November 2007 archive

The Generosity of the Cow

I have always been an animal person. In my youth I wanted to be a naturalist or a veterinarian. For years, I used our set of encyclopedias and the library to study one animal after another. One animal I had little interest in at that time was the cow. I guess I thought cows were boring and unimportant because it looked to me like all they did was stand around in pastures. However, my ideas about cows changed dramatically two years ago when our first family cow came to live with us. Now I understand that cows are one of the key animals supporting human civilization.

Cross posted at Pockets of the Future

A Problem of Race And Ethnicity

In response to this, an essayist wrote this:

Then the student called me a racist. He claimed I was picking on him because he was Latino, and that I wouldn’t be pulling him out of the class if he were White. . . . Was the student race baiting? You bet he was. He was making specious and unsupported claims of racial victimization in order to distract from his own obnoxious behavior.

. . . Just to be clear about the program.  These kids all come in for a one off session and there is rarely if ever any repeats.  I had never met the student in question before that day, nor had I had ever spoken to or about him before the incident.  This is a voluntary program for the students and I do not take attendence, so there was no reason to even say his name.   To my knowledge and belief, there was absolutely no reason for the student to make the claim he did other than for the reasons I’ve already stated.  End of story.

End of story indeed. For Night Owl, this Latino student’s experience PRIOR to attending his class DID NOT EXIST. The racism and bigotry that permeates our culture and our country DID NOT EXIST. The feelings this Latino student had about his own experience outside of that classroom prior to meeting NIght Owl DID NOT EXIST.

GET OVER IT is Night Owl’s advice. ‘Why do we need to consider the racism and bigotry of our culture and nation? I am not a racist. I am not a bigot. Sure I am white. But I am not a racist. I am not a bigot.’

This sounds like nothing more than someone sayng “I did not own slaves.” Why should I pay for it? Most of us are familiar with this line of thinking. It is what is used to oppose affiramtive action, civil rights laws, indeed most every program designed to address the race issue.

A lot of people believe that the problems of race are attended one by one, individually. On one level, this is true. But the notion that the institutional, cultural and national racism and bigotry of our country can be washed away without addressing what racism and bigtory have done to our current situation, that we can walk into a situation with a clean slate, is ludicrous to me. It is equivalent to saying you do not want to do anything about it.

It is not possible imo to remedy and address racism, sexism and bigotry even we do not face up to the hard truths about oursleves, our cultures, our society, our Nation. We can not pretend what has happened did not happen. We can not pretend we do not live in a racist, sexist, bigoted country.

Just as Night Owl should not have pretended that the Latino studet’s life started when he walked into that class, no one can pretend that we as a People in this country can pretend that slavery did not occur, that peoples were NOT subjugated, that Jim Crow, redlining, segregation, etc did NOT happen. That people are not out there argung TODAY that non-whites are less intelligent than whites.

It is true that Republicans, racialists and some idealists want to pretend the past did not happen. But it did. And it causes a lot of things to happen today.

It is my opinion that attitudes like the one expressed by Night Owl are extremely harmful to fighting against racism and bigotry. And while I am sure Night Owl is no racist, his attitudes lead to aid and comfort to racists and RACISM.

It is why I will continue to fight against those attitudes. I think it is important to have that fight.

A Problem With Race and Ethnicity

Pony Party, Phone it in Friday



Docudharma Times Friday Nov.30

Headlines for Friday November 30: Citing Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again: Immigrants’ children grow fluent in English, study says :Sanctuary Was a Lovely Word. Then the G.O.P. Got Hold of It.: Musharraf Sets Date for End of Emergency Rule: Iran Holocaust drama is a big hit

USA

Citing Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again

In almost every appearance as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, Rudolph W. Giuliani cites a fusillade of statistics and facts to make his arguments about his successes in running New York City and the merits of his views.

Discussing his crime-fighting success as mayor, Mr. Giuliani told a television interviewer that New York was “the only city in America that has reduced crime every single year since 1994.” In New Hampshire this week, he told a public forum that when he became mayor in 1994, New York “had been averaging like 1,800, 1,900 murders for almost 30 years.” When a recent Republican debate turned to the question of fiscal responsibility, he boasted that “under me, spending went down by 7 percent.”

I’m out of here

In comments last night, it became clear to me that this is not the site I thought it was, and is not the place for me.

No hard feelings; if you want to read what I write, it’ll be over at dailyKos and Swing State Project

I will watch this diary for any comments, since that seems polite.  Then I’m gone.

Adios Amigos!

In the immortal words of Al Gore:

It’s time for me to go.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Once upon a time we had a sun porch that was covered all in windows and each Holiday season Emily would tape up stencils and paint them in Tempra and leave the light on for a stained glass effect.

That same house had a balcony with a window that my sister and I would play “store” at.

In the near back yard was nothing much but grass, but in the near far back yard was a playset with a swing and a sandbox next to it.

The far, far back yard was forest until you came out above the Texaco Station.

We were three houses from the stoplight across the street from the school where mom worked, and a hundred yards from the A&P where we shopped.  A quarter mile from the butcher who sold prime beef and penny candy.

We went to church in the big church in Hartford with the bowling alley in the basement that the sixth grade Sunday school class studied in (yeah it was duck pin bowling and yeah I stuck out Sunday school long enough to find out they didn’t actually let them bowl).

There were lots of nooks and crannies including a Choir Loft at the top of the top most tower just past the Music Director’s Office and the parlors the Sewing Circles (what?  Bible Study?) used during the week.

Also a Hall/Auditorium where we had big church suppers and amateur theatricals.  Richard had great enthusiasm and delivery but couldn’t (and still can’t) remember his lines so he is hard to work with.

Britain’s Tories, Race/Ethnic Politics, and the 2008 Election

crossposted from Daily Kos, Truth & Progress, and My Left Wing

Ever since the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 during the American Civil War — when President Abraham Lincoln committed the Union to ending slavery — the issue of race has bedeviled not just the United States to this day but in recent decades, several European countries too as they struggle to assimilate minorities of color in their societies. Progressive-minded parties in Western liberal democracies have long been the home of minorities and immigrants seeking to benefit politically and economically from government policies designed to ease their assimilation into society. Some tangible successes notwithstanding, complete assimilation and recognition has often been elusive.  

As has been true for the Democratic Party since the 1930’s — when African-American voters started to switch their political allegiance from Lincoln’s Republican Party to the Democrats as President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs provided economic relief to the poor — minorities in Britain have long supported the Labour Party for over 50 years.  

Are we now witnessing an electoral drift from Labour to the Tories in Britain?  More on the flip side.

Can I Get An “Amen!”?

This speaks to me, and for me.

These guys are Sudanese. They won’t have the British embassy clucking with modulated concern over their fate. The Western press will lose interest in their own fates as soon as, oh – that already happened. They’ll keep doing what they’ve been doing – peacefully opposing tyranny; trying to save a few individuals from it – until they’re jailed or killed or they finally lose hope, or (let’s tell them a happy story to keep them going) Sudan actually turns itself into a better country.

Kucinich on Paul as VP: “It’s not going to happen. Next.” w/poll

Ah…the Dennis haters are going to hate this one!  And the sunshine former ‘supporters’ are going to hate it, too!  Good!

Dennis is not going to ask RP to be his VP.  Period.

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