Tag: Race

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Featured Racism

Trump’s Adviser Being Sued for Hiring Whites to Beat Up Blacks

Donald Trump was “elected” with the help of people like the KKK, who said that Trump represent the type of things they believed in. And since his “election,” Trump has put in power numerous people of questionable racial beliefs. Among these people is Trump’s new adviser, Reed Cordish, an executive of the Cordish Companies and being sued for hiring white men to beat up black people.

On Wednesday, Trump tapped Reed Cordish as assistant to the president for intergovernmental and technology initiatives. Cordish is an executive of the Cordish Companies, his family’s Baltimore-based real-estate business, and the president of Entertainment Concepts Investors, a subsidiary that owns and manages bars, restaurants, and clubs throughout the U.S.

ECI’s largest holdings are in Kansas City, Missouri, where Cordish partnered with Trump son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner on a building in the city’s Power and Light District.

But the Power and Light District, a half-million-square-foot downtown shopping and entertainment center, has a dark reputation among the city’s black community. Two separate lawsuits against the companies say the area is commonly referred to as the “Power and White District” for its owner’s alleged record of racial discrimination.

In 2014, Dante Combs and Adam Williams sued as the lead plaintiffs in a $5 million class-action racial-discrimination case. Cordish’s business won an initial ruling in a federal district court, but Combs and Williams are appealing the decision.

The two plaintiffs say they were beaten and harassed by white men employed by the Cordish company to “lighten up” its clubs as part of a long-running campaign to keep away black people.

Cordish is the latest Trump pick with an alleged racist past.

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Politics Racism racist Tea Party

It’s Not about Race? They Sang “Bye Bye Black Sheep” to Protest President Obama

People protest against presidents all the time, but never in the history of this country has anyone felt the need to sing “bye bye black sheep” at a protest… until now, for this particular president.

But rest assured that these same barnyard vocalists would insist that the color of the president’s skin had nothing to do with their musical selection.

A raucous crowd of supporters and protesters from both ends of the political spectrum showed up outside President Barack Obama’s appearance in Phoenix, Ariz. on Tuesday, with some of his detractors turning to racially charged attacks to express their opposition.

From the Arizona Republic:

Obama foes at one point sang, “Bye Bye Black Sheep,” a derogatory reference to the president’s skin color, while protesters like Deanne Bartram raised a sign saying, “Impeach the Half-White Muslim!”

The Republic reported that hundreds of people gathered outside Desert Vista High School as Obama unveiled a plan to overhaul the nation’s mortgage finance system. Some protesters came from Obama’s left, urging him to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline and take other actions on climate change. But a prevailing theme among many in the protest appeared to be issues of race. Some even suggested that Obama himself was to blame for racial tensions.

“We have gone back so many years,” Judy Burris told the Republic, arguing Obama had taken the nation back to pre-Civil Rights era levels of racism. “He’s divided all the races. I hate him for that.”

The irony.

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Bill O'Reilly Politics trayvon martin

Michael Eric Dyson Slams Bill O’Reilly’s Race Commentary – Video

On Sunday’s Melissa Harris Perry‘s show, a clip of Bill O’Reilly’s commentary was played where the Fox host thought he was doing the African-American community a favor by educating them on racial issues. Bill O’Reilly began his segment with an attitude – You want a conversation about race? You got one – Bill O’Reilly said, after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the Trayvon Martin case. O’Reilly spoke his words with a look of disgust on his face as if someone just interrupted him from watching his favorite show.

O’Reilly then went into his version of “the conversation,” criticizing blacks and black leaders, including President Obama for not making life in the hood any better. According to Mr. O’Reilly, race relations will be much more improved when Blacks pull themselves up by their bootstraps, be better parents and have better entertainment. “You can’t legislate good parenting or responsible entertainment,” Bill says.

No mention from the Fox host on what Whites should do in making race relations better in this country. That is where Mr. Dyson came in with his commentary. “You know,” Dyson said, “what’s interested to me… why is it when we say we want a conversation on race, you want to have a conversation on blackness?”

Watch the rest of Dyson’s commentary below.

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Politics

That’s It! You Wouldn’t Have Crazy Allen West To Kick Around Any More – Good Bye!

The favorite son of the Teaparty has decided to call it quits. Allen West has called his Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy, and he has congratulated Mr. Murphy on winning the Congress seat the two men fought for in the elections two weeks ago.

Politico reports

After two weeks of battle with St. Lucie County elections officials — and a recount of early votes that wound up extending Murphy’s lead — West acknowledged that he couldn’t surmount his 1,904-vote, or 0.58 percent, deficit. That difference was just outside the 0.5 percent threshold to automatically trigger a recount of all votes.
So the brash conservative opted to bow out rather than wage a long and costly court battle he was unlikely to win.

“For two weeks since Election Day, we have been working to ensure every vote is counted accurately and fairly. We have made progress towards that goal, thanks to the dedication of our supporters and their unrelenting efforts to protect the integrity of the democratic process,” West said in a statement to POLITICO. “While many questions remain unanswered, today I am announcing that I will take no further action to contest the outcome of this election.”

West congratulated Murphy, saying, “I pray he will serve his constituents with honor and integrity, and put the interests of our nation before his own.”

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Mitt Romney Politics racist Republican

The Race Race

It doesn’t come as a complete surprise, but this article from Yahoo! News about racial attitudes is a shameful comment about our so-called post-racial attitudes. Turns out they aren’t very post-anything.

Antebellum would be more accurate.

From the article:

In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

And there’s more. This week, Colin Powell officially endorsed Barack Obama for president with eloquence and reason. That, evidently, was not enough for former Bush Chief of Staff, New Hampshire Governor and present Romney staffer John Sununu. His take was that Powell endorsed Obama because he’s black. So is Powell.

In the small mind of a zealot, that makes sense. Not only is this offensive from a racial point-of-view, it is meant to reduce Colin Powell, a great military leader and public servant who actually enunciated a military doctrine that all presidents should honor, to someone who can’t think for himself and must endorse Obama for emotional reasons. He’s questioning Powell’s intelligence. Bad move.

The strategy of dividing the country by race has been a Republican staple since Richard Nixon used the Southern Strategy in his 1968 and 1972 campaigns. Ronald Reagan endorsed state’s rights very early in his 1980 campaign, and Sununu’s boss George H.W. Bush famously made Willie Horton the face of black males in 1988. Racism was muted, for the most part, in the election of 2008 (many Democrats feared a Bradley Effect where people say they’ll vote for a black candidate in a poll, but don’t vote for them in the actual election) as the economy and a near-Depression pushed it to the background. But racism is alive and well in 2012.

Fortunately, I believe, this might be the last national election where the Republican Party’s coalition of older southern and western white voters influences its policy choices. The country is changing demographically and the GOP had better nurture the few African-Americans in its ranks for 2014 and 2016 if it wants to remain competitive. I also expect Latinos like Marco Rubio to be the face of the party at the expense of Paul Ryan. Even young people might find a GOP message more reassuring if it wasn’t so anti-black, brown and gay.

Despite these attitudes, it does look like the United States is about to reelect its first African-American president, and that means something. Obama doesn’t betray a great deal of passion in his non-campaign face, but he desperately wants to win this election for symbolic and political reasons. A one-term presidency would embolden the racists to say that the US tried an African-American president and he failed. Two terms allows Obama to be an even more powerful symbol and leader, as he will now be president when the economy recovers, and the health care, Dodd-Frank and tax reform laws take hold.

In short, he will leave a legacy worthy of a great president.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest

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Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics

Black Vs Mormon – The Obama / Romney Dilemma

Jodi Kantor of The New York Times points out that a little history is about to happen in American politics. With President Barack Obama running for reelection as a Democratic and Mitt Romney of the Mormon faith running as a Republican “extremely Conservative” Republican, this would be the first time neither party’s candidate is a white Protestant.

” Both sides face the specter of longstanding prejudices that no ad, slogan or speech may be able to dispel. In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey conducted last week, 27 percent of those polled said that having a Mormon president raised concerns for them or someone they know, and 12 percent said the same for a black president. Some voters say outright that they will not vote for Mr. Obama because he is black; others make jokes about Mr. Romney belonging to a cult.”

“…After one successful campaign and three plus years in the White House, Mr. Obama and his team’s painful early internal debates on how to handle race have given way to more settled patterns. But Mr. Romney’s camp is divided on the question of how much he should speak about his personal faith. Some in his circles, including many Mormons, argue that his religion is nothing to hide and helps mitigate the caricature of him as a cruel capitalist. Mr. Romney’s political advisers, few of whom are Mormon, are more cautious, arguing that religion should be off the table.

“We as a society have decided to judge people on their actions and not based on where they go to church or the color of their skin,” said Stuart Stevens, Mr. Romney’s top strategist. “It’s true when you apply for a job, it’s true when you apply for a driver’s license and it should be true when you run for president.”

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Politics Racism

Hidden In Pete Hoekstra’s Web Ad, Race Was Injected

It’s your weekly dose of Republican racism.

By now, you’ve all probably heard about the Superbowl ad that Republican Pete Hoekstra ran in his home state of Michigan.

Hoekstra, running a campaign against Democratic senator Debbie Stabenow, used an ad of a “Chinese” actress, speaking broken english and invoking many of the stereotypes associated with the Chinese people. When asked about the obvious racial overtones in the ad, Hoekstra defended it, saying the ad contains nothing racial, and was meant to point out Mrs. Stabanie’s reckless spending.

“We knew we were taking an aggressive approach on this,” he said, “but this is a time where the people in Michigan and across the country are fed up with the spending, and we wanted to capture that frustration that they had with Washington, D.C. This ad … hits Debbie smack dab between the eyes on the issue where she is vulnerable with the voters of Michigan, and that is spending.”

Maybe Hoekstra is just ignorant to what is obvious to the rest of the nation, or maybe it was just poor judgment on his part. But thanks to the good folks over atTalking Points Memo, we now see that Hoekstra and his team knew the racial aspects of the ad, and they willingly contributed to it.

So what did Talking Points Memo find out?

It’s hidden in the programming language of the ad, a derogatory racial epithet used to describe Chinese people was found. The name “yellowgirl” was used to describe the “Chinese” actress Hoekstra used to deliver his message.

Coding from the ad.

img class=”yellowgirl” src=”https://s3…

Now again, Hoekstra could continue claiming this ad had nothing to do with race, but when you look at the coding in addition to the ad itself, it would seem that race is was the original intent, with messaging coming in second.

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Barack Obama Newt Gingrich Politics Racism South Carolina

Why South Carolina Would Not Vote For Barack Obama – Is It Racism?

On this day when we honor d Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we are sadly reminded of an unfortunate fact, that here in America, there are still those who will base their opinions on the color of one’s skin, rather than the content of their character.

Today on MSNBC, the question was asked if the people in South Carolina would vote for Mitt Romney or for Barack Obama. Mr. Jimmy Williams, himself  born in South Carolina, tried to answer the question and in his answer, the ugly truth was revealed.

I think that Romney could eek out a win… I think South Carolinians would do something interesting, I think they would hold their noses because they hate Barack Obama so much. And I’ll tell you why they don’t like Barack Obama, because he’s black.

Happy Martin Luther King’s Day people… and welcome to 2012!

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Barack Obama Politics South Carolina

Jon Huntsman Quits Race – Endorses Willard Romney Instead

The New York Times reports:

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Jon M. Huntsman Jr. informed his advisers on Sunday that he intends to drop out of the Republican presidential race, ending his candidacy a week before he had hoped to revive his campaign in the South Carolina primary.

Mr. Huntsman, who had struggled to live up to the soaring expectations of his candidacy, made plans to make an announcement as early as Monday. He had been set to participate in an evening debate in Myrtle Beach.

Matt David, campaign manager to Mr. Huntsman, confirmed the decision in an interview Sunday evening. “The governor and his family, at this point in the race, decided it was time for Republicans to rally around a candidate who could beat Barack Obama and turn around the economy,” Mr. David said. “That candidate is Gov. Mitt Romney.”

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