“

The Atlantic’s James Fallows already has said it best: for those of us not directly involved in Friday’s mass murder, perhaps the most distressing thing to contemplate today is the realization that we are virtually powerless to prevent it from happening again, soon, somewhere, despite all the hand-wringing and soul-searching that now routinely accompanies these national tragedies. Or, as The New Republic’s Timothy Noah put it, America feels terribly sorry for the dead and the wounded caused by gun violence. But not sorry enough to do anything meaningful about it. Don’t just think Jared Loughner. Think Jason Coday, too.

This sad fact shrouds mournful days like Friday with a sheen of phoniness. The politicians? They quickly stopped campaigning, said all the right things, and called off the attack ads on television. Evidently it is considered more unseemly to campaign in the hours following a national tragedy than it is for elected officials to fail to limit the scope of such tragedies in the first place. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is right; fly the flags at half-staff, bow your heads in a moment of silence, and then have the courage to convene a meeting on Capitol Hill to determine whether people like James Holmes ought to be allowed to buy tear gas grenades, body armor, and assault weapons… Since 9/11, the Brady Campaign tells us, there have been an estimated 334,168 gun deaths* in the United States, a figure that includes homicides, suicides, and unintentional shooting deaths. The total is 100 times larger than the toll of September 11, 2001. Each year, since that day, approximately 30,000 people have been killed by firearms in America. Yet there has been no cry for state or federal policies of prevention over punishment, no loud call for a proactive rather than a reactive approach to gun violence. Imagine how different America would be today if those figures tolled for acts of terrorism instead of acts of gun violence.

”

Andrew Cohen, writing for The Atlantic, reflects on the mass shooting at the Aurora movie theatre and the USA’s gun laws, which remain unchanged since the Columbine High School massacre. 
life: Richard and Mildred Loving never asked to be heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. But when the state of Virginia had their interracial marriage in its crosshairs, the unassuming, intensely private couple fought back. And on June 12, 1967, they won. Here, on the 45th anniversary of the June 12, 1967, Supreme Court decision that, in effect, codified the right of men and women to simply love whom they choose, LIFE.com presents a gallery of recently rediscovered Grey Villet photographs of the Lovings, their family and their friends, along with the text of the original magazine story. High-res

life:

Richard and Mildred Loving never asked to be heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. But when the state of Virginia had their interracial marriage in its crosshairs, the unassuming, intensely private couple fought back. And on June 12, 1967, they won.

Here, on the 45th anniversary of the June 12, 1967, Supreme Court decision that, in effect, codified the right of men and women to simply love whom they choose, LIFE.com presents a gallery of recently rediscovered Grey Villet photographs of the Lovings, their family and their friends, along with the text of the original magazine story.

  • Reblogged from life

Denzel Washington addresses the need to diminish the high school drop out rate in the USA.

“Black Folk Don’t” is a web documentary series exploring racial stereotypes. This five minute clip dismantles the idea that “Black folk don’t swim”. Rather than simply showing that this isn’t true for most African-Americans, which is correct, it goes beyond the stereotype. It raises the historical reasons why swimming was largely foreign for certain groups of African-Americans. Up until recent decades, sub-groups of African-Americans grew up in areas where they had no access to public pools. There is a dimension of class to this argument, which I would love to see fleshed out. Worth watching.

Link via Colorlines.

My hero of the week: Lucia Allain is a an undocumented Peruvian-American student who moved to the USA when she was 10. She is also a DREAMer activist. The DREAM Act would provide undocumented migrants who moved to the USA as children a legal avenue to persue American citizenship. Allain interrupts American politician Mitt Romney a during a speech to call out his hypocrisy:

Right when he started talking about achieving the American Dream, and how every child deserves to live it. I interrupted and said, ‘I’m undocumented and I have a dream, are you still supporting “self-deportation?”’.

Go young Latina, go!

Source: HuffPost Latino Voices.

verbalresistance:

Trayvon Martin’s parents visit Stephen Lawrence memorial

The parents of the murdered black American teenager Trayvon Martin have come to Britain to meet the family of Stephen Lawrence, and visit the spot where he was murdered in 1993.

The parents of 17 year old Trayvon Martin arrived in London this morning, to thank the British people who have lent their support.

Among the many letters of condolence which they received was one from Doreen Lawrence, whose own son was killed in a racist attack in South London 19 years ago. The two families met today, at the memorial to Stephen’s death, united by a search for meaning, amid their personal grief.

A day to look back, as well as forward: a reminder of a young man’s killing that has become as totemic for America as Stephen Lawrence’s death was in Britain…

For anyone who thought the election of a Black American to the highest office in the land meant some kind of milestone in the fight against racism, a nasty wake-up call. As Newsweek put it: “Despite the powerful symbolism of Obama’s election, blacks and whites are still living in different worlds”.

So: back to those fault lines, which have shattered through the veneer of America’s supposedly tolerant modernity. 23 year old Rachel Hislop, on the Daily Grind, writes that she had sat silently while white colleagues questioned whether racism still existed in their “post-racial”, privileged world. “But then a young black man called Trayvon Martin was killed, and the dirty blanket was finally pulled off the taboo conversation of the very present demon that is race relations in America, and I’ve decided I am tired of staying quiet”, she wrote.

A nation divided

According to polls, twice as many blacks and Hispanics think race played a major part in the shooting, as whites: 73% compared to 36%. Black Americans paid much closer attention to news about the incident, overwhelmingly saw George Zimmerman guilty of a crime, and believe he would have been arrested far more quickly had the victim been white.

In the New Yorker, Jelani Cobb wrote that Trayvon’s death “did not so much raise questions as it confirmed suspicions: that we remain stratified or at best striated by race, that innocent is a relative term, that black male lives can end under capricious circumstances, and that justice is in the eye of the beholder - ideas that are as cynical as they are applicable.” …

Read Whole: Channel 4 News [Video via ITV]

(via nothingman)

“Their cause is really straightforward, as is ours: One percent of the population holds [much] of the wealth in this country, and people’s benefits are getting slashed and people are losing their homes. On our reservations, we are mired in the deepest poverty. The idea is to have some equality in this country … economic equality.’”

Moonanum James, United American Indians of New England (via solitaryforager)

(via socialworky)

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an African American sociologist, civil rights leader and a women’s rights leader active in the Woman Suffrage Movement. “Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defence…..”. “If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service.” “Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob…”. “No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders.” “Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so…”. (via Black History Month Open Thread - Jack & Jill Politics)

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an African American sociologist, civil rights leader and a women’s rights leader active in the Woman Suffrage Movement.

“Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defence…..”.

“If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service.”

“Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob…”.

“No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders.”

“Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so…”.

(via Black History Month Open Thread - Jack & Jill Politics)

Student Pamela Moore is one of the women interviewed in Dark Girls, a documentary on color discrimination by actor-director Bill Duke and co-director D. Channsin Berry…Hue-based hierarchy, of course, is ancient — and also very modern. The difference is many non-American societies are matter-of-fact about the preference for lighter skin. Prospects on the Indian online dating and marriage website Shaadi, for instance, often list themselves as “fair” or “wheat-colored” without embarrassment. Women touted as beautiful throughout Latin America and the Caribbean often range from very fair to cafe au lait.Black Americans are no exception — but they’re also less forthright about the color prejudice that exists within the black community. Duke’s film not only airs dirty laundry no one wants to show the outside world — it also may blow the windows off their hinges. (via Movie Interview - Bill Duke Talks ‘Dark Girls’ : NPR)

Student Pamela Moore is one of the women interviewed in Dark Girls, a documentary on color discrimination by actor-director Bill Duke and co-director D. Channsin Berry…
Hue-based hierarchy, of course, is ancient — and also very modern. The difference is many non-American societies are matter-of-fact about the preference for lighter skin. Prospects on the Indian online dating and marriage website Shaadi, for instance, often list themselves as “fair” or “wheat-colored” without embarrassment. Women touted as beautiful throughout Latin America and the Caribbean often range from very fair to cafe au lait.

Black Americans are no exception — but they’re also less forthright about the color prejudice that exists within the black community. Duke’s film not only airs dirty laundry no one wants to show the outside world — it also may blow the windows off their hinges.

(via Movie Interview - Bill Duke Talks ‘Dark Girls’ : NPR)

  • Source: NPR

“The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate…A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonoured.”

Adrienne Rich explains to then-American President Clinton (in writing) why she refused to accept the USA National Medal for the Arts in 1997.

Rich has died - RIP to this amazing and pioneering feminist. By problematising the notion that heterosexuality is natural, she left a lasting impact on science.

Image and quote via the L.A. Times.