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Race
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comedians
new york
NYC Still Black People-Arresting Capital Of World
Shocking fact: in New York City, "arrests for marijuana possession began skyrocketing in the late 1990s during the Giuliani administration." Oh, and that's "a trend that continued under Mayor Michael Bloomberg," the responsible soft-spoken billionaire who's continued many of the grossest aspects of Giulinai's reign of terror, just without the blustery hardman talk. And thanks to their team effort, New York now leads the world in marijuana arrests! But you probably don't need to worry, stoner—the vast majority of these arrests were of poor black people, because when they "decriminialized" possession of small stashes in the '70s they only meant it for like college grads and other responsible types. [WCBS]
god damn america
Reverend Wright A Clinton Supporter's Trick?
Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial former preacher, spent the weekend on media blitz, and the end result is that the press doesn't really like him. Except where before they were just harping on him because it was a great, easy story, now it's personal, because Wright expressed deep disdain for the entire journalistic class during each of last weekend's appearances. NOT DONE, REVEREND. You're supposed to be all penitent and you're expected to curtsy to whichever 60 Minutes dinosaur they unfreeze to drag out your meek apology. But Errol Louis in the Daily News—alarmed though he is that Wright acted at the Press Club "as if nobody in the room was learned enough to ask him a question"—did discover that Wright was actually invited to the Press Club by an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter. Barbara Reynolds voted for Clinton in Maryland, criticizes Obama on her blog, and "organized" the Wright event at the Press Club. Hah. Well, if Obama's "scary" black preacher actually dooms his candidacy, we'll happily join the "god damn America" bandwagon, but that will probably surprise no one. After the jump, the Daily Show's bit on Wright's weekend performance. Stewart's "I'm scared of the black man" routine gets less funny every time he employs it but the clips are decidedly enjoyable. More »
wall street journal
Black People Blog Like *This*
AOL's attempt at recreating itself as an "an ad-supported Web company" (or blog network, basically!) baffle and enrage us but they are apparently having some mild success. According to the Journal, traffic is up at AOL's new blogs many of which don't advertise their AOL connection: "It also created a half-dozen new sites that don't use the AOL name, such as a technology-focused site called Switched, a hip-hop site called BlackVoices, and a Web trend tracker called Urlesque.com, as well as Asylum." We bolded that bit because BlackVoices doesn't actually have anything to do with hip hop, except in that some black people rap and stuff. But, you know, not Sean Bell or Michelle Obama, the subjects of two of the current lead stories on that "hip-hop site." [WSJ, BlackVoices] More »
shouting heads
Lou Dobbs Almost Calls Condi Rice "Cotton-Pickin'"
There's nothing wrong, obviously, with saying "cotton-pickin'" when you are, say, Yosemite Sam. But "one cotton-pickin' minute," while best avoided, is still less of a faux-pas than saying how you're sick of "cotton-pickin'" black people telling you how you can and cannot talk about race, which is more or less what baby-headed CNN anchor Lou Dobbs said on the air the other day. The occasion? Condoleezza Rice said something rather mild about how the United States has a racial "birth defect" on account of how the nation was founded on the backs of African slave labor and it took a while to get all that sorted out. But Dobbs is sick of people telling him to stop being so racist! "We've got to be able to talk about it," he sputters in the attached clip, "and I can guarantee you this, not a single one of these cotton—just ridiculous politicians should be the moderator on the issue of race." Good thing you caught yourself there, Lou! Thankfully, the CNN transcript omits the almost-gaffe completely, so it's like it never happened! Except for that YouTube clip we've embedded below. More »
politics
Hillary Clinton to Lose Nomination, Destroy Feminism
"Valerie Benjamin, a human-resources manager for a consulting firm [in Pittsburgh], was driving to work recently in her red minivan with a Hillary bumper sticker when a man pulled up alongside and rolled down his window. 'You can be for Hillary all you want,' he shouted, 'but there is no way that thing is going to become president.'" You see, Senator Clinton inspires such a feverish rage in the minds of crotch-scratching knuckleheads that if she fails to become the Democratic nominee for President she will have set back the women's movement by decades. Run for cover! More »
lol internet
White People Over-Analyze Like This
Did you hear about that hot new internet blog, "Stuff White People Like"? Did someone email or GChat you a link to it? Or did many people? Chances are you either had a knowing chuckle or got all huffy about it, as those seem to be most people's responses. We've gone through the criticisms both whiny—I'm white and I'm nothing like this!—and smart—boy their definition of "white people" is offensively narrow and classist—and now we're sick of those too, even though we sort of agree with them but also are all "lay off, it's a stupid blog." There's the fucking rub: we dislike the site and are sick of everyone disliking the site. Which is why we were so excited to see that they got ten zillion dollars to turn it into a book! A book about hockey, and Miracle Whip! Except not really, because only like middle American White People like those things, see, and there's that class argument we didn't want to get into. No, this book is actually about Juno or some such bullshit. More »
race
The Assimilated Negro: Spreading Racial Discontent Across the Internet?
"Racially charged blogs" are tearing this nation apart. We saw it on Drudge! America's next civil war is right around the corner and it's all because of Stuff White People Like, a site written by and for yuppies to gently laugh at themselves with smug self-congratulation (or alternatively to condemn the whole enterprise, like we just did—wheels within wheels, people). This alarming site is, as the Houston Chronicle puts it, merely "the latest in a string of racially charged blogs (first came theassimilatednegro.com, then angryasian.com)...." Hah. Congrats to friend of Gawker The Assimilated Negro for apparently being inadvertently responsible for the fucking "Stuff White People Like" controversy. And for embodying the "vaguely suggestive without saying anything" term "racially charged"! [Chron.com]
barack obama
Media Still Baffled By Non-Pandering Race Speech
Can we just say, the day after, that we're still totally impressed with Barack Obama's speech yesterday? Jon Stewart, after a whole routine about it that fell 90% flat, suddenly summed it up quite nicely: "and so," he said, "on a Tuesday at 11 a.m., a Presidential candidate actually spoke to Americans about race as though we were adults." That is actually unprecedented—since the 1960s, at the least. It was so odd, in fact, that it melted the brains of the people whose job it is to trivialize everything about the campaign. Times columnist Maureen Dowd filed a column last night that only barely resembles anything she's written in a decade. More »
yes we can
Why the Best Speech Ever Won't Change a Damn Thing
The chattering classes continue to review Barack Obama's 45-minute speech today on race. The TV pundits' instant response was overwhelmingly positive, but it was almost certain to be. The current campaign narrative sort of required that response: they beat up on him for a week, then presented him the opportunity to redeem himself. Because Barack Obama is a brilliant writer, he did a good part of their work for him. Of course, the speech was, in this narrative, supposed to make everyone forget that he has a "nutty pastor." What Obama was trying to do with it was a little different, but that doesn't matter. As you can see in the Slate headline roundup above, people are still talking about the nutty pastor. So, the conventional wisdom, at the moment: it was an awe-inspiring, wonderful, magical speech, but it won't "work." More »
let's talk about race
Obama's Race Speech!
Democratic Presidential candidate and man who Americans recently realized might be black Barack Obama had to deliver a speech today about his blackness, because the media discovered that his favorite preacher occasionally says controversial things. Obama, who is probably the best writer to run for president of the last century at least, gave a very good speech that was also far too long for cable news people to actually digest, but they are all trying, and it really impressed Candy Crowley and Joe Scarborough. Pat Buchanan, not so much. More »
Scandal!
Barack Obama's upcoming super-important campaign speech about race begins with plagiarism. The opening line, according to Drudge: "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union." Sharp-minded observers may recognize that from a little document called the Constitution.
Barack Obama's upcoming super-important campaign speech about race begins with plagiarism. The opening line, according to Drudge: "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union." Sharp-minded observers may recognize that from a little document called the Constitution.
campaigns
Barack Obama's Own Professor Griff Might Get Him in Trouble
Barack Obama's favorite preacher is this guy named Jeremiah Wright, Jr., a black man who heads a black church and preaches utterly crazy conspiracy theory nonsense like "[America's] got more black men in prison than there are in college" and "[America] bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi" and other demonstrably true statements. This makes him "divisive," a special media term for "being a negative Nelly." Or "being an aggrieved black man." Now Barack Obama has staked much of his campaign on his not being even remotely aggrieved, which is called being "inspiring," a term that means "not threatening." So naturally some people find it a bit odd that he is friends with this aggrieved preacher, and attends his services, and even named one of his books after a Wright sermon. It might become a big scandal! But on the plus side, every time voters are introduced to Obama's crazy preacher friend they will be reminded that Barack Obama might not secretly be a Muslim. After the jump, a clip of Jon Stewart explaining how Reverend Wright is "not helping." More »
racism
Prestigious Boarding School Students Shocked By Decidedly Non-Quirky Problem
Kids at St. Paul's—the boarding school of John Kerry, New Yorker scribe Nick Paumgarten, heiress/psychiatrist Samantha Boardman, former Paris Review deputy publisher Lea Carpenter, and n+1 co-founder/zeitgeist-capturing novelist Ben Kunkel—have just witnessed their very first act of the kind of racism that isn't subtly ingrained in the system that allowed them to attend that prestigious institution: a black student received a threatening letter in the mail. "The top of the letter said 'Get Out,' John said. There was a bulls-eye in the middle and on the bottom, it said, 'Bang Bang,' he said." Three other black students received similar missives, all of which were "postmarked Manchester, through which all of the state's mail is routed." Don't worry, John. One of your classmates will get to the bottom of it in a thinky piece for The Believer in a couple years. [Concord Monitor]
campaigns
'Salon': Obama is Chris Tucker, McCain is Jackie Chan
In case you missed it, Salon's lead story today is about how Americans like John McCain and Barack Obama because they remind them of an interracial buddy cop movie, like Lethal Weapon. No, seriously! John McCain is a grizzled old vet, just one campaign away from retirement! Barack Obama is a wise-crackin street-smart sassy black guy, minus most of those descriptors that aren't "black." Also, dudes like guys, and John McCain and Barack Obama are both guys. Hi, Kurt Andersen! Anyway, it's all about sexism, according to this dude, in Salon. Fun bonus: the worst piece of photoshop ever committed to pixels. It's supposed to be Obama and McCain as Danny Glover and Mel Gibson, but that's obviously the wrong interracial buddy cop movie. McCain is a "maverick" and a little bit crazy, yes, but he's also 100 years old, like Nick Nolte in 48 Hours (and every other thing he's ever been in). [Salon]
things we actually like
How To Strike It Rich As a Black Conservative
We are kind of loving The Root, maybe unfairly called The Black Slate upon its launch by Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive (which also owns Slate, a.k.a. "The White Slate"). This column, by Lawrence Bobo, is a fine example of why. Here is the magic formula for becoming a successful Conservative Black Pundit: More »
race
Blackness Explained Bizarrely
For those of us who have been wondering what it means to be "really black," John McWhorter is here with some impenetrable explanations. McWhorter is a scholar at the conservative Manhattan Institute and frequent phoner-in of columns to the New York Sun (seriously, today's is just him riffing on how much the play "Hairspray" sucks, for no apparent reason). In an essay on TheRoot.com, he takes on those backward-thinking idealists who reject the question of who is "black enough." What's McWhorter's groundbreaking formula for measuring blackness? Hint: It involves dance skills, Ebonics, and chicken!More »
race relations
