Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots have been catching flak for being so white. Occupy Atlanta is no exception, getting off to a rough start last Friday when civil rights movement hero-turned-Congressman John Lewis stopped by to offer his support, only to be waved off by the mostly white general assembly, which is the Occupy movement’s collective decision-making group.

...But his main accomplishment was ending 200 years of racial terrorism, by getting black people to confront their fears. So please don't tell me that Martin Luther King's dream has not been achieved, unless you knew what racial terrorism was like back then and can make a convincing case you still feel it today. If you did not go through that transition, you're not qualified to say that the dream was not accomplished.

That is what Dr. King did -- not march, not give good speeches. He crisscrossed the south organizing people, helping them not be afraid, and encouraging them, like Gandhi did in India, to take the beating that they had been trying to avoid all their lives.

Once the beating was over, we were free.

It wasn't the Civil Rights Act, or the Voting Rights Act or the Fair Housing Act that freed us. It was taking the beating and thereafter not being afraid. So, sorry Mrs. Clinton, as much as I admire you, you were wrong on this one. Our people freed ourselves and those Acts, as important as they were, were only white people officially recognizing what we had done.

PS. I really shouldn't have to add this but please -- don't ever confuse someone criticizing you or telling you bad things over the internet with what happened to people during the civil rights movement. Don't. Just don't do it. Don't go there.

Whoopi Goldberg's great-great grandparents, William and Elsie Washington, were among a very small number of African Americans who became landowners through homesteading in the years following the Civil War. Two generations later, her grandparents were living in Harlem, her grandfather working as a Pullman porter.

After the Civil War, white Southerners moved quickly to eliminate black people's newfound freedom. They wanted to return blacks, in effect, to their prewar status as slaves. In order to do this "legally," they passed new laws that appeared, on the surface, to be neutral and fair to all races. In actuality however, these laws were actually designed specifically to repress black people.

REPORT: MORE WHITES USE DRUGS, MORE BLACKS IMPRISONED

The nation's war on drugs unfairly targets African Americans, who are far more likely to be imprisoned for drug offenses than whites even though far more whites use illegal drugs than blacks, according to a new report by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

The report, to be released today, said that African Americans accounted for 62 percent of the drug offenders sent to state prisons nationwide in 1996, the most recent year for which statistics are available, although they represent just 12 percent of the U.S.  population.  Overall, black men are sent to state prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men, according to the study, which analyzes a wide range of Justice Department information for 37 states to come up with its findings.

Fliers Target Dating Between Blacks, Whites

Part 1: Teivon McNair started getting in trouble at school and with police shortly after the grandmother who raised him died of a stroke at age 45. McNair was just 12.

Part 2: Reasons for racial disparity in Dane County penal system are complex

Part 3: Ex-drug dealer has blunt message: Stop waiting for others to solve race woes

A few months ago, Tim Wise wrote a widely circulated article called, "Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black " which challenged America to take a close look at the hypocrisy of the Right Wing. Now, a Pittsburgh rapper is accepting his challenge in true Hip Hop form. Jasiri X has released a video called "What if the Tea Party was Black." The Hip Hop artist says that he got the idea when Paradise,a member of the pro-black rap group X-Clan, forwarded him a copy of Wise's article. "I saw the article and I liked the concept," says the rapper. So Jasiri hit the studio with producer Cynik Lethal while Paradise grabbed his video camera and they went on their mission to defeat the Right Wing propaganda machine.

LYRICS
What if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would they harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Soaljah
Would they leave it with the votes or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attack

What if Michael Baisden was on ya FM dial
For 3 hours every day calling the president foul
Would they say free speech or find evidence how
To charge him with treason like see he's unamerican now
What if Minister Farrakhan prayed for the death
Of the commander in chief that he be laid to rest
Would they treat it as the gravest threat or never make an arrest
Even today he's still hated for less
What if President Obama would have lost the election
Quit his job so he could go talk to the left and
Bash the government for being off of direction
Fraught with deception
And told black people they want all of our weapons
And we want our own country and called for secession
Would he be arrested and tossed in corrections
For trying to foster aggression
Against the people's lawful selection
Our questions

What if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would they harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Soaljah
Would they leave it with the votes or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attack

What If black people went on Facebook and made a page
That for the death if the president elect we prayed
Would the creators be tazed and thrown in a cage
We know the page wouldn't have been displayed all these days
What if Jeremiah Wright said that everybody white
Wasn't a real America would you feel scared of him
If he had a militia with pictures that depict the president as Hitler
They would kill and bury that
Wait
What if Cynthia McKinney lamented the winning of the new president
And hinted he wasn't really a true resident
With no proof or evidence
Would the media treat it like a huge press event
They would have attacked whatever group she represents
They would have called her a kook on precedent
And any network that gave her due preference
Would be the laughing stock of the news so our question is

What if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would they harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Soaljah
Would they leave it with the votes or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attack

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of $hit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Continue reading on Examiner.com Tim Wise: Imagine if the Tea Party was Black - Washington DC Civil Rights | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/civil-rights-in-washington-dc/tim-wise-imagine-if-the-tea-party-was-black#ixzz1TUWWW1dn

A poet and essayist, Frances Ellen Watkins was born in Baltimore in 1825.  Orphaned at the age of three, Watkins went to live with her aunt and uncle, Harriet and William Watkins.  Unlike most free blacks, Frances grew up in comfortable surroundings; her uncle juggled several occupations in order to support the family, including preaching, shoemaking, and medicine. He was also a teacher and administrator at Watkins Academy, a school he had established in 1820.  Like other young women, Frances learned the female “trades” of sewing and domestic work in addition to learning academic subjects at her uncle’s school.

The Compromise of 1850 brought relative calm to the nation. Though most blacks and abolitionists strongly opposed the Compromise, the majority of Americans embraced it, believing that it offered a final, workable solution to the slavery question. Most importantly, it saved the Union from the terrible split that many had feared. People were all too ready to leave the slavery controversy behind them and move on. But the feeling of relief that spread throughout the country would prove to be the calm before the storm.

Dred Scott first went to trial to sue for his freedom in 1847. Ten years later, after a decade of appeals and court reversals, his case was finally brought before the United States Supreme Court.

We all know that people look different. Anyone can tell a Czech from a Chinese. But are these differences racial? What does race mean? Find the answers to these and other questions by exploring different interactivities within this site.

What do they teach about racism in American high schools? In “Lies My Teacher Told Me” (1995) James W. Loewen looked at 12 history books commonly used in American high schools. One of the things he looked at is what they teach about racism. Very little, as it turns out.

Most history books do not even have the word “racism” or “racial prejudice” in their index. None of the 12 point out out how racism grew out of the practice of keeping black slaves. Not one. The closest any of them get to the cause of racism is this:

[African Americans] looked different from members of white ethnic groups. The color of their skin made assimilation difficult. For this reason they remained outsiders.

Writes Deepak Chopra:

One of the virtues of being on the liberal side of politics is that total obedience isn't required. There are no hidden agendas. Ideology doesn't lead to unreason. In a political climate where it feels as if the inmates are running the asylum -- as in the current Republican threat to default on America's debt -- the prevailing sanity of President Obama is something that others and I have taken for granted.

We cannot afford that luxury any more, I'm afraid.
For many reasons, this is the moment when loyalty is going to count the most. That's a hard sentence to write. Liberal politics is based on a non-regimented, all-inclusive approach to democracy. Freedom of thought is paramount. But certain harsh realities must be faced. For thirty years and more, the progressive tradition has been severely undermined, dating back to Nixon's "Southern strategy" (coddle the racists) and Ronald Reagan's smiling reactionary agenda (AIDS victims deserve what they get), through the first President Bush's Willie Horton strategy (another boost for racism) and the second President Bush's deceptive "compassionate conservatism."

The status of blacks in Virginia slowly changed over the last half of the 17th century. The black indentured servant, with his hope of freedom, was increasingly being replaced by the black slave.

In 1705, the Virginia General Assembly removed any lingering uncertainty about this terrible transformation; it made a declaration that would seal the fate of African Americans for generations to come...

I can't get what Michelle Bachmann said out of my head: African American children did better under slavery.

The woman is an idiot of the worse kind. Not only is she an idiot, she's ignorant! I guess the correct term would be she's an educated fool. Anyone who would repeat anything and everything placed before her is not deserving to lead anything but a slop bucket!

Let's start at the beginning, Michelle Bachmann. Parents were stolen from their country and shipped to America with many leaving their children behind.

Upon arriving in America, those with families were separated due to being sold to various slave owners.

Once parent(s) were sold to different slave owners, the children were raised by whomever took them in. In other words, Michelle Bachmann, many children of slaves had no parent(s).

Children born into slavery, when old enough were sold away from their parent(s).

So I ask, Michelle Bachmann, how did you come to the conclusion, or rather, how did your speechwriter come to the conclusion that the child born into slavery was better off?

Fear never goes out of fashion. Once again Republicans are dealing in fear instead of facts, and why not? It's worked in the past, and a nation that's locked in seemingly permanent recession and high unemployment may be in the market for some scapegoats.

If someone asked you to define contemporary racism, what would you say? What would be the first things that came to mind? And do you think your answer would be any different from people of a different racial or ethnic background?

BOORTZ: You know what? I, for one, am tired of putting up with this crap. And you want to know why I moved out of Atlanta and only spend a couple of weeks a year in this town? That's one of the reasons. Carjackings, violence, people getting shot. It's ridiculous. This city harbors an urban culture of violence. And I want you to look around. You drive into the city. The railroad overpass is on the downtown connector covered with graffiti. And that-- That is just an advertisement for everybody coming into this town that we really don't give a damn about those who would screw up our quality of life around here. We really just don't care. We don't care enough to paint over graffiti on the overpasses that come into our city, advertising welcome to Atlanta, here's some of our finest graffiti, from some of our finest urban thugs and their little gang signs. And pick up the paper tomorrow morning. Read about all the carjackings. Read about the innocent people shot for the pure de-hell of it.

This town is starting to look like a garbage heap. And we got too damn many urban thugs, yo, ruining the quality of life for everybody. And I'll tell you what it's gonna take. You people, you are - you need to have a gun. You need to have training. You need to know how to use that gun. You need to get a permit to carry that gun. And you do in fact need to carry that gun and we need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta.

First, at theUniversity of Alabama, a white student was disciplined for yelling racial slurs at a black student. Days later, racial slurs were found written on a campus sidewalk. "Unfortunately, this incident is not an isolated occurrence on this campus," the president of the university's Black Faculty and Staff Association said.

Meanwhile, a Murray State University professor has resigned after allegedly telling black freshman Arlene Johnson last August that he wasn't surprised that she didn't show up on time to a film he started 15 minutes before class began. Why? Because slaves never showed up on time.

What is it about Barack Obama's race that makes some people act crazy, if not downright vicious? The latest sign of unchecked insanity turned up in the recent anti-Obama diatribe of Princeton professor Cornel West. The president of the United States, said West, is "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats." Now, isn't that a tad bit nasty and delusional?

But such rantings are not limited to West. Nor do they start with him.

This a damn shame!

"Catherine Ferguson Academy" is a school for pregnant girls (I didn't know these types of schools still existed in the United States for the no income or low income) and these girls were trying to achieve a success that has now been denied them!

I'm outraged! And you should be outraged too!

Instead of punishing these girls they should be supported and aided!

This is nothing more than dirty politics!

If you're interested in helping to save Catherine Ferguson Academy then click on this link.

J.B. Stradford, the son of a freed Kentucky slave, rose to prominence in Oklahoma during the early 1900s as one of the key developers of the all-black Tulsa enclave Greenwood. A lawyer and businessman, Stradford owned the 65-room hotel that sat right in the heart of the thriving community that would later become known as "the Black Wall Street."

But in a single day, all of that would change. On May 31, 1921, the arrest of a young black man on a questionable charge of assaulting a young white woman touched off the deadliest race riot in U.S. history. Whites charged through the community in retaliation, leaving an estimated 300 people dead, another 10,000 black residents homeless and 35 city blocks in ruin.

Davis's case has become an emblem for much of what is problematic about a capital punishment system that is riddled with racism, economic disparity and error.

“Whose baby is that?” “Is that your child?” 

Shortly after my adopted newborn son arrived, whenever we were out in public, we drew frequent stares and questions from strangers. Though we live in a racially diverse neighborhood, I didn’t expect the sight of a middle-aged white man carrying an African American infant peering out from a colorful chest-worn sling to be such an attention grabber. 

The Madison worker uprising shook up the US political landscape. State governments that were peacefully going about their business forcing workers and communities to pay for upper class gluttony are facing resistance on a scale they had not imagined.

Down highway 202 on a patch of land not far from where old Forsythe's grocery store used to be, there's a dead end that holds the buried skeletons of a small Southern town.

Yes, Glenn Beck has announced that he will “transition off” his daily TV show on Fox News and, yes, I’ll miss him. You read that right. I will miss Glenn Beck.

No, I will not miss his blatant attempts to gin up fear in the hearts of Americans by slandering and scapegoating poor people, people of color, unions and women. No, I will not miss him convening “representative” audiences of “ordinary people” who are almost always white and mostly male and implicitly signaling they are the “real Americans.” And certainly, no, I will not miss the bagpipes.

But here, in all honesty, are five things I will miss about Glenn Beck—and lessons that we all should learn.

A public school district in Mississippi continues to operate predominately single-raced schools, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has filed a motion in federal court to order the district to develop an plan to integrate.

Nikko Burton, a 10-year-old student at Chapelfield Elementary in Ohio, says he was humiliated by his teacher when she tried to demonstrate what it was like to be a slave on an auction block. Burton, one of two black students in his class, was chosen to be a slave. Students who were the "masters" inspected the "slaves" to see if they would be able workers.

The word turns off a lot of men (insert snarky comment about man-hating feminazis here) -- and women. But here's why black men should be embracing the "f" word.

If you think the Birthers have been chastened into silence, think again – and look to the past.

If you want to view the spiritual parents of the Birthers and their “carnival barkers,” look to the early 1960s – the years before the legislative victories of the Civil Rights Movement, when democracy in America was on the line.

Two ugly forces had to combine to produce the birth certificate sideshow, which can only be described as a national disgrace. One is a calculated attempt by Obama’s political opponents to de-legitimize his presidency.

In an era of racism without racists, the Tea Party GOP Birther brigands provide one more lesson in the permanence of the social evil known as White privilege....

Most pointedly, Obama's tenure has provided an opportunity for the worst aspects of White privilege to rear their ugly head. In doing so, the continuing significance of Whiteness is made ever more clear in a moment when the old bugaboo of White racism was thought to have been slain on November 4, 2008. 

Three men have been arrested and charged in connection to a burning cross spotted off the side of a highway in southern New Jersey.

...The reputation of General Forrest, under whom Ellen's great-grandfather served during the latter half of the war, has come to be defined by two infamous, yet brief, chapters in his life: his controversial assault on the Union-held Fort Pillow in 1864; and his post-war involvement with the first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. So closely is Forrest's name associated with the Klan, in fact, that he is sometimes incorrectly referred to as its founder. If not for these two black marks on his reputation, the ribbons and regalia appraised by Christopher Mitchell at around $10,000 would undoubtedly be quite a bit more valuable. Though totally uneducated, Forrest was a demonically gifted military commander and tactician, a legend in his own time. He was the only man on either side to rise from the rank of private to that of general during the four-year conflict. Robert E. Lee and William Tecumseh Sherman called him the most remarkable man, and finest soldier, produced by the war.

What happened in Savannah, Georgia in 1897 wasn't really a riot if you compare it to other mass racial uprisings that took place in the United States between 1891 and 1899.

The last decade of the 19th century witnessed full-scale race riots in Omaha, Nebraska, Wilmington, North Carolina, Lake City and Greenwood County, South Carolina, and Newburgh, New York. These incidents involved beatings, lynching, labor disputes, a political coup d'etat, rumors of black men raping white females, and widespread property destruction.

But the St. James Dispensary Riot of 1897 has been given no attention in the history books and most people have probably never heard anything about it.

In 1961, the Freedom Riders set out for the Deep South to defy Jim Crow laws and call for change. They were met by hatred and violence — and local police often refused to intervene. But the Riders' efforts transformed the civil rights movement.

Are you ever afraid that fundamentalist Muslim extremists will take over your state court house? That's the idea behind the radical right's peddling of the myth that the Islamic legal code Sharia law will somehow make its way to the United States. The code is usually represented in the West as one mandating that rape victims or battered wives be stoned to death, and more broadly pointed to as evidence Islam's mythical barbarism. Those sorts of ideas have formed the undercurrent of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. for decades.

The headline for this story should actually be "Mr. Racist Goes to Washington." William Johnson, the head of the convict-laden American Third Position Party and a man who first made headlines in the 1980s for proposing an amendment that would deport all non-whites from the United States, recently wrote to his troops about a visit to Capitol Hill on Jan. 5 at a reception for sworn-in senators.

Tea Party Nationalism is a new report by Devin Burghart, Leonard Zeskind and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights that exposes the connection between numerous Tea Party leaders and racism.

With a massive and resistive wave pushing against the Barack Obama administration from the Republican right, an old voice of time past has sprung a new cry among the Republican Party faithful that is aimed at the Black community to repeal the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The 14th Amendment provided Black America with equal protection of the law, due process of the law, citizenship clause that overruled the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), and held that Blacks were citizens of the United States.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, invalidating the Jim Crow laws, barred unequal application of voter registration requirements. Outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce Title IX, and made it easier to move civil rights cases from state courts with segregationist judges and all-white juries to federal court. This was of crucial importance to civil rights activists who could not get a fair trial in state courts.

The other day National Review ran an open letter from Dennis Prager to Hispanics in which he assured them they would always be better off voting Republican, even though it might seem like right-wingers are hellbent on deporting 12 million Latinos these days. Among his soothing assurances:

Those who tell you it is racism or xenophobia are lying about their fellow Americans for political or ideological reasons. You know from your daily interactions with Americans that the vast majority of us treat you with the dignity that every fellow human being deserves. Your daily lives are the most eloquent refutation of the charge of racism and bigotry. The charge is a terrible lie. Please don't believe it. You know it is not true.

Um, right. Does Prager really believe this?

America was never intended to be a democracy and it never has been; despite the lies you've been told all your life. The U.S. constitution only gave the vote to white, male landowners; even poor white males were not allowed the vote . . . and they ignored blacks, women, Hispanics, "Native Americans" and others they left out. Slowly this rule was changed until almost 200 years later in 1964 when every adult was "given the right to vote", but that's not the point. What are you allowed to vote for?

America is a country born of hypocrisy and nurtured in racism and oppression. How stupendous a hypocrite do you have to be to write a document that declares "All men are created equal" while at that very moment you have two hundred human beings chained in your back yard working as your slaves? America's political system (which was designed by these hypocrites) is no better that a shell game which gives rich people control and the rest of us the shaft.

The details of this one are kind of sketchy, but TPM describes the story as one of a series of cases where "people who seemed to want to commit a hate crime … were either too drunk, too stupid or too disorganized to pull it off or even give a really clear idea of what they were trying to do." Apparently, 31 year-old Kevin Morris walked into a hookah bar under the impression that such venues are populated by the Muslim devout rather than smirking hipsters. It didn't go well.

Almost 50 years ago, the Republican Party made a decision to embrace the backlash generated by civil rights among white Southerners....

But it's an inconvenient story for today's Republican Party, which still relies on cultural, racial and ethnic wedge issues to keep its base in line -- but which also needs to win over less conservative suburbanites across the country to compete in national elections.

For an event aimed at reclaiming the civil rights movement, the crowd was pretty homogenous. There may have been a lot of red, white, and blue — but there wasn't a ton of black in attendance.

Armed with a camera and a t-shirt that read "America Deserves Better" (circa 2008), we asked rally attendees what they thought the Tea Party could do to inspire more black people to join their cause.

Glenn Beck with the help of FoxNews did a good job of herding hundreds of thousands of terrified, confused and completely ignorant white folks onto the National Mall. Many of these people sincerely suspect that President Obama is a Muslim communist illegal immigrant who wants to take all their hard-earned white money and give it to some lazy, shiftless and/or criminal black and brown people — if you believe recent polling such as this and this and this.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today urged Congress to reject an appeal for public funding of "faith-based" charities that discriminate in hiring on religious grounds.

"I didn't yeild when they murdered my father or when they burned a cross in my family's front yard. I'm surely not going to yield now."--Shirley Sherrod

A Chicago couple faces discrimination charges after reportedly refusing to sell their home to comedian and radio personality George Willborn because he's Black.

1) An overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens will never lose their jobs to "illegal aliens."

2) In those minority instances when they do, undocumented immigrants certainly aren't at fault. The flight of desperately poor workers to the United States is a phenomenon created through international plunder by the same profiteers who rip off nonunion labor -- teenagers, women, racial minorities, and unorganized males -- within our own home communities. They're all victims of unchecked corporate greed.

As parents arrived early Monday morning to drop their kids off for summer camp at the B'Nai Shalom Synagogue in Olney, Md., they were greeted by a derogatory name for Jews spray-painted on the building.

A class action law suit has been filed on behalf of employees of 24 Hour Fitness USA, Inc. alleging discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin and gender.

As a result of white supremacy/racism, white people cannot be whole human beings. If we do not treat people of color as equals, we not only deny them their own humanity, but we deny ourselves as well. We believe that part of being fully human means treating each other with dignity, and practicing a belief that all people should have the chance to reach their full potential. White people cannot reach our full potential as humans if we treat people of color as lesser human beings.

In ancient White societies the family or spouse of a man that died in battle would often be taken care of by the wealthy, ruling families.

It seems that every week we receive letters and e-mails at the National Office where someone is angry at all the non-Whites on welfare. And these people should be angry over this massive, criminal fraud being perpetrated against White people in America and virtually every other White nation in the West. We have all heard about the billions and billions of dollars being wasted every year on non-White welfare, but in fact there are actually numerically more Whites on welfare than non-Whites.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul is shown during an interview at his campaign headquarters after winning his party's primary election in Bowling Green, KY. Paul says that a 1964 Civil Rights Act provision strikes him as unconstitutional because it infringes on white business owners' rights to exclude black patrons from their establishments.

Kentucky's Paul embraced this racist tactic shortly after winning his GOP primary race. In an interview with a Russian television station, Paul declared his support for federal legislation to deny citizenship to immigrant babies even if they're born on U.S. soil.

"We're the only country I know of that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen," Paul said, obviously unaware that many nations including Canada, Mexico, and Brazil grant citizenship at birth. "And I think that should also stop."

Forty years after the passage of 1964 Civil Rights Act, history and politics are celebrating a strange convergence: It was the passage of the Civil Rights Act that launched the rise of the president who died last week, Ronald Reagan.

The Civil Rights Act, signed July 2, 1964, by President Lyndon Johnson, ended legal discrimination against blacks at hotels, restaurants and department stores. It also made discrimination illegal in hiring. Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee that year, decided to make himself a voice for opponents of the Act.

Mexican immigrants and other Latinos are today being described in terms such as "dangerous" and "criminal." They are called "lazy" and reported to be "lurking on street corners." The way they dress is said to be "funny" or "dirty." They are "flooding the country."

The new language of anti-Mexican racism is actually drawn on centuries-old images from the white racial framing of African Americans, now repurposed for other people with brown skin.

The current white diatribe targeting Mexican immigrants—revealed in polls, media commentaries, actions of Arizona legislators—is much like the invective used against African Americans during the civil rights era.

Having recently reached 74 years of age, if one were to ask me what's my greatest disappointment in life, a top contender would surely be the level of misunderstanding, perhaps contempt, that black Americans have for the principles of personal liberty and their abiding faith in government. Contempt or misunderstanding of the principles of personal liberty and faith in government by no means make blacks unique among Americans, but the unique history of black Americans should make us, above all other Americans, most suspicious of any encroachment on personal liberty and most distrustful of government. Let's look at it.

RACISM explains a lot of white opposition to Barack Obama, say some Democrats. It would be foolish to dismiss this argument out of hand. Lexington walked into a shop in Millington, Tennessee last week and asked the white gentleman behind the counter what he thought of the 44th president. "He's a @!$%#ing @!$%#," came the reply. The shopkeeper then helpfully explained that he was "not bashful" about expressing his opinions.

The right wing conservatives are the ones toting the guns and obstructing the political process in our country. It has been a long time since this nation has been under attack by forces aligned with the likes of the Klu Klux Klan and Neo Nazi Skinheads and White Supremacists, but now the Republican Party has chosen to support the fanatics in the Tea Party Movement who have all the markings of the radical right wing fanatics of the past.

We learned from Watergate and again in 2000 with Bush V Gore that the republicans will stop at nothing to gain and keep power. We spent eight years fighting in a trumped up war and paying the price for our naïveté in thinking that they are playing by the same rules as the rest of us. One only has to look at the way they went about ginning up the Iraq War with lies and half truths so their buddies at Halliburton and the mercenaries at Blackwater could make huge profits with no bid contracts.

How Dred-ful. As in Dred Scott, a slave denied his freedom by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857.

Tom Corbett and Charles Crist behaved dreadfully when they injected race into their respective political campaigns in Pennsylvania and Florida, the two most populous swing states. They now tie for first in tasteless politicking in recent weeks.

Recently there's been a lot of speculation about why the mood on the right has turned so sour. Some observers attribute it to the lack of leadership at the top of the Republican Party, the surreal reality that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have more influence than do elected Republicans. Others say it's a poisonous combination of economic angst and racial hatred. But there's a more obvious explanation: we're witnessing the death throes of conservatism. The right-wing ideology that ran the US for thirty years has proven to be a total failure and the passage of healthcare reform was the final nail in its coffin.

In case you've forgotten, classic conservatism promised to keep us safe, reduce the size of government, lower taxes, and manage the economy. Republican broke each of these commitments.

The Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund provides grants to students actively working for peace and justice. These need-based scholarships are awarded to those able to do academic work at the university level and who are part of the progressive movement on the campus and in the community.

A Two Hour Special Event on Race Relations in America On Martin Luther King Day

Tom Joyner and Chris MatthewsOne year after the inauguration of the first African-American President, MSNBC will present "Hope and Fear in Obama's America," January 18, 2010, 10 p.m. ET, an extended discussion surrounding race and post-racial identity in America. Moderated by "Hardball's" Chris Matthews and featuring syndicated radio host Tom Joyner, live from Texas Southern University, a historically Black university in Houston, Texas. The two-hour special event on Martin Luther King Day will explore some of the most pressing and provocative issues connected to race and race relations in the U.S.

Do you fall under the one drop rule?

It doesn't make sense. I'm a black woman married to a white man with two biracial daughters, living in a town known for its diversity and open-mindedness. I see myself as accepting, always wanting the best for everyone, respecting people of all kinds. So why does the topic of immigration enrage me so?

When the radio and TV pundits call for immigration reform, laud pro-immigration marches or anti-immigration rallies, I scream, "Why so much fuss about them? No one has ever cared so much about us! They come here and they think they're better than black people anyway." I whine like a forgotten stepchild and storm out of the room. Not about illegal immigration, but the topic as a whole triggers a black hole of anger, free-floating and unspecified, that scares me because I don't understand it. Afraid I'll get sucked into the vacuous hole, I push the topic from my mind, but one day my neighbor catches me off guard, forcing me to confront my immigration rage.

Everywhere I turn these days I keep seeing or hearing the words, "No More Excuses." From black self-help book titles to black pundits on CNN, these three words have become the mantra of post-racialism in the Age of President Obama. Whether intended or not, the mantra fuels the belief that because of individual black achievements, we have finally reached the promised land of a color-blind, equal-opportunity America.

Marxism.

Death to Marxism.

Death to Foreign and Domestic.

To @!$%# Day to Scott.

You were, you are, and you shall forever be a @!$%#.

And the Ethiopian cannot make himself white.

Senator Jeff Sessions took a strong stance on hate crime today—in a way that only an unabashedly bigoted lawmaker could.

Native American Cherokees voted to expel descendants of black slaves from their tribe nation in a special election that has prompted charges of racism, according to returns made public early Sunday.

Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America

Searching through America's past for the last 25 years, collector James Allen uncovered an extraordinary visual legacy: photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout America. With essays by Hilton Als, Leon Litwack, Congressman John Lewis and James Allen, these photographs have been published as a book "Without Sanctuary" by Twin Palms Publishers . Features will be added to this site over time and it will evolve into an educational tool. Please be aware before entering the site that much of the material is very disturbing. We welcome your comments and input through the forum section.

Experience the images as a flash movie with narrative comments by James Allen, or as a gallery of photos which will grow to over 100 photos in coming weeks. Participate in a forum about the images, and contact us if you know of other similar postcards and photographs.

The in-depth documentary retraces the history and cause of the siege, including the destruction of Indian Culture and the abuse of peoples that occurred in Indian Boarding Schools.

At the colossal Sparrows Point steelworks on the outer shores of Baltimore harbor, founded in 1887, black men long fed the sweltering ovens and furnaces while white men ran the finishing mills that produced gleaming coils of steel, tin, nails, wire and pipe. Three generations of my father's family labored on Sparrows Point and I grew up in a nearby white working class community that owed much of its post-war prosperity to Bethlehem Steel.

Over the past four years, as I've researched a social history of the works, I've wrestled with issues of race-and with my own ambivalence about my white working class roots.

The people that I was raised among were extraordinarily generous, unpretentious and hard-working, and I greatly admire those qualities. But many were also, no getting around it, racist. Not lynching racist, not burning crosses on the lawn racist, not even, in many cases, personally racist.

Redlining is a familiar, if poorly understood, word for the refusal to insure mortgages in black neighborhoods. Satter shows how it worked in vivid, personal terms. Her painstakingly thorough portrayal of the human costs of financial racism is, in my view, the most important book yet written on the black freedom struggle in the urban North

"They called me a n*gger & told me to go back to Africa."

By Margena A. Christian

Jet Magazine, Nov. 10, 2008, p. 16

President Bush quietly signed into law the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which will give the Justice Department more money to investigate unsolved murders from the civil rights era (Jet, Oct. 20-27).

"We are happy that the Till Bill is now the law of the land," said Alvin Sykes, president of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign and architect of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. "Now the greatest criminal manhunt in this country's history is underway for these perpetrators who thought they had gotten away with their lynchings a long time ago. If they didn't believe this would ever happen before, they'll believe it now!"

The bill was named for the Chicago teen Emmett Till who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a White woman.

As we are witnessing, the conservative movement is in shambles now and the only thing they can do is spew racist hatred out into the world and hope it sticks to their audience in droves. And how is the conservative right going to make sure race is all you can think of when you think of the name Obama?

How about by making the case that blacks in general are lazy, angry, and engaged in a 3 decades old plot to train black children as militants against the US? It's those scary black terrorists again. Don't think anyone would actually SAY that? Think again. Listen to it in Rush Limbaugh's own words. It's hard to cut out much of his racist diatribe so the full transcript will appear under the fold.