REMEMBERING JUNE POINTER OF THE POINTER SISTERS

Feeling Rebloggy

"The youngest of the four Pointer Sisters is June  

Born: November 30, 1953
Died: April 11, 2006

She and her sister Bonnie originally sang as a duo, calling themselves Pointers-A Pair (see group bio).

 

June, known by some fans as the energetic rock & roller, has stepped out on her own many times, even posing in Playboy magazine. In 1983 she contributed the song "Little Boy Sweet" to the soundtrack for National Lampoon's Vacation, starring Chevy Chase. That same year, her solo recording career debuted with the release of the album Baby Sister on Planet Records. The album was co-produced by Richard Perry and Norman Whitfield. The single "Ready for Some Action" reached the Top 30 on the R&B charts. Another uptempo song from the album "New Love, True Love" was written by June with sister Anita and Trevor Lawrence. "I'm Ready for Love," written by Holland-Dozier-Holland was included on The Very Best of The Pointer Sisters, released on RCA in 1996..."

~The Pointer Sisters Website

Read More 

http://www.thepointersisters.com/june-pointer

HE'S SO SHY 

REMEMBERING DAISY BATES

Feeling Rebloggy

DAISY BATES 
ONE OF MANY 
SELF-MADE FEMALE CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS

Born: November 11, 1914, Huttig, AR

Died: November 4, 1999, Little Rock, AR

President of NAACP Arkansas Branch and the co-owner of a newspaper, Daisy Bates was a on the front lines in the fight against segregation.

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court, via Brown v Board of Education,  declared that school segregation unconstitutional in the United States. That legal change on paper had to be challenged in reality. And Daisy Bates was one of those that led the charge.

Little Rock Nine

"In 1957, she helped nine African American students to become the first to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, who became known as the Little Rock Nine. The group first tried to go to the school on September 4.

A group of angry whites jeered at them as they arrived. The governor, Orval Faubus, opposed school integration and sent members of the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from entering the school...

Bates’ home became the headquarters for the battle to integrate Central High School and she served as a personal advocate and supporter to the students. President Dwight D. Eisenhower became involved in the conflict and ordered federal troops to go to Little Rock to uphold the law and protect the Little Rock Nine."

Eventually Bates and The Little Rock Nine Prevailed.

http://www.biography.com/people/daisy-bates-206524#little-rock-nine

Daisy put the "fem" in "feminist" before the identity of feminist was recognized. 
Learn More About Her.   


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14563865"

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/daisy-bates-first-lady-of-little-rock/

https://zinnedproject.org/materials/daisy-bates-first-lady-of-little-rock/

KANYE NEEDS ALL HIS STUFF PUT IN A BOX TO THE LEFT

AND HE IS NOT ALONE

In case you called in sick for few weeks and missed it:

Kanye West has been babbling about how Jay Z and Beyonce's child can't play with his children anymore  -- in addition to talking smack about a BeyHive protected Beyonce who won some award he thought he should have won 

Not long after the election, Kanye called out the black audience members from the stage and said something to the effect of 'If I woulda voted I would'a voted for Trump' and told them to stop talking about racism so much. 

Black audience members handed him his head. (boo-ed him)

Kanye flounced off stage after only 3 songs   

I'm assuming promoters/show runners have to refund the audience's money

THEN Kanye decides he won't do the rest of his tour 

I'm assuming promoters/tour runners have to refund a lot more money  

All of a sudden Kanye's sick with "exhaustion" and cancel's his tour -- It's been reported that he was committed involuntarily  

Me? I'm not going for this. I tend to think his family and lawyers started thinking Kanye looked "exhausted" and needed a rest in a mental institution just about the time they figured out there was a possibility of their meal ticket being sued by everybody who sponsored his tour. 

I mean, how many millions just went up in smoke for Kanye new-ish extended family and his managers because he canceled a tour based on being booed. And all because he can't stop seeing himself as a black unicorn every single time he passes a mirror?

It's true that Kanye could be having a real nervous breakdown --since he's not wrapped too tight to begin with. But I think this breakdown is legally convenient coming on the heels of hissy fit that began on a stage and lasted long enough for him to cancel an entire tour. 

More than that, I don't know that extreme arrogance and a dedication to "I'm sooo different" and I'm  going to prove it just by saying crap that's different than most black folks with common sense actually qualifies as "mental illness." 

I dated a guy who lived to be different. LIVED. FOR. IT.  And it sort of felt like it should be put in the  "mental illness" box. but I don't think it actually is -- dysfunctional or not.

Ultimately though, what one believes about Kanye (Azealia or Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) doesn't matter though. The solution is the same. 

To the left, to the left

To the left, to the left (mmmmmm)

To the left, to the left

Everything you own in the box to the left

In the closet that's my stuff

Yes, if I bought it, please don't touch

And keep talking that mess that's fine

But could you walk and talk at the same time

Standing in the front yard

Tellin' me, how I'm such a fool

Talkin' 'bout, I'll never ever find a man like you

You got me twisted

You must not know about me, 

you must not know about me...

Don't you ever for a second get to thinking

You're irreplaceable

So go ahead and get gone...

Beyonce's Song

Irreplaceable

In case you can't tell, let me inform you that I am not a fan of Kanye West. I haven't been one for a long time. In fact, I'm pretty anti-Kanye.

But I was a big fan for a minute or two when he first started. During a critical moment of the Hurricane Katrina Crisis, he said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." I fell out of my chair laughing over his audacity. A lot of people did. It was an angry laughter though. So many black people were dead and displaced and our government, led by George Bush, was barely moving to help them. 

Do you remember when Kanye said that? Do you remember the days of Hurricane Katrina? (video below)

Black intellectuals had been using million dollar words to say the same thing about Bush Jr not caring on various news shows when he did not respond to Hurricane Katrina with any urgency seemingly because black neighborhoods were hit hardest. Kanye came right out and said Black people are "being called looters" while white people are said to be "looking for food" when they broke into abandoned grocery stores.  

Then Kanye followed up with, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." 

My entire family from coast to coast screamed at our televisions in support. My phone was ringing off the hook. We were overjoyed and laughing because he said it but also angry that it had to be said.  

Video from back when Kanye sounded like 

he was a little "off" but sounded as if he had sense.

"George Bush doesn't care about black people."

But that was before Kanye's Mama died. He ain't been right since.

For a long time I made the excuse he was in mourning when he said something stupid and/or offensive. Then I started making the excuse that he was just young. Then somebody told me he was closing in on 40 years old (a few years back) and I had to admit that it wasn't youth that informed his arrogance and ridiculousness.

I had to admit he's just an arrogant @$$, mourning or not.

By the time Kanye said a couple of things about black and brown women, I was done with him. So I may have overreact a bit when he said "Me and a lot of my friends like...mutts"  (translation: light-skinned, mix raced women)

I started calling him "Coonye" in my head a long time ago.

Now Kanye is saying he would have voted for Mean Tangerine if he had voted. And he said this ignorant crap after MT has assigned a white nationalist to be his chief strategist.

For those that think Kanye is intelligent, let me remind you that for every quasi-wise thing Kanye says, he says 6 idiotic things. And if a person talks long enough that person will eventually say something that sounds profound. It's a matter of time. So I'm not impressed with Kanye's silly @$$ --even without the colorism b.s. he uttered to cover up the fact that he uses a paper bag test to decide who he's going to date and/or marry.

I'm just as unimpressed Azealia Banks' and her attempts to stay relevant by saying outrageous things. But what's interesting here is how Banks gets called everything but a child of gawd when she says anything off the wall. She got dragged, and rightfully so, when she said she supports Trump, a white man that would annihilate all people of color with a snap of a finger if he could.

The difference between Azealia and Kanye get treated is obvious. 

The same Kanye West, who surprises me by being able to walk and chew gum at the same time since his mama died? For him people cry. For him people mourn the loss of his mind and the strain he must be under. For him people skim through paragraphs of verbal mishmash to find a few sentences they can twist, pretzel-ize and generally reform into wisdom....even after he makes it plain he'd have supported Trump too.

Kanye gets cover.

Azealia gets the boot to the butt.

Blatant racism isn't the only thing that hurts the black community The blatant sexism and toxic masculinity worship revealed by the black community's treatment of Azealia Banks, Nate Parker, Bill Cosby are problems too.

In fact, I think people of color refusing to vote for the HILLARY-BLOCK of Trump in the same way they voted for President Obama may have something to do with Hillary's failure to be a man. 

Toxic Masculinity isn't just being repulsed by the control and power of the female. It is also being attracted to the hyper-masculine male. The hyper-masculine hero male in the U.S. is:

1.  the man with a lot of women, 
2.  the man with a lot of money or 
3. the man with a lot of power. 
4.  the man with talent enough to be professional athlete  

Donald Trump fits the bill as a hyper-masculine, toxic masculinity hero in three out of four areas.

So black folk suffering from a TM mindset are likely as attracted to Kanye as they are repulsed by Azealia. And it follows that Kanye, Dwayne Johnson, LL Cool J and a host of others --in what may be a TM mindset-- are as attracted to Trump as they are repulsed by Hillary. 

When you see people like Kanye, The Rock, LL Cool J and more than a few sports figures of various ethnicities, Azealia and Omorosa drool over Trump's unethical path to more riches based on his Daddy's riches, you should probably wonder if they don't feel something close to sexual excitement whenever they Trump or hear him talk.

We shouldn't give our money, time, and support to anybody, no matter what race or ethnicity they are, if they are going to influence others to vote for a misogynistic, homophobic, islamophobic white supremacist no matter what the basis of their attraction to the misogynistic, homophobic, islamophobic white supremacist actually is. 

So, I am not advocating that Azealia be treated like Kanye. I don't want to see her dragged anymore. But I am suggesting that we make sure all of our self-hating attention addicts disappear from public life. People of color can make that happen by not supporting them. This is important because every single person of color these stars influence toward Trump from their platform harms us all. 

Side Note: White feminists have been asking why white country singer, Taylor Swift, a recently self-proclaimed feminist did not come out in support of Hillary Clinton (which is different from black and brown people voting Clinton to keep Trump out of office) The reason they are asking they think a white feminist should vote for and support a white feminist because they know that most of America isn't that bright.

America, black, brown, white, etc vote the way their favorite stars vote. This is dumb that this is true. It is embarrassing that this is true. But it's still true. 

However, it's shockingly ridiculous for white feminists to not understand that white country-western turn pop singer Swift clearly knows her predominantly white audience and their likely love for Donald Trump's mysoginist, racist, homophobic, islamophobic rhetoric. Swift is not Bey. Bey leads her fans. Swift follows hers or at the very least does not say anything contrary to what she can intuit they believe.  

 Therefore, I don't care how minuscule famous POC political efforts in supporting Trump were in the past or will be in the future, Kanye, Azealia, Dwayne the Rock Johnson have the ability to provide real voter support to overt white supremacy candidates.




And if some people of color don't think there's a difference between how fast overt white racism moves versus covert white racism, then the Bleached Blond Dragon is about to give them a lesson.

If some don't think there's differences in levels and types of white racism, that means they've been living in fear and trembling before they've even seen and experienced peak white violence -- and they haven't read very much detail about peak white violence in black history books either. (Not knowing your history can be deadly. POC's should be nervous if not outright scared now.)

  

Not to belabor a point, but Trump being a ethnoracist, sexist, homophobic Islamophobe is not a matter of Trump having opinions different than ours. 

Racism and Sexism are not opinions. Trump is deficient in character and actively trying to harm people of color and whole host of others that are not white male or attached to white males (white wives) And he has strong leadership skills  

Trump's supporters are actually talking about Japanese-like internment camps for Muslims during his "extreme vetting process."  

Black and brown people who voted for the HILLARY-BLOCK understand WHO the white people are that supported the Dragon. We are flat out calling these white people racist, sexist, homophobic islamophobes. 

And now we need to understand the same thing about people of color.
EVERYBODY that voted for Trump, including POCs, have made it clear that they don't give a damn about themselves as people of color, women, LGBT rights, immigrants, or Muslims. And we need to respond to their disregard of others accordingly.

I saw a tweet from a white person that said, "Just because I voted for Trump doesn't make me a racist." 

That has me thinking Kanye and Azealia might say, "Just because I'm inclined to vote for Trump, that doesn't make me a internalized racism sufferer."

A response tweet I read probably applies to both is, "Just because I stabbed a stranger to death with a knife doesn't make me a murderer.

In other words, Kanye and Azealia are both full of crap. Personal disgust aside, we can't afford to let them fracture a POC vote that is already too fractured. 

So please stop giving Kanye and Azealia and other public figures that are POC republicans your money. If we push them disappear from public life we limit their political influence on voters who don't like to think that much.  

Your young sons, young daughters, and young cousins cannot afford to mistake the foolishness they spout for wisdom. And the rest of us cannot afford to have their fans collude with an ethnoracist, sexist, homophobic Islamophobic man that's creating a White House Staff bent on destroying us.

Trump's staff scares me more than Trump does

I don't think Trump has the brains or dedication to run the country. I think his attention seeking is going to take up all of his mind. If he doesn't find a way to quit just so he doesn't have to read a million documents on policy, I think someone on his staff or a group of people on his staff including that white supremacist Bannon, will be running the country.

* * * * *  

As for those who believe Kanye and Azealia  truly are mentally ill. That's fine. Let them recover permanently in obscurity.

Obscurity is probably the cure they need anyway because I tend to think Kanye and Azealia's breakdowns coincide with drops in their popularity. If they have no popularity to lose, they'll be better off. 

Besides, black and brown people who try to side with whiteness, who try to climb inside whiteness are bound to make themselves mentally ill.

Kanye even has white family that fairly republican (as I understand it from reading headlines as I stand on line at the supermarket.) So I am not inclined to feel sorry for him when its clear the mind can't go in two directions at once. The moderate republicans have been filling their swamp with overt racists since Reagan.  Mental breakdown in the midst of white supremacy advocates seems inevitable to me.

Clarence Thomas didn't go completely bonkers and start shooting people like we thought he would, but Kanye's choices of Amber Rose and Kim K. as significant others PLUS his implying by word and deed that he doesn't like black women because he favors women closer to whiteness makes a mental breakdown seem likely more than unlikely. Taken together these are all symptoms of self-hate, right?  

Anybody who doesn't like half the black race (black women) is self-hating, right? Self-hate indicates mental illness -- whether he is up and happy or down in the dumps and in a mental hospital, yes?

As for Azealia Banks? She actually defends bleaching herself. It seems to me that making yourself whiter also lays out the stepping stones of self-hate toward mental illness.

Maybe the two of them are creating their own mental illness with their choices toward whiteness or they were made mentally weak by living in oppressive white America. I'm not a psychologist. So I don't know. But whatever's going on with them? They have chosen the side of the deadliest oppressor the black community has had lately. 

No matter what is or is not wrong with Kanye and Azealia as far as their mental health goes, I think we as black and brown people should boycott anybody that can damage young black and brown fans by spouting self-hating nonsense.

Kanye, The Rock, are Azealia, are not irreplaceable. New artists with a better sense of duty to the black community will be along tomorrow. 



* * * * *

***************
***************

LIE, CHEAT, STEAL IS THE COLONIAL AMERICAN WAY THAT CONTINUES AT DAPL

Feeling Rebloggy 

The land beneath the pipeline was accorded to Sioux peoples by the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. Eleven years later, the U.S. government incited and won theGreat Sioux War, and “renegotiated” a new treaty with the Sioux under threat of starvation. In that document, the tribe ceded much of the Laramie land, including the Black Hills of South Dakota, where many whites believed there to be gold.

In the decades that followed, other land previously controlled by the Sioux was doled out by the federal government as homesteads to Native families; when those farms failed, the government often repossessed the land. And in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills were taken unjustly, and it ordered the U.S. government to compensate the Sioux tribes fairly for them. But the Sioux declined the payment—which still sits in U.S. Treasury accounts, earning interest—because they seek possession or co-ownership of the land itself.

Of course, this history does not answer whose land it really is: American law still respects the underlying logic of the “doctrine of discovery,” the idea that European Christians could lay claim to land if they were the first to document it.

But it is in partial recognition of the painful history of colonial land grabs that modern federal law accords certain rights to Native groups. Since 1992, one of these rights could be described as the right to be consulted: Whenever a federal agency undertakes or approves a construction project, it must consult with local Native nations or tribes about whether sacred sites or places are nearby.

~THEATLANTIC.COM

Read More

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/dapl-dakota-sitting-rock-sioux/499178/ 

ARE YOU SCARED YET?

Feeling Rebloggy

CHAUNCEY DeVEGA OF SALON.COM SAYS,

"Black folks — and Hispanics and Latinos and Arabs and Muslims and all people of color and women and gays and lesbians and those with disabilities —

Are you scared yet? 

You should be.

During his presidential campaign Donald Trump promised to “take care of our African-American people” and now Trump is following through in his own special way.

Trump, a man who spent years trying to show that the country’s first black president was illegitimate and not eligible to hold office because of his “country of birth” (read: skin color) ran a political campaign that nakedly and boldly used racism, nativism and bigotry to win over white voters. Trump was successful in his quest and will be the 45th president of the United States of America. There will be no “pivot” to a kinder and more humane and less racist Trump. only the naive and pandering chattering class have convinced themselves such a thing is possible.

President-elect Trump is now putting in place the people necessary to implement an agenda based on white identity politics ["not white working class politics" as the white left, including Bernie Sanders has been pushing.]

Read More

Headline

Will we see a repeat of Redemption, the post-Civil War white backlash?

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/22/donald-trump-will-take-care-of-the-african-americans-will-we-see-a-repeat-of-redemption-the-post-civil-war-white-backlash/

FIDEL CASTRO DIES AT 90 LEAVING A MIXED LEGACY

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/world/americas/fidel-castro-dies.html

Feeling Rebloggy

"For five decades, he worked to turn the island nation into a place of equality and social justice. His government produced tens of thousands of doctors and teachers and achieved some of the lowest infant mortality and illiteracy rates in the Western hemisphere.

But Cuba never shook off its dependence on foreign dollars and the state-run economy failed to bring prosperity to most Cubans....

Critics say Castro drove the country into economic ruin, denied basic freedoms to 11 million Cubans at home and forced more than a million others into exile.

"In 55 years, the Cuban government has not done anything to help the Cuban people in terms of human rights," said Hector Maseda, 72, a former political prisoner who lives in Havana. "I don't believe in this regime. I don't trust it."

..."The Cuban model doesn't even work for us any more," Castro admitted in 2010, startling a visiting US journalist."

~Aljazeera.com

Read Morehttp://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2016/11/cuba-leader-fidel-castro-dead-90-161126053354637.html

I've never thought about or read about Cuba for long enough to understand its history. But the thing that is certain is that Fidel Castro's legacy will be debated for years and years to come.

But from this Amnesty International Report, it doesn't sound like Cuba was a safe place to live unless you agreed with most everything he did. Due to the outcome of the last election and the president elect appointments we've seen so far, I hope the U.S. doesn't wind up traveling down the same road.

Read Morehttps://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/americas/cuba/report-cuba/

THE DRAGON AND THE WEATHER VANE

Very Smart Brothas Headline

I WILL NEVER UNDERESTIMATE WHITE PEOPLE’S NEED TO PRESERVE WHITENESS AGAIN

At least the author of this article admits he under estimated white folks commitment to preserving the power of whiteness. 

A lot of black and brown folk say that they knew this already. But,   unlike this brave writer, they refuse to admit that they did not see the majority of white folks as a formidable political enemy.

More than that a lot of black and brown folk refuse to admit they failed to connect the dots and therefore failed show up for political battle at the polls. 

I don't usually like using war metaphors. It feels too violent and trivializing of the waste of life that is war. But I don't want to be too similar to President Obama in that I sometimes show up to a gun fight with a dull pen knife (as a friend said of President Obama a few weeks back.)  But we are in a war right now. Trump has appointed people that are openly xenophobic and spewers or hate speech.

For people of color (POCs) the 2016 election was never about loving Hillary. It was about stopping Trump.  Black women that showed up showed solidarity, tried to build a wall between Trump black and brown communities.

But a lot of POCs didn't even show up. They didn't even vote.

But now that I've read the VSB article captioned up top, I now realize that a lot of black and brown people didn't know how much danger they were in from the majority of white people in this particular election.

In order to set voting in certain elections as a priority one has to know the difference between weather vane politician, and a dragon politician -- especially when the Dragon has a new name like "alt-Right." 



The weather vanes (democratic or republican) follow opinion polls and move with the wind. Usually they only have the potential to move POCS backward or forward by about 10% As POC progress comes in minuscule movements over long periods of time, we tend to vote for our white democratic weather vanes because those miniscule movements forward lead to the occasional leap forward. 

Dragons, however, are different. Dragons don't blow with the wind. Dragons create wind based on fear of the-other. They breathe fire and inspire people to move. When you see a white dragon with a clear ability to lead on the other side, that's when you start voting self-preservation. That's when you make sure everybody shows up for political battle.

More important than being able to tell the dragon from the weather vane is having the knowledge that the majority of white people, especially poor white people, will vote against their own financial well-being in order to feel like they have the higher status of whiteness. 

Damon Young of VerySmarthBrothas said,

In this election, White people did not vote against their self-interests. They may have voted against a self-interest — a few actually — but not their most important one: The preservation of White supremacy. 

Retaining the value of a Whiteness they believed to be increasingly devalued superseded everything else. Including their own livelihoods; their own physical and financial well-beings; their own Christianity; their own agency; their own money; their own educations; their own futures; their own children’s futures, their own country’s legacy; their own country’s status with the rest of the world; their own environment; their own food, air, and water; their own rights; and their own lives.

And please note that I am not including any qualifiers. For working class Whites. Or Whites from rust-belt cities. Or White men. Or White people who didn’t graduate from college. Or rural Whites. Or Midwestern Whites. Or Southern whites. This is on ALL White people. Who are complicit even if they didn’t vote for Trump. Because they obviously haven’t done enough to repudiate the mindsets existing in their families and amongst their friends; possessed by their co-workers and neighbors; shared during private holiday gatherings and public city townhalls. Who have shown us that nothing existing on Earth or Heaven or Hell matters more to them than being White and whichever privileges — real or fabricated; concrete or spiritual — existing as White in America provides.

http://verysmartbrothas.com/i-will-never-underestimate-white-peoples-need-to-preserve-whiteness-again/ 

The paragraph above, highlighted in red, is shockingly naive.

The majority of white men have always voted for white supremacy above all else. Always. And non-feminist white women (the majority of white women) follow them more often than not.

Again, the white poor have been voting to slit their own throats for decades and decades as they look on in worshipful hopefulness at the white rich (who hate them) FOREVER. That has never changed. That hasn't changed since slavery.

"Poor white trash" and "Trailer Trash" and "Wife beater" t-shirts are all names I hear from white people about other white people who don't have much, money or education. Yet, poor white people almost worship those that either hate them or try to erase them, pretend they don't exist.   

The thing that was different about this election --after 8 years of white-washed thinking that we were in a post-racial America-- was proximity of the white demographic to no longer being the numerical majority. 

Shrinking White Demographic
White people should no longer be the majority by 2050 (some say 2040)

This bone deep fear or losing power, plus Donald Trump's ability water, nurture, and energize white supremacy in a huge variety of white groups by using a mixture of dog whistle and overt white racism made a lot of white folks decide to vote their white supremacy.

Add to that the fact that white people have been looking at a black president for 8 years and you get a super energized white supremacy. 

So white folks being white didn't surprise me.The things that surprised me were that: 

1) a full two-thirds of white people did NOT vote for Trump. (It was less)
2) the black males vote for Trump at 13% -- and that this was the "good" news for male POCs
3) the latino vote (mostly mexicans) was as bad as it was. I almost fell on the floor when I saw estimates that Latino men (other than Cubans) voted for Trump at a rate of 33%

I thought we (people of color) all knew that we were going to have to jump white supremacy and go to the polls.

And I really did not think educated black people could mistake a weather vane (Hillary) for a white supremacy dragon (Mean Tangerine), and actually think that both were equally threatening to us. 

Again, black women voters rose up to push this back because they did recognized the threat. They did not rise up for love of Hillary. I haven't spoken to a black woman yet who gives a damn about Hillary yet. What black women voters cared about was stopping Trump. 

At least this brother admits he messed up. But I wonder if he knows where he messed up. 

I'm not sure but I'm getting the distinct impression that black and brown folks younger than 30 only know the surface of black and brown history if they know any at all.

White folk jumping up to defend white supremacy at the polls has been consistent for decades. Furthermore, the rogue waves of white supremacy have hit us before, and I'm not talking about during the Civil Rights Movement.

We've seen a white supremacy dragon with an ability to lead before. His name was Ronald Wilson Reagan. Mr. 666 only used a dog whistle to stir up white fears and label black and brown folk degenerates.

And he did it at a time when there was virtually nothing for white people to worry about from a white superiority perspective; they had all the power and were in no danger of losing it any time soon. But Reagan scapegoated black and brown people for what was wrong with the economy-- just like the KKK has done so many times in our country's history. And Ronnie Ray Gun* made white people feel good about themselves as he was doing it. (*- Nickname based on his foreign policy)

This time it's Donald instead of Ronald. And Donald is using a bull horn when there's something real for white folks to be worried about, such as:  

1) a world where they won't be the only ones who can fail to graduate high school and still make a solid middle class living

2) a world where they are out-numbered and can be out-voted routinely.

3) a world where you can no longer feel superior just by being born white even if you don't have a pot to piss in -- just like in the days of slavery. The white poor have always been willing to slit their own throats to feel superior to black and brown. 

That's why Mean Tangerine didn't need half the brain wattage of  a not that bright Reagan in order to be successful. The white supremacy fire was already burning bright before MT came along to pour gasoline on it.

The only thing Ronald and Donald had to be smart enough to do is read white people. 

And, I really thought black and brown children were taught this at the dinner table as they were growing up. I thought black and brown children understood that a huge chunk of white people hide white supremacy from themselves first and others next-- in order to justify reserving or justifying the taking of money, jobs, land or to justify the preservation of white status (a form of power).

Clearly black and brown oral histories are not being passed along at the dinner table. But it needs to start happening again.  We cannot be out-voted again. We can still lose to the majority of white voters. But we don't have to lie down. All of us can show up for political battle and vote.

Black people, women in particular, can try to whittle down that 13% of Black men that voted for Trump

Latinas and Asian women have a bigger job with their men, nearly three times as big a job stopping their men from voting for a racist, sexist, homophobic, islamophobe.

But the most important thing is to get those that didn't vote to see the importance of showing up for battle. We can go down fighting in 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, and 2028 (counting midterm elections too)  Eventually the tide will turn our way.

I don't know how much 2050 will look like South Africa (minority whites ruling the majority black and brown). But we have to try to pull together. Maybe part of that pulling together is creating a new black and brown led party.

The only thing we cannot do is lie down and not have some sort of plan.  We need to have a plan and move collectively because open white supremacy mows us down much more quickly than closet white supremacy. And Mean Tangerine has changed the wind. Open white supremacy is on the table as a political bargaining chip now. Republicans, alt-Right within republican ranks, and democrats are likely to try and access that chip, the white race card, in coming elections.

In other words, we're probably not going to have the option to vote for a weather vane and hope for stagnation instead of sliding backwards.

Read your history. Speak to people who have oral history. And then get your minds right. We do not want to be doomed to repeat our history. And repeating our history is exactly what will happen if we let Trump and his likely smarter successor make America white again. 

  

MAN ASKS OBAMA IF HE'S HAPPY

Feeling Rebloggy

Being Grateful For Our First Black President

"During a virtual road trip on Google+, President Obama answered questions from people joining around the country. Including Rob in Portland who asked, "How are you?" Watch what President Obama had to say."

THE WAMPANOAG VERSION OF THE FIRST THANKSGIVING

As the story commonly goes, the Pilgrims who sailed from England on the Mayflower and landed at Plymouth Rock near 1620 and started a colony. The white pilgrims were in danger of starving to death since they were unfamiliar with how to grow things on the land until the Native Americans showed them what to do.  Grateful to the Native Americans for keeping them from starving to death during their first winter, the white pilgrims invited the Native Americans to dinner for a feast.  This was the first Thanksgiving in what would later become the United States.

This is the nice little story taught in elementary schools everywhere for decades.  It's not even close to true. I tend to guess that white children were most of the ones allowed to continue believing this story past 3rd or 4th grade.

Apparently, Abraham Lincoln made this story up years and years later in order to calm things down during The Civil War. According to the Wampanoag people, the specific Native Americans or "Indians" described in this age old tale of peaceful communion, this story that most of us recognize as 'The First Thanksgiving' isn't even close to true  

Feeling Rebloggy

So [Abraham Lincoln's First Thanksgiving Story] was a political thing?

Yes, it was public relations. It’s kind of genius, in a way, to get people to sit down and eat dinner together. Families were divided during the Civil War.

So what really happened?

We made a treaty. The leader of our nation at the time—Yellow Feather Oasmeequin [Massasoit] made a treaty with (John) Carver [the first governor of the colony]. They elected an official while they were still on the boat. They had their charter. They were still under the jurisdiction of the king [of England]—at least that’s what they told us. So they couldn’t make a treaty for a boatload of people so they made a treaty between two nations—England and the Wampanoag Nation.

What did the treaty say?

It basically said we’d let them be there and we would protect them against any enemies and they would protect us from any of ours. [The 2011 Native American copy coin commemorates the 1621 treaty between the Wampanoag tribe and the Pilgrims of Plymouth colony.] It was basically an I’ll watch your back, you watch mine’ agreement. Later on we collaborated on jurisdictions and creating a system so that we could live together.

What’s the Mashpee version of the 1621 meal?

You’ve probably heard the story of how Squanto assisted in their planting of corn? So this was their first successful harvest and they were celebrating that harvest and planning a day of their own thanksgiving. And it’s kind of like what some of the Arab nations do when they celebrate by shooting guns in the air. So this is what was going on over there at Plymouth. They were shooting guns and canons as a celebration, which alerted us because we didn’t know who they were shooting at. So Massasoit gathered up some 90 warriors and showed up at Plymouth prepared to engage, if that was what was happening, if they were taking any of our people. They didn’t know. It was a fact-finding mission....

~IndianCountryTodayMediaNetwork.com 

Read more at 

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/11/23/what-really-happened-first-thanksgiving-wampanoag-side-tale-and-whats-done-today-145807


When we don't know the truth our intermingled histories, we are collectively going to repeat the worst of our mistakes again and again and again.

The struggle at DAPL seems like worst of U.S. history repeating itself. A broken treaty, environmental racism, and regular racism is at the center of this struggle along with police brutality. If you don't know what's happening to indigenous people in North Dakota, now is the time to learn.

Education is the first step toward stopping the cycle of abuse of indigenous people. The second step is figuring out how you've indirectly benefited from the abuse of others (cheaper fuel costs etc).  The third step is to be grateful for what you have at Thanksgiving while trying to find small ways to remove your tacit support of the abuse of others.