Act.
(d) COOPERATIVE AGREEMENTS- The Board may enter into cooperative agreements with the head of any department or agency of the United States, an appropriate official of any State or political subdivision of a State, or an appropriate official of any private or public agency or organization for conducting weather modification activities or cloud-seeding operations.
(e) CONDUCT AND CONTRACTS FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT- The Executive Director, with the approval of the Board, may conduct and may contract for research and development activities relating to the purposes of this section.
SEC. 7. COOPERATION WITH THE WEATHER MODIFICATION OPERATIONS AND RESEARCH BOARD.
The heads of the departments and agencies of the United States and the heads of any other public or private agencies and institutions that receive research funds from the United States shall, to the extent possible, give full support and cooperation to the Board and to initiate independent research and development programs that address weather modifications.
SEC. 8. FUNDING.
(a) IN GENERAL- There is established within the Treasury of the United States the Weather Modification Research and Development Fund, which shall consist of amounts appropriated pursuant to subsection (b) or received by the Board under subsection (c).
(b) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS- There is authorized to be appropriated to the Board for the purposes of carrying out the provisions of this Act $10,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2005 through 2014. Any sums appropriated under this subsection shall remain available, without fiscal year limitation, until expended.
(c) GIFTS- The Board may accept, use, and dispose of gifts or donations of services or property.
SEC. 9. EFFECTIVE DATE.
This Act shall take effect on October 1, 2005.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s109-517
Introduced:
Mar 3, 2005
Sponsor:
Sen. Kay Hutchison [R-TX]
Status:
Introduced (By Sen. Kay Hutchison [R-TX])
Last Action:
Mar 3, 2005: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. (text of measure as introduced: CR S2025-2026)
109TH CONGRESS
S. 517
1ST SESSION
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Weather Modification Research and Technology Transfer Authorization Act of 2005'.
SEC. 2. PURPOSE.
It is the purpose of this Act to develop and implement a comprehensive and coordinated national weather modification policy and a national cooperative Federal and State program of weather modification research and development.
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) BOARD- The term `Board' means the Weather Modification Advisory and Research Board.
(2) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR- The term `Executive Director' means the Executive Director of the Weather Modification Advisory and Research Board.
(3) RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT- The term `research and development' means theoretical analysis, exploration, experimentation, and the extension of investigative findings and theories of scientific or technical nature into practical application for experimental and demonstration purposes, including the experimental production and testing of models, devices, equipment, materials, and processes.
(4) WEATHER MODIFICATION- The term `weather modification' means changing or controlling, or attempting to change or control, by artificial methods the natural development of atmospheric cloud forms or precipitation forms which occur in the troposphere.
SEC. 4. WEATHER MODIFICATION ADVISORY AND RESEARCH BOARD ESTABLISHED.
(a) IN GENERAL- There is established in the Department of Commerce the Weather Modification Advisory and Research Board.
(b) MEMBERSHIP-
(1) IN GENERAL- The Board shall consist of 11 members appointed by the Secretary of Commerce, of whom--
(A) at least 1 shall be a representative of the American Meteorological Society;
(B) at least 1 shall be a representative of the American Society of Civil Engineers;
(C) at least 1 shall be a representative of the National Academy of Sciences;
(D) at least 1 shall be a representative of the National Center for Atmospheric Research of the National Science Foundation;
(E) at least 2 shall be representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Department of Commerce;
(F) at least 1 shall be a representative of institutions of higher education or research institutes; and
(G) at least 1 shall be a representative of a State that is currently supporting operational weather modification projects.
(2) TENURE- A member of the Board serves at the pleasure of the Secretary of Commerce.
(3) VACANCIES- Any vacancy on the Board shall be filled in the same manner as the original appointment.
(b) ADVISORY COMMITTEES- The Board may establish advisory committees to advise the Board and to make recommendations to the Board concerning legislation, policies, administration, research, and other matters.
(c) INITIAL MEETING- Not later than 30 days after the date on which all members of the Board have been appointed, the Board shall hold its first meeting.
(d) MEETINGS- The Board shall meet at the call of the Chair.
(e) QUORUM- A majority of the members of the Board shall constitute a quorum, but a lesser number of members may hold hearings.
(f) CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR- The Board shall select a Chair and Vice Chair from among its members.
SEC. 5. DUTIES OF THE BOARD.
(a) PROMOTION OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT- In order to assist in expanding the theoretical and practical knowledge of weather modification, the Board shall promote and fund research and development, studies, and investigations with respect to--
(1) improved forecast and decision-making technologies for weather modification operations, including tailored computer workstations and software and new observation systems with remote sensors; and
(2) assessments and evaluations of the efficacy of weather modification, both purposeful (including cloud-seeding operations) and inadvertent (including downwind effects and anthropogenic effects).
(b) FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE- Unless the use of the money is restricted or subject to any limitations provided by law, the Board shall use amounts in the Weather Modification Research and Development Fund--
(1) to pay its expenses in the administration of this Act, and
(2) to provide for research and development with respect to weather modifications by grants to, or contracts or cooperative arrangements, with public or private agencies.
(c) REPORT- The Board shall submit to the Secretary biennially a report on its findings and research results.
SEC. 6. POWERS OF THE BOARD.
(a) STUDIES, INVESTIGATIONS, AND HEARINGS- The Board may make any studies or investigations, obtain any information, and hold any hearings necessary or proper to administer or enforce this Act or any rules or orders issued under this Act.
(b) PERSONNEL- The Board may employ, as provided for in appropriations Acts, an Executive Director and other support staff necessary to perform duties and functions under this Act.
(c) COOPERATION WITH OTHER AGENCIES- The Board may cooperate with public or private agencies to promote the purposes of this Act.
(d) COOPERATIVE AGREEMENTS- The Board may enter into cooperative agreements with the head of any department or agency of the United States, an appropriate official of any State or political subdivision of a State, or an appropriate official of any private or public agency or organization for conducting weather modification activities or cloud-seeding operations.
(e) CONDUCT AND CONTRACTS FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT- The Executive Director, with the approval of the Board, may conduct and may contract for research and development activities relating to the purposes of this section.
SEC. 7. COOPERATION WITH THE WEATHER MODIFICATION OPERATIONS AND RESEARCH BOARD.
The heads of the departments and agencies of the United States and the heads of any other public or private agencies and institutions that receive research funds from the United States shall, to the extent possible, give full support and cooperation to the Board and to initiate independent research and development programs that address weather modifications.
SEC. 8. FUNDING.
(a) IN GENERAL- There is established within the Treasury of the United States the Weather Modification Research and Development Fund, which shall consist of amounts appropriated pursuant to subsection (b) or received by the Board under subsection (c).
(b) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS- There is authorized to be appropriated to the Board for the purposes of carrying out the provisions of this Act $10,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2005 through 2014. Any sums appropriated under this subsection shall remain available, without fiscal year limitation, until expended.
(c) GIFTS- The Board may accept, use, and dispose of gifts or donations of services or property.
SEC. 9. EFFECTIVE DATE.
This Act shall take effect on October 1, 2005.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s109-517
Friday, September 23, 2005
African-American Abortion:
Pro Choice, Infanticide, Or Genocide?
by Brad Lena
The white population in America is in decline. The question for Black Americans is do they wish to accompany them? If the black abortion rate remains constant, it may be inevitable. The Black population in America, according to the 2000 Census, comprised 12.3 % of the population (12.9% if identified as black plus another race.) It is no longer the largest minority having been surpassed by Hispanics in 2000 (5 years sooner than anticipated.) Black American women comprise 13.5 % of the female population in the U.S. but have 34% of all the abortions. Black abortion rates are approximately 2.6 times higher than the white. Most of America's abortions take place in urban areas.
Planned Parenthood, the intellectual and philosophical stepchild of eugenicist and racist Margaret Sanger, has located 78% of their facilities in minority communities. No surprise there. Black pro-life organizations estimate that there have been 15 million fewer black births since Roe v. Wade. By 2038, if current population and immigration trends continue the black vote, a current source of political influence, will become insignificant. There are omens of this trend in the attention the Hispanics are getting from the dominant parties.
Curiously, black politicians, academics and feminists, for the most part, do not appear to have any second thoughts about the abortion rate in their community. Frankly, it reveals a political and social philosophy that has more in common with white European and American intellectuals than the black community.Are there any racial connotations associated with black abortion? Of course there are, it cannot be otherwise. The racist motivations of the European proponents of eugenics and Americans such as Margaret Sanger and her infamous "Negro Project" are well documented. What of today?
Academics and feminists teach black women that their bodies are their own and anything less than absolute autonomy of action is oppressive, exploitive, sexist, constructs of domination, etc. It wasn't always that way. Early white proponents of American feminism, Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, thought abortion and slavery horrific. Stanton proclaimed, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit." Anthony referred to abortion as "child-murder."
These women were ardent abolitionists and feminists long before it was fashionable. The idea that people could be considered property, in or out of the womb, was repugnant to them. As an aside, noted PBS filmmaker Ken Burns thought it inappropriate to present the lives of these women in its fullness and he censored their vehement opposition to abortion in his documentary entitled Not For Ourselves Alone. An incredulous Nat Hentoff remarked at this unconscionable omission "It was as if a televised life of Dr. Martin Luther King focused entirely on him as a fighter for civil rights without a word about his lifelong commitment to direct-action pacifism as taught by Gandhi and the American minister A.J. Muste, who first - as Dr. King told me - convinced him of the power of nonviolence."
Given the history of eugenics, can an argument be made as to why there shouldn't be more Black Americans that isn't fundamentally racist? The post-slavery accomplishments of American Blacks are remarkable and perhaps unprecedented. Considering the level of white social, political, economic and educational malfeasance it is astounding. So what's the problem? Are there too many black doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, scientists, artists and athletes? White people have too long defined the value of a black life. It is insane for black people to participate in the social engineering agenda of the dominant, albeit fading, culture. How does it help Black Americans to adopt postmodern definitions of sexuality, family and gender?
White intellectuals such as Princeton's Pete Singer do not think a human life is any more valuable than the life of an animal. Black people have intimate experience with that sort of reasoning and should be repulsed by it. Mr. Singer's views on human sexuality include sexual relations, consensual of course, with non-humans. How will it serve the political, economic and social interests of Black Americans to follow the white culture into moral and ethical debasement?
How come it seems that no one but Minister Farrakhan is asking these questions openly and challengingly?At the dawn of the 21st Century, the dominant political and social thought of the white elite, with occasional exceptions, is a variation of Marxism or Socialism with a little eco-theism thrown in. As these philosophies require the reorganization of societies there has been an ongoing systematic assault on family structures. The black family with its options constrained by social, economic and educational discrimination have had fewer resources with which to resist these assaults and consequently are the most burdened by the resulting social pathologies.
The separation of black men and women from one another is, for all intent and purposes, a done deal. It is no accident that at the heart of Minister Farrakhan's initiatives is the healing of this fractured relationship. Abortion goes one step further and separates a black woman from her child to be. These separations are lethal and heinous.Historically, when one group of people wishes to displace (or exterminate) another group it requires an outlay of capital. The people slated for subjugation usually contribute little more than their demise if they are not to be enslaved.
In this case however, the costs pertaining to the infrastructure of the abortion culture has been amortized throughout the society disguising both the eugenics and economics of black abortion. How much money is generated from black abortions? Picking a figure of 1,000,000 abortions a year in the U.S. as our example, the actual number of abortions is somewhat higher, and Black Americans account for say 340,000. This figured multiplied by the average cost per abortion of $300 generates $102,000,000 annually. Every time a black abortion occurs it helps pay the mortgage, the car payment, or the dinner out on the town of its practitioners, promoters and administrators.
If these beneficiaries are white, one could almost say it's business as usual, but if they're black it is heartbreaking. The twin evils of unrestrained promiscuity and abortion are decimating a people on the eve of ever-greater achievements. Between the holocaust of AIDS in Africa and African-American abortion, the words "black death" once referring to the Bubonic Plague has taken on a new and horrifically modern definition. Of all the challenges faced by black people in America, abortion is among the greatest and most destructive. Nothing less than the future of Black Americans may be at stake.
Margaret Sanger must be smiling.
Brad Lena is a regular contributor to BlackElectorate.com. Mr. Lena is based in Asheville, NC and can be reached at blena@mindspring.com
http://www.blackelectorate.com/articles.asp?ID=657
by Brad Lena
The white population in America is in decline. The question for Black Americans is do they wish to accompany them? If the black abortion rate remains constant, it may be inevitable. The Black population in America, according to the 2000 Census, comprised 12.3 % of the population (12.9% if identified as black plus another race.) It is no longer the largest minority having been surpassed by Hispanics in 2000 (5 years sooner than anticipated.) Black American women comprise 13.5 % of the female population in the U.S. but have 34% of all the abortions. Black abortion rates are approximately 2.6 times higher than the white. Most of America's abortions take place in urban areas.
Planned Parenthood, the intellectual and philosophical stepchild of eugenicist and racist Margaret Sanger, has located 78% of their facilities in minority communities. No surprise there. Black pro-life organizations estimate that there have been 15 million fewer black births since Roe v. Wade. By 2038, if current population and immigration trends continue the black vote, a current source of political influence, will become insignificant. There are omens of this trend in the attention the Hispanics are getting from the dominant parties.
Curiously, black politicians, academics and feminists, for the most part, do not appear to have any second thoughts about the abortion rate in their community. Frankly, it reveals a political and social philosophy that has more in common with white European and American intellectuals than the black community.Are there any racial connotations associated with black abortion? Of course there are, it cannot be otherwise. The racist motivations of the European proponents of eugenics and Americans such as Margaret Sanger and her infamous "Negro Project" are well documented. What of today?
Academics and feminists teach black women that their bodies are their own and anything less than absolute autonomy of action is oppressive, exploitive, sexist, constructs of domination, etc. It wasn't always that way. Early white proponents of American feminism, Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, thought abortion and slavery horrific. Stanton proclaimed, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit." Anthony referred to abortion as "child-murder."
These women were ardent abolitionists and feminists long before it was fashionable. The idea that people could be considered property, in or out of the womb, was repugnant to them. As an aside, noted PBS filmmaker Ken Burns thought it inappropriate to present the lives of these women in its fullness and he censored their vehement opposition to abortion in his documentary entitled Not For Ourselves Alone. An incredulous Nat Hentoff remarked at this unconscionable omission "It was as if a televised life of Dr. Martin Luther King focused entirely on him as a fighter for civil rights without a word about his lifelong commitment to direct-action pacifism as taught by Gandhi and the American minister A.J. Muste, who first - as Dr. King told me - convinced him of the power of nonviolence."
Given the history of eugenics, can an argument be made as to why there shouldn't be more Black Americans that isn't fundamentally racist? The post-slavery accomplishments of American Blacks are remarkable and perhaps unprecedented. Considering the level of white social, political, economic and educational malfeasance it is astounding. So what's the problem? Are there too many black doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, scientists, artists and athletes? White people have too long defined the value of a black life. It is insane for black people to participate in the social engineering agenda of the dominant, albeit fading, culture. How does it help Black Americans to adopt postmodern definitions of sexuality, family and gender?
White intellectuals such as Princeton's Pete Singer do not think a human life is any more valuable than the life of an animal. Black people have intimate experience with that sort of reasoning and should be repulsed by it. Mr. Singer's views on human sexuality include sexual relations, consensual of course, with non-humans. How will it serve the political, economic and social interests of Black Americans to follow the white culture into moral and ethical debasement?
How come it seems that no one but Minister Farrakhan is asking these questions openly and challengingly?At the dawn of the 21st Century, the dominant political and social thought of the white elite, with occasional exceptions, is a variation of Marxism or Socialism with a little eco-theism thrown in. As these philosophies require the reorganization of societies there has been an ongoing systematic assault on family structures. The black family with its options constrained by social, economic and educational discrimination have had fewer resources with which to resist these assaults and consequently are the most burdened by the resulting social pathologies.
The separation of black men and women from one another is, for all intent and purposes, a done deal. It is no accident that at the heart of Minister Farrakhan's initiatives is the healing of this fractured relationship. Abortion goes one step further and separates a black woman from her child to be. These separations are lethal and heinous.Historically, when one group of people wishes to displace (or exterminate) another group it requires an outlay of capital. The people slated for subjugation usually contribute little more than their demise if they are not to be enslaved.
In this case however, the costs pertaining to the infrastructure of the abortion culture has been amortized throughout the society disguising both the eugenics and economics of black abortion. How much money is generated from black abortions? Picking a figure of 1,000,000 abortions a year in the U.S. as our example, the actual number of abortions is somewhat higher, and Black Americans account for say 340,000. This figured multiplied by the average cost per abortion of $300 generates $102,000,000 annually. Every time a black abortion occurs it helps pay the mortgage, the car payment, or the dinner out on the town of its practitioners, promoters and administrators.
If these beneficiaries are white, one could almost say it's business as usual, but if they're black it is heartbreaking. The twin evils of unrestrained promiscuity and abortion are decimating a people on the eve of ever-greater achievements. Between the holocaust of AIDS in Africa and African-American abortion, the words "black death" once referring to the Bubonic Plague has taken on a new and horrifically modern definition. Of all the challenges faced by black people in America, abortion is among the greatest and most destructive. Nothing less than the future of Black Americans may be at stake.
Margaret Sanger must be smiling.
Brad Lena is a regular contributor to BlackElectorate.com. Mr. Lena is based in Asheville, NC and can be reached at blena@mindspring.com
http://www.blackelectorate.com/articles.asp?ID=657
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Afraid or Ashamed?
Black snakes, white spiders
Denying the racial aspect of the disaster is denying our history and our humanity. Acknowledging it can lead to action
By Leonce Gaiter, Leonce Gaiter is the author of "Bourbon Street," a novel about race and class in New Orleans.
KATRINA"We exhibit a similar fear response to a spider, a snake, and a person of another race." — Arne Öhman, Science Magazine
I WAS FASCINATED to watch white reporters and commentators tip-toeing around the taboo word "black" in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. Class, not race, they said, was the reason black people were wading in neck-high water with their belongings on their heads.
Class, not race, they insisted, was why these black people had to live for days in their own feces and urine in a dank hotbox of a stadium — which is akin to insisting that your right leg carried you from point A to point B and ignoring the contribution of your left.
The reaction of whites toward blacks has been a lifelong study for me. Though black, I have spent 95% of my life around whites. White schools, white neighborhoods, white workplaces, white friends. I was raised during the '60s, and my New Orleans-bred parents insisted on living in the best neighborhoods with the best schools.
They got out of the South to make that possible, and if a white Northern school or neighborhood was hostile, so be it. It was the price they, and I, would have to pay. Some of you are ready to wag your finger in black America's face and say, "See! His family could do it. What's your excuse?"
But my mother was a brilliant woman, and my father possessed a Herculean will that allowed him to escape a poor, fatherless family of 15 children in a racist dung-hole of a Louisiana town and make a comfortable, decidedly middle-class life for himself and his family in an aggressively hostile military.
And he did it without currying white favor by betraying or abandoning the black men and women with whom he served. Do you possess the brains and will to overcome so much and go so far? If not, put that finger away.Being raised in a sometimes hostile white world has taught me that we are all racists. Our little post-monkey brains (evolutionarily speaking) are suspicious of that which is unlike us, and to such we are more likely to assign nefarious motives and intentions.
A recent Science magazine article describes research suggesting that fear informs the attitudes between ethnic groups in part because negative associations stick more easily and relentlessly to faces that don't look like ours. When researchers paired faces with frightening images, white participants acquired more persistent conditioned fears in response to pictures of black faces than to pictures of white faces, and blacks did the same thing with white faces.
This fear response leads to avoidance, which prevents us from knowing people who aren't like us and makes them a blank slate for projections that justify our fears. To me, this seems a simple recitation of the obvious. However, many Americans have a deep national investment in our myth of unassailable moral rectitude. Our history and founding myths insist on a superior sense of justice as our birthright, our national raison d'etre.
Black Americans have more license to admit our wariness and mistrust of whites. Whites cannot admit their mistrust without summoning their forebears brutal enslavement of Africans. You can't feign moral rectitude as you simultaneously acknowledge the bestial inhumanity that lurks in our American history. Many Americans look at black men and women and see an unwelcome reminder.
TVs filled with scenes of black despair call forth the holds of slave ships, and so we spend days pretending that we don't notice the race of those hungry, grieving, angry, exhausted people. A conservative tide has worked hard to strengthen the denial of our American crime — to convince Americans that our record of race hatred is either black Americans' fault or our hysterical imaginings. Some conservatives promote the idea of colorblindness, which is akin to eyelessness as a cure for urban blight.
Suggesting that you can deny what is before your eyes — insisting that you have the will and power to ignore both it and its vast historical implications — is breathtaking hubris. To many, blacks aren't so much citizens as threats to the majority's sense of self. In the wake of Katrina, a headline in the Economist blared "America's Shame," rubbing salt in our punctured sense of righteousness. Pundits insisted that race, not class, was the source of that shame. But history is a living thing.
It didn't disappear in 1964. In New Orleans, in particular, race and class have been conjoined twins for centuries. The 9th Ward is flood- and poverty-prone — low-lying and low in the city's class structure. It's no coincidence that its people are among the city's blackest. This is where they were forced to live, and this is the only place many feel they have the right to live, anchored there by a "can't-have" hopelessness implanted in generations born to shackles.
White people see these people standing on rooftops, pleading for help, and attach all sorts of ugly associations. That's natural — but acceptable only if they recognize it as an expression of our inescapably flawed history and humanity. Own the shame, America. It is as much a part of you as your triumphs and glories. Own it, and you might take action.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-op-race18sep18,1,5691629.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Denying the racial aspect of the disaster is denying our history and our humanity. Acknowledging it can lead to action
By Leonce Gaiter, Leonce Gaiter is the author of "Bourbon Street," a novel about race and class in New Orleans.
KATRINA"We exhibit a similar fear response to a spider, a snake, and a person of another race." — Arne Öhman, Science Magazine
I WAS FASCINATED to watch white reporters and commentators tip-toeing around the taboo word "black" in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. Class, not race, they said, was the reason black people were wading in neck-high water with their belongings on their heads.
Class, not race, they insisted, was why these black people had to live for days in their own feces and urine in a dank hotbox of a stadium — which is akin to insisting that your right leg carried you from point A to point B and ignoring the contribution of your left.
The reaction of whites toward blacks has been a lifelong study for me. Though black, I have spent 95% of my life around whites. White schools, white neighborhoods, white workplaces, white friends. I was raised during the '60s, and my New Orleans-bred parents insisted on living in the best neighborhoods with the best schools.
They got out of the South to make that possible, and if a white Northern school or neighborhood was hostile, so be it. It was the price they, and I, would have to pay. Some of you are ready to wag your finger in black America's face and say, "See! His family could do it. What's your excuse?"
But my mother was a brilliant woman, and my father possessed a Herculean will that allowed him to escape a poor, fatherless family of 15 children in a racist dung-hole of a Louisiana town and make a comfortable, decidedly middle-class life for himself and his family in an aggressively hostile military.
And he did it without currying white favor by betraying or abandoning the black men and women with whom he served. Do you possess the brains and will to overcome so much and go so far? If not, put that finger away.Being raised in a sometimes hostile white world has taught me that we are all racists. Our little post-monkey brains (evolutionarily speaking) are suspicious of that which is unlike us, and to such we are more likely to assign nefarious motives and intentions.
A recent Science magazine article describes research suggesting that fear informs the attitudes between ethnic groups in part because negative associations stick more easily and relentlessly to faces that don't look like ours. When researchers paired faces with frightening images, white participants acquired more persistent conditioned fears in response to pictures of black faces than to pictures of white faces, and blacks did the same thing with white faces.
This fear response leads to avoidance, which prevents us from knowing people who aren't like us and makes them a blank slate for projections that justify our fears. To me, this seems a simple recitation of the obvious. However, many Americans have a deep national investment in our myth of unassailable moral rectitude. Our history and founding myths insist on a superior sense of justice as our birthright, our national raison d'etre.
Black Americans have more license to admit our wariness and mistrust of whites. Whites cannot admit their mistrust without summoning their forebears brutal enslavement of Africans. You can't feign moral rectitude as you simultaneously acknowledge the bestial inhumanity that lurks in our American history. Many Americans look at black men and women and see an unwelcome reminder.
TVs filled with scenes of black despair call forth the holds of slave ships, and so we spend days pretending that we don't notice the race of those hungry, grieving, angry, exhausted people. A conservative tide has worked hard to strengthen the denial of our American crime — to convince Americans that our record of race hatred is either black Americans' fault or our hysterical imaginings. Some conservatives promote the idea of colorblindness, which is akin to eyelessness as a cure for urban blight.
Suggesting that you can deny what is before your eyes — insisting that you have the will and power to ignore both it and its vast historical implications — is breathtaking hubris. To many, blacks aren't so much citizens as threats to the majority's sense of self. In the wake of Katrina, a headline in the Economist blared "America's Shame," rubbing salt in our punctured sense of righteousness. Pundits insisted that race, not class, was the source of that shame. But history is a living thing.
It didn't disappear in 1964. In New Orleans, in particular, race and class have been conjoined twins for centuries. The 9th Ward is flood- and poverty-prone — low-lying and low in the city's class structure. It's no coincidence that its people are among the city's blackest. This is where they were forced to live, and this is the only place many feel they have the right to live, anchored there by a "can't-have" hopelessness implanted in generations born to shackles.
White people see these people standing on rooftops, pleading for help, and attach all sorts of ugly associations. That's natural — but acceptable only if they recognize it as an expression of our inescapably flawed history and humanity. Own the shame, America. It is as much a part of you as your triumphs and glories. Own it, and you might take action.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-op-race18sep18,1,5691629.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Kicked out of Gretna
New Orleans residents who crossed the bridge before it was blocked were taken away from Gretna in a bus caravan organized by Gretna officials. (Robert Gauthier / LAT)
Invisible People
'Like We're Invisible'
Katrina cut off an already isolated rural Mississippi, so residents helped one another.
By Elizabeth Mehren, Times Staff Writer
VANCLEAVE, Miss. — April Smith said she woke up the day after Hurricane Katrina hit and heard God telling her to clean out her closet. With no relief trucks headed toward this tiny town about 15 miles northeast of Biloxi, Smith gathered a bagful of garments — some that still fit her two young children — to distribute on her own."People around here lost everything," said Smith, 30. "And they were not getting the attention they needed."
Rural Mississippi residents joined forces when outside help failed to appear after the disaster, which killed at least 219 across the state, caused billions of dollars in damage, and devastated coastal cities and inland hamlets with fierce winds and 30-foot tidal surges.About 1.6 million people, more than half the state's population, live in Mississippi's rural areas.
Of those, 21.1% live below the U.S. poverty line of $21,180 annually for a family of five. The national poverty average is 11.9%.Isolated and poor, many in this state said they felt neglected, especially by the federal government.
No military convoys rumbled in to lend calm; no National Guard members came through to hand out ice and water. No officials arrived to set up shelters. Large charities and private insurance companies also overlooked them, residents said.So they took matters into their own hands.
Robert Williams tried to contact the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the county about removing two 60-foot pine trees that threatened his mother's home here.
No one responded, so Williams borrowed a chain saw and brought the trees down on his own.After a while, the 32-year-old church janitor got through to FEMA.
"They gave us a case number and said someone would be out as soon as possible," he said, standing beside the fallen trees, which crushed a utility shed. "We have no idea when that will be.
"Half a mile away, James Meeks, 54, found a large portion of his mobile home's roof in a tree, crumpled like an accordion. Meeks' wife, Betty, 57, called FEMA to find out about emergency compensation.
"To be honest, it has taken FEMA quite a while to get back to us," she said. "I called them more than 10 days ago, and they said they would be right out. Nobody has come yet.
"James Meeks hauled out a ladder and crafted a makeshift roof. He worked without electricity, which did not return to his neighborhood until two weeks after the hurricane.
"We're just out in the country, and it takes longer to get to us," Betty Meeks said. "But then, it's also easy to forget about us out here."
Lea Stokes, spokeswoman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said that relief efforts in rural areas had been complicated and sometimes not as prompt as residents would have liked because of the scope of the disaster."Katrina went through our entire state," she said. "We had to set up distribution centers [for food and other supplies] in 73 out of 82 counties in Mississippi. So it was very overwhelming."
Pete Smith, spokesman for Gov. Haley Barbour, said Department of Transportation crews had been working their way across the state to clear roads and restore power. He acknowledged that "in rural Mississippi, it is sometimes harder to get to them."At the Mississippi Development Authority, spokesman Scott Hamilton said officials were concerned about economic hardships in rural sections of the state.
He said his agency planned to open business assistance centers throughout Mississippi. But he said his best advice was for people to "help themselves."Like Vancleave, many of these small towns lie in Mississippi's heavily wooded inland region, up to 25 miles from the coast.
Humble houses and aging mobile homes often are accessible only by dirt roads. One rural community, Moss Point, had the added headache of roaming alligators, escapees from an alligator farm that flooded during the storm.Yet winding roads and marauding reptiles did not deter a small group of volunteers that traveled to the area from rural Georgia.
Devan Voyles said he cleaned out his bank account and loaded a truck with supplies, figuring that the hurricane could just as easily have walloped his area. He enlisted a dozen helpers, dubbing their effort Northeast Georgia Disaster Relief.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rural19sep19,0,4319997.story
Katrina cut off an already isolated rural Mississippi, so residents helped one another.
By Elizabeth Mehren, Times Staff Writer
VANCLEAVE, Miss. — April Smith said she woke up the day after Hurricane Katrina hit and heard God telling her to clean out her closet. With no relief trucks headed toward this tiny town about 15 miles northeast of Biloxi, Smith gathered a bagful of garments — some that still fit her two young children — to distribute on her own."People around here lost everything," said Smith, 30. "And they were not getting the attention they needed."
Rural Mississippi residents joined forces when outside help failed to appear after the disaster, which killed at least 219 across the state, caused billions of dollars in damage, and devastated coastal cities and inland hamlets with fierce winds and 30-foot tidal surges.About 1.6 million people, more than half the state's population, live in Mississippi's rural areas.
Of those, 21.1% live below the U.S. poverty line of $21,180 annually for a family of five. The national poverty average is 11.9%.Isolated and poor, many in this state said they felt neglected, especially by the federal government.
No military convoys rumbled in to lend calm; no National Guard members came through to hand out ice and water. No officials arrived to set up shelters. Large charities and private insurance companies also overlooked them, residents said.So they took matters into their own hands.
Robert Williams tried to contact the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the county about removing two 60-foot pine trees that threatened his mother's home here.
No one responded, so Williams borrowed a chain saw and brought the trees down on his own.After a while, the 32-year-old church janitor got through to FEMA.
"They gave us a case number and said someone would be out as soon as possible," he said, standing beside the fallen trees, which crushed a utility shed. "We have no idea when that will be.
"Half a mile away, James Meeks, 54, found a large portion of his mobile home's roof in a tree, crumpled like an accordion. Meeks' wife, Betty, 57, called FEMA to find out about emergency compensation.
"To be honest, it has taken FEMA quite a while to get back to us," she said. "I called them more than 10 days ago, and they said they would be right out. Nobody has come yet.
"James Meeks hauled out a ladder and crafted a makeshift roof. He worked without electricity, which did not return to his neighborhood until two weeks after the hurricane.
"We're just out in the country, and it takes longer to get to us," Betty Meeks said. "But then, it's also easy to forget about us out here."
Lea Stokes, spokeswoman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said that relief efforts in rural areas had been complicated and sometimes not as prompt as residents would have liked because of the scope of the disaster."Katrina went through our entire state," she said. "We had to set up distribution centers [for food and other supplies] in 73 out of 82 counties in Mississippi. So it was very overwhelming."
Pete Smith, spokesman for Gov. Haley Barbour, said Department of Transportation crews had been working their way across the state to clear roads and restore power. He acknowledged that "in rural Mississippi, it is sometimes harder to get to them."At the Mississippi Development Authority, spokesman Scott Hamilton said officials were concerned about economic hardships in rural sections of the state.
He said his agency planned to open business assistance centers throughout Mississippi. But he said his best advice was for people to "help themselves."Like Vancleave, many of these small towns lie in Mississippi's heavily wooded inland region, up to 25 miles from the coast.
Humble houses and aging mobile homes often are accessible only by dirt roads. One rural community, Moss Point, had the added headache of roaming alligators, escapees from an alligator farm that flooded during the storm.Yet winding roads and marauding reptiles did not deter a small group of volunteers that traveled to the area from rural Georgia.
Devan Voyles said he cleaned out his bank account and loaded a truck with supplies, figuring that the hurricane could just as easily have walloped his area. He enlisted a dozen helpers, dubbing their effort Northeast Georgia Disaster Relief.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rural19sep19,0,4319997.story
Monday, September 19, 2005
Now You Talkin.......
Breaking Free: A Plan For Black Empowerment
If Katrina did not awaken Black America to the weaknesses of Government and the continual dependency on American politics, then the next disaster could be deadly enough to wipe us off the map of the continental United States. If the perks of the Civil Rights Movement was to empower us on the political front, and all we got are mayors scattered throughout the US without a pot or window, meaning powerless, then maybe we should have followed the Black Panther's plan of action, which was self-empowerment and defense.
This should be the focus of Black leaders from this point on. The crisis of Katrina and what pissed Black America off the most - whether they could express themselves correctly or not - was the fact that our people were helpless when left to fend for themselves. There was no Black Power structure to come to our aid, this is a major wake-up call.
There should have been a Black security/rescue squad to descend upon New Orleans like flies coming from all over the United States. From cities like LA, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta. There should have been brothers and sisters there the next day with artillery, rescue equipment, and food and water from reserves mounted over the years. Instead what did we have to fall back on...the freakin US political system. To hell with Civil Rights, Black Empowerment and Power is needed NOW!
Where were the Crips and the Bloods. Where were the gangster OG's of the Rap world and their hardcore styles? Where were the hundreds of thousands of Nation of Islam brothers seen in every major urban city when we really needed them. If the US Army or National Guard is not willing to help then we should help our damn selves and they should have no reason to complain or be afraid, especially if we are in the "help ourselves" mode.
Now, there needs to be a solid structure set into place in case something like this was to ever happen again. Now, there must be at least 7-12 Black men and women sitting at a table to take control of Black America. Where are the best and the brightest of Black America to prepare for our collective future, now is the time to bring forth these Black leadership roles:
Security and Rescue Operations - to be there the next time something like this happens
Political and International Affairs - to strike alliances with other African countries
Minister of Health and Well-being - to enlighten our Black women and children on health
Educational Expert - to regulate the learning process of our children
Business and Economics - to gather the rich and prosperous of our people and invest in our future
Community Squads - to protect our young brothers and sisters from dope and trigger happy white-boy cops
Family Affairs - to break free all brothers and sisters subject to the US courts and train them in family
Media and Entertainment - to control our national image and regulate our sports contracts
Spiritual Leader - to put faith, identity and hope back into our Black minds instead of taking our money
Legal Advisors - one who can keep us out of the white man's prisons and from his debt.
There should be leaders taken from the above who can put together a team of Black talent and brains that will see these things through. No more should we depend on this system to direct our paths, for we see what 40 plus years of Civil Rights Legislation has gotten us...humiliation and broken hearts, dreams, and dependency.
Is this a Democrat / Republican thing? Hell no...this is a Black thing. Why should we continue to enslave ourselves and our future and our children's future to political madness and believe in a half-baked Democracy that really (and I mean really) does NOT have their Black constituency at heart, or any constituency for that matter. How can government help us?
We need our own political party. We need to break free from dependency and begin a life for ourselves and tie it to our mother land. There are many African nations willing to help us in America, why do we continue to put our faith and money into the hands of whites? Someone explain the hell out of that to us at Afromerica.
It is time to Empower ourselves!
© September 2005 by CR Hamilton
Liberation
If Katrina did not awaken Black America to the weaknesses of Government and the continual dependency on American politics, then the next disaster could be deadly enough to wipe us off the map of the continental United States. If the perks of the Civil Rights Movement was to empower us on the political front, and all we got are mayors scattered throughout the US without a pot or window, meaning powerless, then maybe we should have followed the Black Panther's plan of action, which was self-empowerment and defense.
This should be the focus of Black leaders from this point on. The crisis of Katrina and what pissed Black America off the most - whether they could express themselves correctly or not - was the fact that our people were helpless when left to fend for themselves. There was no Black Power structure to come to our aid, this is a major wake-up call.
There should have been a Black security/rescue squad to descend upon New Orleans like flies coming from all over the United States. From cities like LA, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta. There should have been brothers and sisters there the next day with artillery, rescue equipment, and food and water from reserves mounted over the years. Instead what did we have to fall back on...the freakin US political system. To hell with Civil Rights, Black Empowerment and Power is needed NOW!
Where were the Crips and the Bloods. Where were the gangster OG's of the Rap world and their hardcore styles? Where were the hundreds of thousands of Nation of Islam brothers seen in every major urban city when we really needed them. If the US Army or National Guard is not willing to help then we should help our damn selves and they should have no reason to complain or be afraid, especially if we are in the "help ourselves" mode.
Now, there needs to be a solid structure set into place in case something like this was to ever happen again. Now, there must be at least 7-12 Black men and women sitting at a table to take control of Black America. Where are the best and the brightest of Black America to prepare for our collective future, now is the time to bring forth these Black leadership roles:
Security and Rescue Operations - to be there the next time something like this happens
Political and International Affairs - to strike alliances with other African countries
Minister of Health and Well-being - to enlighten our Black women and children on health
Educational Expert - to regulate the learning process of our children
Business and Economics - to gather the rich and prosperous of our people and invest in our future
Community Squads - to protect our young brothers and sisters from dope and trigger happy white-boy cops
Family Affairs - to break free all brothers and sisters subject to the US courts and train them in family
Media and Entertainment - to control our national image and regulate our sports contracts
Spiritual Leader - to put faith, identity and hope back into our Black minds instead of taking our money
Legal Advisors - one who can keep us out of the white man's prisons and from his debt.
There should be leaders taken from the above who can put together a team of Black talent and brains that will see these things through. No more should we depend on this system to direct our paths, for we see what 40 plus years of Civil Rights Legislation has gotten us...humiliation and broken hearts, dreams, and dependency.
Is this a Democrat / Republican thing? Hell no...this is a Black thing. Why should we continue to enslave ourselves and our future and our children's future to political madness and believe in a half-baked Democracy that really (and I mean really) does NOT have their Black constituency at heart, or any constituency for that matter. How can government help us?
We need our own political party. We need to break free from dependency and begin a life for ourselves and tie it to our mother land. There are many African nations willing to help us in America, why do we continue to put our faith and money into the hands of whites? Someone explain the hell out of that to us at Afromerica.
It is time to Empower ourselves!
© September 2005 by CR Hamilton
Liberation
Black on Black Huh???
Expert wants France sued over Genocide....
By Magnus Mazimpaka
Sunday, 18 September 2005
A renowned researcher on the Genocide has asked the Rwandan government to sue France over its role in the 1994 Genocide. Dr. Christian P. Scherrer, a Professor at Hiroshima City University, (Hiroshima Peace Institute) in Japan, insists France masterminded the Genocide...
...and should be tried, particularly at ICC or at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).His plea comes after France continuously refused to step down, plead guilty and ask for forgiveness to the Rwandan government. Scherrer is also a peace researcher on long term conflicts like that of the Sudan, Rwanda and Ethiopia. He is currently helping the Rwandan government to research on Genocide.
“The then Rwandan army was not so tactical and was not quite strong to carry out the Genocide. From 1990 in October to 1994, French soldiers were training several Rwandan special forces, even the militias were trained. If you go to Gisozi, a Genocide museum, there is a picture of the French forces training the Interahamwe and I think this is something symbolic (of the role France played in the Genocide),”
Dr. Scherrer remarked.“The French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who was the head of the Africa Section in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, threatened the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) delegation that had gone for peace talks to stop the Genocide in 1992 in Paris,” he said. He added: “The French officials told the RPF delegation that if they continue with the war, they will find their sisters and brothers killed. This is evidence; this was also disclosed by President Kagame himself when he was the vice president,” the researcher observed.
He also said France had several forces in Rwanda at the time of the massacres, operating under different names and at different places.“There were very many French special forces right from the front in the north, up to bases. There were prominent forces and with different names, and this was a kind of manoeuvre it had in the anti-revolutionary war,” he disclosed.He said the French forces controlled the then Rwandan army; “It distributed guns and trained militias and these militias were killing people.
I think those people like the ICC should look at that because France was an accomplice in the Rwandan Genocide. And genocide probably would not happen if it was not for the French conspiracy.”He advised to investigate the case basing on the evidence against the France.Scherres, who recently attended a hearing of a Belgian priest Fr. Guy Theunis, a genocide suspect who was placed in the first category of genocide suspects, also strongly criticized Human Rights Watch activist, Allison des Forges, for sabotaging the Gacaca system.This was after Allison des Forges defended the priest, who is being accused of faxing letters containing hate messages to Europe.
Allison des Forges defended the priest, claiming that the faxes he sent did not constitute incitement to Genocide because they were not addressed to local people. The expert immediately rebuffed des Forges for sabotaging the Gacaca system, and cited a case where the HRW activist criticized Gacaca at an international conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Scherres, who said that Fr. Theunis incited Genocide, openly disagreed with the HRW officials, and said it would be betrayal if Rwanda did not convict the clergyman at a time when Belgium has jailed several Genocide suspects.
Genocide
By Magnus Mazimpaka
Sunday, 18 September 2005
A renowned researcher on the Genocide has asked the Rwandan government to sue France over its role in the 1994 Genocide. Dr. Christian P. Scherrer, a Professor at Hiroshima City University, (Hiroshima Peace Institute) in Japan, insists France masterminded the Genocide...
...and should be tried, particularly at ICC or at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).His plea comes after France continuously refused to step down, plead guilty and ask for forgiveness to the Rwandan government. Scherrer is also a peace researcher on long term conflicts like that of the Sudan, Rwanda and Ethiopia. He is currently helping the Rwandan government to research on Genocide.
“The then Rwandan army was not so tactical and was not quite strong to carry out the Genocide. From 1990 in October to 1994, French soldiers were training several Rwandan special forces, even the militias were trained. If you go to Gisozi, a Genocide museum, there is a picture of the French forces training the Interahamwe and I think this is something symbolic (of the role France played in the Genocide),”
Dr. Scherrer remarked.“The French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who was the head of the Africa Section in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, threatened the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) delegation that had gone for peace talks to stop the Genocide in 1992 in Paris,” he said. He added: “The French officials told the RPF delegation that if they continue with the war, they will find their sisters and brothers killed. This is evidence; this was also disclosed by President Kagame himself when he was the vice president,” the researcher observed.
He also said France had several forces in Rwanda at the time of the massacres, operating under different names and at different places.“There were very many French special forces right from the front in the north, up to bases. There were prominent forces and with different names, and this was a kind of manoeuvre it had in the anti-revolutionary war,” he disclosed.He said the French forces controlled the then Rwandan army; “It distributed guns and trained militias and these militias were killing people.
I think those people like the ICC should look at that because France was an accomplice in the Rwandan Genocide. And genocide probably would not happen if it was not for the French conspiracy.”He advised to investigate the case basing on the evidence against the France.Scherres, who recently attended a hearing of a Belgian priest Fr. Guy Theunis, a genocide suspect who was placed in the first category of genocide suspects, also strongly criticized Human Rights Watch activist, Allison des Forges, for sabotaging the Gacaca system.This was after Allison des Forges defended the priest, who is being accused of faxing letters containing hate messages to Europe.
Allison des Forges defended the priest, claiming that the faxes he sent did not constitute incitement to Genocide because they were not addressed to local people. The expert immediately rebuffed des Forges for sabotaging the Gacaca system, and cited a case where the HRW activist criticized Gacaca at an international conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Scherres, who said that Fr. Theunis incited Genocide, openly disagreed with the HRW officials, and said it would be betrayal if Rwanda did not convict the clergyman at a time when Belgium has jailed several Genocide suspects.
Genocide
The Only Question is Who's Truth????
The Truth About Race in Amerikkka?..Part 1,2 & 3
BY JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, September 13, 2005 4:07 p.m. EDT
The Truth About Race in America
What does Hurricane Katrina tell us about race in America? A new Gallup poll is informative:
Six in 10 African-Americans say the fact that most hurricane victims were poor and black was one reason the federal government failed to come to the rescue more quickly. Whites reject that idea; nearly 9 in 10 say those weren't factors. . . .
Republican efforts this year to reach out to black voters have not been helped. . . . By more than 3-to-1, [blacks] say Bush doesn't care about black people. By more than 2-to-1, whites say he does.
Let's look more closely at these two questions, which are questions 14 and 3, respectively, in the poll results. By 60% to 37%, blacks think the government was slow in rescuing Katrina victims for racial reasons; by 86% to 12%, whites do not think so. By 72% to 21%, blacks think President Bush does not care about black people. By 67% to 26%, whites think he does care.
USA Today doesn't give figures for the population as a whole, but let's extrapolate them. At the 2000 census, 69.1% of the U.S. population was non-Hispanic white, and 12.9% of the population was black. Since we have no polling data on Hispanics or other ethnic groups, our analysis is necessarily limited to the 82% of the population that is either black or NH white. This subgroup is 84.3% white and 15.7% black.
Now, let's weight the black and white responses to these questions to reflect their proportions of the population (the percentages given are of the total black and NH white population):
Bush cares
Black yes
3.3%
Black no
11.3%
White yes
56.5%
White no
21.9%
Rescue racist
Blacks yes
9.4%
Whites yes
10.1%
Blacks no
5.8%
Whites no
72.5%
This means that a vast majority of blacks (72%) disagree with a solid majority of the overall population (60%) on the question of whether Bush cares, and a solid majority of blacks (60%) disagree with an overwhelming majority of the overall population (78%) on the question of whether the rescue was racist.
The truth about race that Katrina illuminates, then, is that, at least when it comes to matters involving race, black Americans are extreme political outliers. This is why attempts to play the race card are politically futile: They have to appeal not just to blacks, but to a substantial minority of whites. The Gallup poll results makes clear that the current racial appeals are not resonating with whites.
'So What?'A few readers were puzzled, even offended, by our item yesterday about a Fox News interview of a foul-mouthed New Orleans evacuee. Here's reader Peter Lee:
I was waiting for a sharp attack on the man's demands for $20,000 because he chose to live below sea level. Instead, you call attention to the fact that he's with a white woman? So what?
I guess you were trying to show some hypocrisy in his "slave ship" reference. His analogy can be rebutted many different ways, but your observation came across as borderline racist: "Look, he's dating a white woman!"
"So what?" is right. In fact, it's precisely the point. In post-civil-rights America there is nothing at all remarkable about a public display of affection between a black man and a white woman. The same was not true in the days of slavery, or for about a century after abolition. Emmett Till was lynched barely 50 years ago. To liken America in 2005 to America in the days of slavery reflects a stunning degree of ignorance, malice or both.
The Truth About Race in America--II
Perhaps the ugliest thing written in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was a post on the Puffington Host by Randall Robinson, a self-styled "social justice advocate," which appeared on Sept. 2:
It is reported that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive. Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying like dogs. No-one has come to help them.
I am a sixty-four year old African-American. New Orleans marks the end of the America I strove for. . . .
My hand shakes with anger as I write. I, the formerly un-jaundiced human rights advocate, have finally come to see my country for what it really is. A monstrous fraud.
Robinson subsequently retracted the wildly implausible cannibalism claim (surely one of the most invidious antiblack stereotypes imaginable). But in a disclaimer atop the article, he writes that he "stand[s] behind everything else I wrote without reservation." Apparently that includes the statement that "thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying," which is almost certainly (knock on wood) an exaggeration. According to the Associated Press, the latest death toll for the entire state of Louisiana is 423. (Granted, this isn't a final figure and is likely to rise.)
Robinson's views are extreme, and his way of expressing them particularly inflammatory, but as we noted yesterday, black Americans' views of racial issues tend to be sharply at variance with those of whites, and thus of the population as a whole. In a Gallup poll, 60% of blacks think that "one reason the federal government was slow in rescuing these people was because many of them were black." Eighty-six percent of whites and (by our estimate) approximately 78% of the total population disagrees with this statement, for which there is no evidence and which is almost certainly false.
Of course it is human nature to empathize with people who are "like us," which is why people care more when a disaster strikes their country than a foreign land. Thus it's perfectly understandable that black Americans would respond with a heightened fervor to the sufferings of fellow blacks after Hurricane Katrina.
But it makes no sense to expect nonblacks to empathize with blacks because they are black. Transracial empathy must be based on what people of different races have in common: that we are fellow Americans, or fellow human beings. The use of a natural disaster as an occasion for racial grievance is a hindrance, not an aid, to national solidarity and empathy.
Robinson followed up his cannibalism post with a call for dialogue last Monday:
Long ago white America stopped talking to black America about what black America needed to talk about. Indeed, white America long ago stopped talking about what all of America needs badly to talk about--race, and the origins and causes, exceptions notwithstanding, of intergenerational white wealth and black poverty in America.
Perhaps now, we can begin to talk. Honestly for once. For the good of us all.
But if Robinson is willing to conclude--based on urban legends, rumors and his own prejudices--that America is "a monstrous fraud," what can there possibly be to talk about?
The Truth About Race in America--III
Thursday, September 15, 2005 4:10 p.m. EDT
Yesterday's installment in this series argued that racial special pleading is at odds with interracial compassion:
It makes no sense to expect nonblacks to empathize with blacks because they are black. Transracial empathy must be based on what people of different races have in common: that we are fellow Americans, or fellow human beings. The use of a natural disaster as an occasion for racial grievance is a hindrance, not an aid, to national solidarity and empathy.
But of course the culture of racial grievance is not about compassion or empathy, which is why the racialization of Hurricane Katrina has struck such a discordant note. The only appropriate response to a natural disaster is to offer concern and help to the victims; claims about justice and guilt are out of place and beside the point.
Yet it is upon claims about justice and guilt that racial politics in America are built. And since those who make such claims have seized on Katrina to press them, it's fair to respond by taking a critical look. Let's begin with our friend Randall Robinson, whose Puffington Host post we cited yesterday, and who is an intelligent defender of an extreme position. Here's an excerpt from the Amazon.com review of Robinson's 2000 book, "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks":
He goes further than any previous black public figure in calling for reparations to African-Americans for the present-day racism that stems from 246 years of slavery. Citing compensation that Jews and Japanese Americans have received, he writes, "No race, ethnic or religious group has suffered as much over so long a span as blacks have and do still, at the hands of those who benefited . . . from slavery and the century of legalized American racial hostility that followed it." In making his case, Robinson utilizes facts and figures that highlight the disparity between African-Americans and whites.
"Reparations" for slavery are not really a serious idea, but the question Robinson raises in his title is worth asking: What does America owe to blacks?
Up to a point, almost everyone can agree on the answer. America owes blacks full citizenship, which as a formal matter means equal treatment in matters of law, politics, commerce and education. Hardly anyone argues against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, or the outcomes of landmark civil rights cases such as Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia.
In post-civil-rights America, racial matters become contentious when the issue is preferential, rather than equal, treatment. "Reparations"--Write me a check, you racist!--are the crassest version of this idea, easily dismissed as silly (remember this guy?). But the policies that fall under the rubric of "affirmative action" are based on the same concept: that white Americans today continue to be guilty for wrongs committed by white Americans of the pre-civil-rights era.
This notion of collective guilt is at odds with America's individualist ethos, and for that reason both the politics and the jurisprudence of affirmative action are muddled. Racial preferences persist largely out of bureaucratic inertia, even though they have been rejected on the rare occasion that they were put to a political test. In 1996 voters in liberal California approved Proposition 209, banning all racial preferences in state and local government, with 54% of the vote.
The U.S. Supreme Court, meanwhile, has long held that any distinction by race, even a "benign" one designed to help minorities, is subject to "strict scrutiny" under the Constitution. But in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which allowed colleges to impose racial preferences so long as they are somewhat vague about what they're doing, the court preposterously decided that the University of Michigan had met this high standard merely by offering bromides about the importance of "diversity" in education. Muddying the waters further, Justice Sandra O'Connor opined that this justification would expire in 25 years.
Affirmative action is deeply entrenched in America's governmental, educational and corporate institutions. But political support for it--already weak, as we saw in California in 1996--is likely only to become weaker. That's because white guilt is a fading force in America. Every American now under 40 was born after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, so they have no memory of pre-civil-rights America. In two more generations, there will be hardly anyone left with even childhood memories of segregation.
It's hard to make people feel guilty when they personally have done nothing wrong. It's hard to argue that racial disparities are the product of extant racism when there is no direct evidence that such racism is anything but extremely rare, and when public policy actually favors blacks over whites.
On Tuesday we noted that black Americans have sharply different views on racial matters than do white Americans and, therefore, than do Americans as a whole. What we are arguing today is that the views of whites are likely to move even further away from those that blacks now hold.
We do not think there is any serious danger of old-fashioned racism resurging; the post-civil-rights consensus in favor of equal citizenship is as solid as anything in American political life. But the divergence between blacks and whites is still a problem for America, and a much bigger problem for black America. Black leaders would be well advised to spend less energy cultivating grievances and more cultivating an understanding of their fellow Americans. That is the path to integration.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110007253
BY JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, September 13, 2005 4:07 p.m. EDT
The Truth About Race in America
What does Hurricane Katrina tell us about race in America? A new Gallup poll is informative:
Six in 10 African-Americans say the fact that most hurricane victims were poor and black was one reason the federal government failed to come to the rescue more quickly. Whites reject that idea; nearly 9 in 10 say those weren't factors. . . .
Republican efforts this year to reach out to black voters have not been helped. . . . By more than 3-to-1, [blacks] say Bush doesn't care about black people. By more than 2-to-1, whites say he does.
Let's look more closely at these two questions, which are questions 14 and 3, respectively, in the poll results. By 60% to 37%, blacks think the government was slow in rescuing Katrina victims for racial reasons; by 86% to 12%, whites do not think so. By 72% to 21%, blacks think President Bush does not care about black people. By 67% to 26%, whites think he does care.
USA Today doesn't give figures for the population as a whole, but let's extrapolate them. At the 2000 census, 69.1% of the U.S. population was non-Hispanic white, and 12.9% of the population was black. Since we have no polling data on Hispanics or other ethnic groups, our analysis is necessarily limited to the 82% of the population that is either black or NH white. This subgroup is 84.3% white and 15.7% black.
Now, let's weight the black and white responses to these questions to reflect their proportions of the population (the percentages given are of the total black and NH white population):
Bush cares
Black yes
3.3%
Black no
11.3%
White yes
56.5%
White no
21.9%
Rescue racist
Blacks yes
9.4%
Whites yes
10.1%
Blacks no
5.8%
Whites no
72.5%
This means that a vast majority of blacks (72%) disagree with a solid majority of the overall population (60%) on the question of whether Bush cares, and a solid majority of blacks (60%) disagree with an overwhelming majority of the overall population (78%) on the question of whether the rescue was racist.
The truth about race that Katrina illuminates, then, is that, at least when it comes to matters involving race, black Americans are extreme political outliers. This is why attempts to play the race card are politically futile: They have to appeal not just to blacks, but to a substantial minority of whites. The Gallup poll results makes clear that the current racial appeals are not resonating with whites.
'So What?'A few readers were puzzled, even offended, by our item yesterday about a Fox News interview of a foul-mouthed New Orleans evacuee. Here's reader Peter Lee:
I was waiting for a sharp attack on the man's demands for $20,000 because he chose to live below sea level. Instead, you call attention to the fact that he's with a white woman? So what?
I guess you were trying to show some hypocrisy in his "slave ship" reference. His analogy can be rebutted many different ways, but your observation came across as borderline racist: "Look, he's dating a white woman!"
"So what?" is right. In fact, it's precisely the point. In post-civil-rights America there is nothing at all remarkable about a public display of affection between a black man and a white woman. The same was not true in the days of slavery, or for about a century after abolition. Emmett Till was lynched barely 50 years ago. To liken America in 2005 to America in the days of slavery reflects a stunning degree of ignorance, malice or both.
The Truth About Race in America--II
Perhaps the ugliest thing written in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was a post on the Puffington Host by Randall Robinson, a self-styled "social justice advocate," which appeared on Sept. 2:
It is reported that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive. Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying like dogs. No-one has come to help them.
I am a sixty-four year old African-American. New Orleans marks the end of the America I strove for. . . .
My hand shakes with anger as I write. I, the formerly un-jaundiced human rights advocate, have finally come to see my country for what it really is. A monstrous fraud.
Robinson subsequently retracted the wildly implausible cannibalism claim (surely one of the most invidious antiblack stereotypes imaginable). But in a disclaimer atop the article, he writes that he "stand[s] behind everything else I wrote without reservation." Apparently that includes the statement that "thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying," which is almost certainly (knock on wood) an exaggeration. According to the Associated Press, the latest death toll for the entire state of Louisiana is 423. (Granted, this isn't a final figure and is likely to rise.)
Robinson's views are extreme, and his way of expressing them particularly inflammatory, but as we noted yesterday, black Americans' views of racial issues tend to be sharply at variance with those of whites, and thus of the population as a whole. In a Gallup poll, 60% of blacks think that "one reason the federal government was slow in rescuing these people was because many of them were black." Eighty-six percent of whites and (by our estimate) approximately 78% of the total population disagrees with this statement, for which there is no evidence and which is almost certainly false.
Of course it is human nature to empathize with people who are "like us," which is why people care more when a disaster strikes their country than a foreign land. Thus it's perfectly understandable that black Americans would respond with a heightened fervor to the sufferings of fellow blacks after Hurricane Katrina.
But it makes no sense to expect nonblacks to empathize with blacks because they are black. Transracial empathy must be based on what people of different races have in common: that we are fellow Americans, or fellow human beings. The use of a natural disaster as an occasion for racial grievance is a hindrance, not an aid, to national solidarity and empathy.
Robinson followed up his cannibalism post with a call for dialogue last Monday:
Long ago white America stopped talking to black America about what black America needed to talk about. Indeed, white America long ago stopped talking about what all of America needs badly to talk about--race, and the origins and causes, exceptions notwithstanding, of intergenerational white wealth and black poverty in America.
Perhaps now, we can begin to talk. Honestly for once. For the good of us all.
But if Robinson is willing to conclude--based on urban legends, rumors and his own prejudices--that America is "a monstrous fraud," what can there possibly be to talk about?
The Truth About Race in America--III
Thursday, September 15, 2005 4:10 p.m. EDT
Yesterday's installment in this series argued that racial special pleading is at odds with interracial compassion:
It makes no sense to expect nonblacks to empathize with blacks because they are black. Transracial empathy must be based on what people of different races have in common: that we are fellow Americans, or fellow human beings. The use of a natural disaster as an occasion for racial grievance is a hindrance, not an aid, to national solidarity and empathy.
But of course the culture of racial grievance is not about compassion or empathy, which is why the racialization of Hurricane Katrina has struck such a discordant note. The only appropriate response to a natural disaster is to offer concern and help to the victims; claims about justice and guilt are out of place and beside the point.
Yet it is upon claims about justice and guilt that racial politics in America are built. And since those who make such claims have seized on Katrina to press them, it's fair to respond by taking a critical look. Let's begin with our friend Randall Robinson, whose Puffington Host post we cited yesterday, and who is an intelligent defender of an extreme position. Here's an excerpt from the Amazon.com review of Robinson's 2000 book, "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks":
He goes further than any previous black public figure in calling for reparations to African-Americans for the present-day racism that stems from 246 years of slavery. Citing compensation that Jews and Japanese Americans have received, he writes, "No race, ethnic or religious group has suffered as much over so long a span as blacks have and do still, at the hands of those who benefited . . . from slavery and the century of legalized American racial hostility that followed it." In making his case, Robinson utilizes facts and figures that highlight the disparity between African-Americans and whites.
"Reparations" for slavery are not really a serious idea, but the question Robinson raises in his title is worth asking: What does America owe to blacks?
Up to a point, almost everyone can agree on the answer. America owes blacks full citizenship, which as a formal matter means equal treatment in matters of law, politics, commerce and education. Hardly anyone argues against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, or the outcomes of landmark civil rights cases such as Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia.
In post-civil-rights America, racial matters become contentious when the issue is preferential, rather than equal, treatment. "Reparations"--Write me a check, you racist!--are the crassest version of this idea, easily dismissed as silly (remember this guy?). But the policies that fall under the rubric of "affirmative action" are based on the same concept: that white Americans today continue to be guilty for wrongs committed by white Americans of the pre-civil-rights era.
This notion of collective guilt is at odds with America's individualist ethos, and for that reason both the politics and the jurisprudence of affirmative action are muddled. Racial preferences persist largely out of bureaucratic inertia, even though they have been rejected on the rare occasion that they were put to a political test. In 1996 voters in liberal California approved Proposition 209, banning all racial preferences in state and local government, with 54% of the vote.
The U.S. Supreme Court, meanwhile, has long held that any distinction by race, even a "benign" one designed to help minorities, is subject to "strict scrutiny" under the Constitution. But in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which allowed colleges to impose racial preferences so long as they are somewhat vague about what they're doing, the court preposterously decided that the University of Michigan had met this high standard merely by offering bromides about the importance of "diversity" in education. Muddying the waters further, Justice Sandra O'Connor opined that this justification would expire in 25 years.
Affirmative action is deeply entrenched in America's governmental, educational and corporate institutions. But political support for it--already weak, as we saw in California in 1996--is likely only to become weaker. That's because white guilt is a fading force in America. Every American now under 40 was born after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, so they have no memory of pre-civil-rights America. In two more generations, there will be hardly anyone left with even childhood memories of segregation.
It's hard to make people feel guilty when they personally have done nothing wrong. It's hard to argue that racial disparities are the product of extant racism when there is no direct evidence that such racism is anything but extremely rare, and when public policy actually favors blacks over whites.
On Tuesday we noted that black Americans have sharply different views on racial matters than do white Americans and, therefore, than do Americans as a whole. What we are arguing today is that the views of whites are likely to move even further away from those that blacks now hold.
We do not think there is any serious danger of old-fashioned racism resurging; the post-civil-rights consensus in favor of equal citizenship is as solid as anything in American political life. But the divergence between blacks and whites is still a problem for America, and a much bigger problem for black America. Black leaders would be well advised to spend less energy cultivating grievances and more cultivating an understanding of their fellow Americans. That is the path to integration.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110007253
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