In a city consumed by the Superbowl and Mardi Gras celebrations, New Orleans elected a new mayor last weekend. Mitch Landrieu, the state’s current Lieutenant Governor, won 65% of the vote - almost twice the total of the other ten candidates combined. Landrieu will be the city’s first white mayor since his father held the office, from 1970-78. Troy Henry, a former Enron executive, came in second place with 14% of the vote. Fair Housing lawyer and progressive activist James Perry came in fifth with 3%.
Voters also made selections in a wide range of other races including sheriff, coroner, assessor, several different judgeships, and all seven city council seats. In contests where there were three or more candidates and no one received more than 50% of the votes, there will be a runoff on March 6.
The elections marked the consolidation of a change in the city’s political power structure. For more than three decades, most elected positions in the city were in Black hands. But now, in the context of mass displacement after Katrina - as well as low voter turnout - that has changed. For the first time in more than 30 years, New Orleans will have a white mayor and a 5-2 majority-white city council.
For now, the city is united in an ecstatic euphoria over its first-ever Superbowl championship. It’s an open question whether the city’s new political leadership can keep this often divided city together, and oversee a much-needed revitalization. Even within the celebration, there are worrying signs.
I really enjoy the push and pull of a good political conversation, especially ones that apply big questions of policy of philosophy to real life situations. That’s a good thing, since I seem to find myself in the middle of them these days — from the hot debate about state budget cuts in social services at my beauty parlor last week, to the inquiry about the relevance of Black History Month on the radio yesterday.
Rose Aguilar, the host of Your Call Radio on KALW 91.7, was a great instigator of thought, challenging us to defend our positions. And we guests — Dr. Daryl Michael Scott of the Study of African American Life and History, filmmaker Kevin Epps, and myself — didn’t duck the hard questions.
The conversation raised some intriguing questions and responses:
What does Black History Month have to teach us?
Everyone has an important role to play in advancing the movement to racial justice. Some of us write books, others mount major issue campaigns, some make films and still others sing protest songs.
Aren’t we post-racial? Is Black History Month necessary anymore?
Black History Month, much like any other event in this society, is what you make of it. It could and has been commoditized as an occasion to pat ourselves on the back, assuming that all the hard work has been done. But at best the month should be a time where we evaluate our movement work, asking ourselves what have been the lessons learned and how do we go about pressing forward.
Last year, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. after he tried to enter his own home jolted some Americans out of the post-election post-racial euphoria. The idea that a prominent elderly Harvard scholar could be nabbed for “disorderly conduct,” stemming from suspicions that he was trespassing in his own home, seemed an absurd reminder of the prevalence of racial profiling. But really, the only thing that made Gates’s ordeal unusual, as he later acknowledged, was his position of relative privilege.
A group of public housing residents in New York City wish their grievances got a fraction of the public attention Gates attracted in the wake of the Cambridge affair. The residents are suing the city, accusing the Police Department of systematically treating them as criminals in their own home.
If you were one of the legions of pissed-off jobless folks out in force at the National Tea Party Convention this week, demonstrating against the “illegals” taking “your job,” you’re entitled to your opinion. But you should know that the guy supposedly stealing your livelihood probably gave you a raise this week.
Countering the popular meme about the harm immigrants pose to the “legal” workforce, the Economic Policy Institute has issued a report that undercuts the fears that faceless hordes of migrants are sending the country to hell. In fact, immigrant workers indirectly subsidize the wages of U.S.-born workers, boosting weekly wages by about $3.68 above what immigrant workers make. That’s right, the economic benefits of the flow of immigrant labor is skewed toward the “native born.” And in fact, the immigrants toiling away in American communities (including those with legal and non-legal status) may see their wages indirectly depressed by the inflow of newer arrivals.
Every family, like every country, has a narrative about itself, a story they come back to over and over again, that they tell at parties, on the front stoop, over café. They share these cuentos—adding and subtracting details as years pass—to create a sense of themselves, of their communities, of where they’ve been and what they’ve overcome. When these lives and stories are shaped by immigration policy, families create coded narratives, ways to talk about the events without naming the painful aspects of their experiences.
So it was with my family. My mother made it sound like an adventure that she came to visit a friend in the States and then found a job (code for “I overstayed a tourist visa”). She also announced the anniversary of the day she became a citizen with awe and relief (code for “I didn’t have to hide anymore”).
I grew up hearing these and other stories but not understanding the coded language, not realizing all that was being left unsaid—until I began editing Alberto Ledesma’s poignant essay on growing up as undocumented immigrant in East Oakland.
We’re thrilled to announce that Jamilah King’s officially joined the ColorLines team. You may recognize Jamilah King’s name from the many posts that we cross-posted here from WireTap magazine, where Jamilah served as their associate editor for several years.
She’ll be working with ColorLines as we transition into an exciting 2010 with lots of new content and exciting changes. Please join us in welcoming Jamilah to the ColorLines family!
It’s not easy for independent bookstores these days, especially if you’re a Black-owned business. But Marcus Books, a legendary family-owned bookstore operating in San Francisco’s intensely gentrified Fillmore, is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
“There was an urgent need to have a source of knowledge about black people,” Raye, 89, says while relaxing on a couch just inside the front door of the San Francisco store.
..The store, which stocks 6,000 books by and/or about black people, is on the ground floor of a Victorian built on Laguna Street in 1885. During the 1950s, before being lifted from its foundation and moved to Fillmore Street, it was the home of Jimbo’s Bop City, a famous after-hours club where jazz artists such as John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Art Tatum would come to jam or just hang out. Manager Jimbo Edwards lived upstairs.
…Blanche, 63, remembers the time Malcolm X came into the store, and her dad, knowing that his visitor was an observant Muslim, jokingly offered “to buy him a pork chop down the street.”
If you’re in town, come celebrate next Monday at Yoshi’s in the city.
I have a confession to make: I’m not a big Colts fan. In fact, I’m a pretty big hater. And I can’t stand Peyton Manning.
But when it comes to this year’s Super Bowl, I’m excited for all the wrong reasons — and it has nothing to do with the commercials. The Saints playing the Colts is probably not a surprise to anyone, since they had two of the best records in the league this season. But the political ramifications behind it? Mesmerizing.
A coworker recently said in a meeting, “The Saints winning the Super Bowl after Katrina would be like Haiti winning the World Cup after the earthquake.”
Not sure if I’d go that far, but sure, there’s a comparison to be made.
For me, the most interesting part of this Super Bowl are the underlying racial scripts beneath each team’s stat sheet. Everybody’s All-Pro, All-American quarterback Peyton Manning versus the newly arrived New Orleans Saints. Manning may be our football equivalent to Larry Bird, white America’s last great hope for an “authentic” American quarterback to come in and save one of its favorite national pastimes.
We’ve got an eclectic round-up this week of the best of Twitter. People are sounding off on the new unemployment numbers that report a dip in joblessness; giving plenty of love to the New Orleans Saints linebacker Scott Fujita, who gives us many reasons to admire him; and talking about Haiti, and everything messed up with the post-earthquake recovery.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has more charters schools than any other school district in the country. Charter schools in L.A tend to serve underrepresented communities which are often either Black, Latino or Asian. This results in schools whose enrollments are largely monoracial.
You can find similar scenarios across the country, for example, in Texas, the typical Black charter-school student attends a campus where nearly 3 in 4 students also are Black.
A new report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, “Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards,” found that charter schools stratify students by race, class, and possibly language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country.
We’re coming to the end of the first week of 2010’s Black History Month, and there are a bunch of big milestones to celebrate and remember. On February 1, fifty years ago, four Black college students named Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeill, sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked to be served.
At about 4;45 p.m. on February 1st, the four freshmen entered the F.W. Woolworth Company store on North Elm street in the heart of the city. each of them purchased a tube of toothpaste and then sat down at the lunch counter.
A Negro woman working in the kitchen rushed over tot hem and said, “You know you’re not supposed to be in here.” Later the woman called the four “ignorant” and a “disgrace to their race.”
The students requested four cups of coffee from the white waitress.
“I’m sorry but we don’t serve colored here,” she informed them politely.
Franklin McCain responded, “I beg your pardon, but you just served me at the counter two feet away. Why is it that you serve me at that counter, and deny me at another? Why not stop serving me at all the counters?”
A few minutes later the manager of the store told the youths, “I’m sorry but we can’t serve you because it is not the local custom.”
The four young Negroes remained at the counter, coffeeless, until 5;30 p.m., when the store closed.
And it has since been remembered as the first public action that sparked the youth-led movement to challenge racial segregation in the South. Within days, sit-ins were being held at other public places around the South. And six months after the first sit-in at that Woolworth’s, their counter was desegregated.
Congratulations are in order for Russian figure skaters and favored Winter Olympics gold medalists Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, who managed to make me let out an audible gasp when I saw this photo of them this morning.
It takes a lot to shock me in the realm of racial offenses anymore. But yes, your eyes are seeing correctly. These figure skaters painted their faces, affixed leaves to their clothing, which was actually darkened and covered with white paint in decorative, um, “aboriginal” designs and performed to “inauthentic” didgeridoo music, according to the NY Times.
The whole debacle prompted Sol Bellear, a member of the New South Wales state Aboriginal Land Council, to tell an Australian paper:
“It’s very offensive. We see it as stealing Aboriginal culture, and it is yet another example of the Aboriginal people of Australia being exploited.”
And that seems to be the point that the pair’s defenders don’t get. Sure, they might not have intended to be disrespectful, but there are some things you don’t get to appropriate just because you think it looks cool. And Domnina sure ain’t winning any fans with the quotes she gave to the BBC:
She told the website that her dog Topi, a Yorkshire Terrier, had been instrumental in selecting the music.
“When we switched on the music for the original dance, my dog started to race around the room like crazy and we understood that maybe this music is what we need. It was really like this, I’m not lying,” she said.
There are some days when I think I can’t be any more shocked by the depth of people’s racial ignorance. And then, along come Oksana and Maxim!
The portion of the U.S. workforce that belongs to a union has fallen to historical lows. The latest data from the feds show that unionization dwindled to 12.3 percent in 2009 (about 15.3 million), basically the same as the year before. The number of workers with union membership fell by 771,000, largely due to the unemployment crisis. The decline marks a low ebb in the state of working America, with acute consequences for working-class people of color.
The immigration system has never been known for being family friendly (unless you think parent-child detention helps maintain “family unity”). Yet as immigration enforcement has spilled into local police patrols, anti-drug law enforcement, national security, and the prison industrial complex, it’s perhaps inevitable that its mission would creep into child welfare.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t really in the social service business, of course. But they are in a sense empowered uphold their “security” mission by splitting families apart with impunity.
A new report by the Urban Institute tracks the experiences of 190 children and 85 families who have been caught up in ICE immigration raids in recent months. The study documents the long term consequences of the trauma of that initial triple-blow of separation—“arrest, detention and deportation.” It covers six locations, including communities involved in large workplace sweeps, as well as the sites of home and neighborhood raids.
I’m not sure how long this has been around, but we heard from our friends at MULE Design that the LA Times has introduced a new system intended to deliver content personalized to you, based on your interests and values. Go ahead, go to their site. Scroll down till you see the “Newsmatch” banner, the one promising a “personalized news feed.”
The link will direct you to take a picture-based quiz. You’ll be asked a series of questions about your desires, interests, values and goals by selecting images that speak to each of them. I usually am a sucker for multiple-choice personality quizzes. Something about mysterious algorithms and unrelated points of data that are collected to tell me more about myself! It’s so mysterious and exciting! Except when it isn’t.
(Click to enlarge image)
Because, as I should have known from the get-go, the whole thing is a gussied up marketing survey. And because, as a woman of color, I am not part of their marketing plan. The whole system is powered by Visual DNA, a company with “patented technology proven to increase Revenue Per User.” Visual DNA’s tagline is: “We transform unknown users into known people.” Only problem is, they’re not interested in knowing anyone whose goals, values and interests fall anywhere outside of a very narrow range of people.
The whole exercise is the most heterosexist, white, male, corporate America view of the world. See one of the quiz slides that asks: “What does success mean to you?”
Twelve images, twelve different views of success, except that all of them feature white folks. I could almost forgive that photo of the white business man walking on the tarmac away from his private jet. I shrugged at the image of that white man sitting on the bow of his yacht, I even let out a little snort at the photo of that celebrity couple on the red carpet.
I understand their place in American imagery, that’s fine. I get it; each image is a visual cue tapping into a set of cultural memes and values about material wealth and happiness we’re all supposed to aspire to. In America, the white male is the standard symbol for human being. We are supposed to see ourselves when we see white men because they represent humankind’s neutral ideal. There are no people of color anywhere in the popularly imagined land of success? Fine! What else is new around here.
President Obama says the stimulus saved or created 2 million jobs in 2009. But is the recovery really working? The American dream of good jobs and strong communities is still just a dream for too many. The unfair economy hurts certain groups more, and that ends up hurting everyone. From the bottom line to the unemployment line to the color line, watch a new in-depth program from Link TV and Applied Research Center for a closer look — ColorLines: Race and Economic Recovery.
Tune in to Link TV Friday, February 12, for ColorLines: Race and Economic Recovery on DIRECTV Channel 375 or DISH Network Channel 9410 at 6:30pm Pacific, 7:30pm Central and 8:30 pm Eastern. After the show, join us on Twitter @racialjustice, as we host a roundtable discussion on what we’ve seen.
ColorLines: Race and Economic Recovery follows communities making ends meet in The Great Recession. The program narrates the moving story of Tisha, mother of three in Connecticut, facing a social safety net shredded further by the crisis. Then the program goes to Los Angeles, where community-based organization SCOPE has mobilized to win green jobs for communities of color.
In the almost 17 years since the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed,” General Powell said in a statement issued by his office. He added: “I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen.
Powell’s new found integrity comes at a much-needed time, since just yesterday, the aforementioned Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee it was time to repeal the discriminatory policy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ Admiral Mullen’s language was forceful and unequivocal and sincere.
“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” [said] Adm. Mike Mullen.
As a murmur swept through a hearing room packed with gay rights leaders, Admiral Mullen said it was his personal belief that “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.”
Except this seems to have put Republicans in a bit of a bind, especially one Sen. John McCain. McCain, who once said he would support a repeal of DADT if other top military officials recommended such a change, appeared firmly opposed to lifting the ban yesterday. Apparently, his constant deferral to military officials’ opinions (which included Colin Powell, during Clinton’s presidency) was only meant to last as long as those military officials’ views aligned with his own. Too bad he’s got nowhere to hide now.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" has been used to kick Black women out of the military at a much higher rate than other groups. In fact, Black women are discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” at three times the rate that they serve in the military. Although Black women make up less than one percent of servicemembers, they comprise 3.3% of those discharged under the policy.
But wait, it gets better. The same report notes people can be discharged under DADT even if they are not gay or lesbian, apparently there are cases where men have accused women who refuse unwanted sexual advances of being lesbians, or because the women are successful and some men do not want to serve under them.
Just a few weeks after the end of Ramadan last year, a gunfight broke out at a warehouse in Dearborn Michigan. After all the shots were fired, Imam Luqman Ameein Abdullah was dead. His body, riddled with bullet holes, was found in handcuffs inside a trailer.
The FBI claimed Abdullah had engaged in extremist activities and was a “highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group.” The federal indictment (which was linked to several other suspects) also tied Abdullah to a stolen goods ring. But the conventional criminal charges seem almost like an afterthought in the wake of the portrayal of Abdullah as a violent separatist who “regularly preaches anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric.” Local Imams say he was a local leader whom the FBI was out to assassinate.
It’s been three weeks now since the earthquake hit Haiti and the Associated Press has issued a grim picture of where recovery efforts stand: medical teams still need the basics like bandages and only 2,000 tents have been distributed for the 1 million who are homeless.
What about the dollars you sent to Haiti through donations or remittances?
It turns out that the more gringo money we send to Haiti the more we mess with the country’s exchange rate. Translation: The more dollars we send the less people in Haiti get when they exchange those dollars into the local currency, the gourde. That’s a problem because food and other basic necessities are bought in gourdes and since the earthquake prices have increased. So just when people need gourdes the most, they’re getting less of them.
I learned about this from emailing with Steven Werlin, a branch manager for Haiti’s largest microfinance institution, Fonkoze, which has more than 40 branches in the country and bills itself as “Haiti’s alternative bank for the organized poor.” Werlin works out of a branch in the port town of Marigot in southeastern Haiti.
In the week after the earthquake, actual dollars weren’t even making it to Haiti. “Although dollars were, in a sense, flooding the market, they were not entering in the form of cash, but as internet transfers between remittance companies and offices like Fonkoze,” Werlin writes.
The problem? With the country’s main city in ruins, no one had actual dollars on hand. People were, in effect, forced to take remittances in gourdes or go without.
As a 501(c)3 tax-exempt charitable organization, the Applied Research Center, and its projects RaceWire.org and ColorLines.com, do not advocate for or endorse political candidates. Our intent is to discuss important underlying public policy issues, not to comment on the position of any particular candidate nor impact any local or national elections.
Written by Jordan Flaherty
Every family, like every country, has a narrative about itself, a story they come back to over and over again, that they tell at parties, on the front stoop, over café. They share these cuentos—adding and subtracting details as years pass—to create a sense of themselves, of their communities, of where they’ve been and what they’ve overcome. When these lives and stories are shaped by immigration policy, families create coded narratives, ways to talk about the events without naming the painful aspects of their experiences. 
We’re thrilled to announce that Jamilah King’s officially joined the ColorLines team. You may recognize Jamilah King’s name from the many posts that we cross-posted here from WireTap magazine, where Jamilah served as their associate editor for several years. 
It’s not easy for independent bookstores these days, especially if you’re a Black-owned business. But 
I have a confession to make: I’m not a big Colts fan. In fact, I’m a pretty big hater. And I can’t stand Peyton Manning. 
The Los Angeles Unified School District has 
We’re coming to the end of the first week of 2010’s Black History Month, and there are a bunch of big milestones to celebrate and remember. On February 1, fifty years ago, four Black college students named Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeill, sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked to be served. 
Congratulations are in order for Russian figure skaters and favored Winter Olympics gold medalists Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, who managed to make me let out an audible gasp when I saw this photo of them this morning. 
Wouldn’t it have been so nice if Gen. Powell had this much guts and conviction when he was actually in office. But better late than never I suppose.
Besides Afghanistan and Iraq, there is no other military policy that raises as much controversy as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT.)
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