The prison terms were suspended — not commuted — on the condition that Gladys donate a kidney to Jamie, who is seriously ill with diabetes and high blood pressure and receives dialysis at least three times a week. Gladys had long expressed a desire to donate a kidney to her sister, but to make that [...]
[2 Jan 2011]
I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either. I came back to my native country and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. [...]
[6 Dec 2010]
And many slaveholding Southerners begin to realize that that means that many whites cannot afford to gain entry into the slaveholding system any more. A book published in 1857 by a white South Carolinian, a deep racist named Hinton R. Helper, argued that non-slaveholding Southern whites ought to wake up to their economic exploitation by [...]
[15 Nov 2010]
Elaine Brown, a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. I attended a screening of 41st & Central last night, as part of the National Black Arts Festival. It’s a quite moving documentary about the rise of the Los Angeles branch of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, especially [...]
[17 Jul 2010]
I’ve avoided the temptation to say that, in the United States, poverty is white. It’s true, however, that there are twice as many poor whites as there are poor blacks. While a larger percentage of the African-American population lives in poverty, the sheer number of poor whites — 24.1 million — overwhelms the number of poor blacks — 12.1 million. (Interestingly, there are also more poor [...]
[16 Jul 2010]
Segregation in Hungary doesn’t happen as a result of racist laws. It’s de facto segregation. For different reasons in different locations, all of the Roma children, or at least large majorities of them together with financially disadvantaged non-Roma, wind up in the same classrooms or schools. So says Lilla Farkas, a lawyer with the NGO [...]
[8 Jul 2010]
During the 1990s, it was only the French extreme right that ridiculed the idea that multiracial sport could facilitate racial integration in France. Now the derision directed against the indiscipline of a “black” team and the implicit failure of sport’s integrative role in French society rains down from across the political spectrum. From Le Scandal [...]
[2 Jul 2010]
Internalized racism is defined as acceptance by members of the stigmatized races of negative messages about their own abilities and intrinsic worth. It is characterized by their not believing in others who look like them, and not believing in themselves. It involves accepting limitations to one’s own full humanity, including one’s spectrum of dreams, one’s [...]
[30 Jun 2010]
Or the black bartender who said to me: “A black American and a white American … you all are the same to me.” It was another awkward compliment, but from his viewpoint, he equates the lifestyles of black Americans with white people, both in America and in South Africa. I suppose in a way that’s [...]
[21 Jun 2010]
Every time immigration debates pop up, I think about how we’ve treated previous waves of immigrants. Each successive wave of newcomers was first viewed with suspicion and hostility. That suspicion and hostility eventually gives way to some degree of assimilation into whiteness. ‘The Beige and the Black’: Segregation in Marriage Twelve years ago, the New [...]
[1 May 2010]