Friday, September 01, 2006

As Communities of Color Grow - Katrina and 'Macaca'-Type Racism Intensify

SF Mission District Mural - 24th Street near Capp St.
One indispensable resource I use as a teacher and School Board Member/public policy maker is the Applied Research Center's publication Color Lines. They have recently upgraded their website with a brand new blog called Race Wire. [Thanks to the ever provacative Bitch Lab for alerting us all]
See ARC's 'racial cut' on the demographic analysis of the recent Census Data released to the mainstream media earlier in August - the Explosive Growth in Communities of Color.
I really enjoyed ARC staffer and educational justice leader Tammy Johnson's great review of Spike Lee's documentary on New Orleans/Katrina and the systematic racial and class oppression of the people of the gulf coast region.
But what caught my eye and brought out my gut-level disgust was Daily Kos/Liars and Crooks post: Bigotry: Out in the Open by mcjoan
Crooks & Liars has a very discouraging run-down of recent events, guest-posted by Steve Benen:

Sen. George Allen's (R-Va.) "macaca" scandal.
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) joked about how a "nice little Guatemalan man" fixing up his house might be an illegal immigrant.
A leading congressional candidate in Florida said he knows, "from my own experience, that blacks are not the greatest swimmers, and may not even know how to swim."
Two congressional candidates and a gubernatorial candidate believe people who "appear" to be Arab or Muslim should be subjected
to racial profiling
at airports.

Pat Buchanan's new book argues for "an immediate moratorium on all immigration," in order to preserve the dominance of the white race in America.
And in one you may not have heard about, a Baptist church in Mississippi voted out a 12-year-old boy who "asked Jesus to live in his heart" -- because the child is biracial and church members didn't want the black side of his family attending with him.


Lastly, congratulations to Rinku Sen who has just been chosen as new head of the 25 year old Applied Research Center, replacing founding director Gary Delgado, a longtime social justice movement leader and founder of the ACORN and the Center for Third World Organizing in Oakland. Go Rinku!

1 comment:

KC said...

It is discouraging that these idiots are still in office and on the air being pigs. But, at least in the case of Allen, the ballot may extract the final revenge. Allen was quoted yesterday saying that only the media cares about his macada moment, but the polls suggest he is dead wrong.

Then again, I'm just a hopeless optimist.