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Comment on When Black News Disappears: White Holds on Black Intellectuals’ Minds & Mis-Informing the Black Public. by Quand les informations noires disparaissent : l’emprise blanche sur la désinformation du public noir | Etat d'Exception

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:24:32 +0000

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Comment on Minority Student Identity Development: Complex Questions by cordoba blue

cordoba blue — Wed, 22 May 2013 01:22:09 +0000

I can relate to this and always have. I grew up in a minority culture. I’m not specifying which, but I experienced all the aforementioned angst.
Until I was about eight years old, I did not have conflicting emotions about my inheritance. Then I heard classmates ( and parents of those classmates ) make disparaging remarks about people of my background. Many of these people did not realize that I was “one of them”. It was a cruel awakening that my background was the butt of jokes and distaste. At first I didn’t know what to feel. I very much wanted to be accepted. I liked my friends, and wanted them to respect me.
I began to simply avoid details about my inheritance. I did not wear my background on my sleeve, as it were. Many people of my background did so. They would laugh and say they’d never marry anyone who wasn’t of their ethnic background. They would always make comments about food in terms of liking their ethnic food rather than American cooking etc.
I was the opposite. I identified with the English writers that I loved such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Being a big reader of Anglo books and having so many Anglo friends made me “think” like an Anglo person. I still do. Nobody meets me and says, “You must be —–!” My speech patterns, my psychology of how I deal with family members and raise my children, my values, all fall pretty much in the majority culture zone. In fact, when I’m around people of my ethnic background, alot of how they think seems foreign to me.
Now alot of this has to do with my specific parents. They definitely wanted to be American, all the way. They raised us to use books and knowledge as a compass, NOT culture. I’m not claiming this as a positive or negative, just an observation. So in some ways I felt I was a first generation individual, because I kind of had to make my own rules as I went along. And those societal rules were shaped by my associates,,who in turn were mostly WASP’s. In other words, I did not use my grandparents as a compass because I did not identify with them,,probably because my parents didn’t identify with them either.
Sometimes I felt as if I were walking this strange line between my genetics and my actions. My past would whisper in my ear, “Your grandmother would NEVER have done this”. Then my own logic steps in and says, “Yeah, but this is America. And that won’t work here. Besides my OWN logical reasoning skills tells me, nope, I have to go by what makes the most sense, not cultural norms of my background.”
But sometimes it hurts. Actually sometimes it hurts alot. Because I loved my grandparents so much, and even though they’re gone, I feel they are relying on me to uphold their beliefs. I don’t want to disappoint them. But America has a long way to go before its citizens can feel accepted if they are not from the dominant background. In college, I even heard professors make remarks about “People who are —–usually” and then they’d follow it up with something completely inane. And I’d resent the hell out of it, believe me!
It scared me sometimes. It was like if I revealed my “true identity” (like I was the real Spider Man for instance! Or I should say woman in my case) everybody would make all these freaking assumptions about me that weren’t even applicable!”Best to keep my mouth shut”, I would think. Let people judge you for who you really are, not by dozens of idiotic stereotypes, many of which were extremely hurtful and cruel.
This is getting VERY EMOTIONAL. So I’d better stop. But yeah, I struggle every day with this native culture/dominant culture/logical-reasoning-skills-write-your-own-script meme. Hope people can relate to what I’ve written.Thank you for the great post!

Comment on When Black News Disappears: White Holds on Black Intellectuals’ Minds & Mis-Informing the Black Public. by Dr. Tommy J. Curry

Dr. Tommy J. Curry — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:11:42 +0000

Thanks for reading Earl, and I don’t really have a great reasons for overlooking the Chicago Defender especially given Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s publications and activism in the Chi’.

My point is not to simply “lump” Melissa Harris Perry into the “non-radicals,” but to simply provide at least one example of how the liberal/progressive message continues to interpret Black tragedies for the white public, without first and primarily attending to the lost and fear such actions bring to Black communities and young Black boys. Though your point is taken.

To be honest, most of the “news” I read Voxunion, ReddingNewsReview, and I check out the root and the grio from time to time, but again am not sure I support the ideologies used to decide specific focuses.

You are not going to find a “Black owned and operated” mainstream news venue so I try to sample the perspectives of multiple fronts radio personalities/academics and Black activists.

Comment on When Black News Disappears: White Holds on Black Intellectuals’ Minds & Mis-Informing the Black Public. by Earl Smith

Earl Smith — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:57:24 +0000

This is an important post and for me especially that Dr. Curry points to the radical Black Press past in the likes of David Walker, Ida B. Well, Freedom’s Journal etc.

He did miss the always informative (fiery) Robert Sengstacke Abbott, founder & editor of the Chicago Defender.

Once you eliminate those Black organs that have closed, there is not much left of this radical past and to pull in the African American intellectuals who have a platform with the so-called “white media” and trounce on them is quite tricky.

One does not have to agree with today’s Black talking heads such as Professor Melissa Harris Perry, but they do not own and control that places where they work and to lump them in with the radical Black press and acuse them of not carrying on the tradition of that social movement is a very complex argument that can’t be made herein in such limited space.

This reader would like to know, exactly, what Professor Curry includes in his listing of the Black Press in light of the fact that so many of these outlets have closed and / or have been sold to Whites.

Nice piece!
Earl Smith

Comment on Racism in K-12 Public Schools: Education Series by Racism, Intentional Or Otherwise, Pervades The US Education System

Racism, Intentional Or Otherwise, Pervades The US Education System — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:36:28 +0000

[...] or not, racism is not just a phenomenon happening at one school in one city. A study from 1990 found that even in the progressively liberal, white-majority community of Eugene, Ore., [...]

Comment on Antiracist Action and Lives Lost: William L. Moore by Bill_in_PA

Bill_in_PA — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:11:00 +0000

Thanks for the post about Wm. L. Moore. He was a neighbor. I used to chat with him as he walked by on his way home from work. My siblings were classmates of his. I was very moved by his autobiographical book, “The Mind In Chains”. I went to his memorial service. We named Binghamton’s CORE chapter “The William L. Moore Chapter” in honor of his memory.

Comment on IQ and the Nativist Movement: Richwine’s Report by Notable Links: 5-17/13 | BROTHA WOLF

Notable Links: 5-17/13 | BROTHA WOLF — Fri, 17 May 2013 05:55:00 +0000

[...] IQ and the Nativist Movement: Richwine’s Report [...]

Comment on IQ and the Nativist Movement: Richwine’s Report by John D. Foster

John D. Foster — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:29:05 +0000

Great post. It’s sad to know how seemingly competent social scientists would allow this garbage to pass as a dissertation. This case serves as yet another reminder of how far sociology has to go as a discipline, despite the perception held by many of us that we are “radical,” or at least “liberal.”

Comment on IQ and the Nativist Movement: Richwine’s Report by José Cobas

José Cobas — Tue, 14 May 2013 03:28:37 +0000

Let’s not forget the white racial frame relies on sex for its arguments: Latinos have lower i.q.s because it fucking says so.
I’m not sure that the erudite Harvard scholars are far from this. Their arguments persist in spite of serious theoretical and methodological shortcomings. The view that the Latino umbrella covers many “races” that we find in Latin America is considered nonsense by a majority of U.S. people that I have encountered in my 51 years in this country. But in Latin America “race” is not a “clean” concept, either, and this is the case no matter how we slice it. The concept of race has been crap from the beginning and it’s astonishing that a genius like Immanuel Kant, who as far as I know never saw an African in his life, would make the outlandish “scientific” statements about race that he did.

Comment on IQ and the Nativist Movement: Richwine’s Report by Joe

Joe — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:55:42 +0000

Thanks, Diego, for the interesting post. also problematical is the whole widely accepted idea that human “intelligence” can be measured well with the mostly paper-and-pencil “IQ” tests (mostly written or devised by whites even today). That is a notion created by whites many decades back — often to put down and denigrate earlier immigrants (then from eastern and southern Europe). The tests have always been white-racist-framed…… And Harvard’s elite scholars have been critical in this long history of scientific racism: Richwine stands in a long Harvard tradition of Agassiz, Shaler, Herrnstein, Huntington, and many other defenders of white racial framing and dominance in the age-old racial hierarchy still central to this society. By the way, our fairly recent survey of 150+ self-defined “white” college students shows that almost all see all Latino groups as NOT “white.” This was also true for the many non-Latino students of color in the sample as well. Most native born self-defined whites see Latinos/Hispanics mainly in racial terms, and very clearly as not white.