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Tag: racism
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My Teacher Chose An Unthinkable Way To Teach Us About Slavery. I’m Still Haunted By It.
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The first time I remember seeing someone who looked like me in my school curriculum, I was in fifth grade, and our class was studying a unit on slavery in the United States. In our textbook, there was a photo of a man, turned away from the camera, whose back was gnarled and scarred from being whipped. The next day, my teacher made us sit on the classroom’s carpet in rows, packed together, pretending to be on a slave ship. Anywhere off the carpet was the ocean, and if we made a sound, she would scream and “throw us off.” Some of my classmates had been chosen by our teacher to be “overseers,” and they were in charge of keeping the “slaves” in line. I remember being brought to tears but not being exactly sure why I was crying.
When I told my father what happened, he and a group of other outraged parents confronted the school administration, and my teacher was forced to apologize, and life went on. Except … it didn’t. I felt as if there was now an invisible whip following me and a new fear attached to me that I just couldn’t shake.
As a woman with both Black and Puerto Rican ancestry, I’m still impacted by that moment over a decade later. My earliest memories of learning about my ethnicity and culture in school are associated with being the “other.” I was the “slave,” the sharecropper ― anything but me. It destroyed my self-confidence and made me feel hopeless. It was as if the glass ceiling was suffocating me, and I still struggle with my self-esteem while attempting to make my way in the world.
Even now, I feel the failures of my earlier education as I study political science as a freshman at Columbia University. Today, my classes expose the misinformation and misconceptions that were accepted as truth all throughout my childhood. In my college courses, the fact that slavery was the reason for the Civil War is never debated. Systemic and institutional racism is an actuality – not a hypothetical. It only makes me wonder how many young students could benefit from schools with the resources to teach accurate lessons about not only race but also racism, so that students are prepared for the rigor of higher education ― and to confront and prepare for the often harsh and unfair realities of our world.
Unfortunately, countless children across the country lack these lessons and resources. When schools cannot teach the true history of students of color, it not only dehumanizes them but demeans them as well. A new report by NYU Metro Center found that the three most commonly used elementary-level English Language Arts (ELA) curricula offered only superficial representations of characters of color, one-sided Eurocentric storytelling, and hardly any guidance for teachers to center students’ different cultures and identities. This wasn’t surprising to me, given my own experiences in elementary school.
It wasn’t until the eighth grade that I finally had an instructor who presented an accurate, more complete reflection of my people’s history. My teacher bought 20-plus copies of “Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case” with her own money. Most of my classmates were 14, the same age as Emmett when he was brutally murdered (I was 12), and learning about his life and death at that age was profound for us.
Our teacher allowed us to lead challenging conversations about racism while she acted only as an objective observer. She let us ask questions like, “Does Black privilege exist?” and “How does generational trauma affect us?” By the time we finished “Getting Away with Murder,” students who were often racially insensitive (and at times, offensive) realized the weight behind their words. Students who had never had to confront the color of their skin gained a deeper understanding of its beauty and importance. It was this transformative lesson that established my love for political science. Devastatingly, lessons like this one are now being banned across the country.
“It wasn’t until the eighth grade that I finally had an instructor who presented an accurate, more complete reflection of my people’s history. My teacher bought 20-plus copies of ‘Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case’ with her own money.”
Many people argue that teaching students about racism will make white students feel guilty and ashamed. Fear-mongering rhetoric like this has led to over 40 bills since January 2021 that propose censoring classroom conversations on racism and sexism. However, many of the white students in my class transformed their stances on inequality and equity after participating in honest conversations, and I felt safer because of it. Learning is often uncomfortable, but we must lean into that discomfort to become new people. The most important lessons are often the most difficult.
Banning age-appropriate lessons on inequality and failing to include them in core curricula makes all students, including white children, unprepared for a collegiate environment in which the existence of racism is presented as an objective fact. White privilege is a sociological term in my textbook ― not a buzzword relegated to Twitter. How can students excel in learning about something they are told doesn’t exist? What’s more, it makes students unprepared for the real world, where racism and white privilege are thriving and harm all of us, even if that’s not apparent to everyone.
Children should not receive an education they have to heal from, and they should see accurate and diverse representations of their histories and communities no matter what race they are. The teacher who told me to sit cross-legged and pretend I was enslaved didn’t purchase our books with her own money, but my teacher who taught an accurate history did. We need anti-racist education to be fully funded so every student is ready to face the world that awaits them and has a high-quality education that is not dependent on the generosity of one teacher.
Curriculum companies taking billions of dollars in public funds need to be held accountable to provide anti-racist lessons and inclusive materials for teachers. Thankfully, I’m now studying at an institution with professors and textbooks that endeavor to tell the full truth about this country. I believe everyone deserves and needs that chance ― and they shouldn’t have to attend college to get it.
Jaylen Adams (she/her) is a political activist and a Columbia University student. During her high school career, she was president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Youth Council, a representative on the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council, and a voice for women on the Title IX Committee. Today, Jaylen is continuing this battle as a first-year student at Columbia University, studying political science-economics and creative writing. She works with Our Turn, a national education reform nonprofit, as an executive fellow. Focusing on strategic development and communicative outreach, Jaylen also works on the Truth(Ed) campaign, which focuses on achieving truthful and culturally inclusive curriculum for all. In her free time, Jaylen loves a cozy book with a warm cup of tea.
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Texas Teacher Fired After Telling Students He Thinks His Race ‘Is The Superior One’
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A middle school teacher in Pflugerville, Texas, has been fired after a video taken in his class showed him telling students that he thinks his race “is the superior one.”
The teacher, who is white and whose name has not been made public, was employed at Bohls Middle School, but was placed on administrative leave after the video went viral.
On Monday, Douglas Killian, superintendent of the Pflugerville Independent School District, said the teacher “is no longer employed” by the district and that the district “is actively looking for a replacement,” according to Austin Fox affiliate KTBC.
A video taken by a student shows the teacher telling students that “deep down in my heart, I am ethnocentric, which means I think my race is the superior one,” according to Austin NBC affiliate KXAN.
“I think everybody thinks that,” the teacher says in the video. “They’re just not honest about it.”
The father of one of the students shared the video on Instagram, writing: “I’m so angry I’m loss for words but I will stand up for my child and the other black and Spanish kings and queens in this video.”
In the statement announcing the teacher’s termination, Killian apologized on behalf of the district, saying that “this conversation does not align with our core beliefs and is not a reflection of our district or our culture at Bohls Middle School.” He wrote that the discussion “was inappropriate, inaccurate, and unacceptable.”
Killian said in his statement that counselors and administrators are “available for any of our students and families who want to discuss this situation further.”
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Color By WebMD Part 1: Call Colorism Out, Loudly
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Nov. 3, 2022 – In Asian, Black, and Latino communities, colorism is the elephant in the room, sitting at the family dinner table, the group photoshoot, meeting strangers for the first time, or even playing in your kindergarten classroom. This phenomenon is so deeply rooted within communities of color that it is almost taboo to talk about. Or maybe it hurts too deeply to call out by name.
But, if you’re not a person of color, this concept might sound completely foreign; but that’s OK, keep reading. To boil colorism down to a simple explanation, it is discrimination, prejudice, and bigotry, based on skin tone and color.
“The similarities in colorism across [Asian, Black, and Latino] communities are specifically related to the adoration and glorification of whiteness and the perception that anything that’s European and of lighter skin is better,” says Nayeli Y. Chavez-Dueñas, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist and professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
This includes thoughts like, “white people – followed by people of color with lighter skin – are smarter and more capable and deserving of societal privileges, like access to better jobs, wealth,” she says.
In our new docu-series, “Color by WebMD: WebMD’s Exploration of Race and Mental Health,” we’ll start by addressing colorism and the costly mental health effects of this phenomenon. We’ll also look at ways to break these multi-generational thought patterns that prevent some people of color from truly recognizing and appreciating the beauty of varying skin shades.
Colorism vs. Racism
Differentiating colorism from racism can be tricky because one bleeds into the other, according to Radhika Parameswaran, PhD, an associate dean of The Media School at Indiana University in Bloomington. Racism pertains to attitudes, behaviors, and treatment from one racial group to another. For example, the way a white community treats an Asian community. Colorism, on the other hand, looks at how members of a community of color treat one another.
“So, in some ways, colorism is also about internalized racism,” says Parameswaran.
Where Does Colorism Come From?
While colorism is rooted inside certain racial groups, we can trace its origins back to European colonialism, says Vanessa Gonlin, PhD, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Georgia. For African American communities in the U.S., colorism stems from chattel slavery. Colonizers created a skin-tone hierarchy where lighter-skinned slaves were more likely to be “put in the house” and tasked with cooking, cleaning, and other duties often deemed as “easier,” Gonlin explains. Darker-skinned slaves often worked it the fields.
“This led to literal divisions among enslaved people,” she says. “You’re less likely to band together for a slave revolt if you have these perceived differences that actually are enacted based on your occupation.”
Even after emancipation, some African Americans kept colorist ideas going within their communities. Gonlin gives the example of the notorious “brown paper bag test,” particularly among certain Greek fraternities and sororities throughout the 20th century.
“If your skin was lighter than a brown paper bag, you were allowed entry into certain spaces,” Gonlin says.
Colorism in Asian and Latin American Communities
When Spaniards began to colonize Latin America in the late 15th century, they created a ranking system. People with lighter skin were at the top and those with darker skin and non-European facial features (for example, a narrow nose or thin lips) were at the bottom of the ranking order, according to Chavez-Dueñas.
“They used this [ranking order] to dehumanize and exclude people who were indigenous people or of Afro descent,” she says. “That system has been at work for centuries throughout Latin America.”
And in many Asian cultures, colorism began long before Europeans arrived. Rather, skin tone bias was connected to social class.
“If you were lighter-skinned, that means that you’re not toiling outside in the field,” Gonlin says. “It was this idea of having the luxury or the means to be able to stay inside. If you were darker-skinned, then you were a laborer.”
It Starts at Home
Perhaps the ugliest reality across cultures is that colorism usually starts at home. Ideas of self-doubt can be introduced very early and can be hard to shake, says Chavez-Dueñas. In fact, colorism often begins before birth. Comments like, “I hope your child turns out white” or “I hope they have good hair” can be commonplace for pregnant women, she says.
In some families, there will often be praise heaped upon siblings who have a lighter skin tones, Parameswaran says.
“They will be sought out for presentation to the public.”
This may sound horrendous, but it’s important to keep in mind that many families just want the best for their children, Parameswaran says. The idea that lighter skin provides children less social stigma and more career opportunities, romantic partners, and an overall “easier life” fuels colorist narratives.
The Harsh Reality for Darker-Skin Children
Colorist comments are usually uttered during casual conversation and often become normalized. Darker-skin children can develop feelings of exclusion and low self-esteem, even to the point where they believe their parents “don’t love them as much as, perhaps, a sibling who’s lighter-skinned,” says Parameswaran.
“The child ends up carrying a lot of stigma and shame – it’s like a heavy backpack,” Parameswaran says. “Sometimes they don’t have that vocabulary to articulate those feelings. So, they hold it within themselves, and it can be very damaging over the long run.”
Some children carry this shame into adulthood, which can make it hard to sustain romantic relationships and simply “be themselves to the fullest extent possible,” she says
Next, we’ll chat with mental health experts about how to overcome psychological trauma from colorism. We’ll also explore ways more people of color – at their core – can truly esteem the beauty of rich skin tones and other ethnic features.
Stay tuned! The next episode is scheduled to launch Nov. 17.
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More than a century after 7 Black men were lynched, an Indiana teen sought to rectify the injustice
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Mount Vernon, Indiana — Sophie Kloppenburg stepped up to a lectern, said her name and without uttering another word, she received a standing ovation.
What did the 17-year-old do to deserve such respect in Posey County, Indiana? She rectified an injustice, 144 years in the making.
In 1878, after a rape allegation, seven Black men were lynched and four of them were hanged directly outside the county courthouse they never got to set foot in. It was the largest lynching in state history. Yet the whole incident had been largely forgotten — until Kloppenburg heard about it.
She started at the courthouse, looking for a plaque or any mention whatsoever. She said there was no public acknowledgement of what happened.
“I’m sure people don’t want to remember because it’s hard to remember tough things, but it’s unacceptable to just forget,” Kloppenburg told CBS News.
It’s also unrealistic to expect others to care as much about the issue as she did. Posey County is more than 95% White. Erecting a reminder to a racist past wasn’t exactly a high priority around here.
But that didn’t stop Kloppenburg from appealing to the county commissioners. Repeatedly.
Commission president Bill Collins said Kloppenburg was very passionate about the issue.
“You’d probably be hard-pressed to find very many seniors in high school anywhere in the country that would be willing to take on something like this,” Collins told CBS News.
And there are even fewer who could succeed, he said.
After her standing ovation, Kloppenburg thanked her community.
“I’m proud of Posey County, Indiana, and the beautiful people here for having the difficult conversations and giving a tangible voice to its minorities,” she said. “Thank you.”
This week, thanks to that diplomatic touch, in the heart of red America 144 years after that mob gathered in the square, another crowd formed at the very same spot. This time to watch Kloppenburg unveil a memorial bench and history marker that formally acknowledged the past and celebrated the progress.
To contact On the Road, or to send us a story idea, email us: OnTheRoad@cbsnews.com.
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Miami Beach City Commission adopts ordinance to ban hair style discrimination
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MIAMI BEACH — The Miami Beach City Commission on Wednesday voted to ban discrimination in housing, employment or the use of municipal facilities based on the style or texture of the applicant’s hair.
The new ordinance was adopted as a means of ending racism that has largely been directed at Black people because of their hair styles, including Afros, twists, locs or braids.
“It’s unacceptable in 2022 that Black Americans and other minorities still face discrimination based on something so trivial as whether or not they have textured or curly hair,” Miami Beach Vice Mayor Alex Fernandez said in a written statement. “This serves to protect cultural identity and not have to worry about sacrificing who you are in Miami Beach.”
It was not immediately clear what penalties are for those who violate the ordinance.
It was also not clear who would enforce the measure or how someone can file a report about offenders who run afoul of the ordinance.
The city’s human rights ordinance already prohibited discrimination on the basis of various characteristics, including weight and height. The commission expanded those protections to now include hair texture associated with race, such as braids, locks, afros, curls and twists.
Officials did not immediately say if there was a specific incident that led to the commission’s decision to adopt the expanded ordiance.
The Miami Herald reported that the genesis for their ordinance came from the city’s human rights advisory committee, which first requested it in April 2021.
The Miami Beach ordinance follows a similar one approved by Broward County in 2020.
By CBSMiami.com Digital Director Alfred Charles
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Kanye West escorted from Skechers office, footwear brand says
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Rapper accused of ‘unauthorised filming’ after unannounced visit to company’s Los Angeles office.
Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has been escorted from Skechers’s corporate office in Los Angeles after showing up unannounced and uninvited, according to the footwear company.
Two company executives removed Ye and a number of individuals after the rapper engaged in “unauthorised filming” at the office, the company said in a statement on Wednesday, local time.
Skechers, the world’s third-largest footwear brand by revenue, said it had no intention of working with Ye and did not tolerate anti-Semitism and other hate speech amid controversy over the rapper’s inflammatory remarks about Jewish people.
“We condemn his recent divisive remarks and do not tolerate antisemitism or any other form of hate speech,” the company said. “The company would like to again stress that West showed up unannounced and uninvited to Skechers corporate offices.”
The incident comes after Adidas on Tuesday ended its partnership with Ye over “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous” remarks about Jewish people, despite the rapper claiming the sportswear company could not drop him for making anti-Semantic comments.
The German sportswear giant scrapped its partnership, which was worth an estimated $1.5bn, after the rapper was suspended from Twitter and Instagram earlier this month for making anti-Semitic posts. The collapse of the deal stripped Ye of his billionaire status, according to Forbes, reducing his net worth to $400m.
Clothing brand Gap has also announced it will remove the rapper’s Yeezy Gap line of merchandise from its stores and shut down YeezyGap.com, while Footlocker has pulled Yeezy sneakers from its shelves.
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Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, loses support, business deals as fallout from antisemitic remarks continues
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Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, loses support, business deals as fallout from antisemitic remarks continues – CBS News
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Embattled Los Angeles City Council continues to face protests amid racism scandal
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Embattled Los Angeles City Council continues to face protests amid racism scandal – CBS News
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How Audley Moore Created a Blueprint for Black Reparations
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“Something that is often missing from ‘reparations talk,’ ” legal scholar Alfred Brophy observed in 2010, “is a specific plan for repairing past tragedies.” California and New York have joined the dozen or so states and municipalities that have initiated what they are calling reparations programs. As a core platform issue, presidential candidate Marianne Williamson proposed up to $500 billion in payments to the descendants of US slavery, but even that was woefully inadequate.
Enslaved Africans were the first abolitionists—seizing every possible moment to liberate themselves and their families—and they were the first architects of reparations. Other groups in the US have developed successful redress strategies—Holocaust victims, Japanese Americans unjustly incarcerated during World War II, 9/11 victims, the Iran hostages, victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and many others—but black American descendants of US slavery have come up empty-handed.
The racial wealth gap is the most robust indicator of the cumulative economic effects of white supremacy in the United States. It is on average about $850,000 per black household, for a total of $14 trillion. The annual budgets of all 50 states and every municipality in the country combined is about $4.68 trillion. Only the federal government has the capacity to pay the bill, and a sufficient proportion of white Americans must support doing so.
Qualitative profiles—stories and narratives—capture people emotionally, but they often are dismissed as purely anecdotal. Numbers establish patterns that can be generalized to a larger group. Black nationalist “Queen Mother” Audley Moore understood the importance of documenting racial disparities, and she believed in taking complaints to a higher authority. In 1957, the black-power pioneer presented a petition to the United Nations demanding land for black Americans and billions of dollars in reparations, and in 1963, she launched the Committee for Reparations for Descendants of U.S. Slaves.
Pan-Africanists invoke Moore’s name because she also embraced decolonization and freedom for Africa and believed the federal government should provide funds to black Americans who wanted to repatriate to the continent. Moore appears to be consistent in arguing that reparations from the US government should go to blacks whose ancestors were enslaved here and not to blacks who migrated here after slavery ended, particularly the large number who came after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Several of her more vocal disciples, however, have used her ideological Pan-Africanism to put words in Moore’s mouth, ones that support the claim that US reparations should go to all people of African descent.
Equal parts oracle, badass, and political strategist, Moore and her collaborators launched the campaign to demand reparations in New Orleans in 1955 after concluding it was the only way “to save our people from execution.” She was not the first person to endorse a national reparations program for black American descendants of US slaves. That distinction goes to Callie Guy House, who was born into slavery around 1861 in Rutherford County, near Nashville. As her biographer Mary Frances Berry documents in My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations, House tirelessly petitioned the US government for pensions, a form of reparations, for the 1.9 million people formerly enslaved, including the more than 180,000 black soldiers who fought in the Union Army during the Civil War. White veterans received pensions from the federal government, House observed. Why not blacks?
Moore was born in New Iberia, Louisiana, at the tail end of Reconstruction, in 1898, the same year House cofounded the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association. Moore’s mother, Ella Henry, had been educated in France after a wealthy white family chose Henry as their daughter’s companion—better a black child they could control than the poor whites whom they despised. But Henry died in childbirth when Moore was five years old. Her father, St. Cyr Moore, an assistant deputy sheriff who had been run out of a nearby town for retaliating in kind against a white neighbor who had “horsewhipped” his young son, would die before Moore reached adolescence. St. Cyr’s mother was the daughter of an enslaved woman and the white plantation man who had raped her, and Henry’s father had been lynched trying to protect his land. When Moore was very young, around the time her mother died, she witnessed a lynching in New Iberia. “I remember the hollering…white men like wolves, and the [black] man’s feet was tied behind the wagon and he passed in front of our house,” she said; “his head was bumping up and down on the clay, [on] the hard crusty road.” Moore’s lived experience would define her trajectory.
An organizational zelig, Moore was a member of the Communist, Republican, and Democratic parties, as well as (she said) the Elks and the Masons; she was a Catholic, an ordained bishop, and a convert to the Baptist and Ethiopian Orthodox communities of faith, and the Apostolic Orthodox Church of Judah. “’Ive got all the religions,” she said years later. “I have one objective, win ’em for freedom.”
One might wonder if she ever worked for the FBI, which built a copious file on Moore over a 20-year period. Apparently, the agency did approach her in the 1940s to become an informant. Her account of what took place: “I’ll tell you the truth…[when I am in] my right mind, I could join the Ku Klux Klan and know why I’m there, you understand? I could join the police force if I had to.”
In 1919, during the “Red Summer,” white terrorists launched upwards of 40 attacks on black communities. The heroic military service of more than 380,000 blacks during World War I had not brought an end to disenfranchisement and segregation, debt peonage, and racial violence. White supremacy at home proved to be a more invincible foe than the German army. Blacks in Louisiana and elsewhere were desperate to see an end to the carnage and the destruction of black property. But they did not have the capacity to make this happen. Marcus Garvey believed the solution lay with blacks themselves. Like his hero Booker T. Washington, he embraced respectability politics: Blacks must accept responsibility for “improving” themselves to show white Americans they are worthy of equal rights. First, though, they must accept and celebrate their African past and be proud of their black skin.
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A. Kirsten Mullen
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Josep Borrell as Europe’s racist ‘gardener’
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Listening to Europe’s seniormost diplomat Josep Borrell at the inauguration of the new European Diplomatic Academy in Bruges, Belgium, last Thursday, I could only shake my head in wonder and outrage, as he compared Europe to a garden and the world to a jungle – a beastly and scary jungle.
As far as bad speeches go, his rant wouldn’t have merited much commentary if it weren’t for its undiplomatic insensitivity and racism. It was short on wisdom and long on clichés and contradictions. It was badly structured and poorly delivered.
And yet, for a high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, this was a new low. Just when one thought European politics couldn’t get any worse, Borrell spoke his “truth”. In his paternalistic smugness, he effectively poisoned the young minds of Europe’s future diplomats with utter vainness, conceit and supremacism.
But first, the casual sexism. He started by complimenting “Federica” – his predecessor and the academy’s director Federica Mogherini – for her youthful looks with the gallantry of a Catalan bull. No pun intended of course, since the Catalans prefer donkeys to bulls.
In Trumpian fashion, the diplomat then swiftly gauged the world as if it were a red rag that must be confronted head-on, asking the young souls in his audience to beware of the imminent dangers facing Europe from all sides. He pontificated that “Europe is a garden” but “most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden”.
The little garden, he educated them, cannot defend itself by building a wall. Why? “Because the jungle has a strong growth capacity, and the wall will never be high enough in order to protect the garden.”
So, what’s the solution? Then came the punch line: “The gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means.”
I could go on and on, citing more from this childish and utterly dreadful metaphor, but I suppose you get the picture. The bottom line: Wonderful prosperous and free Europe is an exception in our otherwise vicious world, and it won’t survive for long unless its “gardeners” go out there to the jungle and help civilise the world.
All his humbug about gardeners reminded me of The Constant Gardener, a John le Carre book and movie inspired by real-life events about a pharmaceutical firm that tested a new drug on poor locals in Africa, killing or maiming many of them.
In real life, European engagement with Africa and the world has gone far beyond pharmaceutical testing to a whole plethora of pillages from colonialism, slavery and genocide to shadow wars and the theft of natural resources.
But European memories can be at times short and selective – even when it comes to their own history. If indeed Europe is a garden, it is one that’s been tilled over a continent-wide cemetery. Lest Borrell forgot about the centuries of religious, nationalist and imperial wars, including the two world wars and many civil wars – like the Spanish civil war and its bloody 36-year dictatorship that only ended in 1975 and that the Catalan diplomat should be particularly familiar with.
That’s not to say there isn’t much to celebrate. Europe has done very well since the second world war in terms of unity, security and prosperity, but only after defeating racism and fascism. But the rise and spread of neo-fascist and far-right politics throughout the continent, and its electoral victories in important countries like Italy, are reasons for caution, not conceit. But then again, if the racist tone of Borrell – supposedly a socialist – is anything to go by, what difference does it make whether Europe is led by the Left or the Right? Tomato, tomahto.
Borrell was also wrong when he claimed, in the same speech, that Europe has become stronger and more independent of the United States since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Rather the contrary. A weaker, colder, more vulnerable EU has become more subservient to Washington.
Yet the smug diplomat sounded particularly delusional about the implications of the war as it grinds on. While Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned of a greater war and at the same time expressed readiness for diplomacy, Borrell chose to dismiss any diplomatic solution for the time being. Instead, he threatened that the Russian army would be “annihilated” if Moscow were to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, without any thought as to what that may mean to the survival of Europe.
Like his racist rant, this reckless escalation was utterly appropriate language for Europe’s top diplomat to use while speaking to those aspiring to join his profession, or to anyone else for that matter.
And to end his inspirational, motivational big talk with a final wisdom, Borrell told the prospective envoys to raise their heads high and be good gardeners not only of Europe but of the “jungle”, wishing them happy diplomatic safaris.
All joking aside, Borrell’s racist discourse is terribly dangerous in the current state of international affairs. It must be condemned in Europe first and foremost. Europe deserves better representatives. The world deserves better from Europe.
We all harvest what we sow.
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Norman Lear on laughing at what ails America
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Norman Lear on laughing at what ails America – CBS News
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Stanford Apologizes For Limiting Number Of Jewish Students In The 1950s
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STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Stanford University apologized for limiting the admission of Jewish students in the 1950s after a task force commissioned by the school found records that show university officials excluded Jewish students for years and later the school denied it occurred.
The task force was formed in January and issued a report last month confirming assertions that Stanford had admissions quotas for Jewish students, Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne said in a letter sent Wednesday to the Stanford community.
“This ugly component of Stanford’s history, confirmed by this new report, is saddening and deeply troubling,” Tessier-Lavigne said.
The task force cited a memo from February 1953 in which the-then director of admissions discusses his concerns about the number of Jewish students enrolling at Stanford. The memo was first made public in a blog by a historian last year.
After that memo was issued, “enrollment patterns reveal a sharp decline in Stanford students who graduated from two high schools known to have significant populations of Jewish students: Beverly Hills High School and Fairfax High School,” in Los Angeles, according to the report.
The task force also found that when questioned about its practices in later years, school officials denied any anti-Jewish bias in admissions.
Tessier-Lavigne apologized on behalf of Stanford University to the Jewish community and the entire university community “both for the actions documented in this report to suppress the admission of Jewish students in the 1950s and for the university’s denials of those actions in the period that followed,” he wrote.
“These actions were wrong. They were damaging. And they were unacknowledged for too long,” he added.
Tessier-Lavigne said that Stanford plans to put into action the recommendations made by the task force to improve the experience of Jewish students at the university, including offering anti-bias training that addresses antisemitism and offering a kosher dining program.
Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, executive director of Hillel at Stanford, a Jewish student group, told the San Francisco Chronicle that she appreciated the school’s institutional courage in commissioning the task force, issuing an apology and acknowledging its past mistakes.
“It potentially opens a new chapter in terms of the partnership between those of us who support Jewish life on campus and the university,” she said.
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L.A. City Council member resigns over racist remarks
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L.A. City Council member resigns over racist remarks – CBS News
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Leaked racist remarks from former Los Angeles City Council president ignite outrage
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The Los Angeles City Council remains in turmoil following leaked audio of racist comments made one year ago by Nury Martinez, who resigned as council president on Monday after the revelation. Martinez was a no-show at Tuesday’s meeting, taking what she called a “leave of absence,” but residents expressed their outrage and demanded resignations.
“Shame on you! Shame on you” one man yelled at the council members.
The moment of backroom bigotry happened during a call that included Martinez and councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin DeLeon. Cedillo and DeLeon showed up to Tuesday’s meeting, but never spoke. All three, who are Latino Democrats, have apologized.
It’s unclear who recorded and leaked the call in which Martinez referred to a colleague’s son, who is Black, as “Parece changuito,” which translates from Spanish to English as “that little monkey.”
Hateful comments were also directed at Indigenous people, gays and Blacks. No one is heard pushing back.
“On these tapes I have heard the worst of what Los Angeles is — trusted servants who voiced hate and bile,” said councilmember Mike Bonin, whose son was the target of Martinez’s slur.
The furious father said Martinez must first resign, then ask for forgiveness.
Gustavo Arellano, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, said he expects the councilmembers will be forced to resign.
“I’m glad Latinos especially are being some of the loudest voices against them,” he said. “They’re going to have to step down.”
But when that will be, he says, is “a question only their arrogance can answer.”
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Leaked racist remarks ignite outrage in Los Angeles
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Los Angeles City Council president resigns over racist remarks
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Kanye West’s Twitter and Instagram accounts restricted following antisemitic posts
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Rapper Ye — also known by his given name, Kanye West — has been locked out of his Twitter account “due to a violation of Twitter’s policies,” the social media platform told CBS News in a statement.
Twitter did not specify which policies had been broken, but the action came not long after West on Saturday night posted an antisemitic tweet in which he threatened to go “death [sic] con 3” on Jewish people.
In the tweet — which has since been removed — West also wrote, “The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also.”
The move comes shortly after West’s Instagram account was similarly restricted by the platform’s parent company, Meta, after West posted screenshots of an alleged conversation with rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs in which West suggested Combs was being controlled by Jews.
“Ima [sic] use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me,” West wrote. Instagram has since deleted the post.
Prior to Saturday, West had not tweeted since November 2020. After a tweet criticizing Mark Zuckerberg over his suspension from Instagram, West was welcomed back to Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk, who has been embroiled in litigation around the purchase of the platform for several months.
West was previously suspended by Instagram for 24 hours in March for directing a racial slur at “The Daily Show” host, Trevor Noah.
West’s posts have garnered public outcry from the American Jewish Committee, which denounced the language as “anti-Jewish” and “dangerous.” The AJC also referenced an interview West did on Tucker Carlson’s show last Thursday, in which the rapper accused former Trump senior advisor and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is Jewish, of brokering the Abraham Accords to “make money.”
Last week, West also came under fire for debuting “White Lives Matter” shirts at Paris Fashion Week, which Combs later criticized, leading to the alleged texts West posted on Instagram. West was photographed in the shirt alongside conservative commentator Candace Owens.
Hannah Gais, senior research analyst at Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, said in a statement to CBS News that both West and Owens “have a proclivity for high-profile stunts designed to troll liberals,” and that their “use of rhetoric popular among some on the racist fringe goes to show that these slogans can become normalized and part of the broader right-wing vernacular through repetition.”
The phrase “White Lives Matter” emerged as “a racist response to the Black Lives Matter movement” in 2015, and has been adopted and promoted by white supremacist groups and sympathizers, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
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How the far-right got out of the doghouse
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European far-right politicians just stormed to victory in Italy, after achieving historic results in France and Sweden.
“Everywhere in Europe, people aspire to take their destiny back into their own hands!” said Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally Party.
But if you think there is a new wave of right-wing radicalism sweeping Europe, you’d be wrong. Something else is going on.
Analysis by POLITICO’s Poll of Polls suggests far-right parties in the region on average did not increase their support by even one percentage point between the start of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine in February and today.
POLITICO looked at the median and average increase of all parties organized in right-wing European Parliament groups of Identity and Democracy, the European Conservatives and Reformists or unaffiliated parties with political far-right positions.
Overall, the results indicate that if an increase in support occurred for far-right parties, it happened several years ago.
The Sweden Democrats’ first surge happened after the 2014 election, when the party grew from around 10 percent to 20 percent, the same one-fifth share of the vote they received in this year’s election. The far-right Alternative for Germany AfD in Germany grew fast in 2015 and 2016 reaching 14 percent in POLITICO’s polling tracker. In Italy, the Northern League overtook Forza Italia for the first time in early 2015, and peaked in 2019 at 37 percent before starting a downward trend ending on 9 percent in last month’s election. In the Italian election, voters mostly switched between rival right-wing camps.
The far-right has moved from the fringes of politics into the mainstream, not only influencing the political center but also entering the arena of power.
“There is a normalization of far-right parties as an integral part of the political landscape,” said Cathrine Thorleifsson, who researches extremism at the University of Oslo. “They have been accepted by the electorate and also by other, conventional parties.”
Cooperation between the center-right and the extreme-right has become less taboo.
“The rise of far-right parties is only part of the story. The facilitating and mainstreaming of far-right parties as well as the adoption of far-right frames and positions by other parties is at least as important,” tweeted Cas Mudde, a leading scholar on the issue.
This may risk destabilizing Europe even more than winning a couple of percentage points in the polls.
Italy’s far-right firebrand Giorgia Meloni is a clear-cut example. While her party draws its origin from groups founded by former fascists, she’ll now lead the EU’s third-largest economy.
Leader of Italian far-right party “Fratelli d’Italia” (Brothers of Italy), Giorgia Meloni | Pitro Cruciatti/AFP via Getty Images In Sweden, the center-right party has started coalition talks for a minority government which would have to draw on opposition support, most likely from the far-right Swedish Democrats. Far-right parties have also entered governments in Austria, Finland, Estonia and Italy. Other countries are likely to follow.
George Simion, the leader of Romania’s far-right party, Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), celebrated Meloni’s win in Italy, saying his party is likely to follow in their footsteps.
Spain heads to the ballot box next year and socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez may have a tough time winning re-election. The conservative People’s Party is between five and seven points ahead of the Spanish socialists in all the published polls, but it is unlikely to garner enough votes to secure a governing majority outright.
That means it may have to come to an agreement with far-right party Vox, whose leader, Santiago Abascal, is an ally of Meloni’s. While the People’s Party previously refused to govern with Vox, last spring its newly elected leader, Alberto Núnez-Feijóo, greenlit a coalition agreement with the ultranationalist group in Spain’s central Castilla y León region.
Tom Van Grieken, the right-wing Belgian politician, also pointed to Spain as the next likely example, especially because of the possible cooperation with the PP. “All over Europe, we see conservative parties who are considering breaking the cordon sanitaire,” he said, referring to the refusal of other parties to work with the far-right. “They are tired of compromising with their ideological counterparts, the parties at the left end of the spectrum.”
Chairman of Vlaams Belang party Tom Van Grieken | Stephanie Le Coqc/EFE via EPA This didn’t happen overnight. The far-right worked hard to shrug off their extremist, neo-Nazi image.
“In some of the reporting on the Swedish Democrats, you’d think they’ll deport people on trains as soon as they’re in power. Come on, these parties have changed,” said one EU official with right-wing affiliations.
The far-right invested in “image adjustment and trying to tread carefully with some issues, while unashamedly catering to others,” said Nina Wiesehomeier, a political scientist at the IE University of Madrid. “This is particularly obvious in Italy right now, with Meloni sticking to the slogan of ‘God, homeland, family,’ as a continuation, while having tried to purge the party from more radical elements.”
In Belgium’s northern region of Flanders, the right-wing Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) explicitly dismisses the label “extreme-right.” Just like his counterparts in Italy, Sweden and France, Van Grieken, the party’s president, denounced the more extremist positions of his group’s founding fathers and moderated his political message to make voting for the far-right socially acceptable.
Overt racism is taboo. Instead, the rhetoric changes to criticizing an open-door migration policy. By carefully catering to centrist voters, the far-right aims for a bigger slice of the cake, while still riding on the anti-establishment discontent.
“There is a clear fault line between the winners of globalization and the nationalists,” Van Grieken told POLITICO. “This comes on top on the concerns about mass migration, whether it’s in Malmö, Rome or other European cities.”
Perfect storm
Now, the time is right to capitalize on that transformation.
As Europe is battling record inflation and Europeans fear exorbitant heating bills, governments warn about the political implications of a “winter of discontent.”
“It’s a massive drainage of European prosperity,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told POLITICO recently. “In the current situation, it’s hard to believe in progress, it’s very hard to make progress. So there’s a very pessimistic feeling.”
The current war in Ukraine is the latest in a succession of crises — in global finance, migration and the pandemic. Experts argue that this is key to understanding the rising support for the far-right.
“Such existential crises have a destabilizing effect and lead to fear,” said Carl Devos, a professor in political science at Ghent University. “Fear is the breeding ground for the far-right. People tend to translate that fear and outrage into radical voting behaviour.”
Migration and identity politics are less prominent in the media because of the Ukraine war and rising energy prices, but they’re still key issues in right-wing debate.
In Austria, the coalition parties fought over whether or not asylum seekers should receive climate bonuses. In the Netherlands, the death of a baby at the asylum center Ter Apel led to a renewed debate over the overcrowded migration centers.
The combination of those issues is likely to feed into more right-wing wins across the continent. “The far-right offers nationalist, protectionist solutions to the globalized crises, said Thorleifsson. “We see how the migration issue was momentarily off the agenda during the pandemic, but now it’s back.”
Aitor Hernández-Morales, Camille Gijs and Ana Fota contributed reporting.
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Barbara Moens and Cornelius Hirsch
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Halloween decoration depicting man hanging from tree comes down in Harnett County after complaints
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HARNETT COUNTY, N.C. — A Halloween decoration in Harnett County has come down after sparking controversy within the community and online.
This display, shared hundreds of times on Facebook, shows what appears to be a fully-dressed man with his hands tied behind his back hanging from a tree outside a home in Coats.
Investigators with the Harnett County’s Sheriff Office tell WRAL the family says it was Halloween decoration meant to look like a farmer. Some residents say the display had racist undertones.
“Maybe we did take it the wrong way,” said Jenni Byrd, who lives in Harnett County. “And it did look a certain way that everyone was kind of confused about but i’m glad in the end, that’s not what it was representing.”
Investigators said the family took down the display after realizing the hurt it caused within the community.
They go on to say there aren’t policies banning such displays on private property.
DeAngelo McDougald spotted the controversial Halloween display and it was jarring upon his first glance.
“I just rode past it and it looked so real that I stopped,” McDougald said.
A display showing what appears to be a fully dressed man with his hands tied behind his back, hanging from a tree.
“If you’re passing by and you just glancing over, you’d be like ‘someone’s hanging from a tree.’”
McDougald posted the image to social media, hoping to bring light to the situation. As of tonight, it’s been shared more than 360 times.
Those who saw it in person said this hits close to home for families of color
“My daughter is biracial – she’s Black, white and Indian, and I don’t want her growing up seeing these things,” said Jenni Byrd.
When we drove by the home this evening, the display had been taken down.
Major Aaron Meredith with Harnett County Sheriff’s Office said investigators spoke with homeowners about the controversial display.
“It’s a Hispanic family and they said it was a simply a Halloween decoration they put up and once it was explained to them how it was perceived, they realized that and they were very apologetic and they took it down immediately,” Meredith said.
Harnett County residents who saw the decoration was thankful to see a positive resolution.
“If the intent of it wasn’t what we thought it was, then that’s the best outcome,” Byrd said.
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