CNN is reporting that Walmart has decided to stop selling merchandize promoting the logo of the confederate flag.
“We never want to offend anyone with the products that we offer,” Walmart spokesman Brian Nick said. “We have taken steps to remove all items promoting the confederate flag from our assortment — whether in our stores or on our web site. We have a process in place to help lead us to the right decisions when it comes to the merchandise we sell. Still, at times, items make their way into our assortment improperly — this is one of those instances.”
The confederate flag, a symbol of racism and a favorite icon of white supremacy groups, has come under fire since Dylann Roof – one of its followers – went into a predominantly black Church in Charleston South Carolina and murdered nine people as they held a Bible study. South Carolina’s governor Nikki Haley has finally suggested removing the flag from certain government facilities in her state.
And he is running for President of the United States!
“This is the M-O of this administration,” the Republican presidential candidate said in an interview with Newsmax. “Any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message.”
The “accident” Perry was referring to is the intentional, calculated shooting of 9 black people in a South Carolina Church by a racist 21-year-old. The former Republican governor of Texas also chalked up the massacre to the need for more prescription drugs.
“Also, I think there is a real issue to be talked about,” Perry continued. “It seems to me, again without having all the details about this, that these individuals have been medicated and there may be a real issue in this country from the standpoint of these drugs and how they’re used.”
The leader of a white supremacist group that apparently influenced Dylann Roof, the suspect in the killing of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church last week, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns, including those of 2016 presidential contenders such as Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul, the New York Times reports.
Mr. Cruz, a Texas senator, said Sunday night that he would be returning about $8,500 in donations that he had received from the Texas donor, Earl Holt III, who lists himself as president of the Council of Conservative Citizens.
“We just learned this evening that Mr. Holt had contributed to the campaign,” a spokesman for the Cruz campaign said in an email to The New York Times. “We will be immediately refunding all those donations.”
Mr. Paul’s campaign said it planned to send $2,250 received from Mr. Holt to a victims’ fund set up in the wake of the shooting.
Earl Holt III, president of the Council of Conservative Citizens, in a 2013 image taken from the council’s website.
“RandPAC is donating the funds to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund to assist the victims families,” said Sergio Gor, a spokesman for the campaign. Mr. Holt made four separate donations to the Paul campaign last year, records show. The campaign could not confirm the total received but said that all the money it identified from the white supremacist leader would be donated to the fund.
The Guardian first reported on Mr. Holt’s donations to the Republican contenders.
Racial politics is sometimes like the weather. Everybody complains about it or has an opinion about it, but there’s precious little that we can seemingly do about it. Here we are again, having the same conversation about the same issue and the politicians are crafting their statements and the sociologists are telling us about how the Internet is the problem and the gun enthusiasts are telling us that it’s a mental health issue and there’s a debate about whether this is only a hate crime or is it home-grown terrorism. And then there’s that darned Confederate flag flying over Charleston. Which seems to be causing a bit of angst in the Republican Party.
The race is on and race is now a major part of it. This time, though, it feels different.
Nine African-Americans were killed in their church simply because they were African-Americans. Yes, I know that many people say that Walter Scott and Eric Garner and Michael Brown were killed because they were African-American, but they were also involved in activities that brought them attention from the law. The victims in Charleston were doing no such thing. They were being good citizens, were praying, were welcoming a stranger into their world as many other Americans would. Such a terrible tragedy.
What we know for sure is that the shooter did not like black people, and he said so explicitly. He grew up in a country that’s supposed to be post-racial with a more enlightened group of young people who did not experience the Civil Rights movement or institutional segregation. They’re supposed to be more welcoming, more open, more accepting. We now know about one of the exceptions to that interpretation.
But we are also at the beginning of a presidential election cycle and we need to measure the candidates and potential candidates against their words and actions. The initial reactions were sober and immediate, with quick condemnations and expressions of horror and disbelief. That sentiment soon turned to the issue of why Dylann Roof perpetrated this crime. Many on the right called it an attack on religion.Some said worse things. President Obama looked anguished and sad when he addressed the news media the day after the killings, and his inclusion of the gun issue showed that he truly regrets not being able to get any kind of meaningful background check legislation through the Congress.
I want to know specifically what the candidates plans are in reaction to this event. They all say that we need to bring the country together, but how will they do this? I understand that I might have to wait a good long time, but now is the moment when we need to push anyone who wants to occupy the Oval Office in 2017 for answers. Specific answers.
Right now we’re asking questions from our homes and places of worship. Next time, we’ll be in the streets.
Moments after it was known that Dylann Roof committed the horrendous act of murdering nine people in a South Carolina Church, people took to the internet to learn more about the racist 21-year-old. Facebook was naturally one avenue for information on the killer and before his Facebook profile was eventually taken down, one man found Roof’s profile and left the only comment on this picture of Dylann Roof:
The man who left the sole comment on Roof’s photo is Marcus Stanley, a 30-year-old who, according to his website, was also shot eight times in the past.
“White Appreciation Day” began as a joke among the staff of the Colorado barbecue restaurant, Rubbin’ Buttz.
But owner Edgar Antillon told television station KUSA he decided to follow through with the idea and mark a day where white customers could enjoy a 10 percent discount.
“We have a whole month for Black History Month, we have a whole month for Hispanic Heritage Month, so we figured the least we could do was offer one day to appreciate white Americans,” Antillon told KUSA. The station said the owner is Hispanic and that his parents were from Mexico.
“White Appreciation Day, June 11,” a sign read outside the shop in footage shot by the station. “Because all Americans should be celebrated.”
Jennifer McPherson of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies told KUSA that anyone who felt discriminated against by the discount for white people would have recourse to file a complaint.
Rubbin’ Buttz has apparently already taken heat for the day, and addressed it on the restaurant’s Facebook page on Friday.
“Although we’ve had overwhelming support for it, there are a few who are filled with hate and/or misunderstanding,” the post read. “People full of hate and negativity want your attention, don’t give it to them.”
His goal was to give a review of the new Jay Z music streaming app, but then the news broke about another black man gunned down by another police officer, and in this edition of The Illipsis, Jay Smooth shared his thoughts on the killing of the 50 year old African American, Walter L. Scott.
“Why do they never try to save them?” Smooth asked.
If a place was going to do it, it had to be Texas. But hold on to your horses, don’t go riding off into the sunset just yet. It seems these signs, displayed on various stores and restaurants, are the work of a few racist people and not sanctioned by the city of Austin ot anyone in power – at least that’s what Austin’s mayor, Steve Adler, said.
“This is an appalling and offensive display of ignorance in our city,” Adler said in a statement. “Austin condemns this type of hurtful behavior. Our city is a place where respect for all people is a part of our spirit and soul. We will keep it that way.”
Bearing a striking resemblance to the official logo of the Texas capital, the stickers demands that only a “maximum of five colored customers” are allowed in the store at any given time with exception given of course, to “colored” store employees. And below that, the words… “sponsored by the City of Austin” is proudly displayed.
At least eight stores showed the sticker. They have since took those stickers down.
Of course we have a black president and yes, it is 2015. But there are those who are intent on keeping racism alive and they are doing their best to pass their horrid thinking on to the next generation.
Parents of a young girl have spoken of their shock after their daughter received a letter from her classmate telling her she might not be allowed to attend her birthday sleepover because she is black.
A ten-year-old girl wrote the note for her friend Harmony Jones at a school in Memphis, Tennessee, after she was invited to her birthday celebrations, WREG reports.
The letter read: “Maybe I will not be able to go to your birthday sleepover because my dad will not let me go because you are black. Not trying to be races [sic], but my mom let me no [sic] Happy birthday!’
Local civil rights activist Lasimba Gray described the note as “regrettable” but said he hoped it could be used as a learning curve.
“Fifty-two years since the Dr. King ‘I have a dream speech,’ you would think that the basis for racism would disappear, but evidently it is being perpetuated by those who teach it,” he added.
Harmony’s father Christopher Jones said he was shocked that his daughter received a letter of this nature. “It angered me a little bit,” he told the network. “It hurt me that my 10-year-old girl had to deal with this, and I myself never thought I would have to deal with this.”
“I guess as parents we have to be more aware and more conscious of what we teach our children.”
The girl’s family has not commented on the letter.
When he appeared on Jimmy Kimmel last week, the President spoke about a number of important issues facing this country today. One of those issues was Ferguson, the recent DOJ report detailing the unbelievable level of racism by the Ferguson Police Department, and the rights of the community to protests and the rights of the police officers to do their job.
“I think that what had been happening in Ferguson was oppressive and objectionable, and was worthy of protest,” the President said. “But there was no excuse for criminal acts… In the same way that you can’t generalize about police officers who do an extraordinarily tough job, overwhelmingly they do it professionally, you can’t generalize about protesters who, it turns out, had some very legitimate grievances.”
You just can’t keep this racist out of the lime-light. Just days after attacking President Obama for “not loving America,” the former mayor of New York went home to Fox News and this time, attacked a 17-year-old dead black teenager named, Mike Brown.
Of course Mike is not around to defend himself and we will never get his side of the story, but that is not necessary for the likes of Rudy Giuliani who repeated the talking points of Officer Darren Wilson, the man who killed Mike Brown. And although it is a known fact that Darren Wilson did not have any information about Brown robbing a convenience store, Giuliani used this insignificant detail to justify killing the teenager.
“A man committed a robbery, attempted to assault a police officer, and the police officer, to save his life, shot him,” Giuliani told Fox News on Thursday. “The police officer did his duty. The police officer should be commended for what he did. He did exactly what you should do.”
He is no longer working at Univision, but a spot may have just opened up on Fox News. This is the people Fox adores!
Rodner Figueroa, the host of “El Gordo Y la Flaca,” said in Spanish, “You know Michelle Obama looks like she is of the cast of “The Planet Of The Apes” as he pointed to a photo of Obama. Figueroa made the comment in a segment about makeup artist Paolo Ballesteros.
Figueroa was quickly fired in response, according to NBC News.
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