Clarion Content

Long time readers know, the Clarion Content always has our radar on for any signs of police malfeasance. This is because the police in many places continue to espouse an ethic that is less "protect and serve" and more "enforcement." This combined with our philosophical distrust for government and the terrible imbalance in the power dynamic between cops and citizens makes us hyper-alert.



One such story crossed our scopes this weekend and the peripherals stink to high heaven. There is as yet no evidence of police wrongdoing, just a lot of smoke and suspicions. Here is the lowdown.

Chavis Carter, a twenty-one year-old African-American male was in a car stopped by police in Jonesboro, Arkansas on suspicion of smoking marijuana.¹ He was with with two other people. Cops released both of the other folks and detained Carter after discovering weed on his person and that he had an arrest warrant in Mississippi.²

Police searched Carter twice to find the pot, but did not find a gun. A police car's videotape of the events shows Carter lead toward the patrol cars and then out of the frame. A police report says Carter was placed in the second patrol car without handcuffs, though the video doesn't show that.

As NPR notes, "the other officer searches the driver and remaining passenger, who then stand in front of the first patrol car. The officer who searched Carter asked them where the rest of the marijuana was because he found some on Carter. The driver and other passenger are handcuffed and led out of the frame, too. Eventually, they appear without handcuffs and the officers let them leave."

The patrol car's video cuts off at that point.

Police reports indicate that Carter subsequently had his hands cuffed behind his back and was stuffed into a Jonesboro Police crusier.

A second batch of police video begins as police light flickers on an empty stretch of road. A dog barks and a white SUV turns around a ways down the street.

Suddenly, an unseen man curses and shortly after he says, "He was breathing a second ago." An ambulance pulls up and someone, perhaps the same man, says, "I patted him down. I don't know where he had it hidden."

Later, someone instructs the others to leave everything as it is.

The video goes on to show an officer cordoning off the area with police tape. Two people can be seen looking on, but they leave after interacting briefly with an officer.

Carter is not shown in that video.

Carter was quite likely already dead. The cops story, he concealed a gun from them, despite being searched twice, and shot himself in the head in the back of the car, despite his hands being cuffed behind his back.³

CBS News reports, "Carter's family and others have questioned the police story, claiming that Carter was not suicidal."

CBS News also notes the autopsy report released after the incident indicated that Carter tested positive for methamphetamine use and a trace amounts of oxycodone.

Clearly there were a lot of issues in play. The police have a difficult and dangerous job. One has to wonder how much the psychology that places "enforcement" on a higher plane than "protect and serve" had to do with the death of this young man.

The cops later released a reenactment video that shows an officer being cuffed, then sitting in the back seat of a police cruiser, retrieving a fake gun from his pants, and bringing the barrel to his right temple.

In a society where Abner Louima was brutally sodomized with a stick while inside a Brooklyn police station, Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times by police while reaching for his wallet in a doorway in the Bronx, and Arthur McDuffie⁴ died of police-administered skull fractures at a hospital in Miami after a traffic stop showed him driving with a suspended license, we worry.

We do not have the answers, but we surely hope they come to light.


Notes
¹Can we decriminalize already?? How many more young men have to die or rot in prison over weed?!?

²Of course, need we even note, it was drug related...

³Did you know, despite being left-handed and handcuffed, Carter managed to shoot himself in the right temple?

⁴Five white cops, one black man. Ask Rodney King. And the list goes on and on. Read more examples here in the Baltimore-Sun.

Labels: cop stories, Ethically questionable, facing race, Politics

This Sunday, July 29^th, at 1pm, Paula Cole Jones, a management consultant and editor of "Encounters: Poems About Race, Ethnicity and Identity," will lead a workshop on "Race in the Life of Organizations," that will examine how the racial composition of organizations affects the culture of those institutions.



Ms. Jones is a former president of Diverse and Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries, and an independent antiracism consultant for the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

The workshop will be followed at 4pm by a reading of works from "Encounters" by Ms. Jones and others. The poetry reading is free and the workshop is $10, payable at the door, or by preregistering at http://allsoulsjuly29.eventbrite.com/

Ms. Jones, on the blog the InterConnection TipSheet, broke it down thusly, "Encounters can help people become aware of stories beyond their own. We tend not to know the intimate experiences of other people. These poets help us know what no one person can know. We encounter people, and sometimes we have very little knowledge of the depth and the kind of searing wounding that racialized society has done since its beginning. It helps us see what we’re up against if we’re going to heal ourselves. And heal the world."

The event will be held at the Walltown Children's Theater, #1226 Berkely Street, 27705, in Durham's Walltown neighborhood.

This event is sponsored and organized by All Souls Church Unitarian Universalist, Walltown, Durham, and co-sponsored by the Multicultural Committee of the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Garret Road, Durham.

Labels: Durham, facing race, Poet tree

The Clarion Content subscribes to the 538's electoral forecasts. They indicate President Obama has a good chance of retaining his throne regardless of what happens in Appalachia. Nobody seriously believes Obama is going to pick up any states in region that he did not win in 2008. But a lot of folks are wondering what his unpopularity there means and where it comes from; the Clarion Content finds this an interesting question, because it is our view that there is bit of a microcosm brewing in the Appalachian tempest that may be a harbinger of some white behaviors to come in a country heading toward a majority brown skinned peoples.

Here are a couple of takes that stir the surface of the question.

The Economist examines why people who identify as Democrats voted against Obama in droves in the Appalachian region's presidential primaries.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in the Atlantic, takes on the underlying dynamics behind trying to bracket off Obama's race from the "other" reasons he is opposed in Appalachia.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, facing race, Politics

Did you miss the Bull City Soul Revival 2012?

Even with all the heads up we gave you?

Lucky for you somebody made a highlight video of the event.

Be patient there is a minute long commercial at the start, but past that some amazing Durham documentary footage.

Labels: Durham, facing race, music, Pop Culture

The Bull City Soul Revival continues tonight with Dr. Bruce Bridges performance and lecture, "Signifying the Monkey, Toast and the Humor Tradition in African-American music."




The term “Signifying Monkey” comes from a folk trickster figure said to have originated during the slavery era. In the meta-narrative archetype, the monkey dupes a powerful lion by “signifying”: employing a speech pattern using connotative, contextual key words, the significance of which are accessible only to those who share unique cultural values and perspective. It is insider speech deliberately coded to be understood only by the intended audience.

In Henry Louis Gates’s highly influential book, The Signifying Monkey, he expands the term to refer not merely to a specific vernacular strategy, but also to a trope of double-voiced repetition and reversal that exemplifies a distinguishing property of African- American discourse.

Dr. Bridges breaks it all down tonight at the Stanford L. Warren branch of the Durham Public Library, #1201 Fayetteville Street, at 7pm. Admission is free.

Labels: Durham, facing race, humor, Pop Culture

Why the murders of Trayvon Martin and Eve Carson cannot be compared.

by: Alicia Towler





Today when I logged into my favorite news site, I saw the headline: “Poll: Trayvon Martin case divides U.S. by race, age, wealth, and politics.” The poll taken by the Christian Scientist Monitor reports that the country is split in its perceptions of the handling of the case and whether or not the crime was racially motivated.

When I logged into Facebook, I saw that yet another friend had shared this poorly reasoned blog post asking why people were so outraged at the shooting of Trayvon Martin but not the Eve Carson murder four years ago in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The author argues that Carson was similarly racially targeted for being “a rich, blue-eyed, blonde haired, white girl” when she was kidnapped, robbed, and killed.

There are many differences between the two cases, but here are the core issues that make the comparison irrelevant:

When Carson was murdered, police worked quickly to identify her, find her car, phone, laptop, and wallet, and develop leads to identify her killers. Within days, police SWAT teams had stormed houses in Durham looking for the two identified men, Atwater and Lovette, and shortly after, both men were arrested, charged with 1st Degree murder, and imprisoned to await trial.

When Martin was killed, police did not use his cellphone, which was at the scene, to try to identify him or canvass the neighborhood where they would have found Martin’s father. There was no need for a manhunt - the killer was at the scene when police arrived. George Zimmerman was questioned and released that evening, and Zimmerman returned home.

And there is the problem – we were able to move on from Carson’s death without marches or phone calls from the president because justice was served. In Martin’s case, without the attention of the national media, there is no indication that there would have been any further investigation into the murder. Zimmerman would have been able to quietly return to his neighborhood watch with his concealed weapons permit and would have remained a threat to any “suspicious” persons who crossed his path.

So to the blogger who asked why there was no outrage over Carson’s death - hundreds of students showed up for a vigil on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus just hours after Carson’s body was identified. There was so much interest in the case and so much tension in the area that Lovette's attorneys had to request that his trial be moved to another district because they didn't think they could find an impartial jury in Orange County. But this outrage was channeled into remembering the contributions Carson made to the community and finding constructive ways to keep her legacy alive. The community was able to move on because it had closure.

At the time Carson was murdered, I was living in the same neighborhood, I had recently graduated from the same university, and I, too, felt safe on the streets of Chapel Hill alone at 3am. It’s been four years, and the town has never been the same to me. Personally, I am angry that two cruel young men took my sense of safety along with Carson’s life.

In the past few weeks since the news of Martin’s murder caught fire in the national media, I have read articles from black parents whose sense of safety has also been taken. These parents fear that their children may be perceived as suspicious, as dangerous, as criminal because of the color of their skin, and worse yet, that if a neighborhood watch captain gunned down their unarmed child on a residential sidewalk in the middle of the night, no one would even care.

The unnerving issue in this case is that police were immediately willing to believe that Zimmerman needed to use deadly force against an unarmed teenager. The unanswered question is whether Zimmerman would have been released without charges or further investigation if the races of the two men had been reversed.

Labels: constitutional issues, cop stories, Ethically questionable, facing race, Guest columns

The president and founder of the Campaign for Change, Otis Lyons, is also the writer, director, producer and driving force behind, "Ridin' Wit' Joe Crack."

It is a one night engagement, for now, tomorrow night, at 7pm at the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC).

Our advice, Durham, do not miss this show.

This is the eighth year in production for "Ridin Wit' Joe Crack." Each year Lyons adds an element of showmanship and drama, raising the game and the excitement level. This year one hundred and twenty-five members of Hillside High School Marching Hornets band and dance team will be joining the cast of Joe Crack on-stage at the DPAC.

From what we have seen in rehearsals, Durham, do not miss this show...



Steve Collins is Joe Crack
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour


The Clarion Content is fond of the maxim, truth trumps fiction. It is a mantra that Otis Lyons has lived so empirically that he needs no reminders of its veracity. Lyons was a talented student according to peers and acquaintances, but he was rolling with the wrong crowd. His role models were leaders in the streets, not the classroom. Like the tale he tells in Joe Crack, Lyons was a gang member who made his living selling drugs.¹ As Joe notes, "Few live and survive life's ride to tell this story."



Otis Lyons aka Vegas Don (standing)
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour


That is the sad truth for Lyons old crew, as the man they affectionately call Vegas Don looks back from the far side of forty, by some estimates as many as two-thirds of his high school "crew" may already be gone. Twenty out of thirty young men, waylaid, doing life behind bars or dead. Lyons is doing all he can to prevent this outcome for others in our community, Durham.



Left to right---Orishio Williams, Otis Lyons, Steve Collins, Monte C.
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour


Lyons is not only spreading the message through the show itself, but literally picking up people along the way. For many members of Lyons cast, the story of Joe Crack is personal. Nick Alejandro, whose performance as Joe Crack's running mate, T-Money, sends shivers down the spine says, "This [role] touches me because its so real."

The mantra of truth trumping fiction rings authentically for cast members who have experienced much of the tale of life on the streets that Lyons and Joe Crack unfold.

Alejandro admits before the birth of his daughter Amaya, five, his life was headed down a dangerous path. He has been working with Otis Lyons and the Campaign for Change three years. Campaign for Change is Lyons non-profit organization dedicated to anti-gang, drug and crime education through youth empowerment, positive role modeling, goal-setting and outreach.

It is this same gripping reality that captures the minds of audience members young and old alike. Lyons narrative, his ability to show the truth of what is happening in the streets, opens eyes and moves hearts. The show incorporates live music, from modern hip-hop to R&B to Carmina Burana, spoken word, and a powerful personal message from a wheelchair bound former gang member², it is a raucous wall of sound and an explosion of energy, with highly stylized blocking and elaborate choreography.

The vignettes depict scenarios that many young people face: peer pressure, street life, relationships, family interactions, girlfriend/boyfriend dynamics. They are deliberately archetypal without sounding corny or shying away from the real.

Lyons is a demanding taskmaster of his cast, often sounding like the basketball coach³ he is.

Drilling and honing the tiniest details, he demands, "Why is he sweating?" looking at Joe Crack, played by Steve Collins, who is literally dripping with the intensity of his effort.

Lyons answers his own question, "Because he is giving 110%. Why isn't everyone else sweating?"

His voice reverberates and his actors dig deeper.

Lyons knows he is tough. It is because he is about the message. He states firmly and forthrightly, it is not about the song and dance for him. It is not the spotlight of the production that drives him. It is the message, "We are changing lives here. We can't play. We don't have the time."

The earnestness of his intensity mixed with his record of success breathes fire. His people want to run through walls for him, uncomplainingly repeating takes, working as their own stage crew humping pieces of set and props on and off stage again and again.

Steve Collins, a NCCU theater graduate, playing the lead, Joe Crack, has no problem declaring it is so, "I gave up everything for this. My car. My place. I am sleeping on a friend's couch. I am willing to forgo everything else."

Collins is a veteran of professional theater who has been working with Lyons for several years. The cast is stocked with talent. Older actors like Orishio Williams and Johnny Foster stride the stage like the streets to create a seamless illusion of the world where Joe Crack dwells. Younger performers like Moriah Williams, Fred Jones, and Rahim Royal aka the DeFacto Thezpian, shimmy and strut with confidence and feel. Williams plays a "street girl" like she owns her character's diary. Jones, as the comedic junkie, has touches of everything from Jimmy Walker to early Damon Wayans. Royal's body control and movement in a non-speaking role is mesmerizing.

It would be impossible not to highlight the powerful, ebullient, vibrant performance by Jakayla Hart as Keisha, Joe Crack's girlfriend. If there is one cast member whose passionate work rips at the fabric of your very being, it is Hart. She stands strong next to the virtuoso intensity of Collins's Joe Crack and Alejandro's T-Money. In a male dominated cast, about a male dominated milieu, Hart might not be able to save Joe Crack and T-Money from themselves, but the emotional strength and harmony of this triumvirate under Lyons direction will touch you.⁴



Jakayla Hart as Keisha
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

"Ridin' wit' Joe Crack's" message is powerful and inspirational.

Among the memorable lines from the production:

"Real G's don't hurt the people they love."

"Visiting a living corpse behind steel bars."

"The thin line between walking it, talking it and living it. Giving it or just pretending it's all right."



Steve Collins as Joe Crack and Jakayla Hart as Keisha
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour



Steve Collins as Joe Crack and Jakayla Hart as Keisha
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Durham, you do not want to miss this show.

Originally published January 5th, 2012.


Notes
¹Read Otis Lyons's Durham story of poverty, violence, high school, family, gangs, prison, and ultimately redemption here.

²Lyons often uses former gang members as speakers. In this case, it is a personal family friend, Mike Spain. Mr. Spain, a wheelchair bound casualty of gang violence, tells it like it is. He warns young audience members, "You don't have to end up this way. You have a choice. I have to have help to take my pants off. I might spend twelve hours or two days waiting for someone to come by my house to get me, to go anywhere."

³Word is Lyons, aka, Vegas Don coaches the Carolina Don's youth basketball team in his spare time.

⁴We defy you to go and not cry. This, too, is Durham. Too ignore the reality of it is a moral failure.

Labels: Durham, economics, facing race, Pop Culture

special to the Clarion Content from guest columnist Rebecca Yan...



“Community-rooted”, “volunteer-nourished” and “alive” are the words that Jenny Justice used to describe Durham Family Theatre in downtown Durham.

Justice co-founded the theatre in August 2010.

“In a city that is about 45 percent African-Americans, 45 percent White and 10 percent Hispanic, going forward without diversity would be to fail in our mission, and if you don't live your mission, then why do you exist?” Justice said.

The theater’s first show, “Alice! A Mad Musical Adventure,” which she co-wrote with Ryan Gunzel, included actors ranging from eight to sixty-eight years old.

“Everything we’ve done has affirmed our mission,” Justice said of the first play. “It was exactly as we had envisioned.”

The theater is performing, “As You Like It”, a play with a 50 percent African-American cast, but it did not start out that way.

The audition for the play consisted only of Caucasians.

“People think it’s a white people’s play,” said Justice, “but I wanted to broaden the possibilities and cross boundaries.”

Justice found her lead actors after attending a theater class at North Carolina Central University (NCCU).

“I think if you want people to be involved, you have to reach out to them,” Justice said. “So we made a policy that if our show doesn’t have diversity, we don’t go forward with it.”

The cast now includes not only students from NCCU, but also a teacher and high school students from Durham School of the Arts who are working as apprentices to Justice.

“Half of the cast is African-Americans and most of the cast hadn’t even read Shakespeare,” said Justice. “They downloaded films and scripts to their iPhones and worked every minute for two months.”

Sherena Siler, a senior theater and psychology major at NCCU, plays Celia, the emotional daughter of Duke Frederick and Rosalind’s dearest friend.

“I have done one Shakespeare before, Romeo and Juliet, in high school,” Siler said. “Being an aspiring actress, Shakespeare is something that you have to do once. It’s one-of-a-kind.”

“We’ve been working since the end of August, four nights a week with pretty intense rehearsals,” Siler said. “The vocabulary and dialogue is really not in this period and before you can act, you have to interpret first and it brings a level of difficulty, but Ms. Jenny really helped a lot with the dialogue. She’s a Shakespeare guru.”

All the hard work paid off during their opening night last Friday.

“It was really successful from the audience’s perspective,” Siler said. “They were able to understand and were laughing, which tells us that the dialogue was interpreted well.”

Tehila Rosenblatt-Farrell, fourteen, started taking acting lessons with Justice after seeing the theater’s first play, “Alice”, and performed in a major role in a play put on by the theater this summer.

“Jenny really cares about the students and takes time to figure out what they need to work on, “said Rosenblatt-Farrell.

Rosenblatt-Farrell learned more than acting skills from the classes.

“She became more confident,” said Tehila’s mother, Coco Rosenblatt-Farrell. “It wasn’t just intellectual learning. She got it in her bones, in her daily life, in her school life.”

Coco Rosenblatt-Farrell said that her daughter’s acting skills actually helped her once when she was preparing for a performance at friend’s house.

“I take singing lessons and I was going to be doing a performance at a friend’s home,” said Rosenblatt-Farrell. “Tehila came in and sat down and coached me to being on stage, the body language and postures to use, and she credited it all to the Durham Family Theatre.”

Justice said that the theater could not have started without the help of the community.

“We wouldn’t exists without them,” Justice said. “I didn’t start the space at all. This theater was started completely on community volunteers.”

The Hayti Heritage Center provided the stage for the current play while Trinity Presbyterian Church provided space for the theater’s summer camps.

“We’ve really been blessed,” Justice said. “It’s taken a lot of pavement pounding.”

“I’m a big believer in building community through volunteer efforts,” said Justice, “and I want this to be a place where families can create together.”

Durham Family Theatre has performances of the current show, “As You Like It” this Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. in St. Joseph’s Performance Hall at the Hayti Heritage Center.

Labels: Durham, facing race, Guest columns, Pop Culture

The Clarion Content favors school uniforms, we believe uniforms help improve focus and eliminate potential classroom distractions. However, we do not support draconian school dress codes, which are quite different than uniforms. These dress codes, rather than eliminate confusion and issues, exponentially increase them by setting up battles where youth, inherently, naturally, push the limits creating conflicts with parents, teachers and administrators.

It was during the debate on imposing a statewide (as a sidenote surely this is an issue to be addressed on the local, not the state level) dress code in Florida schools that we heard one of the most egregious cases of blame the victim we have ever heard.

In attempting to illustrate the need for a dress code with the case of an eleven year-old Texas girl who was gang-raped by more than a dozen men, Florida State Representative Kathleen Passidomo said, "There was an article about an eleven year-old girl who was gang-raped in Texas by eighteen young men because she was dressed like a twenty-one year-old prostitute. And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn’t happen to our students."

Wow!?! An eleven year-old kid, gang-raped by eighteen men and it was her fault because of how she was dressed?!? She had it coming? She wanted it? Eleven year-olds cannot consent to sex in this country. Period. We hope Representative Passidomo's constituents are calling for the resignation of this anti-feminist hater.

Read more here.

Labels: constitutional issues, cop stories, facing race, Politics

How's about this one for a story we had never heard previously...

Social reformer and legendary baseball great, Jackie Robinson, who famously broke the color-line in what were, until then, the all-white Major Leagues, was once court-martialed for refusing to move to the back of an Army bus at Fort Hood, Texas. What!?! He was acquitted on all charges, but that was surely a story the Clarion Content had never heard about Robinson.

He had also been turned away when he tried to play for the Army base baseball team at Ft. Riley, Kansas. He was told to report instead to "the colored team," which, of course, did not exist, a Jim Crow joke.

Ugly, but a story that bears repeating, as it only happened sixty years or so ago.

Found on Foreign Policy.com.

Labels: facing race

When our lead political editor was a Cold War kid, this picture consisted of three white males, every year, year, after year. The picture has changed for sure. Has America come as far down the road? Surveys of racism indicate that it has declined. The pollsters believe our attitudes toward women have changed, too. Do we believe them? Have moved as far forward as a society as the picture makes it look like we have?

Labels: 2008 presidential election, facing race, Politics, thought

There are many differences between the Obama presidency and the reign of George Bush the II. One of them is that if someone had done this during the Bush II presidency, they would have been water-boarded in the search for co-conspirators, then locked up in a foreign prison beyond the reach of the United States' Constitution.

According to the Los Angeles Times and numerous other sources, "The Secret Service launched an investigation into a Facebook poll asking if President Obama should be assassinated." The paper reported that "The question, "Should Obama be killed?" had received 730 responses since its posting on Saturday. The four possible answers: Yes. Maybe. If he cuts my healthcare. No."

Wow! Bush engendered a heckuva lot of hostility, be wethinks nobody was getting away with that without facing the wrath of Dick Cheney.

Read the whole story here.

Labels: facing race, Politics, Pop Culture

The smiling face of the South Carolina GOP

The ever moderate and broad minded Republicans of South Carolina are at it again. Republican activist Rusty DePass reprised one of the oldest racist lines in the book on his Facebook page, over the weekend. The story was after a gorilla escaped from a zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, DePass took the time out to change his Facebook status to, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors - probably harmless," referring to the First Lady. Must be a pleasure for Senator Lindsey Graham and his ilk to be associated with progressive thinkers like Mr. DePass. Though we must query, what's with the ape reference we thought these guys didn't believe in evolution?

Read more here at Politics Daily.

Labels: facing race, Politics

The Clarion Content has observed the controversy surrounding the cartoon published last week in the New York Post from afar. We will not be linking to it directly. Here in Durham we have been unable to formulate a coherent perspective on the situation. Luckily we have a guest columnist from Morris County, New Jersey with a short take. Take it away AnthemSled...

It seems to me the real story here is that the Post, full of sour grapes and slouching towards irrelevance, decided to print this [cartoon] knowing that they could bait their favorite punching bag Al Sharpton into criticizing them for something they could defend with a shrug, "We're not racist, just obtuse and unfunny!" meanwhile helping white males to feel like they are the ones being persecuted. I can't really boycott the Post, cause I never buy it anyway.

The tragedy here is that all the lefty vehemence against the Post right now is giving them exactly what they were looking for - publicity.

Links do not imply endorsement. Food for thought only...

Labels: facing race, Guest columns, media, Politics, Pop Culture, public protest

Wow, we guess the Republican National Committee (RNC) isn't too worried about the forces of political correctness. We make this bold statement on the heels of a candidate for chairman of the RNC's release of a song and video titled, "Barack, the Magic Negro." It is a parody of the old Peter, Paul and Mary song, "Puff, the Magic Dragon." It features such sensitive lyrics as, "Oh, Barack the Magic Negro, lives in D.C. The L.A. Times, they called him that 'cause he's black, but not authentically."

Wow!

It goes on, "The media sure loves this guy, a white interloper's dream!"

Guess the Republicans have written off the idea of getting any minority votes this century. Here is a link to the basis of their defense in the Drudge Report. It comes down to, well black commentators have made the accusation that Obama isn't black enough or he isn't from the hood, why can't we parody that? (Don Imus is spinning in his grave. Whaddya mean Imus isn't dead?)

Here is the link to the original LA Times piece that discussed president-elect Obama and the American archetype of the Magic Negro. It is a daring and provocative article written in 2007 during the Democratic presidential primary race by an African-American author. It speculates on the concept that support for Obama might have roots in collective white guilt. It uses much of the phraseology that the RNC parody song later picks up.

The Clarion Content thought Obama did a marvelous job of addressing these issues head on in his speech on race in Philadelphia during the campaign. It wasn't the safe or politically correct thing to do, making that speech. It was brave. It was honest. It took on issues rarely raised outside the privacy of American homes, like white anger with affirmative action, like black anger at institutionalized racism. It faced down the falsehood that the racial politics of both sides stoke, that progress is a zero sum game; my gain comes only via your loss. Bullshit, sayeth the president-elect and we believe.

The Clarion Content did wonder if Obama's demographic background helped him with the American electorate, but from a very different angle than the LA Times piece. We were more focused on whether Obama's mixed race and relative youth vibed with an American youth culture that pictures him looking a lot like the future of the country. Did his background make him seem extra cool, even hip? Especially faced off against an array of old white men and the permanently stodgy Hillary Clinton?

Here is a link to the "Barack, the Magic Negro" video.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, facing race, Politics

Some links to things we have been following, reading on, or just happened across recently...



Custom Made Cop Cars
Read here about the E7 from Carbon Motors. The first custom made for the cops, cop car. No modified, retrofitted Crown Victorias, Tauruses or Impalas here, no Mustangs either, this baby has more in common with the recently revived Knight Rider car or the Batmobile. As the company's CEO says, "You would never send a pickup truck to go put out a fire. Why would you send a family sedan to go take care of a homeland-security issue?"

Bill Richardson facing objections
High profile Chinese-American activists are opposing President-elect Barack Obama's nomination of Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary. Richardson was famously involved during his tenure as Bill Clinton's Energy Secretary with the high profile spying case against Taiwanese-American Wen Ho Lee. Lee worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and was investigated for passing nuclear secrets to China. He always denied the charges, and although the man wouldn't let him off completely, obliging him to plead guilty to one felony count of downloading sensitive material, the presiding judge at his trial said 99 percent of what he was accused of passing was in the public domain. Richardson led what felt like a witch hunt at the time. He fired Lee and was the first to publicly name Lee as being under suspicion of espionage. Richardson has, "acknowledged the government made "some mistakes" in the Lee case," read more here in the San Jose Mercury News, incidentally a brilliant newspaper.

Get your surgery done in India
This one we saw in the New York Time's Health section a while back, talk about globalization. The health insurance company Wellpoint is trying out a pilot project at Serigraph, a huge printing company in Wisconsin. The program offers insured members the option of flying to India for elective surgery, with no out-of-pocket medical costs and free travel for both the patient and a plus one. Serigraph also has offices in India and the Times says, many of its employees are familiar with India. It quotes Dr. Razia Hashmi, chief medical officer for national accounts for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which is affiliated with Wellpoint, "Knee surgery that costs $70,000 to $80,000 in the United States can be performed in India for $8,000 to $10,000, including follow-up care and rehabilitation. The quality is comparable to care provided in the United States, Dr. Hashmi said. All the physicians speak English, and patients can share their medical records and consult with a surgeon in India before making the trip." Read the original article here.

Labels: economics, facing race, nuclear issues, Politics, technology

Follow this link to a neat new Obama related ditty, "It's A New Day" by will.i.am. The song is well constructed, the video is even better.

This link is to eleven interesting reactions to Obama's election, published in Seattle's The Stranger, including why it is now weird to wear a shirt with Obama's mug on it.

Special thanks to the Durhamanians who sent this stuff our way.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, facing race, Politics, Pop Culture

Local NC free sheet the Independent Weekly featured a couple of Obama election reaction quotes that reiterated why the Clarion Content endorsed Obama.

The first is from a North Carolina delegate to the Democratic National Convention. His name is John Verdejo. He is a twenty-nine year-old, Raleigh native, from a single parent family. He was raised in the South Bronx until he was fourteen. Reacting to Obama's election Verdejo said, "[it] is going to force us to look at ourselves. We can no longer use the excuse of "because of my skin color, I can't be anything I want to be.""

The second is from a local mother of two girls, one only eight months old. The mom's name is Stacy Scott. She was quoted at a Durham, NC Obama victory rally that she attended with both kids as saying, "If he [Obama] wins tonight, if he can do this, then I can tell my kids tomorrow that anything is possible."

Labels: 2008 presidential election, facing race, Politics, quotes

Ever offensive, Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, patronizingly referred to President-elect Obama as "young, handsome and even tanned." He probably thought he could get away with it because he was in Russia after meeting with Vladimir Putin. Berlusconi has a long checkered history of inappropriate remarks, usually more likely to be sexist than racist, but prejudice is as prejudice does. Sadly, Obama will probably have to face down this kind of discrimination more than once in an anti-African American Europe. Italy and its Prime Minister may be an extreme example, but surely they are not alone. In addition to his morally questionable mindset, Berlusconi has a long history of shady financial deals (and possible organized crime links) in his past.

Labels: facing race, quotes

You may recall that last week on the main Clarion Content page we were discussing the virulent anger of some McCain-Palin supporters, and how race would factor in the presidential race. In a nuanced piece in this week's New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai addresses the issue head-on in an article titled, "Will Gun-Toting, Churchgoing White Guys Pull the Lever for Barack Obama?" He pulls out important threads, reminding readers that a very white Senator John Kerry lost the white male vote nationally by 25% according to exit polling. He notes that, "In three states — Texas, Indiana and North Carolina — more people voted in Democratic primaries this year than voted for Kerry on Election Day in 2004."

He concedes that, of course, Obama's priority is winning the election. However he carefully follows and artfully interviews the candidate on the issue of an election mandate. No more of Bush II's arrogant, divisive stance that, "50% plus exactly one vote empowers me to do whatever I want." He says that, "Obama’s central argument about American politics [is] this notion that the cultural fault line in the electorate can somehow be bridged by a generational change in leadership." Bai follows that up quoting Obama to the effect that this cultural fault line is exploited by a relentlessly profit driven media, "...there is an entire industry now, an entire apparatus, designed to perpetuate this cultural schism, and it’s powerful." Bai reminds us that this was an issue Obama wanted to fight as far back as the 2004 convention speech that introduced him to many folks, "when he talked about worshiping 'an awesome God in the blue states' and having 'gay friends in the red states.'" Obama is quoted saying that the cultural divide, the surrounding anger, and partisanship has been the impassable blockade that has prevented action on so many big issues, "if voters are similarly polarized and if they’re seeing two different realities, a Sean Hannity reality and a Keith Olbermann reality, then we’re not going to be able to get done the work we need to get done.” The Clarion agrees.

No matter who wins there are issues that have to be addressed. Among them: immigration, (which neither candidate is talking about,) the coming retirement of the boomers and the strain on Social Security and Medicare, (which McCain at least mentioned in the last debate) and farm subsidies and their brutal effect on the world's poorest. Some issues will always be partisan, some people will always disagree with any course of policy. The Clarion's hope, whichever candidate wins on November 4th, is that America will get a leader who wants to unite people, to raise them up and bring out their best selves, not a leader who uses his election to divide people and bring out their worst, smallest selves.

Let us abandon the myopia of, "I win, therefore, you lose."

Labels: 2008 presidential election, facing race, Politics, thought