Harper Lee Passed Away!

Harper Lee passed away.

The iconic writer of the book How to Kill a Mockingbird passed away today. The Associated Press reports that Harper Lee passed away at the age of 89.

World News Today send our condolences to the family of Harper Lee.

Nelle Harper Lee was born and raised in the small town of Monroeville, Alabama, on April 28, 1926. She was the youngest of four children born to newspaper editor and lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee and homemaker Frances Cunningham Finch.

Lee grew up a tomboy. She was close childhood friends with Truman Capote, an eccentric child who would later become the famed writer of the acclaimed 1966 non-fiction work In Cold Blood and a lifelong friend to Lee.

Lee graduated high school in the spring of 1944. The following fall, she enrolled in the all-female Huntingdon College before transferring to the University of Alabama. Lee, set on pursuing a career in writing, dropped out of college in her senior year to move to New York City.

The city had a profound effect on the trajectory of Lee's writing career, connecting her with Broadway composer Michael Martin Brown who would become an important financial backer and one of her most avid supporters.

In 1956, she reunited with Capote and began work as his research assistant for a New Yorker article that later evolved into the book In Cold Blood.

That same year, Brown generously offered to financially support Lee for a year so she could focus on writing full time.

To Kill a Mockingbird found immediate success in literary circles. Peppered with autobiographical elements, Lee's debut novel was set in the mid-1930s in small-town Alabama and follows the story of precocious child Scout Finch and her father, Atticus. Atticus, a lawyer reminiscent of Lee's own father, is appointed by a judge to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a young white woman.

To Kill a Mockingbird documents Robinson's trial and tackles the themes of racial injustice and traditional class and gender roles. The book was enthusiastically received, with the New Yorker touting it as "totally ingenious," and became an international bestseller.

Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. Brock Peters as Tom Robinson.

The film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird was released in 1962 and starred Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. The film won three Academy Awards and earned a spot in the American Film Institute's list of the greatest American movies of all time.

In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Lee to the National Council on the Arts. Though Lee invested time in researching and preparing new work after To Kill a Mockingbird, including a true-crime novel called The Reverend, she didn't publish another book until more than 50 years later.

In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first of several high honors. She received the National Medal of Arts, presented to her by President Barack Obama, in 2010.

Lee left New York City in 2007 and moved into an assisted-living facility in her hometown of Monroeville after suffering a stroke.

Last July, Go Set a Watchman, a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, was released. The highly anticipated novel was Lee's second and final published book. The manuscript, thought to have been lost, was discovered in one of Lee's safety deposit boxes by her lawyer Tonja Cater in 2011.

Lee's failing health, including severe hearing and vision loss, led many to speculate that the author wasn't competent enough to sign off on the publication of Go Set a Watchman.

The Alabama Department of Human Resources launched an investigation in 2015 to examine whether elder abuse influenced the release of the sequel but ultimately determined the claims to be "unfounded."

Harper Lee kept a quiet life. Never gave many interviews and lived in Alabama as a reclusive.

Go Set a Watchman revisits a now 26-year-old Scout, who encounters intolerance in her small Alabama hometown while visiting from New York. Readers -- and Scout herself -- are surprised to find that her father, regarded by many literary critics as a fictional crusader for racial justice, has a less-than-progressive stance on race issues. Atticus argues with Scout about civil rights, telling his daughter that "the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people" and that black people aren't ready to vote.

The book received mostly negative reviews, as readers were shocked to find their once beloved civil rights-defending protagonist exposed as a "racist." Many critics agreed the novel could have used several more rounds of edits, calling it "unfit for print" and a "mess." Some said the "rough draft" was published only for the sake of constructing a "phony literary event."

Lee is pre-deceased by her parents, two sisters and one brother.

The author lived a private life. She never married or had children, and she rarely gave interviews.

"I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me," Lee said in 1964. "I would like to leave some record of the kind of life that existed in a very small world."

Obama Race Speech: Making White People Feel Safer by Telling them That Its not "Only" Their Fault

So far Barack Obama has not failed to disappoint in regards to his willingness to kiss the big fat ass of White sentimentality in America. Mr Obama it seems will go to any embarrassing length to play the “good guy” apologetic, no-hurt-feelings Negro of so many an exotic Sidney Poitier dream so many White folks dream of at night. While they sleep soundly secure in the fantasy of the epic sonnet to global White Power by Rudyard Kipling, the reality of White supremacy and its negative effect on no-European societies go unmentioned and unnoticed by the White colonialist mind. No wonder, to face such horrors is self-incriminating and the sense of justice all men feel when confronted with the genocidal actions of one people against another indeed do demand justice.

For Barack Obama to plead with the White American population about their dream for a race-neutral United States that utilises theological-corporate Europocentric values and objectives as the sole fundamental litmus test for universal understanding while himself a very public victim of White American racism is appalling. Not that my analysis nor the deconstructions of my brothers and sisters observing this minstrel show will mean much outside of the African community. We do not own major media. We do not even own the creative expression packaged and marketed around the world for the direct benefit of the White businessmen who own and jealously guard the means of production. Our opinions, when it comes to critiquing the colonialist government and society that claims dominance over us, are limited not just by our lack of access to technology, but the reluctance Whites have in listening and reading to voices that do not reinforce their sense of entitlement and authority over the entire world. It is the proverbial sea in which we all swim. White makes right, no matter what the circumstances.

The fact that Mr. Obama is acting like a sucker by punking himself out on international news media to the sheer delight of the liberal White representatives is not a minor thing to us. Unlike the Hon. Min. Louis Farrakhan and his own pastor Reverend J. Wright, Obama is enthusiastically handing over his manhood, and I’ll say it the way I feel it, his African manhood, to the White American public, a population that has hated and fought the Black man and woman from attaining any sense of measurable dignity by any means necessary. And the fact that White people in the United States have always scuffled and without a doubt continue to resist acknowledging the damage that they as a society have and continue to be responsible for is a moral crime that their own twisted version of Palestinian theology promises will be accounted for in the afterlife.

This was the message behind Pastor Wright’s much reported sermons and African people still able to function after four hundred years of genocide know it when they hear it. At some point Mr. Obama hear it too. Is it that the gleam of being the “first” Negro in the White House is too strong? Are Black people in America that politically shallow?

When one looks at Condi Rice and Colin Powell and especially Supreme Court house-negro Clarence Thomas we must as reasonable people of conscience say yes. Their records of support staff for White Power in the United States make this clear as does their silence on race issues. Mr Obama has made his contribution to the “race problem” by taking any responsibility for White American racism and ethnic bias away from White people. For Barack Obama, racism in the U.S. is an equal opportunity endeavour:

Obama Race Speech: Read The Full Text - Politics on The Huffington Post: "Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."

“Legitimate concerns?” Mr. Obama actually defended White racism as ‘legitimate concerns’ held by a wide swath of Americans. How else should a person of colour perceive such a statement? Barack Obama has cast his lot with White America and in no uncertain terms. Even to the point of patently excusing the historical marginalisation and murder such attitudes encompass.

Why not just hand the Ku Klux Klan a medal for upholding the best aspects of American White fears and the collective inability of the colonial White mind to accept responsibility for mass destruction of the non-White planet? He might as well, the White mainstream media in particular the liberal “alternative” sectors are already praising this sermon to the American White man and Israeli as “groundbreaking”, “illuminating” and “historic”. Why wouldn’t they? He provided more than enough grease to ease their public sodomy of him and by fiat, each and every African in America.

Barack Obama is not my candidate, nor is he the candidate of any self-respecting African living in the United States.

The Angryindian

West Virginia torture and rape victim arrested for writing bad checks at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture

West Virginia torture and rape victim arrested for writing bad checks at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture: "The victim in an alleged weeklong torture in Logan County was arraigned in Kanawha County Magistrate Court on multiple counts of writing bad checks. Megan Williams is charged with offenses in Summers, Raleigh and Greenbrier counties. There are 11 misdemeanor counts of writing worthless checks, one misdemeanor count of obtaining under false pretenses and one felony count of failure to appear in circuit court in Summers County, according to documents provided by Kanawha County Magistrate Ward Harshbarger. …Megan Williams is charged with obtaining under false pretenses and writing a worthless check in Raleigh County, according to the Raleigh County warrant. The false check charge is for a $32.21 check to Dominos Pizza. The false pretenses charge is for $96.40 to the Kiddie Junction Consignment Shop in Beaver. In Greenbrier County, Williams is wanted for eight worthless checks, according to the warrant for her arrest filed in Greenbrier County. One of the checks was for $173.79 to BSR Auto Supply."

Cyber-Apartheid: White apathy and the literary children of James Baldwin

This is my first op-ed piece for Stephanie's Journal and I sincerely thank her for the opportunity.
- The Angryindian
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I was at first glance quite pleased with myself when I scanned my morning newsfeeds to discover that an American African entertainment blog took note of how blogs of colour are reaching readers and helping shape opinions on issues that affect the African community as a whole. I even experienced a brief rush of accomplishment and righteous vindication amongst my peers in cyberspace for my efforts as an autonomous and non-partisan newsblogger and Indigenist activist.

But it was short-lived. Reality set in after my second sip of honeyed fennel tea that while the author of the post was quite correct in his estimation of the growing power of “Black” bloggers, the fact that such an article needed to be written at all shows just how segregated the Internet really is.

On the whole, cyberspace is just as “White” as the physical day-to-day world we are all guided to accept as the only empirical reality. The culture and direction of the Internet without question operates solely within the paradigms of European-centred control and management. Created initially by the U.S. Military and used chiefly by scientists for rapid transmission of peer data, the Internet has since the mid-80’s grown-up into a gigantic sensory-overload capitalist’s dream universe that reflects more about people and society than many of us care to admit.

Take an hour and rift through the user-uploaded clips on YouTube or the ever expanding myriad of forums, blogs and websites and you are likely to come across something we are told young Euroamericans have supposedly learned to overcome: racism. YouTube and Craigslist in particular have been cited for their overwhelming White racist commentary in response to videos and current news and social events. Openly racist sites such as Jewwatch.com garner more than 1 million hits a month. Neo-Nazi sites abound the web and don’t seem to be receding. In fact, interest in such material has increased according to some sources as much as 400% since 2000 and the first Bush coup d'état in Florida that illegally removed thousands of American African male voters from their state elections register.

Not to say that their isn’t loads of questionable material available on the Internet, (such as pornography accounting for more than 80% of web traffic which says a lot more about people than it does about the genre) but the Internet simply reflects those that created it, maintained it, expanded it and currently control all the means of production and utilisation of the technology.

Even in the 21st century, most non-European homes in the First, Second and Third worlds still do not have PC’s let alone ISP service. It simply remains out of the financial reach of many minorities due to the usual culprits, economic marginalisation and under-education to the use and benefits of the technology. Amongst those that do have access, far too many of them spend more time downloading entertainment than pursuing political, educational or cultural knowledge. And again, even this highly generalised deconstruction I have offered still only amounts to less than 20% of all Internet usage globally.

This explains why the Daily Kos can enjoy such high ratings and acclaim among activists of various stripes while non-European political commentary blogs such as my own (Intelligentaindigena Novajoservo) are not read by much more than those uniquely concerned with very specific issues. My blog focuses on matters that concern worldwide Aboriginal genocide, political power and racial issues that impact everybody. But if discussing race and First Nations subjects in America candidly is just about impossible in the general public discourse, it is for all practical purposes a deliberate drag through the valley of indifference in cyberspace.

White people simply aren’t interested enough in Brown folks to engage us as anything other than entertainment fodder or the hyper-sexualised fantasies of historical White racist guilt. Their apathetic readership and support for Black/Brown bloggers proves this and arguments as to the legitimacy of this argument ca be verified by the Internet logs of no-European bloggers that do good work, yet are ignored by those who comprise the bulk of the Internet reading audience. In a world where print media is on a downward slide to oblivion, this is a very important issue.

Like my ancestral mentor James Baldwin, I believe everybody has a story. We all have something to say from a perspective all our own. African people are no less human than any other man, woman or child on this planet, yet we are constantly placed into positions where our humanity is challenged for no other reason than our otherness. And like Baldwin, many of us who have the ability to upload our observations of the Europocentric empire from the inside do so with one foot in the White world while tip-toeing in the territories where we really come from. Our commentary is biting, accurate and damming of what has been euphorically described as the wide, wonderful world of Europeanization brought to us by way of a necessary and on-going genocide and the institution of a racial/ethnic hierarchy that favours the fair of skin and cultural vanity. We are the faces of colonialism and genocide and we articulate the angst and antagonism of our endurance with an accent of “otherness,” in a vernacular that burns Euro-supremacist eyes and ears to a cinder.

Hence the delicate yet consistently applied apathy of White weblog readers towards bloggers of colour despite the qualitative content of their websites.

Who wants to read about socio-political issues that they might feel responsible for addressing when they could be reading about scandalous professional socialite- harlot Paris Hilton’s brush with the reality of the L.A. County lockup? Poor White and minority women go to prison and go missing everyday but it’s always more disturbing when it happens to someone they regard as representative of the “Master race”. The other paradigms of humanity simply do not calculate interest, compassion or respect.

Still doubt my assessment? Ask your nearest Palestinian, Iraqi or Afro-refugee from Katrina bashed Louisiana. Darfurians could tell you themselves, but many of them are dying from preventable conditions made worse by European and Euro-colonial unresponsiveness to human suffering. And they said it would never happen again.

Without the axiomatic “free exchange of ideas” mantra of the free-market PR gangsters applied to the Internet, the only ideas that will germinate will be White ideas in a world overwhelmingly populated by those or various hues and convictions other than White, or Eurocentric. Are those that control the levers of socio-political power fearful of letting “The market decide” in cyberspace, or are we just afraid to call a spade a spade and admit that the Internet is just the new Apartheid, Jetsons style.

- The Angryindian