Walter Plecker- Father of Racial, Political, and Ethnic Divisiveness

Walter Plecker- An American Bigot

Walter Plecker by Abagond:

So-called president Donald Trump would have been so proud of him!

Plecker in 1935 at the Bureau of Vital Statistics (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Walter Plecker (1861-1947), a White American eugenicist, was the mastermind of the state of Virginia’s Act to Preserve Racial Integrity (1924). The law was an instrument of Jim Crow and did considerable damage to Native American tribes. It led to Loving v Virginia (1967), which made mixed-race marriages legal across the US.

Plecker was born the son of a slave owner ten days before the start of the Civil War. He became a country doctor, then a county public health officer and then, from 1912 to 1946, the head of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics.

He was a pioneer in public health. He cut infant mortality among Blacks nearly in half and reduced blindness among Blacks and Natives.

As a eugenicist he believed in “race improvement”, so his concern for public health extended to keeping the White race “pure”:

“Unless this can be done, we have little to hope for, but may expect in the future decline or complete destruction of our civilization.”

To that end he pushed for the Act to Preserve Racial Integrity:

“the most perfect expression of the white ideal, and the most important eugenic effort that has been made in 4,000 years.”

It was not completely overturned till 1974.

Under the law, his Bureau recorded the race of every person born in Virginia, as either “white” or “coloured”, using the One Drop Rule. When you got married, you had to go through the Bureau, which either knew your race already or required proof of it. This prevented mixed marriages, like the Lovings.

It went beyond marriage: you could not go to a good school or a good hospital unless you were White.

Plecker wrote to one White mother:

“This is to inform you that this is a mulatto child and you cannot pass it off as white. You will have to do something about this matter and see that this child is not allowed to mix with white children. It cannot go to white schools and can never marry a white person in Virginia.

“It is a horrible thing.”

He was a devout Christian:

“Let us turn a deaf ear to those who would interpret Christian brotherhood as racial equality.”

Because many Virginia lawmakers counted Pocahontas as an ancestor, they made an exception to his White ideal: you could be up to 1/16th Native and still count as White.

To close this loophole, Plecker said that all Natives were “mixed-blooded negroes,” that he could prove that with state records going back to 1830.

Because some Natives could pass for White, he made lists of common Native names, like Branham, public.

Families were torn apart: many Natives left Virginia to escape Plecker’s world.

Natives were recorded as “coloured” (Black) under Plecker. In part because they had disappeared from state records as Natives, the US government sees Virginia as having no tribes. So Virginian tribes do not receive the rights and money granted to other tribes.

It will take an act of Congress to undo the damage, something tribes have been pushing for.

– Abagond, 2015.

My take on Walter Plecker and his racist/fascist legacy he left:

He left a legacy of racial, ethnic, and class division not only in the commonwealth of Virginia, but also this nation.  He not only want to classify Native Americans as Black, but also many groups such as the Melungeons.  He strongly believed in white racial purity/racial hierarchy as well as eugenics to purge certain groups of people from the body politic of the nation.  Buck v Bell case comes to mind.  He thought young Miss Carrie Buck was a danger and a threat to American social order, so he favored her being sterilized over her family's objection.  

The real legacy of Mr. Plecker is that he wanted to see America  divided into two "races", "pure" white and nonwhite.  His evil racist/classist legacy lives on today in the right wing of the Republican Party. Just take a look at the demagoguery of Donald Trump and his followers, Steve King of Iowa, Ted Cruz(person of Color), etc., the HBD crowd, the American Renaissance crowd, talk radio and media hosts Bob Dumas and Richard Cohen, and the Tea Party Crowd.  Unfortunately, liberals as well.  They, too, imbibe the poison of Mr. Plecker by not recognizing American Indian tribes in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina.

His legacy is alive and well in racial profiling by American government, the divisive political atmosphere of the Republican and Democratic parties, as well as ongoing systemic institutionalized racism.

The evil spirit of Walter Plecker is alive and well today and it's not going anywhere unless people push back against racial/ethnic divisiveness.- S.

Before Richard Cohen, Bob Dumas had a Problem with Interracial, Intercultural, and Interethnic Relationships

Before Richard Cohen, there's another despicable guy had a problem with interracial/inter ethnic relationships.


This is the hateful and racist commentary from Raleigh's G105 DJ Bob Dumas commentary about a then-upcoming wedding of one of their interns who is married to a Lumbee Indian  back in 2008:

Rush Limbaugh Clone Bob Dumas

Bob Dumas April 2008:

"Did you tell your parents, 'hey, at least he's not black?'" Dumas asked during the broadcast. "After you guys get married are you going to have a tee-pee warming party? A tee-pee warming party? I hear Pottery Barn is making great stuff for tee-pees."-

Bob Dumas of Bob and the Show gram, G105, Raleigh, N.C., back in 2008.
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Here's more despicable racism of Bob Dumas:

By Lorraine Ahearn
Staff Columnist 
Friday, Apr. 11, 2008 3:00 am 


How could this be OK?

That was the fundamental question when a Lumbee friend called last week, outraged, after her high school-age daughter heard a trio of shock jocks trashing the tribe on Raleigh’s WDCG (105 FM).

Now, the first thing that might come to mind is last year’s April fool, Don Imus, and the "nappy-headed hos" remark that earned him a you-know-what-storm and cost him his CBS Radio show.

But if you listened to last week’s "Bob & the Showgram" segment — which remained up on the G-105 Web site for several days until cooler heads prevailed — some differences became apparent.

First, Imus’ callous comments:

a) Were in passing, off the cuff.

b) Lasted less than a minute.

c) Forced Imus off the air despite several profuse apologies from Imus (who admitted his words were "racist and abhorrent"), a meeting with the Rutgers women and an appearance on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s show.

In contrast, the G-105 comments:

a) Were a clearly planned segment, with prepared background sound effects and traditional Native American music, in which the three white morning hosts derided an intern they called "White Girl" about her upcoming wedding to her Lumbee fiance.

b) Lasted 14 minutes, 33 seconds.

c) Brought a vague apology from the station manager "to any listener that may have found remarks or recordings played Tuesday, April 1st, 2008, during Bob and the Showgram to be offensive, derogatory or insensitive," and, a week later, resulted in a three-day suspension for the hosts.

So what, exactly, did they say, in remarks that Ruth Revels, founder of the Guilford Native American Association, called "the worst I’ve heard in all my years" of involvement?

The segment, led by DJ Bob Dumas, began as banter with a departing station intern who said she was leaving to get married. After the unnamed intern mentioned that she was marrying a Lumbee, stock sound effects such as fake "woo-woo-woo" Indian chants played in the background.

Dumas and his co-hosts quizzed the intern at length about her fiance, asking whether he was "full-blooded" and whether the couple planned to have a "teepee warming" after the wedding and suggesting she tell her parents, "At least he’s not black."

After making fun of the intern, who laughed along, Dumas and his co-hosts ridiculed Indians in general as "lazy" and Lumbees specifically as "inbred."

It was only after Greg Richardson, executive director of the N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs, on Wednesday demanded the hosts be fired that the station announced the suspension — eight days after the show aired.

But back to the original question from my friend, who was so angry at what her daughter heard that she was practically in tears: How could this be OK? And why was the reaction so lukewarm compared to Imus?

One reason, of course, is that Imus is national. Even though the Rutgers players don’t listen to his show, they soon got wind of it. But there’s a more fundamental difference: Lumbees are a minority’s minority.

True, they are the largest tribe east of the Mississippi, but there are only 50,000 of them in the state and only about 5,000 here in Guilford County. They have been invisible, easy to ignore. Which, incidentally, explains why they are still waiting for federal recognition after 120 years.

It also explains why someone such as Bob Dumas felt safe saying the things he said — statements he would never dare insert the word "black" into, at least not on the air.

Then again, cowards never pick on anyone their own size.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com

http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dl … /756073241



More of his racist misogyny against American Indians and White women who date/marry outside of their race:

Shock jock comments about Lumbees labeled racist

By Michael Futch
Staff writer
ADVERTISEMENT

The N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs has demanded that a Raleigh radio
station fire the hosts and producer of a morning show over “racially
charged comments” made on the air.

The station — WDCG, “G105” — posted an online apology Friday for anyone
who was offended by the remarks, which singled out Lumbees and called
American Indians “lazy” and “in-bred.”

Members of the Lumbee and other tribes in the state have expressed outrage over the comments made Tuesday during “Bob and the Showgram.” The popular morning program is hosted by longtime Triangle radio air personality Bob Dumas.

Derogatory references were made on the air about the names of Pocahontas and Sacajawea. Traditional American Indian music played in the background as the “Showgram” team laughed at their own jokes.

“I think simply, it’s very sad that you would have a radio (station) like
that putting that kind of information out on the air,” said Greg
Richardson, executive director of the N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs.
“It’s inflammatory. I wonder if they understand how inflammatory those
remarks can be.”

Richardson, who belongs to the Haliwa-Saponi tribe, said Friday that his
office had been “absolutely bombarded” by e-mails and calls complaining
about the comments. Recordings of the show have circulated this week by
e-mail.

“I’ve never encountered anything like that before,” he said. “I thought we
were beyond that. This is 2008. I think people should have more respect
than to get involved in a discussion like that on the air.”

Dick Harlow, general manager of WDCG, said he would not comment Friday. He said Dumas would be unavailable for interviews, too.

On Friday afternoon, a statement was posted on the Web site for the radio
program, bobandtheshowgram.com.

“WDCG apologizes to any listener that may have found remarks or recordings played Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 during Bob and the Showgram to be offensive, derogatory or insensitive. WDCG does not condone inappropriate behavior, language or insensitive remarks.”

The N.C. Commission on Indian Affairs — established by the General
Assembly as an advocacy agency for the state’s Indian population — also
called for the Federal Communications Commission to investigate station
owner Clear Channel Communications Corp.

The state commission also wants the FCC to examine the company’s “history, tolerance, and promotion of this type of inflammatory and reprehensible programming.”

In a statement, the Commission of Indian Affairs Chairman Paul Brooks
said, “Such statements are further indicative of these individuals’
insensitivity, gross ignorance, and blatant bigotry against American
Indians across this great nation,”

The Lumbee tribe, in particular, was singled out in the 15-minute segment
that opened Tuesday’s show.

“This is the God’s honest truth,” Dumas said on the air. “You can look at
the statistics — Indians are lazy.”

The on-air exchange began when a white intern at the station — Chelsea
Pryor, who has attended the University of North Carolina at Pembroke —
told Dumas and his co-hosts that she was marrying a Lumbee.

“Hey, white girl. After you get married, are you going to have a
teepee-warming party?” someone quipped. “I could give you a pelt or
something.”

Morgan Brittany Hunt, a Lumbee who works with the tribe by talking with
teens about the consequences of smoking, called the comments racist.

“We have doctors, we have lawyers, we have businessmen,” she said. “We may have people who don’t have their four-year degree, but who get up and work hard to provide for their family. I was really upset.”

Hunt said the show is a hot topic in Pembroke.

“Everybody’s in an uproar,” she said. “It’s slander and racism. (Don) Imus
was fired for a lot less than what aired” on G105.

Nearly a year ago, MSNBC and CBS Radio fired Imus, a talk show host, after he made a slur about the mostly black Rutgers women’s basketball team. The Rev. Al Sharpton became the leading voice in opposition to Imus, calling for his dismissal.

Rebekah Revels, the former Miss North Carolina from Robeson County, was referred to as “the naked girl” during the show. Revels won the pageant in 2002 but was forced to give up the crown after her ex-boyfriend threatened to publicize topless photos of her.

“My situation was an ordeal I went through with my family that was
painful,” Revels said Friday. “I have learned to cope and deal with those
emotions. I was attacked publicly. Now they’re attacking my tribe. It’s
not about me. It’s about an ethnic culture that I love. Now it’s about
standing up for my people.”

Revels said the cast and crew of the “Showgram” and station owner Clear
Channel should be held accountable. “It’s unnecessary, uncalled for and
hurtful,” she said.

Earlier remarks

Dumas, who has been with WDCG for nearly 16 years, is not a newcomer to controversy.

In 2004, a Durham minister started an online petition to oust Dumas for
what the minister called “racially incendiary” comments about “American
Idol” winner Fantasia Barrino, who is black. Dumas used the terms “ghetto” and “low class” during the show to describe Barrino.

Five years ago, he drew the wrath of bicycling enthusiasts in the Triangle
for finding humor in motorists who assault cyclists or run them down with
their vehicles.

Staff writer Michael Futch can be reached at futchm@fayobserver.com or
486-3529.

Dumas' bigoted view of Asian women:

"Popular morning radio host Bob Dumas angered another constituency this month when he declared Asian-American women unattractive.

Dumas, who infuriated bicyclists last year with a broadcast that included jokes about running cyclists off the road, has sparked another crusade, this time by local Asian-Americans, to persuade advertisers to drop WDCG's "The Bob & Madison Showgram." The local UPN affiliate has pulled its sponsorship of the show.

A number of Asian-Americans in the Triangle heard about the Feb. 10 broadcast through a widely circulated e-mail calling Dumas' comments racist and asking advertisers to stop supporting the show.

Dumas encouraged listeners to send in pictures of Asian women, and predicted that none of them would be attractive.

"If he just wanted to get attention from the listeners, he succeeded, but unfortunately, it's in a negative way," said Rachel Chao, who lives in Cary and works in contract financing. "If he really thinks Asian-Americans are not attractive, then he has not seen enough or he has vision problems."

Raising hackles appears to be in Dumas' job description. In September, local bicyclists accused WDCG (better known as G105) and its owner, Clear Channel Communications, of encouraging violence against bicyclists. Two sponsors canceled their advertising on the show in protest, and station officials apologized and agreed to broadcast announcements about bicycle safety.This time, G105 backed up Dumas."
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Despicable "closet racist" Richard Cohen

Richard Cohen November 2012:

"Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill De Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all."-

Richard Cohen, Washington Post Columnist

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Here's more about his abysmal record on race and gender from Think Progress:

Tuesday’s Richard Cohen column, where the long-time Washington Post writer asserts that “conventional” Americans “gag” at interracial couples, has managed to unite the entire political world against him.

But the offending bit shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. Cohen’s piece, which managed to take bizarre swipes at both African-Americans and lesbians, represents something of an apotheosis for Cohen’s career, the past few years has been spent in something of an arms race with itself, stockpiling an ever-increasing stack of offensive comments about blacks, women, and LGBT Americans.

Cohen’s race problem dates back to 1986, when he defended store owners banning black boys from their places of business. For fear of crime, you see. The black community launched a massive wave of protests, the Post’s executive editor apologized, and even Cohen later admitted his critics were “mostly right.”

Fast forward to 2013, when Cohen used the same argument to defend George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was “understandably” suspicious of Trayvon Martin, because he was black, young and “wearing a uniform we all recognize.” Cohen concluded these musings with an argument for racial profiling based on a laughably basic statistical fallacy.

But lest you think Richard Cohen is blind to racism, never fear. He’s all over racism against white people — or, as it’s more commonly known, affirmative action. Because “for most Americans, race has become supremely irrelevant” (tell that to defender of profiling Richard Cohen), “it was not racists who were punished [by affirmative action] but all whites.”

In Cohenland, it’s not only whites who are victims of political correctness run amok, but also accused rapists. In his column defending Roman Polanski, he refers the 13 year old girl who the filmmaker raped after deliberately getting drunk as a “victim” (his quotes). Cohen concluded that there was “something stale about the case” and that he “dearly wishes the whole thing would go away.”

The Steubenville rape case was a “so-called” rape and more a matter of “decency” than criminality. It was also Miley Cyrus’ fault.

Cohen’s writing on gender in general is similarly horrifying. He bemoaned the rise of the use of smart phones for news consumption because print newspapers allowed “the first lady [to] adhere to gender orthodoxy and read the softer sections” while “just as in the old movies, papa could explain things, like what’s the purpose of NATO anymore.” He squealed over Daniel Craig’s “rippling muscle,” complaining that the expectation that the modern male beauty ideal exemplified by Our Bond made experience unsexy, especially to 23 year old girls. Totally coincidentally, Cohen had been accused of telling a 23 year old Post staffer to “stand up and turn around.”

Cohen grumbled that “every 20 years or so, some woman surfaces to accuse [Clarence Thomas] of being a male chauvinist pig — to resurrect an old term from the tie-dyed era — but falls frustratingly short of making a case for true sexual harassment.” Like, say, “stand up and turn around?” Cohen finds “the level of sexism applied” to Monica Lewinsky appalling, but wonders “where is the man for her?” He has worried about too many female acquaintances trying to kiss him. Richard Cohen does not like that.

Sexual orientation is a less-common subject of Cohen’s, but his writing on it isn’t much better. In 2005, his column blamed the spread of AIDS on “not only reckless but just plain disgusting” behavior by gay men. “It is the determination of some gays,” Richard Cohen determined, “to disregard all the rules for safe sex because being gay, they think, means you don’t have to follow any rules at all.”

Anticipating the charge of victim-blaming, Cohen wrote that “sometimes the victim needed to be blamed. This is the case now with gays when their behavior is both stupid and reckless.” No other causes of the spread of the plague beyond the perfidy of gays go mentioned in the piece.

It’s that deep simple-mindedness, that total incuriosity about a changing world that makes Cohen uniquely odious. There are talented, insightful critics of left-liberal positions on gender and race — Ross Douthat and John McWhorter immediately come to mind. But Cohen isn’t a culturally conservative intellectual; he’s just someone who passes off lazy stereotypes as profound insights.

There’s no better example of this than his 2009 column on Obamacare, which isn’t about health care reform so much as how much health care reform bores Richard Cohen. “For me, health-care reform is Missiles Redux — specifically the Reagan-era disputes over SS-20s and such.” Cohen complains about being “expected to know something about such matters, being a Washington columnist and all, but I could never keep the damn terms and numbers straight.” So he just throws up his hands: “The Soviet Union collapsed anyway.”

Richard Cohen doesn’t care to learn any more about missiles or health care than he knows about race, gender, or sexual orientation. But while he chooses not to write about the former, the latter appear to fascinate him. So his column becomes an evidence-free font of prejudice, the Platonic ideal of a useless old media dinosaur.

Another racist post from R. Cohen:

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is getting, and this is not racist, horse-whipped over a new column in which he seems to suggest that gagging at the thought of interracial marriage is not racist, but merely “conventional.”

But all the haters really ought to ease up on Cohen, who, as of last week, realized that American slavery wasn’t “a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks.”

That’s gotta count for something, right?

This epiphany came to Cohen as he watched the new film 12 Years a Slave, which forced Cohen to “unlearn” the following:

• slavery was not a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks.
• slavery was wrong, yes, that it was evil, no doubt, but really, that many blacks were sort of content.
• Slave owners were mostly nice people — fellow Americans, after all

Cohen says he learned all of this in school, but you’d be hard-pressed to produce a list like that from someone who was home-schooled by the banjo kid from Deliverance. If it’s even possible, the lessons he took from 12 Years a Slave are even weirder:

• “slavery was not only incomprehensibly cruel — it had to have had consequences.” – Sure, but like a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon, who could ever begin to guess at what those consequences could be without a movie to untangle them?
• “Families are broken up — not just like that, with a casual statement of fact, but with a rending of garments and an awful pain and a tearing of the soul.” – So it wasn’t all like “Hey, I’ll never see my kids again. BT dubs, I think they’re putting sage in this gruel, are you going to finish that?”
• “12 Years a Slave has finally rendered Gone with the Wind irrevocably silly and utterly tasteless, a cinematic bodice-ripper.” – Yes, who could have known the realities of slavery before last week, let alone in 1939?
• “(Solomon Northrup) goes from being a human being to a blotted entry on a ledger. We can all connect to that. At the same time, we connect less with the slaves he left behind when he was freed. He is restored to the life he once had. They remain with the life they have always had.” – Even with a really great movie as your guide, empathy has its limits.

Stay tuned for Richard Cohen’s next column, about how Birth of a Nation went kinda easy on the Ku Klux Klan.

For all of his racial insularity, though (and it is considerable), at least Cohen is a few steps ahead of Sarah Palin.

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen Isn’t The Only Columnist Confused By The De Blasio-McCray Marriage

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen made headlines this morning in a column, ostensibly about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s presidential chances, that took a strange turn when he began to discuss the racial attitudes of the kinds of voters Christie and Sen. Ted Cruz will have to win over. “People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?),” Cohen wrote. “This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.”

Cohen’s phrasing here makes it somewhat difficult to figure out which disagreeable sentiment he’s expressing. Does he mean to say that De Blasio and McCray’s marriage is confusing to Americans on the grounds that he is white and she is black? In Gallup’s Minority Rights and Relations poll conducted earlier this year, 87 percent of respondents said they approved of marriages between African-Americans and Caucasians, a figure that would suggest that it’s not even close to conventional to have a gag reflex triggered by the sight of an interracial couple like the one that will be inaugurated as New York City’s First Family. Did Cohen mean to say that the conventional thing to do these days, the polite thing, is to suppress any lingering concerns or uncomfortable reactions one might have about couples who don’t resemble one’s own family? That’s a more charitable reading of Cohen, and one that would serve to marginalize the remaining Americans who both are repulsed by interracial couples and more than willing to express those sentiments publicly.

But the fact remains that Cohen seems to have seized on De Blasio and McCray as a locus of anxiety about cultural change, rather than treating them as a positive symbol of a new New York. And while a Change.org petition has, predictably, already sprung up demanding Cohen’s firing, he isn’t alone in treating De Blasio and McCray as exotic not just for reasons of race but of sexuality. The couple, it seems, has become a useful litmus test less for imaginary conservative voters in the forthcoming Republican primaries, than for prominent columnists at significant American publicans.

In an August column on De Blasio and McCray, Maureen Dowd lingered at even greater length on the fact that McCray used to identify as a lesbian, and that she’d treated questions about her sexual orientation from Essence as if they were fussy and old-fashioned. Then, Dowd went on to compare McCray and Christine Quinn’s wife to Anthony Weiner’s sexual escapades, suggesting that they were all part of an atmosphere of sexual strangeness that had engulfed the race.

“Besides the woman who wants to be the first first lady who used to be a lesbian, there is also Kim Catullo, the wife of Quinn, who would be the first first lady who is a married lesbian,” Dowd wrote. “Then there is the perverse Carlos Danger who wants to be the first mayor who plastered pictures of his privates online. The summer has been so drenched with the unthinkable and the unorthodox that the de Blasios, married for 19 years, seem quite conventional by comparison.”

The idea that sexual orientation is fluid, that a woman who believed herself to be exclusively attracted to women might fall in love with, marry, and have children with a man, does seem to be genuinely confusing to Dowd and to Cohen. To a certain extent, that might be the result of one of the great successes of the LGBT rights movement, making the argument that sexual orientation is innate and immutable. That idea is critical to everything from the push for legal protections for LGBT people, to pushback against so-called conversion therapy that claims to be able to change people’s sexual orientations and gender identities. But it’s not necessarily an idea that encompasses the entirety of every person’s lived experiences, whether they’ve lived a heterosexual life before falling in love with someone of the same gender, or they’re a self-identified lesbian who decides she wants to be with the man who would become Mayor of New York. The Kinsey Scale, which expresses sexual orientation as a continuum, does a better job of capturing that range of relationships and identities, but it’s a more sophisticated–and as a result, difficult–foundation on which to build legal and social change.

It doesn’t help that there’s lingering confusion about bisexuality, the possibility that a person might be attracted to people of more than one gender. The idea that bisexuality is non-existent or a transitional phase on the way to a more stable identity as a gay or straight person, is still deeply embedded in American culture. Glee, to name just one example, a show that’s been much more broadly inclusive of gay couples and transgender characters, has treated bisexuality with considerable skepticism.

It’s disappointing to see publications like the Washington Post and New York Times give column space to the idea that De Blasio and McCray’s marriage is some sort of revealing abnormality, even if they’re doing it in a rather back-door way by treating New York’s embrace of the couple of evidence of changing attitudes, or suggesting that it would be rude to treat them poorly. Bill De Blasio and Chirlane McCray, and the two children they’ve raised together, may not be a familiar sight for all Americans. Not even, as it turns out, people who are card-carrying members of the theoretically sophisticated coastal elite. But that doesn’t make their marriage and family unconventional. Instead, the reactions to them in some of the most rarified perches of the commentariat are a reminder of the unfortunate power of outdated ideas, and how little value we ought to place on certain so-called conventions.

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Bob and Richard had made racist, sexist comments during the past 10-30 years in the media. They've been given a pass from the mainstream media during the same amount of time.  All they did were apologize, pay a fine, then repeat.  That's the beauty of white privilege. They're currently on the payrolls of both WaPo and Clear Channel and are staying put.  The same could be applied Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, Don Imus, Matthew Drudge, Ann Coulter, etc.  They continue to spew hateful views concerning people of Color, working class/poor people, immigrants/foreigners, women in general, feminists in particular, interracial/inter ethnic relationships, etc.

For bonus reading concerning those two bigots:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/11/22/2499420/g-105-apologizes-for-parade-float.html

http://americablog.com/2013/11/conventional-racism-richard-cohen.html

http://mediaconfidential.blogspot.com/2013/10/raleigh-radio-paris-rants-about-bob.html

http://www.popehat.com/2008/04/07/radio-host-calls-native-americans-lazy-jokes-about-reservations/

http://woodlandindians.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=3861

http://www.newraleigh.com/articles/archive/racist-dj-outrages-nc-native-americans/

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/11/22/2499420/g-105-apologizes-for-parade-float.html

http://www.southernstudies.org/2008/04/nc-clear-channel-station-tries-to-make-nice-with-indians-but-takes-aim-at-mexicans.html

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/11/richard-cohen-just-the-worst

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/richard-cohen-acting-out-again

http://mediamatters.org/tags/richard-cohen

National Outrage: Trayvon Martin Killing.

The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI are looking into the matter. Sanford, Florida is the center of the controversy. A young teenager was gunned down by a neighborhood watch captain. The public outcry has now stirred the debate once again about racial profiling and gun laws. The White House express regret. The person, George Zimmerman 28, who fired upon teenager Trayvon Martin, 17 is for now a free man. Zimmerman is fearing for his life after incident.

The conservative media is trying to ignore the story and white supremacists are cheering for more incidents like this to happen.



That was the 911 tape in which the shooter was warned not to apprehend Martin. Below is the picture of the teenager, and George Zimmerman, the shooter. Zimmerman is White (Hispanic).

 From the New York Magazine, the detailing of the controversy.

In what is becoming an increasingly well-known sequence of events, on February 26, during halftime of the NBA All-Star Game, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin walked to buy Skittles and iced tea from 7-Eleven in Sanford, Florida. On his way back to his father's house in a gated community, Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain who had just called 911 to report Martin as "a real suspicious guy." Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Latino man, claimed self-defense and has not been arrested or charged, but now finds himself at the center of a prickly national conversation about race, guns, and more. What started as a local news story has, thanks in large part to Internet outrage, become an unavoidable, albeit unresolved, story covered everywhere from leftist blogs to CNN and the New York Times.

Over the weekend, police released eight 911 calls related to the case, sparking a new round of press attention. In the recordings, Zimmerman, who called the police nearly 50 times in the last year, can be heard saying, "This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something." Martin, he said, had "his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male ... Something's wrong with him. Yup, he's coming to check me out. He's got something in his hands. I don't know what his deal is." He added, "These assholes, they always get away."



The dispatcher tells Zimmerman not to follow Martin, but in subsequent calls from neighbors, a struggle can be heard, followed by a gunshot. Mother Jones has a very detailed rundown of the case, and the tangential issues it raises, including, but not limited to, Florida's self-defense laws, the checkered past of the Sanford police, gun control, and potential federal government involvement.

A petition from Martin's family to the local D.A. has been signed online more than 400,000 times, and received a huge boost this weekend as the media homed in on the disturbing details. The New York Times reported on the story for two straight days in its national news section, in addition to a Saturday column by Charles Blow. "This case has reignited a furor about vigilante justice, racial-profiling and equitable treatment under the law," Blow wrote, "and it has stirred the pot of racial strife."

USA Today and the Washington Post also featured detailed reports over the last few days, as did both New York City tabloids. Local Florida publications have been on the story since the beginning, although they lack the reach of the nation's biggest newspapers. But before it was in the hands of influential columnists, the story had already become unavoidable online. As early as March 8, Huffington Post reporter Trymaine Lee was spreading the story, following up seven times since. The site now has a dedicated section and banner for "The Trayvon Martin Tragedy."

The details behind Martin's death have spread socially too. "Trayvon Martin didn't die so we can create a race war, he died so we can promote better understanding," Russell Simmons tweeted, pointing to a Facebook page with thousands of followers. Following suit, Google traffic has skyrocketed in the last few days:

 

And Martin has become a fixture on cable news, as well — with one exception: The progressive blog Think Progress reports that through this afternoon, CNN had dedicated 41 segments to the killing, compared to MSNBC's thirteen, and just one on Fox News. Political implications aside, this story is now officially too big to ignore.

Update: Asked about the shooting this afternoon, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, "We here in the White House are aware of the incident, and we understand that the local FBI office has been in contact with the local authorities and is monitoring the situation." He added, "Our thoughts and prayers go out to Trayvon Martin's family, but obviously we're not going to wade into a local law enforcement matter."

The conservative media isn't covering the story and white supremacists online praised the shooter. This is what we're living in as American citizens. Florida has passed a controversial law called "Stand Your Ground". A firearm owner can use deadly force if the person felt threatened by an alleged attacker. Also did the shooter utter a "racial slur" while on the phone with the police dispatcher? The controversial phrase "fucking coons" was played and they can't confirm or deny it but it's clearly a slur in the video posted below.




There were more 911 tapes. The witness.



As of October 1, 2005, Florida became a "Stand-your-ground" state. The Florida law is a self-defense, self-protection law. It has four key components:

1. It establishes that law-abiding residents and visitors may legally presume the threat of bodily harm or death from anyone who breaks into a residence or occupied vehicle and may use defensive force, including deadly force, against the intruder.
2. In any other place where a person “has a right to be,” that person has “no duty to retreat” if attacked and may “meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
3. In either case, a person using any force permitted by the law is immune from criminal prosecution or civil action and cannot be arrested unless a law enforcement agency determines there is probable cause that the force used was unlawful.
4. If a civil action is brought and the court finds the defendant to be immune based on the parameters of the law, the defendant will be awarded all costs of defense.

Once again, Republicans caters to the extremes. They're busy wrapping their asses and eventually their necks in preparedness/defense of these culture wars. This firearm law is a prime example of the Republicans and its allies in the conservative movement catering the gun lobbyist groups such as Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association. These laws abashedly give a gun owner authority to shoot and kill an apparent threat without even posing an imminent threat. Picture this if this was a white person being killed by a Black watch captain and the "stand your ground" defense was used. It's a shame though, a young life cut and another fearing that his future is uncertain. If the law doesn't get him, he'll forever be ridiculed by the media or the family of this young teenager.