Showing posts with label discrimination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discrimination. Show all posts

Friday, 30 May 2014

"Belle" and a word on Reparations (video)

Ashley Wellls, Pat Macpherson, Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Ta-Nehisi Coates, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now, 5/30/14); Michel Martin (Tell Me More/NPR.org)

(FMT) An illegitimate mixed race daughter of a wealthy British aristocrat, a Royal Navy Admiral... based on a true story, "Belle" follows the story of an Dido Elizebeth Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the illegitimate mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral. Raised by her aristocratic great-uncle, Lord Mansfield, and his wife, Lady Mansfield, Dido's lineage affords her certain privileges, yet the color of her skin prevents her from fully participating in the traditions of her social standing. Left to wonder if she will ever find love (because she, unlike the women of her time, can afford to marry for love due to her handsome inheritance), Dido falls for an idealistic young [religieux, a] vicar's son bent on change who, with her help, shapes Lord Mansfield's role as Lord Chief Justice to end slavery in England.
 
Written by Misan Sagay. Directed by Amma Asante. Also starring Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson, Sara Gadon, Penelope Wilton, Miranda Richardson, Tom Felton, Sam Reid, Matthew Goode. © Fox Searchlight Picture. In theaters today, May 30, 2014.

The Untold History of Slavery in the United States of America (AP/msnbc.com)


The Case for Reparations
Reckoning with U.S. slavery and institutional racism 
Coates-nobug
Part 2: Coates on slavery reparations
An explosive new cover-story in the June 2014 issue of The Atlantic magazine by the famed essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates has rekindled a national discussion on reparations for American slavery and institutional racism.

Levittown, Penn. 1957 (AP/Bill Ingraham)
Coates explores how slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and federally-backed racist housing policy systematically and purposely robbed African Americans of their possessions [recapitulated in the recent Wall Street banking/mortgage housing bubble and foreclosure crisis] and prevented them from accruing inter-generational wealth.

Much of the essay focuses on predatory lending schemes that bilked potential African-American homeowners, concluding: "Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole." More
"Belle": Romance, Race, and Slavery with Jane Austen style
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido Elizabeth Belle in Belle.After the success of movies about the brutality of slavery, the film Belle brings a new perspective. Actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw talks about her role as a mixed-race 18th century heroine.

British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw was brought up on Jane Austen adaptations. "You know, the Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle was something I watched on a weekly basis with my mum at home in Oxfordshire," she tells NPR's [magnificent but exiting "Tell Me More" host] Michel Martin. AUDIO: LISTEN NOW
 
Screen_shot_2014-02-17_at_9.20.00_am
Untold History: More than quarter of US presidents involved in slavery, human trafficking

Tuesday, 29 April 2014

The NBA, BLM slave owners (cartoon)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly  (SPORTS COMMENTARY)
A woman scorned: Is she a gold digger who set up her Jewish billionaire boyfriend?
"Rancher Bundy and His Cows" (Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com)
  
I can't believe what you did to me. - I can.
Racism is alive and well in America. First the federal government's BLM (Bureau of Land Management), which is eager to get its share of the 25,000,000 gunshot rounds the U.S. government's DHS has requested, used heavy handed tactics on a rural bumpkin who stepped in the poop, then a cosmopolitan white supremacist came down with Foot in Mouth disease.
 
Armed property owner reports trespasser, gets charged with felony assaultEver since 2012 things are being revealed. Last week revealed a racist cattle exploiter and cow killer ("rancher") thinking out loud about how Blacks might not be better off as slaves instead of dependent on government subsidies. Listen to his egregious statements:


 
Massive Raid By Federal agents, Rangers and F.B.I. On Bundy Ranch Imminent?Cowboy Cliven Bundy apologized but refused to retract the statements. Why? Because "if a man can't say things like that, then Martin Luther [King Jr.] has failed!"
 
Militia Mobilization Under Way For *OPERATION AMERICAN SPRING*Now, Commissioner Silver has slammed Sterling, the Jewish "owner" of a "team" of Black men who do what he says...but are not slaves. Don't call them "slaves," not even "wage slaves," because that would be racist. And if there's one thing the mainstream media will not tolerate is racism, when it feels like it.
 
(TMZ) Magic Johnson, Shaquille O'Neil, and Doc Rivers react. LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling told his "girlfriend" he does NOT want her bringing Black people to his games... including Magic Johnson. It's ALL on tape.
Wisdom Quarterly/KFI AM, April 29, 2014
"The one editorial cartoon about Donald Sterling you have to see" says The Washington Post's Missy Khamvongsa: Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Mike Luckovich sums up the Sterling debacle pretty succinctly. More
 
"Don't bring Black people to Clippers games"
From NY, the commissioner has spoken: The NBA is banning Los Angeles Clippers billionaire owner Donald Sterling from the Clippers' organization for life after racist comments attributed to him went public.

He is also being fined $2.5 million.  The penalties come just hours before the Clippers are set to host the Golden State Warriors in Game Five of their playoff series in Los Angeles.

An audio recording of an exchanges, or exchanges, with his "delicate" half-Latina and half-Black "girlfriend" was leaked over the weekend.

Trafficking in USA, too (freetheslaves.net)
In it Sterling is allegedly heard telling her not to associate publicly with African-Americans or bring them to Clippers games. [She seems to bait him into incriminating himself further and revealing his true colors. Many have jumped in to add this was mild in comparison to many things the 80-year-old has said in the past]. More

Who is Sterling? What's his past?
CC Liu (ed.) Wisdom Quarterly; KPCC/SCPR.org
  • He was born Donald Tokowitz in Chicago, Illinois, in 1934,
  • Only son of immigrant produce peddler (Sports Illustrated).
  • Left Chicago for Boyle Heights, now a Latino enclave in East Los Angeles but then a poor Jewish enclave (SI).
  • School: He graduated Cal State Los Angeles near Pasadena and Southwestern Univ. School of Law (SI).
  • He changed his last name to "Sterling" in his 20s because it “instilled confidence in people” (Dave Zirin, KPCC interview).
  • Practiced law in Boyle Heights then Beverly Hills (SI).
  • He became a real estate mogul, buying multiple apartment buildings in L.A. and Sterling Plaza.
  • He bought the Clippers in 1981 for $12.7 million (ESPN).
  • Net worth: $1.9 billion, ranks #328 in US (Forbes 2013).
How racist is Sterling's racism? 
BeforeItsNews.com, April 28, 2014 (edited by Wisdom Quarterly)
Racism is deplorable. Most Americans now will not stand for it. But many of us don't even realize we're doing it.! Yes, some are too sensitive, BUT most of us are too insensitive.

 
This is not the first time he is accused of race-based discrimination. Sterling was previously sued in a case that revealed that he ran the Clippers like a "Southern plantation owner." This is only the most recent example of Sterling’s well-documented hostility toward other races, particularly Blacks and Latinos. But this time the story and video went viral just as ballplayers and rights defenders wanted.

Do something: Free the Slaves!
In a racial discrimination suit, former General Manager Elgin Baylor charged that Sterling ran the Clippers with the “vision of a Southern plantation-type structure” asking him to create a team of “poor black boys from the South and a white head coach.”

When interviewing one prospective white coach, Sterling reportedly asked, “I wanna know why you think you can coach these n**gers.”

Despite complaints from [basketball] players, Sterling has made a disturbing habit of bringing women into the locker room and saying things like “look at these beautiful Black bodies.”

[Remember, White plantation owners used to rape and sell Black children, boys and girls, their mothers and fathers, all of whom were their legal property -- a little discussed consequence of European-style slavery in America.

Billionaire modern-"slave" owner Sterling is a ruthless, bigoted slumlord: In 2009, he settled a case with the Department of Justice after paying out the largest settlement ever obtained in a government housing discrimination suit:

He was accused of systematically denying rental opportunities to prospective Black and Hispanic tenants across his Southern California properties. In court documents, he stated that "Black tenants smell and attract vermin." More

More from Before It's News
Recent Stories

Wednesday, 16 April 2014

India recognizes a "third gender" (pandaka)

Ashley Wells, Irma Quintero, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
People from the Puritan US to Putin's Russia may dislike gays, but the question is, Do they have rights? Do we not all as sentient beings, at least as human beings, have equal rights?
"Homophobia can kill you," says Discovery (news.discovery.com). So be pro-gay or neutral.
  
Hijras mourn in India (wiki)
The Supreme Court of India recognized a legal third gender for hijra and transgender individuals (Buddhist pandakas).

What are or were pandakas in the Buddha's day? "People of non-normative sexual natures, perhaps originally denoting a deficiency in male sexual capacity," according to Peter A. Jackson ("Non-normative Sex/Gender Categories in the Theravada Buddhist Scriptures," Australian Humanities Review, April 1996).
 
Buddhism, Sex, and Gender
The best account, and one of the very few, we have ever come across concerning Buddhism and homosexuality, which is the frame for discussions of pandakas, is an academic collection of essays edited by Jose Ignacio Cabezon: Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender. Of particular interest is the contribution of Prof. Donald S. Lopez.

Buddhaghosa, apparently, put together a clinical description of pandakas -- often offensively and misleadingly translated as "eunuchs" when they are in fact non-normative individuals. Ancient sketches of transgender and cross-dressing individuals had many disparate presumptions about their character, habits, and proclivities as well as the karmic source of their condition. It cannot be asked, "What was the traditional view of homosexuality in Buddhism, Jainism, and Brahmanism?" without reference to pandakas because they were not distinguished from "perverts" and third-gender-rebels.
Ancient India with Afghanistan (Gandhara, Kamboja) and Pakistan at upper left, Burma and Thailand at lower right, Nepal and Tibet at the center top, and famous Buddhist sites on the plains of the Ganges river (wiki).
 
Sex in the Pali Canon
Gender of devas is fluid in Indian iconography
The Pali canon -- a ancient collection of sutras and other sacred Buddhist texts including the disciplinary code (Vinaya) and commentaries -- contains numerous references to homoerotic behavior and to individuals who today would [today] be variously identified as hermaphrodites, transvestites, transsexuals, and homosexuals.

However, none of the sex/gender categories named in the canon precisely matches any of these contemporary notions. But it combines instead elements of these diverse physiological, gender, and sexual conditions in distinctive formulations. 

Dharmic renunciates say no to pandakas.
Most Buddhist canonical accounts of non-normative gender and sexuality are found in the Vinaya, the monastic code of conduct, and they are listed among the many explicitly described forms of sexual activity proscribed and forbidden for monks and nuns (bhikkhus and bhikkhunis).

In analyzing Theravada Buddhist accounts of sex and gender, it is vital to keep in mind that the tradition began as a Monastic Sangha, an order of celibate male and female renunciates, and that the Vinaya is a monastic not a layperson's code of conduct. 

Scriptural accounts of non-normative sex and gender also need to be understood in the context of the tradition's general disdain of sexuality and its distrust of sensual indulgences.

Buddhist Thailand's third gender is the kathoey
Nevertheless, according to Jackson, what makes accounts of sex and gender in these ancient Indian texts especially fascinating is their contemporary relevance in Thailand, which together with Sri Lanka, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia forms part of the Asian cultural sphere in which Theravada Buddhism remains a vital cultural institution. More

Growing up in India, I never met openly gay...
Deepak Singh never met an openly gay person when he was growing up in India. That, of course, has changed in the years since, with people of many different sexual orientations coming into his life. But the news out of India's Supreme Court decision makes his heart grieve. [That was last year.]

Supreme Courts rights traditional wrong (NPR)
Singh should be happy today (4-16-14) because India's Supreme Court has just legally declared a third gender (hijra) that gives rights to its LGBTQ community (lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and questioning). The third gender is neither males who want to be females nor females eager to become males. Nor are they regarded as sufficiently "male" by each other or the larger community. There really is a third gender, and it is now enshrined in law...at least in India. In India, Supreme Court hands down landmark ruling recognizing transgender citizens.
 
Hancock just returned from seeing the wonders of India

Thursday, 6 March 2014

Racism in Buddhist Burma: Muslim Rohingya

CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Kathmandu Post (ekantipur.com); BBC News America; 
Beloved daughters of Burma must be protected from feared minority? It's racist discrimination. Sandalwood paste is used on many children to lighten and keep skin clear (Dietmar Temps/Deepblue66/flickr)
 
Proposed law is discriminatory
(KP) Burma’s human rights record will hit a new low if a proposed marriage bill becomes law. Couched in an idiom that merely seeks to give “protection and rights” to Buddhists, the proposed law targets the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority and forbids Muslims from marrying into the majority community. 
 
Spearheaded by a monk, Ven. Wirathu, the move, it seems, has officialdom’s blessings. President Thein Sein, succumbing to pressure from the extremist lobby, asked parliament to consider enacting such a law, which proposes a 10-year jail sentence for a Rohingya marrying a girl from the Buddhist community without obtaining her parents’ permission.

Vaguely worded, the proposed law, which bans polygamy, would “balance the increasing population” -- of whom, the legislation doesn’t specify. The proposal has also been criticized by Aung San Suu Kyi, who called it “a violation of women’s rights and human rights.” 
 
Already subjected to a discriminatory two-child policy, the Rohingya community is considered by the UN as the world’s most persecuted group. The state doesn’t recognize the Rohingyas as Burma’s citizens [regarded as rightly belonging in neighboring Muslim Bangladesh, who rejects them] even though most of them have been living in Burma for generations. They are not allowed to own land, and they cannot travel without permission. More

An Army private sweeps the floor in Fort Knox, Kentucky, on 27 February 2014
US Army prosecutor accused of groping
 
A top prosecutor of sexual assault cases in the US Army has himself been accused of groping a female colleague, military officials say. [What chance was their for justice for victims of rape and sexual assault in the US military?]
Quebec's Premier Pauline Marois waves as she boards her campaign bus after she called an election at the National Assembly in Quebec City, 5 March 2014Campaigning begins in Quebec after Premier Pauline Marois of Parti Quebec dissolved the legislature and launched a bid for a majority.
Bitcoin t-shirtClaims by Newsweek to have found the man who invented the Bitcoin virtual cash system have drawn criticism and skepticism.
Marijuana stocks
Wall Street's Reefer Madness