Rand Paul & the GOP: Black Friend Wanted

Big week in conservative outreach to the black community! 

Rand Paul went to the Harvard of historical black colleges -- Howard University -- to school a roomful of already educated black students on how President Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and that all of the NAACP's founders were Republicans. (Some were also white! And really light-skinned Negroes!!! And Ida B. Wells!!!!) Of course, all the students (and me and most black people who can read) already knew this.

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WTF: Brad Paisley and LL Cool J Go LL "Fool" J on "Accidental Racist"

First thought: No.

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Clutch Magazine: Choosing Safety Over Independence For Black Children

In my latest post for Clutch Magazine Online, I write at length about the efforts black parents go through to keep their children safe, even at the expense of their child developing better skills to be independent. While it may be easy to throw out advice and parenting rules and bring up all sorts of psychology studies to black parents, most are solely concerned with making sure their son or daughter doesn't become a statistic, freedom be damned.

Here's a snippet after the jump.

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The New Republic Breaks Down How the GOP Doubled-Down on Whiteness

The best retort critics could come up with was "you do it too."

That was the slam after The New Republic published its piece "Original Sin: Why the GOP is and will continue to be the party of white people." Conservatives quickly googled Wikipedia, and pointed out how lacking in a tan The New Republic's staff is, failing to grasp that The New Republic (while could benefit from diversity) is not one of two national political parties that takes turns in writing, executing and judging our laws.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the GOP might be a bit more important and powerful than a magazine. I can't think of the last time TNR did something that determined what military contracts we might purchase and how much interest the government will have in my womb year-to-year.

As Dylan Byers writes at Politico: "Should TNR diversify its offices? That's up to them. But for the GOP, it isn't a case of should or shouldn't. It's a case of must."

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Clutch Magazine: Condi Rice Glosses Over Important Part When She Talks Civil Rights

Former Secretary of State Condozeela Rice addressed the Republican National Convention Wednesday night in a speech that touched on everything from her foreign policy strengths (or weakness depending on who you ask), to social issues. But one of the issues she skiddladdled right by was the Civil Rights movement. Wanting to keep things in that "feel good" mode she spoke as if that leap from segregation to her becoming secretary of state was a glorious lap Americans ran together, rather than a knock down, drag out grudge match that people are still wielding cudgels about today. Never mind the fact that it took sending the National Guard to many states just to enforce the rule of law.

Jim Crow didn't die so much as he was a suicide bomber who tried to take as many folks with him before he finally blew up Alabama, and the scaring was so deep we're still dealing with the consequences today. To paraphrase the film "Magnolia," Rice may be through with the past, but the past isn't through with us.

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Clutch Magazine: Minister Fails Important Follow Bigots or Jesus Test in Mississippi

There's no fail like a minister fail, and that's what recently happened in Mississippi when a white minister decided to not marry a black couple at his church because a few members complained and said they'd come for his job. In a breath-taking case of CYA, Rev. Stan Weatherford chose his job over doing the right thing and that's what lead to me writing about it for Clutch Magazine Tuesday.

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Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje Used to Be A Skinhead And Other Terrifying Tales of Self-Loathing in the Diaspora

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje in London last week. Photograph: Andy Hall for the ObserverOn the UK Guardian Thursday is the amazing life story of Nigerian-born actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (famous for his roles in TV shows "Lost" and "OZ") who was raised by white foster parents in the United Kingdom and grew to have a profound hatred for other blacks, including himself. Agbaje struggled to reconcile the white world he was raised in (and his desire to look like the people who were his foster parents) with the expectations of his Nigerian parents. His real life story goes to some terrifying places as a black child convinces himself he's white when faced with abandonment, displacement and racial violence from other children, desperate for love and desperate to find a place in the only world he knew. 

I'm still just now reassembling the pieces of my head after it blew up while reading the profile.

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Right Wingers Try to Get Obama By Bringing Back Failed Rev. Wright Strategy Then Denounce Strategy

You know it's serious when they stick "Hussein" in there to hit that "exotic other" angle. Like he was Saddam's cousin or something.

The chickens have come home to roost! But since right wingers don't really understand what that phrase means, the chickens actually showed up at their coop talking about, "Really? Reverend Jeremiah Wright? Again? Are you going to bring back Glenn Beck's show again so he can do another 12-part series on Black Liberation Theology?"

Then they went cluck-cluck-cluck and pooped all over everything just like chickens do.

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Clutch Magazine: Ugh. Like, Don't Listen to This Derbyshire Guy, Mmkay?

This Monday for Clutch Magazine I went on one of my infamous long rants which can be summed up thusly as "Ugh, why is ANYONE taking this guy seriously." This time I'm addressing a cadre of internet commenters on Clutch who felt columnist John Derbyshire's racist rant was somehow written to "shed light" on the realities of black people, clearly ignoring that he was on some typical Bell Curve crap and doesn't give a flying fig about black people or our general safety. That's just some special mental jujitsu to read something obviously racist and to try and find something "truth-telling" and "positive" in it. Just because he quoted a kernel of true things about black-on-black crime, doesn't mean that he didn't twist them to fit his warped view of society.

This is one of those times where, even though he talked about black people, my dear black people, he did not write this for you. 

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