What I would have said about the Trayvon Martin case

There is something about the subtle, not provably deliberate de-racializing conversations surrounding the Trayvon Martin killing that just rub many Black people the wrong way. When Jay Leno interviews Piers Morgan as an expert, and everyone is clearly sympathetic to the Martin family for their loss, what can you say when they try to take race out of the narrative? Well, you have to say something.

Jill (Cheryl Contee) says it very well. Here's one quote from her April 12 JJP post, and then please go check out the original.

The step backward then is the misunderstanding, the lack of connection of race to what happened. The bewilderment I see in white people’s eyes as they ask — how did this even happen? They are shocked! Shocked, confused and dismayed! The Trayvon case is not shocking for African-Americans. Infuriating, yes. Disgusting, yes. But sadly…so sadly not shocking. Ok so white folks, just so we’re all clear — this happened because unlike your kid (or you), Trayvon was not white. And this kind of thing has a way of happening to not-white people sort of regularly.

Wake up, Dorothy. You were never in Kansas

[Big ol' tip o' the fedora to Prometheus6 for snapping me out of "too busy to post" mode.]

Apparently you can make death threats against a Presidential candidate (translation: a black candidate, specifically Barack Obama) on the Internet and get away with it.

Man's call for Obama assassination is free speech, not crime, court rules
July 19, 2011 | 4:27 pm

A La Mesa man who posted racial epithets and a call to "shoot" Barack Obama on an Internet chat site was engaging in constitutionally protected free speech, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in overturning his criminal conviction...

...the statute doesn't criminalize "predictions or exhortations to others to injure or kill the president," said the majority opinion written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

"When our law punishes words, we must examine the surrounding circumstances to discern the significance of those words’ utterance, but must not distort or embellish their plain meaning so that the law may reach them," said the 2-1 ruling in which Chief Judge Alex Kozinski joined but Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw dissented.

Quick now, who's surprised? And who thinks this would be consistently applied to threats against a white candidate? And who thinks the (two) judges in the majority are sure in their own minds that race played no part in their decision?

Full decision here.

Why We Fight, or: Clearly, America has a Black President, not just a President

On the night of April 27, 2011, the night of the day President Obama called a special press conference to personally release his birth certificate, thus "showing his papers" to the country, Rachel Maddow was smart enough to turn her show directly over to Goldie Taylor of The Grio. Goldie explains, through a story about her own family, how this aspect of race in America has shown the constancy of the trade winds.

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Once you have absorbed the video, I recommend to your attention the full text of Goldie Taylor's column at the Grio.

ETA: I am reminded by rikyrah at JJP to remind you to check Baratunde's April 27 video as well.

I need to find time for Inherently Unequal

BookTV (C-SPAN2) just showed Lawrence Goldstone on Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865-1903 over the weekend and it's available on demand at their site.

May have to multitask and watch it today, even though such practice continues to be decried.

Silly me, I thought THAT "master narrative" was back-burnered

Cross-posting a couple of Civil War celebratory items, courtesy of Tuesday JJP commenters:

(1) From Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic, who states: "I think we need to be absolutely clear that 150 years after the defeat of one of the Confederacy, there are still creationists who seek to celebrate the treasonous attempt to raise an entire country based on the ownership of people."

'They Have Encouraged and Assisted Thousands of Our Slaves'

NOV 29 2010, 10:54 PM ET

The Times notes that in Charleston, the Sons of Confederate Veterans are planning a 150th anniversary "Secession Ball." Jeff Antley, a member of the SCV, explains:

"We're celebrating that those 170 people risked their lives and fortunes to stand for what they believed in, which is self-government," Mr. Antley said. "Many people in the South still believe that is a just and honorable cause. Do I believe they were right in what they did? Absolutely," he said, noting that he spoke for himself and not any organization. "There's no shame or regret over the action those men took."

It really annoys me the that Times used someone who they felt they had to ID as a "liberal sociologist" to counter Antley. Far better to simply quote from the founding documents which those 170 people authored. In that way we can get some sense of precisely what they were risking their lives for, and the exact nature of the fortune they were protecting:

We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof. The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River...

(2) From Katharine Q. Seelye at the New York Times, who reminds us: "Commemorating the Civil War has never been easy. The centennial 50 years ago coincided with the civil rights movement, and most of the South was still effectively segregated, making a mockery of any notion that the slaves had truly become free and equal.

"Congress had designated an official centennial commission, which lost credibility when it planned to meet in a segregated hotel; this year, Congress has not bothered with an official commission and any master narrative of the war seems elusive."

Well, let us not say that a master narrative is hard to find-- we seem to be tripping all over them-- but I suppose she meant that in another sense.

November 29, 2010

Celebrating Secession Without the Slaves

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

ATLANTA — The Civil War, the most wrenching and bloody episode in American history, may not seem like much of a cause for celebration, especially in the South.

And yet, as the 150th anniversary of the four-year conflict gets under way, some groups in the old Confederacy are planning at least a certain amount of hoopla, chiefly around the glory days of secession, when 11 states declared their sovereignty under a banner of states’ rights and broke from the union.

The events include a “secession ball” in the former slave port of Charleston (“a joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink,” says the invitation), which will be replicated on a smaller scale in other cities. A parade is being planned in Montgomery, Ala., along with a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.

In addition, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and some of its local chapters are preparing various television commercials that they hope to show next year. “All we wanted was to be left alone to govern ourselves,” says one ad from the group’s Georgia Division...

Voting rights in the South: a drive-by update to push your hot buttons

I am in the throes of pre-Thanksgiving Week weirdness (have you ever SEEN a gaggle of caged, crazed college students planning & executing a prison break?) so with hat tip to Prometheus6, here is a must-read from The Defenders Online.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund Files Brief to Defend Voting Rights Act Against Constitutional Challenge

Posted By The Editors On November 16, 2010 @ 8:07 pm

Alabama case threatens to have ‘heart’ of VRA declared unconstitutional

(New York) – Yesterday the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) filed a brief in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, a case challenging the constitutionality of two core provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The law requires jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to have voting changes reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice or D.C. District Court to ensure they are free from discrimination.

LDF’s brief asks the District Court for the District of Columbia to deny Alabama’s motion for summary judgment –which seeks to have the Section 5 preclearance provision declared unconstitutional based on recycled arguments that have been rejected previously. Instead, LDF asks the court to grant its motion for summary judgment on the grounds that a detailed Congressional record demonstrates that ongoing discrimination remains pervasive in those states and jurisdictions around the country where Section 5 applies...

NPR Women on Williams (Juan, not Armstrong)

The Williams men (who are probably 23rd cousins or something, aren't we all) continue to put themselves out there. One more drive-by from me here, this time on Juan. Then, unless they do something else to raise their profiles, I'll move on. Today's Juan Williams revue (sic) is from two women with strong NPR connections and reason to have inside knowledge, Farai Chideya and Michel Martin.

Farai Chideya, formerly of NPR, now of Pop and Politics, has this, which I cross-posted at JJP if it looks familiar at all:

Posted: October 23, 2010 01:44 PM

What Everyone Is Missing About NPR's WilliamsGate

"juan, gettin ugly. wonder if it will result in him severing ties, or mutual"

That was my note at the top of an email I sent back in September of 2007 to a colleague at NPR. In full disclosure, I am a former employee of NPR, let go in 2008 as part of the cancellation of three shows, including one I hosted. In the email, I'd forwarded a Washington Post column by Howard Kurtz dissecting a Fox/NPR/Juan Williams triad of recrimination. The headline: "NPR Rebuffs White House On Bush Talk -- Radio Network Wanted To Choose Its Interviewer." In Kurtz's words:

The White House reached out to National Public Radio over the weekend, offering analyst Juan Williams a presidential interview to mark yesterday's 50th anniversary of school desegregation in Little Rock. But NPR turned down the interview, and Williams's talk with Bush wound up in a very different media venue: Fox News. Williams said yesterday he was "stunned" by NPR's decision... Ellen Weiss, NPR's vice president for news, said she "felt strongly" that "the White House shouldn't be selecting the person."

This incident is more telling than the oft-dissected statement Williams made on Fox that Michelle Obama had "this Stokely Carmichael-in-a-designer-dress thing going." Juan Williams and NPR have been a mutual mismatch for years. In this volley, Williams -- with his reported new $2 million over 3 year contract with Fox -- is the clear winner; with Fox a close second; and NPR left holding the bag. It need not have been this way.

If NPR had such clear concerns over how Juan Williams fit into their organization, in the amorphous role of "news analyst," then they had an opportunity to let him go a long time ago. They could have decided he didn't fit their needs, and moved on in a less polarized time. But by firing him now, in this instance, after years of sitting uncomfortably with his dual roles on NPR and Fox, they made a few crucial errors. They chose to fire him for doing what he has done for years... be a hype man for Bill O'Reilly. Why now?...

More at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/farai-chideya/what-everyone-is-missing_b_772849.html

In addition to the rest of her write-up, at the above Chideya linked out to Michel Martin's Tell Me More segment on Williams. Here is the intro:

MICHEL MARTIN, host:

I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.

Today, we are going to talk about another controversy involving the media, ethnicity and ethics. Just recently on this program, we have talked about the firing of CNN anchor Rick Sanchez and former White House correspondent Helen Thomas over comments that each made in public forums that many people considered ignorant and even anti-Semitic. And the question was what kind of dialogue crosses the line between legitimate commentary and bigotry, especially inappropriate for journalists to engage in.

Today's story is along those lines, but it hits even closer to home. It's about the decision by this network, NPR, to fire its longtime employee Juan Williams. Juan has been a host here, a correspondent, and most recently, he has had the title of senior news analyst. And for long stretches of time, he's been one of the few consistent African-American males on the air here. And for a number of years, he's also been a regular contributor to FOX News Channel. And therein lies the issue.

He was fired Wednesday after comments he made about Muslims in an appearance on FOX News' "The O'Reilly Factor." Those comments and NPR's response to them has generated a controversy that has engulfed both networks and the blogosphere. For example, by midmorning today, some 15,000 messages have been blogged about this on NPR's home page.

Later in the program, we'll ask the Barbershop guys to weigh in because they are also a group of journalists of color who are often called upon to speak off the cuff about controversial topics. So we will hear what they have to say.

But first, we've called Asra Nomani, the author of "Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam," and a scholar in the practice of journalism at Georgetown School of Continuing Studies. Also with us, Richard Prince, he's an editor at The Washington Post, who writes an online publication called "Journal-isms," where he focuses on issues around diversity in the media. And John Watson, associate professor of communications law and journalism ethics at American University. And they're all here with me in the studio and I thank you all so much for joining us...

Listen at:

NPR Fires Juan Williams, Journalists React

Lagniappe: h/t to a JJP commenter for this, since Williams is easily frightened:

http://muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/

 

This Wordle seems to suggest I reconsider which words I use a lot:

Yuckiness at Ebony/Jet: Armstrong Williams

I'm not a frequent visitor at many sites (there are just too many, and frankly, I do have an outside life). But I went to the Ebony/Jet site yesterday on a photo hunt and found a pretty cool video about their 65th anniversary issue's cover shoot. (Doesn't seem to be embeddable but it'll load in a new window if you click.)

I went back today to dig around for still photos, but their home page gave me a stomach flip-flop. Dang if they weren't leading with an article by known arch-enemy Armstrong Williams. I guess you can't keep him down.

OK, here is a link to his article "The Browning of the GOP" about how impressive the Republican Party has been over the decades. He's left out a little history, like the flocking of white supremacists to the GOP, preferring to emphasis the black reaction of moving to the Democratic Party.

 

I think Dinesh & Newt are in a fever dream about the younger Bush president

So, because G.W. Bush wanted to finish up in Iraq for his daddy, they think Obama must be up to something because of his daddy? At this point, I suspect these folks are just playing old Bush-era video, grabbing a random sentence, and applying it to Obama, all just to see if people will fall for it. (We already know Fox will run it, that's not the question.)

How D'Souza thinks

Sep 13th 2010, 17:11 by M.S.

I DON'T find it at all difficult to understand how Barack Obama thinks, because most of his beliefs are part of the broad consensus in America's centre or centre-left: greenhouse-gas emissions reductions, universal health insurance, financial-reform legislation, repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and so forth. Dinesh D'Souza, on the other hand, appears to have met so few Democrats in recent decades that he finds such views shocking, and thinks they can only be explained by the fact that Mr Obama's father was a Kenyan government economist who pushed for a non-aligned stance in the Cold War during the 1960s-70s. Since the majority of Democrats don't have any Kenyan parents and have no particular stake in the anti-colonialism debates of the 1960s-70s, I'm not sure how Mr D'Souza would explain their views. In any case, Mr D'Souza's explanation of Mr Obama's views doesn't make any sense on its own terms. This, for example, is incomprehensible: "If Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he wants people who are already paying close to 50% of their income in overall taxes to pay even more." Come again? Progressive taxation is caused by...anti-colonialism? Message to American billionaires and the people who write for them: many events and movements in world history did not revolve around marginal tax rates on rich people in the United States.

In other words, while I don't have any trouble understanding how Barack Obama thinks, I have a lot of trouble understanding how Dinesh D'Souza thinks...

Stephen R. Covey has oft said, "First seek to understand, then to be understood." He means shut up and listen, make sure you've got the other person's viewpoint straight before jumping to conclusions. This may be an exception. We have plenty of material on D'Souza and serial-marrier Gingrich, who by now should be in America's dustbin with John Edwards. Time to move on.

Black farmers getting plowed under like unwanted crops

Recent article from The Root, a story worth spreading and keeping alive. Somebody needs to remember this on November 2nd.

h/t P6 & JJP &...

$1.5 Billion for Wealthy Arkansas Farmers; Nothing for Black Farmers

Apparently, the votes of white farmers in a key state trump the USDA's settlement of long-standing discrimination complaints -- especially in an election year.

By: Frank McCoy | Posted: September 2, 2010 at 5:32 PM

The ire that black farmers and their advocates are currently feeling has two targets: the Senate's failure to vote the money to complete the farmers' settlement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and President Obama's recent generous offer to white Arkansas farmers. Both examples of political expediency are bitter reminders of black farmers' second-class status.

For five months, the Senate has blocked passage of legislation that contains money to fund the USDA's $1.25 billion settlement of the second bias suit lodged by black farmers. The agreement, called Pigford II, is supposed to redress past USDA racial discrimination cases...

How many Senators does it take to avoid paying black farmers?

Once again, here's a timely update to the plight of the black farmers who STILL aren't paid, months after the February 2010 court settlement, thanks to inexcusable delays in the Senate. Hat tip to rikyrah at JJP for posting story & link where I would see it. Comments have been light (nonexistent) on this update over at JJP so I'm cross-posting here for possible penetration.

Black farmers ask why some get aid and they wait

By Jasmin Melvin

WASHINGTON | Wed Aug 11, 2010 8:45pm EDT

(Reuters) - Black farmers involved in a decades-old discrimination case are questioning why the Obama administration has promised to hasten aid for some large-scale farmers in the South while their case is held up in political wrangling.

The administration pledged last week to find $1.5 billion to help farmers hit by natural disasters after it appeared unlikely the Senate would promptly fund the package.

Black farmers reached a historic $1.25 billion civil rights settlement in February to compensate them for being left out of federal farm loan and assistance programs for years due to racism, but are still waiting for funding.

There have been seven failed attempts by the Senate, including one last week, to fund the settlement...

[Original story at Reuters.com]

Nothing certain as dearth in Texas

[At the risk of skewing the Blogger/Google stats about my blog even more, this week's pact post will be again be more reactive than proactive and will contain certain right-of-center terms.]

From a bird's-eye view, there's a national pattern emerging that has been succinctly described as lost they damn minds to explain everything from why there are still black Republicans, to why there are any minority Tea Partiers, to why people will pay to hear Sarah "Half a term is better than none" Palin's word salad, to why certain state officials (Virginia, Arizona, Texas) have done things that are clearly racist to all but the most obtuse-- all while mainstream media pundits continue to "debate both sides of the issue."

I believe that Rand Paul of Kentucky has been sufficiently hoist on his own petard as he trampled on his own primary victory by first being just a little too honest about the 1964 Civil Rights Act in a May 19 Rachel Maddow interview:

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... and then deciding he'd had enough and refusing to appear a few days later on Meet the Press. I can't add much to what's already been well said. I don't know what's in his heart (ignorance or racism) and I don't care, because his smarmy meanderings deny history and contribute to a racist result. From his own comments, he'd clearly allow a return to Jim Crow days-- and on that basis alone, he doesn't need to be a U.S. Senator.

So let's move on from Dan'l Boone country to Texas, where the State Board of Education has been even more direct in their denial of history than waffleberry Rand Paul. On May 21, they officially adopted new curriculum standards for history. This year's conservative rewrite follows last year's revised science standards, which generated a bit of controversy themselves and stopped just short of saying the universe began in the year 4400 B.C.

A decent summary of the Texas proceedings can be found at the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) Insider blog. For an alternative one-pager, try the TPMmuckraker summary. Bottom line: Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schafly in, overt discussion of Christianity in, minorities (including President Obama) barely tolerated, left-of-center figures out.

I take the impending ignorance of Texas grads seriously because I have young family members in K-12 schools there. One is old enough to miss most of this controversy and will only have a couple of years under the new standards. The other is young enough to be impressionable and will be fully immersed when the new textbooks arrive. I find myself thinking I should send CARE packages of books and videos on black history. One of the kids isn't a reader but the videos might "take."

I also find myself thinking about boycotts. There's just been a push to boycott Arizona over their recent immigration laws. Haven't heard a peep about boycotting Texas, but...

One sector that won't boycott Texas anytime soon would be the textbook publishers. They have their own difficult calculus to deal with. Texas as the 800-pound gorilla may not be a sustainable model much longer, in this age of customizable textbooks, print-on-demand, and e-textbooks, but they're still in charge.

By contrast, the higher ed textbook model is essentially broken already-- the publishers are really pushing e-texts and even book rentals to keep the doors open. They have put their best (and, might I add, best-looking) sales reps on the job to sell their hardcover, high-cost wares to the profs. I don't think it's working, though it's an impressive last hurrah. This has to trickle down to K-12 soon and influence Texas, California and New York, which I believe are the next-largest gorillas. The latter two each have distinct K-12 standards and I hope they won't adopt Texas history just to please the publishers' desire for hardcover sales.

I've also been concerned about the general welfare of the upcoming generation of grads beyond my own family, and I can imagine a need for remedial U.S. history to join the remedial English and math that already plagues so many of our incoming college students.

Remediation is an add-on to my system's 4-year model, but it's destined to shrink, not grow. It's already been pushed to the community colleges at CUNY on the "other" coast. And California State (CSU) is picking up on that idea:

CSU trustees advance college readiness

Despite calls to maintain the status quo, the trustees of the California State University system approved this week the "Early Start" program to address remediation rates that often top 60% at various campuses, and hover near 47% in English and 37% in math system-wide.

Starting in 2012, prospective freshmen who fail the CSU proficiency placement exams must take CSU-sponsored courses to address the deficiency before arriving at college. CSU anticipates this program will reduce the amount of remediation the campuses must offer and help their new students arrive ready for college-level work...

This is touted as "wholesome and gentle" at the above link, but low-income (including white and minority) students are really going to feel the squeeze. From the K-12 side they will be deemed ready to move on if they pass the high-school exit exam and graduate. The CSU English and math placement exams will, in the percentages described above, say they're not ready for college.

The current solution for most students needing remediation is to admit them, and offer a combination of late summer and first semester remediation on campus. The "new and improved" solution is actually a very old one: Get any remediation done on your own before showing up. In principle, one can argue that 4-year colleges shouldn't do remediation. In reality, there's a gap and a need. Our community colleges are full now, so everyone needing remediation won't be able to get it, starting in 2012.

[NOTE: Several parts of this post were adapted from comments I posted on a thread at P6.]

Why I hate the Confederacy, Part V: Treating treason like it's a good idea

OK, I'm back, with a hat tip to a commenter at JJP who posted a link to the following Washington Post item today:

Despite previous governors' refusals, McDonnell issues Confederate history month proclamation

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has quietly declared April 2010 Confederate History Month, bringing back a designation in Virginia that his two Democratic predecessors -- Mark Warner and Tim Kaine -- refused to do.

This is literally "two fifths forward, one fifth back"... I like the wryness of one comment at WaPo that suggested Michael Steele cut the ribbon... (He'd charge for it, though.)

The full proclamation signed by McDonnell can be read here.

---

***

UPDATE 24 hours later:

The heat was on McDonnell, especially heat from major financial backer and known black woman Sheila Johnson (who took half of the BET fortune with her when she divorced Bob Johnson). Apparently, her support for McDonnell didn't include proclamations about Confederate history that don't mention slavery:

"The complete omission of slavery from an official government document, which purports to be a call for Virginians to 'understand' and 'study' their history, is both academically flawed and personally offensive." More here about Johnson's statement.

As of late afternoon on April 7, McDonnell has issued his own variation on the boilerplate "near-apology since I got caught anyway":

"The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed."

No, by all means don't just apologize.

Every now and then someone tries this one

Trent Franks (R-AZ, which may mean he deserves razzing) may or may not be a distant relation of former congressman Gary Franks (R-CT) who seems to have disappeared after being proudly black and against affirmative action during the 1990s. We'll need Skip Gates to check that out in his next PBS special.

What we know for sure about ol' Trent Franks (and what is it about people named Trent in Congress making racist remarks, anyway?) is this: He famously said a few months ago that President Obama is an "enemy of humanity." Oddly, that remark wasn't considered treasonous or worthy of FBI investigation (that we know of). But he is newly famous for injudiciously suggesting that black people were victims of a greater scourge than slavery.

That's been discussed at length elsewhere, and by some the remark is being dismissed as just a lame attempt at getting brownie points (ironically enough) from the pro-life crowd. I am concerned, though, that there is a never-ending nostalgia among, er, certain folks for the good old days when, uh, certain other folks knew their place, and they'll grasp at any straw (any straw...! You cannot be serious!) to keep the memory of those days alive. Every time you want to go all post-racial and do a national group hug, somebody serves up a gentle reminder as Franks did.

Of all the commentary, I like Keith Knight's editorial cartoon best (so far). He's in my faves section in the left menu, but here's his Trent Franks rejoinder. Sample above, full cartoon at the link.

Why I hate the Confederacy, Part III: Literacy tests

Hat tip to JJP for spotting this Rachel Maddow segment on the Tea Party's fervor for good old-fashioned Southern-American values such as "literacy tests."

The first half of the segment has a tolerable if brief intro to the concept of literacy tests and why they were in place from Jim Crow up through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It also shows Tom Tancredo (former Rep.-CO congressman) foaming at the mouth, or just slavering over fond memories of the old days when you didn't have to let minorities vote if you could selectively screen them out and keep white voters in.

Although elsewhere online this seems to be "Dump on Charles Ogletree Week," I am OK with his comments in the second half of the Maddow segment. Take 10% off the top for typical Maddow-interviewee banter and it's all right. He correctly states that Maddow's intro understated the real history. (She has to keep her show on the air, after all.)

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Why I hate the Confederacy, Part I: Slave Names

Oooh! ®

Then Whitten told some employees he was changing their Spanish first names. Whitten says it's a routine practice at his hotels to change first names of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce.

"It has nothing to do with racism. I'm not doing it for any reason other than for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don't know the Spanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything," Whitten says. [emphasis added --ProfGeo]

Hotel owner tells Hispanic workers to change names
By MELANIE DABOVICH, Associated Press Writer
Monday, October 26, 2009
(10-26) 05:57 PDT Taos, N.M. (AP) --

Larry Whitten marched into this northern New Mexico town in late July on a mission: resurrect a failing hotel.

The tough-talking former Marine immediately laid down some new rules. Among them, he forbade the Hispanic workers at the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel from speaking Spanish in his presence (he thought they'd be talking about him), and ordered some to Anglicize their names.

Earth to Tangipahoa Parish, LA: You need to let go

With hat tip to Julie Dermansky (jsdart) of Flickr, I found several "man on the street" video follow-ups to the Jim Crow flashback story of Keith Bardwell, the "Marryin' Sam" who, in 2009, wouldn't marry interracial couples.

This one is African-American Tangipahoa resident "John Brown":




There are a couple more by the same interviewer. Just to, uh, be complete (but not fair and balanced, thanks) I am including the following video comments of "John Green," a Ponchatoula resident. File under hoist on own petard:

Part 1:


Part 2 (has plenty of US history, Southern-style):

Louisiana: so much for my nice post-Katrina story

Hat tip to JJP for the first post I saw about this one, "Interracial couple denied marriage license in Louisiana. It's not 2009 everywhere." Apparently it's not even 1909 in some places.
Oooh! ®

Here's the original story from the Hammond (LA) Daily Star. My first glance at the comments there was enough...

JP refuses to marry couple

By Don Ellzey

A justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple last week because of concern for the children who might be born of that relationship.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward, also said it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

“I’m not a racist,” Bardwell said. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.”

Beth Humphrey, 30, said she and her boyfriend, Terence McKay, 32, both of Hammond, intend to consult the U.S. Justice Department about filing a discrimination complaint.