Lady Bird Johnson, R.I.P.

Former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson died Wednesday at age 94 from natural causes. She's known for her beautification programs in the 1960s and beyond as well as a passionate environmentalist. Her legacy lives on. May she rests in peace.

Link:

Thousands See Former First Lady's Casket

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
-------------------------------------
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

Most and Least Segregated Cities for Blacks

At Rachel's Tavern, Rachel compiled a list of most and least segregated cities/counties for Black Americans. This is a very important read for it affects all aspects of Black life, from access to health and jobs as well as to decent stores for shopping, the whole quality of life in general. Some people may not like what she reported, but it reflects my reality, for I live in a very segregated city in Southern Ohio(Dayton). Not only the metro area where I live is polarized racially, but economically and socially as well.

Supreme Court makes it tough for most of us -- Page 1 -- Times Union - Albany NY

Supreme Court makes it tough for most of us -- Page 1 -- Times Union - Albany NY: "On George Bush's Supreme Court, the big guys win, you lose -- unless, of course, you are one of the big guys, in which case, congratulations!


If you are a customer, tough. Manufacturers may go back to barring retailers from underselling the price a manufacturer wants. If you are a mere taypayer, tough again. You are barred from challenging government expenditures on faith-based programs as possible violations of church-state separation.

If you are convicted of a crime and your lawyer files your appeal three days late, too bad -- even though the lawyer filed on the date the judge (mistakenly) directed. Justice David Souter, in dissent, put it plainly: 'It is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way.'

If you suffer a troubled pregnancy, sorry. Lawmakers may bar you from the medically safest abortion. Women's health no longer governs abortion issues. Expect a festival of harassing legislation next year in the manner of the ban on 'partial-birth abortion' -- a term made up for political purposes -- which the court endorsed."

informationliberation - Independence Day?

informationliberation - Independence Day?

Every year on The Fourth, I wonder what people are celebrating. That is, the ones who give it any thought at all beyond its being a day off. The celebrants have no sense of irony.

If it's all about freedom, then oughtn't we at least have more respect for the word than to associate it with the condition to which we've been reduced? Let's face it, the average American just accepts the following: "We are Americans, ergo we are free." End of discussion. He contemplates how bad things are around the world, and that is sufficient for him to conclude that things are just fine here in America. Contradict him at your peril.

What the rest of the world prefers to tolerate is a pretty poor standard by which to gauge our liberty, and I'd like to propose a better one. It is this: Are our rights respected? Are we allowed to own ourselves and our justly acquired property? Ask this of our theoretical free American and he's likely to insist his rights are just fine, thank you. He'll often invite us to love it or leave it.

Given the sorry state of government schooling, I can't say I'm surprised. But is it asking too much that people should understand the meaning of words thrown around so casually?

A right is something one may do without getting anyone's permission, and if government has any legitimate purpose at all, it is protecting our rights. It has no other legitimate reason for existing. When governments go beyond that, they become as much a criminal as the mugger who takes your watch, or the trespasser who invades your property. Nothing about this is rocket science.

But this is way too much theorizing for most folks. Their eyes glaze over. Enjoying their barbecue and ball game tells them all they need to know, and that it just couldn't be better here.

In fact, Americans are so thoroughly policed, monitored, and regulated they can scarcely conceive it being otherwise. No aspect of their lives escapes the government's attention and control, and they have no rights at all, only privileges. By a stupendous act of doublethink they believe they are free.

A short list should suffice to raise serious questions in the mind of our theoretically free American.

Ecuador Carving out New Democracy - Prensa Latina

Ecuador Carving out New Democracy - Prensa Latina: "Quito, Jul 5 (Prensa Latina) Political and economic reforms are the main proposals boosted by the Ecuadorian government in the future Constituent Assembly, to be established on October 30.
# Correa Denounces Destabilization Plan

Those proposals were made by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa to the National Higher Education Council, which is in charge of drawing up a draft for the new Constitution.

Correa considers the Assembly important and historical for the country, and its success 'will depend on the people s support to achieve significant changes.' 'If citizens elect the same politicians as on September 30, the nation will remain in the same situation it was before January 15 last year, with rising prices of electricity, water, privatizations, and the handing over of sovereignty to foreign powers,' said Correa.

He said the country has to go from a pseudo representative democracy to a participatory democracy, to elect legislators by district, so that each region of the country has its own representatives."

The Fourth of July and Hypocrisy

Ann's post:

What's the 4th of July To Me? captures all the sentiments I had regarding America's hypocrisy towards the least of all citizens. Please read the article at:

http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/what-is-the-4th-of-july-to-me/

Your view of America won't be the same after reading this searing essay. At Rachel's Tavern, she discusses racial segregation in housing that is still with us today and is not going away soon. Please read that article as well.

Michelle Obama Under Attacked by Pearl Jr.

Michelle Obama Comes Under Attack? By Pearl JR

Many of us are noticing that there is really and truly an attack on the value, worth, and importance of Black women in the lives of prominent men. It has gotten so bold that Angelina Jolie is playing a Black woman, 70 percent of Black women are living without spouses, the vast majority of our children are growing up in a single mother household, sixty percent of Black men who earn over $100,000 annually are married to non-Black women, and now a group of White people have created, produced, and distributed a music video that insults Presidential hopeful's Black wife, Michelle Obama; who is now the newest Black women to come under attack to soon be unmated.

Before anyone writes me to tell me the ever-popular notion that supports a cowardly and ignorant point of view that "it doesn't matter", I'm here to tell you that it better matter quick because the attack on Black women or shall I say, "Nappy Headed Hos" is moving full speed ahead.

Yesterday, while watching Fox News, there was a story about a group of college White students who are posing as Barack Obama supporters that produced a music video called "I Got a Crush on Obama" featuring a sexy White chick lip singing because she was recruited from Craiglist.com to act in a music video.

Apparently, the Jewish looking female vocalist just wasn't sexy enough to persuade a response from the public or to get Barack Obama's attention they had to use a dummy to pull off this mind-twisting insult.

This video hails Mr. Obama as some type of sex symbol Mandingo that is swooning White women and White people with his sexiness and not his intellect nor his integrity. Forget that Mr. Obama is running for the most powerful job in the world, the Presidency of the United States of America, and put aside that he has a Law Degree from Harvard University and was the only Black President of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, plus voted in as the ONLY Black Senator in the United States Senate among many other notable accomplishments has now been reduced down to being the object of White women's sexual desire.

The scantily dressed White woman with the name of "Obama" on her butt must be to let Barack-ster recognize that she and the producers are aware that Black men like asses, or just in case, he's a tits man, her blouse is tight, especially around the breast area. Furthermore, there is zero mention of Michelle Obama nor his two Black daughters as if they don't even exists, or soon won't, because he is now on White women's radar.

You see, I've been watching Barack Obama and I was very interested in how he was going to handle the Don Imus incident; he came to Black woman's calling by saying "Don Imus should be fired" and then his ranking fell about 10 percentage points. I guess he was suppose to appease Whites by not taking offense that an old White man called a group of innocent Black female college students playing in a championship tournament, "hard-core hos" and "nappy headed hos". I never once heard Anna Nicole Smith or Paris Hilton being called "hos" of any type, especially "stringy headed hos", even though it is widely known that those White women have been very public exhibiting "whorish" behavior.

Of course, any President, despite his race or gender, must be a President for all American citizens, it's nice to know that a Black man running for President has enough sense and pride to realize that to insult innocent Black women on the purity that they are simply Black females is a slap and insult to all Black women, young, old, rich, poor, educated or uneducated. And to think some Whites have stopped supporting him due to him taking a stand that protects the image of his wife and his children is somehow less American, lets me know that racism is alive, growing, and inevitable hungry to keep Black inferiority THE status quo.

And to add insult to injury, the group of 4 White people appearing on Fox News who produced this raunchy, insulting, and belittling video had the nerve to act like the video was made out of love for Mr. Obama and would actually help him win the office of Presidency. I guess the diminishing of Black female worth is so low that during the interview not one of them mentioned Michele Obama at all, just a scroll across the screen as an after thought wondered how she would feel.

Maybe Fox News received my many emails complaining about the insult to Mrs. Obama. Then, there was the question asked if Hillary Clinton was behind this video to discredit Mr. Obama, and one of the producers responded with a slippery and shady "no comment" paraphrase.

Now sistahs of the Black Woman's Movement, (if you haven't signed up, please do so today because we are in phase one of gathering up the troops-tell all your friends), we must not get upset with Barack Obama over yet another White woman chasing after a Black man of prominence, he had absolutely nothing to do with the creation and distribution of this degrading video. As a matter of fact, Mr. Obama's camp has made no comment, but was urged to contact the producers and praise them for insulting his wife and his prestige. What the heck? You see, there are trick bags all over the place and this is just some bait to see if Barack-ster would be weak and dumb enough to insult his family by being flattered with such filth and attention diverting plots that he would praise a fake singing sex-pot that was hired to perform a duty. I'm not even sure the actress hired is a real Obama supporter.

Lastly, check out this comment that I received from youtube, "if Obama is a true black man he would dump his colored girl wife and shack up with a blonde lady".

Black men are getting clowned all the time due to their continual abandonment of Black women, because you know only a TRUE racist would use the word "colored" to describe today's Black woman.

Black women must be on the same page with understanding what is feeding our epidemic singleness. Furthermore, I'm receiving comments after comments about non-Black women stealing Black men from Black women-it has truly gotten way out of hand.

If you don't' believe me, then visit my website: www.BlackWomenNeedLoveToo.com and watch a clip from the movie Jungle Fever from 1991 and tell me that we have NOT participated in the "it doesn't matter" syndrome for far too long. It's past time for us to stand up for our rights to be loved, honored, and cherished just as much as any other woman.

Learn what we can do about it in my book, Black Women Need Love, Too! available on amazon.com and if a bookstore near you doesn't have any copies on their shelves, ask them to order it-Black Women Need Love, Too! is not only a book, but an important message that needs to be spread worldwide.

ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE BOOK, BLACK WOMEN NEED LOVE, TOO! AND TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO DO THE SAME BECAUSE NOTHING WILL CHANGE UNTIL WE CHANGE IT.

Please visit Pearl JR at www.BlackWomenNeedLoveToo.com

News for June 24, 2007

Here are several news clippings for the week of June 24, 2007:

LATIN AMERICA: Black Women on the Bottom RungBy Diego Cevallos- MEXICO CITY, Jun 19 (IPS) -

There are at least 75 million black women in Latin America and the Caribbean, but those who occupy high-level political or public administration posts number less than 50. As activists pointed out to IPS this week, black women are at the very bottom of the social ladder in this region.

More about this sad plight of Latin American Black Women, Click here.
The body of Jessie Davis Found.

This is sad news to the week-long search for Ms. Davis, who was nine-months pregnant and a mother of a two-year old son. Click here and here. My prayers and sympathy are with her family. As Ms. Davis is being mourned, let's also remember Latoyia Figueroa and Reyna Marroquin whose lives ended in tragedy as Jessie Davis. May they all rest in peace.

This Week's Links for 6-9-2007

To all my readers,

Here are several article I have for your reading pleasure:

"Diversity Is Still An Issue at TV Networks"- LA Times. How about more diverse viewpoints in newsrooms as well? It's still not diverse despite the growing population of people of Color in the U.S. C'mon, y'all can do better than that. Hat tip to Racialicious.com for the link.

Fox News Bundles Race Reporting. No Brainer here.

This article is from The Gimp Parade via Rachel's Tavern. It's about the Long Island Couple suing the fertility clinic for the "wrong" in-vitro that resulted in having a child darker than her parents. This is not new, for in the 1990s when a white woman was given the wrong in-vitro that resulted in her having a biracial Black girl(now a teenager). She sued the clinic for damages and was generously compensated. What if such thing happened to a Black expectant mother? Would she be generously compensated for giving her the wrong treatment? Would the public be sympathetic to her plight? What you say?

More petitions against hateful racist/sexist stereotyping by corporations. Please sign them. Thank you Ann for bringing this to the forefront.

News for 5-29-2007

News for 5-29-2007:

Here's an interesting article from Utne reader regarding racism in the blogosphere:

Bigotry and the Blogs

Related link:

The Segregated Blogosphere

Tell me what you think of the above articles.

More news later. Have a nice day!

She Was More Than King's Daughter by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

She Was More Than King’s Daughter
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The applause was loud and sustained virtually every moment that Yolanda King was on stage performing her one-woman theatrical performance. The audience beamed with love, joy and most importantly appreciation for her. This writer did too as I sat spellbound in the first row of the Los Angeles church where King performed. The occasion was the annual King Day celebration last year held at a popular Los Angeles church. The audience didn’t embrace and idolize King solely because she was the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Most of those in the audience weren’t even born when King was alive. And the applause for her wasn’t solely out of a misty nostalgia for the civil rights movement.


Most there had no first hand knowledge or involvement in the civil rights battles four decades. No, their applause and respect was for her, and her moving on stage recapture of the pain, suffering, and sacrifice as well as the triumphs of the civil rights movement. Their sustained applause was also given out of deep appreciation for her impassioned crusade to keep Dr. King’s dream alive by actively opposing Bush’s wasteful and ruinous Iraq war, championing women and gay rights, and fighting for economic justice for the poor. In between her theatrical skits, she would pause take a deep breath, and in measured but passionate tones remind the audience that King’s dream still was unfulfilled. She in turn prodded, cajoled, and implored the audience that the best way to keep her father’s dream alive was to be active fighters for peace and social justice.


Yolanda King understood that decades after the great civil rights battles of the 1960s blacks are still two and three times more likely to be unemployed than whites, trapped in segregated neighborhoods, and that their kids will attend disgracefully failing, mostly segregated public schools. It ignores the reality that young black males and females are far more likely to be murdered, suffer HIV/AIDS affliction, to be racially-profiled by police, imprisoned, placed on probation or parole, permanently barred in many states from voting because of felony convictions, are much more likely to receive the death penalty especially if their victims are white, and are more likely to be victims of racially motivated violence than whites.
She well knew that middle-class blacks that reaped the biggest gains from the civil rights struggles often find the new suburban neighborhoods they move to are re-segregated and soon look like the old neighborhoods they fled. They are ignored by cab drivers, followed by clerks in stores, left fuming at restaurants because of poor or no service, find that more and more of their sons and daughters are cut out of scholarships and student support programs at universities because of the demolition of affirmative action, and denied bank loans for their businesses and homes. Then there are the fierce battles over affirmative action, police violence, the segregation laws still on the books in some Southern states, and the nightmarish scenes of thousands of poor blacks fleeing for their lives from the Katrina floodwaters in New Orleans, and the big fight over what if anything should be done about the plight of the black poor. These are further bitter reminders of the gaping economic and racial chasm in America. Yolanda knew that as well, and was a resolute fighter for the poor.


In the decades after King's murder, Yolanda stormed the barricades against racial injustice, economic inequality, military adventurism, and against hate crimes and violence. She wrote countless letters, gave speeches, and participated in direct action campaigns. She continued to fiercely protect King's legacy from the opportunists that twisted and sullied his words and name.The civil rights struggle has now become the stuff of nostalgia, history books, and the memoirs of aging former civil rights leaders. Yet, millions remain trapped in poverty, and racial discrimination still pervades much of American society. Dr. King’s dream was to free them from that plight. Yolanda King and her father shared that same dream. And like her father she did more than dream. She brought her relentless passion and vision for peace and social justice to that battle. Her and her father’s vision of what America still can be continues to challenge us to do our part to make that vision a reality for millions of Americans of all races. We’ll deeply miss Yolanda King. But it can be truly be said that she was more than just King's daughter.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press and Hispanic Economics New York) in English and Spanish will be out in October.