Is the Republican Party in the USA Racist? Are the GOP — “The Grand Old Party” — kind to Blacks and other minorities, or is their entire purpose and strategy to demonize Blacks and win elections off their backs while only pretending to want and welcome Black skin into power?
As an avowed atheist — I prefer to worship art and nature — it may seem strange that I have a long list of religious friends. Of my many Mormon friends, I have discovered there are two topics that, when mentioned, will cause them to give you the stink eye and turn away from the conversation. If you press the matter, they will refer you to the LDS website for official commentary.
The first verboten topic is colloquially known as “The Mark of Cain” and it is an interesting and undeniable stain on the Mormon church where Blacks — men of African descent — were denied the priesthood because of their “mark”… their skin color.
Continue reading → The Mark of Cain and the Mountain Meadows Massacre
We all know there is nothing good for you under the sun. I wholly support the idea of not getting a suntan from the sun. I am, however, confused by the idea of “sunless tanning” where orange dye is applied to the skin in order to give a full and healthy glow. There’s even a “reality” TV show on the E! network called “Sunset Tan” where we get to watch feeble-minded people turn their skin orange for a thousand dollars a session.
Last night’s Democrat debate in Orangeburg, South Carolina revealed another weak stab against the Racism that still bleeds in the Deep South — and in urban cores across America — when Senator Barack Obama confirmed, when asked, that the Confederate Flag belonged in a museum and not flying above state buildings.
I ask you: Is the Confederate Flag a symbol of Racism in America, or is it merely a historical artifact that honors the struggle between being and bondage? This Confederate Battle Flag — owned by Confederate General JEB Stuart — recently sold at auction for $956,000.00 USD:
Continue reading → Is the Confederate Flag a Racist Semiotic?
Are you in favor of Capital Punishment?
If you do support state-sponsored killing, do you prefer hanging, firing squad, lethal injection or death by electric chair?
Is the current method of execution in America Racist and muddled in gender biased while being based on misinterpreted Laws of Moses using “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” as a rationale for killing?
There is a rather gruesome conversation going on in the state of Nebraska right now concerning their use of the electric chair as the sole method of capital punishment.
The argument isn’t over the issue of using the chair or not or if killing people is right or not.
The discussion concerns just how much electricity it takes to “humanely” kill someone:
Continue reading → Methods of Execution: Death Row Racism and Gender Bias
Today is the 60th anniversary when Jack Roosevelt Robinson — Jackie Robinson — became the first Black player to take the field in a Major League Baseball uniform. He played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Few know that in 1941 Jackie Robinson was the first athlete in the history of UCLA — of any color — to letter in four sports: Baseball, Football, Basketball and Track. There are perils when you are a pioneer and a barrier-breaker and — in the light of our Don Imus Conversations — we cannot deny how the past haunts us with a similar hatred that still chases us today as witnessed in this letter sent to Jackie Robinson on May 20, 1951:
In examining 
the Don Imus controversy over the last few days here in our Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos and Race and the American Humor Line articles — I now realize when one ponders on the core purpose of this Urban Semiotic blog — one cannot escape the hard reality that an “Urban Semiotic” has most powerfully come to mean in this blog the matter of Black skin and its place in The American Dream.
Time and again many of our most poignant and powerful articles published here have addressed Racial issues in America — and that necessary, and sometimes uncomfortable dialog — has been examined and perpetuated in conversations here that are as invigorating as they are enlightening and, for that, I thank you.
If you have a favorite Urban Semiotic article that deals with Race and The Color Line, I would appreciate it if you would provide the title and a link in your comments — along with your reason for picking the article(s) — so we can create a new thread of understanding, a new way forward, and a context for the history and the now that we have tried to covet and change when it comes to getting along with each other beneath the barriers of our skin.
Continue reading → The Lesson of Don Imus: Red is Thicker than Green
Yesterday’s post on Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos has sparked a secondary discussion in our moderated comments area that — because of bad language and cruel intent — cannot be published here. The topic those horrible comments are trying to enlighten — Where is the Humor Line Drawn When it Comes To Race in America? — deserves wider, but calmer, critical attention.
I love editorial cartoons and this is how some of them are framing the Imus issue this morning. Sometimes a public correction is felt deepest in the bones under the guise of humor:
The Rev. Al Sharpton wants Don Imus fired for Racist remarks Imus made on-the-air last week about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.
I agree with Al Sharpton even though I have written positively about Imus here in the past.
Sometimes there are things spoken that are so inconsiderate and so hurtful that no apology and no excuse can ever erase the psychological and physical damage done.
Imus, and his show Imus in the Morning, allegedly have a well-documented history of Racism and intolerance and he needs to immediately and permanently leave the airwaves:
Continue reading → Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos
I have always been appalled by the idea that if a person has “one drop”
of “Black” blood in them, then they are “Black.”
If you have “The Drop,” then no other ethnicity, skin color, or culture can trump that Black droplet.
I wonder where that notion of a single drop of blood making you Black was invented.
It seems impossible that idea came from the scientific community.
A single drop of pure water doesn’t make the ocean any less salty. Adding a single speck of sugar to cookie dough doesn’t make the cookie any sweeter.
If Racial identification by blood droplet isn’t chemical or scientific — then is it a cultural condemnation and a preservation of a social pecking order used to falsely mediate expectation?
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