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17 December 2002

Washington Times Editor is Member of Racist Organization

Washington Times Assistant National Editor Robert Stacy McCain is a member of the League of the South, a neo-confederacy group that says it's not racist, but many others would disagree with that assertion. The Southern Law Poverty Center has added them to their list of hate groups, but you can judge for yourself just from these excerpts regarding Trent Lott from the founder/president of this organization:

The uproar surrounding the recent comments by Mississippi Senator (and former Ole Miss cheerleader) Trent Lott provides us an opportunity to examine the phenomenon known as Cultural Marxism (C.M.), more commonly called “Political Correctness” (P.C.).

How does one determine if he (he/she?) is a Cultural Marxist? Here are a few examples

1. First, in keeping with the topic of Senator (and former Ole Miss cheerleader) Lott’s praise for Strom Thurmond’s 1948 Dixiecrat Presidential bid, you believe that state-enforced segregation is “immoral” (to use President G. W. Bush’s term) while holding that state-enforced integration is OK.

14. And here we go, all you Confederate Southrons-Slavery is an institution ordained of God and regulated by His Word! It is not therefore “evil!”

Mr. McCain has plastered his racist ramblings all over the net - from his columns attacking Abraham Lincoln as a war criminal for his "assault on the Confederacy" to recently on freerepublic.com, McCain said he agreed with Gordon Baum, CEO of the CCC, when he says "God Bless Trent Lott.". The "freepers" (or McCain himself) have removed the posts, but not before they were captured by some savvy bloggers.
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16 December 2002

1780 Madison Avenue Substation

Before the internet and world wide web became ubiquitous and transformed into a giant commercial abyss serving soliciation and mindless time killing aids, I thought of the net as being a power of liberation. A tool of mass communication that enabled every online denizen to showcase wonderous creativity, share cerebral thoughts, and tap into one giant master mind that would power all the globe into a golden age unseen in any past nation's history. It's not the first time I've been tagged a idyllic dreamer, detached from the vulgar reality of common life form behavoir. And alas, a quick glance at that Lycos 50 most entered search queries shows the online realm inundated with hunts for such weighty topics as 'Tatoos', 'Britney Spears', 'Pamela Anderson' and the file sharing program du jour to enable limitless copying of music and video. I guess I put too much hope in humanity.

But every now and then, I stumble across a story that encapsulates my early vision of the potential power of this new medium. Here is the latest such example: Brian Taylor and his brother, who live in a crack-infested Baltimore neighborhood, are using the world wide web to improve their lot. They've turned their old carriage house into a police substation at no cost to the taxpayers and set up a weblog at www.rebuildingmadison.info to share their fears, frustrations and victories.

A project history is chronicled, along with photos of the substation and miscreants lurking nearby and log entries like this one:

He told Vaughn his is not the worst slum in town. Maybe not, but it is bad in every conceivable way. He has violated a consent decree ... yet again. His tenants live in squalor. By night, his building is the McDonalds of crack. He visits his building to collect rent and pretend to work on it during business days when I would think he'd be at his desk or working at his job as a sanitation department supervisor with the city. He owes nearly $11,000 in back taxes and fines to the city. Who does he know?

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11 December 2002

Is Trent Lott a Racist?

Senate Republican leader Trent Lott has been busy backpedaling the last several days over an absolutely egregious statement he made at Strom Thurmond's birthday bash. I don't know what the official apology count is up to now, and I'm guessing that we're going to see more damage control and spin from the Lott camp in the coming days. For those of you who haven't heard what was said, here are the remarks that have ignited calls of racism:

I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.

In case you're a little light on the historical record of 1948 presidential election politics, allow me to fill in the blanks or correct the myopic meanderings of right wing talk show callers and hosts. The States Rights Democratic Party split from the Democratic party not because of economic policy or abortion or school choice, but strictly due to their belief in "segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race". Segregation forever was the campaign cry! If you doubt my words, check out their adopted platform.

Lott now says his statements were a "mistake of the head and not of the heart". But what the hell does that mean? I read it to say that his heart screams "Segregation Forever" but his head says that it wasn't politically expedient to verbalize it. Or does it mean he yearns for the Jim Crow era, but thinks he ought not ponder it anymore?

Even taken alone, such a repulsive remark renders Lott a racist in my view, but this is not an isolated incident that illustrates his bigotry. Consider the following points:
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3 December 2002

Forgotten Teachings of Martin Luther King

This morning, on the KFYI Barry Young show, the host postulated that anyone defending Affirmative Action policies could only put forth "transparent" arguments that were nothing but examples of reverse racism. Recently, the right wing think tanks and their scions have propagated the notion that Martin Luther King would be aghast over such programs like Affirmative Action or "racial quotas" as detractors like to frame them. But, as is plainly evident to anyone who has read the speeches and writings of Dr. King, that assertion is just pure nonsense.

Here are some excerpts and quotes from Dr. King [1] on the matter:

Reporter: "Do you feel it's fair to request a multi-billion dollar program of preferential treatment for the Negro, or any other minority?"

Dr. King: "I do indeed...Within common law, we have ample precedents for special compensatory programs. ... America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of veterans...They could negotiate loans from banks to launch businesses. They could receive special points to place them ahead in competition for civil service jobs...There was no appreciable resentment of the preferential treatment being given to the special group." -- (Interview,1965, p.367)

"A section of the white population, perceiving Negro pressure for change, misconstrues it as a demand for privileges...The ensuing white backlash intimidates government officials who are already too timorous." -- "Negroes Are Not Moving Too Fast" (p.177)

"Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic." -- 1964, Why We Can't Wait.

"A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro..." quoted by Stephen B.Oates, Let The Trumpet Sound.

"Anatole France once said: 'The law in its majestic equality forbids all men to sleep under benches -- the rich as well as the poor...France's sardonic jest expresses a bitter truth. Despite new laws, little has changed...The Negro is still the poorest American -- walled in by color and poverty. The law pronounces him equal -- abstractly -- but his conditions of life are still far from equal." -- "Negroes Are Not Moving Too Fast", 1964 (p. 176-177).

"Although the terms desegregation and integration are used interchangeably, there is a great deal of difference between the two...Desegregation simply removes legal and social prohibitions. Integration is creative...more profound and far reaching than desegregation...

"Integration...is the welcome participation of Negroes into the total range of human activities...Desegregation is not enough; integration alone is consonant with our national purpose." -- "Ethical Demands for Integration" ,1963, (p.118).

"Something positive must be done... In 1863 the Negro was told that he was free as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation. But he was not given any land to make that freedom meaningful. And the irony of it all is that at the same time the nation failed to do anything for the black man -- through an act of Congress it was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and Midwest -- which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor...Not only that, it provided agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, as the years unfolded it provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize their farms. And to this day thousands of these very persons are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies every year not to farm.

"And these are so often the very people who tell Negroes that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps...

"We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice." -- "Remaining Awake," 1968 (271).

"White Americans must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change of the status quo...This is a multi-racial nation where all groups are dependent on each other...There is no separate white path to power and fulfillment, short of social disaster, that does not share power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity." -- Where Do We go From Here, 1967 (588-)

"The problem of race remains America's greatest moral dilemma. When one considers the impact it has upon the nation, its resolution might well determine our destiny. ..The price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negro is the price of its own destruction." -- "Ethical Demands of Integration," 1963 (p.117).

Is racial injustice no longer an issue? Has the problem been rectified and not relevant in today's United States of America? Not according to these indicators [2]:

Last month a national study found drastic disparities in the way white and minority suspects were treated in the criminal justice system when both were charged with comparable crimes. For example, among young people who have not been sent to a juvenile prison before, blacks are more than six times as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison. The study found that among young people without a record charged with violent crime, black teenagers are nine times more likely than whites to be sentenced to prison. For drug offenses, black youths are 48 times more likely than whites to be sentenced to prison, according to the study. Researchers for "And Justice For Some" also found that while African-American youth are just 15 percent of the population under 18, they account for 40 percent of the youths sent to adult courts and 58 percent of the youths sent to adult prison. Written under the auspices of the Youth Law Center, a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy group, the study was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and six of the nation's leading foundations, including the Rockefeller, Ford and MacArthur Foundations as well as the Center on Crime, Communities and Culture of George Soros's Open Society Institute

OK, those statistics are indicting only of the criminal justice system, not the economic system which effects all Americans on a day-to-day basis. So, what is the deal there? Gains have been made, but still, the unemployment rate for black people is double what it is for white people and the ratio of black-to-white median income is 64% [3]. Those numbers show that there's still a bit of economic disparity, though things have improved since the Civil Rights era.