IS THIS WHAT YOU'RE TEACHING YOUR CHILD?

Students Chant "Assassinate Obama" on School Bus

Update: Commission penalizes swim club in Pennsylvania racism complaint

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/09/23/pennsylvania.swim.racism/
The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission issued a finding of probable cause Tuesday that racism was involved in the decision last June by a suburban Philadelphia swim club to revoke privileges of a largely minority day care center.

The commission ordered monetary damages for humiliation and embarrassment and a civil penalty of not more than $50,000.

The decision noted that none of the club’s 155 paid members this year was African-American.

Last year, according to the decision, there were “179 paid memberships, none of whom were African American.”

In addition, the decision noted that in 2009, the Valley Club “made a concerted effort to expand the geographic range of its membership by engaging in a marketing campaign…. The Respondent efforts were mainly directed at areas with overwhelmingly Caucasian populations…. The Respondent made no effort to direct such marketing efforts at areas with significant African American populations….”

Limbaugh warns of white Jim Crow, suggests segregation

Limbaugh warns of white Jim Crow

"The Thin Green Line" has been following the devolution of political discourse into fear-mongering and apparent race-baiting since Van Jones, the former adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality, first got entangled in it.

Like many commentators, this blogger has felt that the level of disrespect shown for Obama, and indeed the office of the president, of late was fueled by racism.

At least as far as Rush Limbaugh goes, the nagging question has been answered. Limbaugh called for segregation of school buses in response to an incident in which a white boy was beaten up by two black boys.

Here's the chain of events: In one of probably hundreds of school bus incidents that day, a white student was roughed up punched by two black students while onlookers egged them on. Local law enforcement tentatively declared that the incident was racially motivated. The next day, national conservative blog the Drudge Report made the incident its top story.

The same day, the AP reported that law enforcement was now saying that race was not a factor in the fight. (The aggressors objected to the boy's choice of seats.)

The next day, Limbaugh discussed the incident, and even after a caller reminded him that the police were reporting that race was not a factor, said:

In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on.' I wonder if Obama's going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.

Frankly, it's hard to make sense of Limbaugh's rant, but in what appears to be a continued attempt by the right to redefine racism as blacks' alleged hatred of whites, with what appeared to be sarcasm, Limbaugh made reference to how racism should be socially acceptable because (according to a study cited in Newsweek), it's inborn like homosexuality.

Apparently still using "racism" in this new frankly Orwellian sense, Limbaugh went on to opine that not only was the beating [remember, over the choice of seats] "racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that's the lesson we're being taught here today. Kid shouldn't have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses -- it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama's America.

Takeaway: Though hardly even coherent, Limbaugh is attempting to tell white people that they should fear this new "racism"; with presidential support, new anti-white Jim Crow laws and beatings could be just around the corner.

Danger scale: high.

Click HERE for a slideshow of pictures chronicling segregation in America

Democrats Run from Carter on Race Comments

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/27248
First Dems ran from ACORN, now they are running from former President Carter.

They sure do scare easily, don't they?

Can your name keep you from getting hired?

http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2009/08/28/can-your-name-keep-you-from-getting-hired/?ncid=AOLCOMMjobsDYNLprim0001
From the article: "For example, résumés with white-sounding names have a 50% greater chance of receiving a callback when compared to those with African American names..."

The article starts out on a light note, with a man whose name is Glenn Miller. But it gets serious. Not too serious, this is AOL.

The Wrong Side of History

The all-white crowd gathered round, seething with anger about change, which they felt was being shoved down their throats.

Some pumped demoralizing signs into the air, others shouted down anybody they didn’t feel were on their side. It didn’t take long for the name-calling and insults to commence.

“Somebody started yelling. Lynch her! Lynch her! I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd — someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.”

These are the words of Elizabeth Eckford. She is not talking about town hall protesters or tea baggers. Eckford, one of nine black students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., was recalling how hundreds of white protesters — with backing from powerful politicians — tried to block her and eight other children from entering a public school in 1957.

They became known as the Little Rock Nine.

Protesters faced by the nine youths repeatedly warned that if blacks were allowed into “their schools” (much like the “their country” sentiment currently being echoed) it would harm their children.

It is ironic that thousands of angry, mostly white protesters converged on Washington last weekend at the same time I happened to be reading Cooper v. Aaron, a 1958 Supreme Court case stemming from the Little Rock Nine. The case is about Arkansas Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus and his refusal to obey federal orders to integrate the state’s schools. His defiance caused Republican President Dwight Eisenhower to send in federal troops to force Faubus to follow the law.

Chaos erupted. Vitriol and rowdy demonstrations spread not only throughout Arkansas, but across the country.

The nation was so polarized that it was nearly impossible for most people to foresee what many now take for granted: Integration would benefit the whole country, not just a particular demographic group.

We also now know that those screaming protesters were on the wrong side of history.

Some may ask what the Little Rock Nine story has to do with the current health care debate, especially when the apparent villain in the case was a Democrat and the hero, a Republican.

Here’s a clue: This column is not really about race. It’s about the way history repeats itself, and about our place in it.

Faubus’ opposition to allow black children to integrate Arkansas schools was politically motivated: He risked losing political support if he sanctioned integration, even though it was the right thing to do. Just like Republicans now risk losing political support if they show agreement with President Obama’s health care ideas — or any of his ideas, for that matter.

Click here to continue.

Joe Wilson, Neoconfederate—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/09/hbc-90005700
say it ain't so, Joe

Back in 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks took offense to an anti-slavery speech delivered by Massachusetts abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner. Accompanied by another congressman from the Palmetto state, Laurence M. Keitt, Brooks waited until Sumner was almost alone on the floor of the Senate and then approached him. He called Sumner’s speech a “libel on South Carolina,” and then raised a thick gold-capped cane over Sumner’s head and began to strike him. Brooks continued to deliver blows to Sumner’s head until his stout cane broke and Sumner collapsed in a pool of blood on the floor. When several senators came to Sumner’s defense, Keitt brandished a pistol in their face and warned them to keep away. Sumner barely escaped with his life and was incapacitated for a full three years.


John L. Magee, Southern Chivalry–Argument versus Clubs (Philadelphia, 1856)
Brooks, however, became a hero to his fellow fire-breathing white South Carolinians. Dozens sent him new canes, one inscribed with the legend “Hit him again!” He died a few months later, after surviving an effort to expel him from the House. But his legacy lived on. As South Carolinians opened the first volleys of the Civil War three years later, wags up north talked of “Poor South Carolina–too small to be a country, too large to be an insane asylum.”

Judged against the Brooks and Keitt standard, South Carolina Congressman Addison Graves (“Joe”) Wilson’s disruption of President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress last week with the words “You lie!” looks pretty pale. On the other hand, the flow of support he received from the array of birthers, tenthers, and deathers who now call the G.O.P. home seemed predictable. More than any development in recent memory, it demonstrated the inversion of the Republican Party. No longer is it a party that identifies with Lincoln and Sumner. The G.O.P. of 2009 is led by forty- and fifty-something white men with romantic (and delusional) longings for the antebellum south. Take Joe Wilson.

In 2003, Wilson attacked Strom Thurmond’s natural biracial daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, saying her public acknowledgement of her parentage shortly after Thurmond’s death was “a smear” designed to “diminish Thurmond’s legacy.” Wilson launched his political career working as an aide to Senator Thurmond and has continuously held the staunch segregationist as a hero.

Now Max Blumenthal probes more deeply into Wilson’s relationship with a radical Neoconfederate organization entitled the Sons of Confederate Veterans, SCV for short:

Who are the SCV?… By 2006… the SCV had been substantially taken over by an organized cadre of white supremacists who sought to turn the nation’s oldest Southern historical society into what the veteran white supremacy activist Kirk Lyons called “a modern, 21st century Christian war machine capable of uniting the Confederate community and leading it to ultimate victory,” had seized much of the SCV’s leadership positions, the Southern Poverty Law Center released an extensive list of SCV officials who belonged to “hate groups.”

Lyons, a key member of this new leadership, had harbored dreams of creating a seemingly benign front group for a more sophisticated version of the Ku Klux Klan. “I have great respect for the Klan historically, but, sadly the Klan today is ineffective and sometimes even destructive,” Lyons told a German neo-Nazi magazine in 1992. “It would be good if the Klan followed the advice of former Klansman Robert Miles: ‘Become invisible. Hang the robes and hoods in the cupboard and become an underground organization.’” With the SCV, Lyons discovered he didn’t have to go underground after all. Once Lyons helped install his close friend, Ron Wilson, as president of the SCV, the organization’s political newsletter, The Southern Mercury, was transformed into a propaganda mill for crude white supremacist cant. Mailed to all dues-paying members of the SCV until it folded in 2008, the Mercury published articles describing blacks as genetically inferior to whites, calling African-Americans as “a childlike people,” and warned that if Obama runs for re-election, race riots of an “exceedingly violent nature” would immediately ensue, leaving “entire sections of some of our cities in ruins.”

No doubt about it. Preston Brooks would approve. And so, evidently, does Joe Wilson.

yikes! Perhaps Jimmy Carter and Maureen Dowd weren't just whistling Dixie... well - you know what I mean. lol

Another Tea Party Meltdown

This stuff is so common now that it has become a general rite of passage for these tea party people to fall over themselves in abject stupidity.

But I'm posting this anyway because it is way too funny to keep to myself!

Frank Schaeffer: Glenn Beck and The 9/12 Marchers: Subversives From Within

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/glenn-beck-and-the-912-ma_b_284387.html
Who are these people?! Where do they come from?! Ordinary Americans might wonder why anyone would stoop so low as to follow Glenn Beck, Fox News and Dick Armey (and their corporate sponsors masquerading as "FreedomWorks") as they organize their "9/12 March On Washington" to cynically exploit the 9/11 attack.

Patriotic Americans might question the organizer's aim to provide a media forum for dimwitted right wingers to scream "Liar!" "Socialist!" "Antichrist!" "Muslim!" "Death Panels!" "He's not an American!" and so on and on and on about the commander in chief charged with defending us from further attacks. And some people might even cry "shame on you!" to the more mainstream Republicans participating that include Dick Armey of FreedomWorks, as well as GOP Reps. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Mike Pence of Indiana, Tom Price of Georgia, and South Carolina GOP Sen. Jim DeMint.

Ordinary folks from Planet Earth may ask why the Republican Party, right-wing activists and members of the Religious Right seem so unreachable with mere facts let alone decency and decorum. (As the proud father of a US Marine who fought in Afghanistan, I'm particularly outraged that these people would exploit the 9/11 attacks after my son and others were prepared to give their lives in response to our enemies.)

As a former Religious Right leader, who was raised (and home-schooled by my Evangelical-leader parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer) in the movement, let me explain just why the ordinary rules of decency don't apply to the right these days.

Let me also answer this question: Who are these people?

You have to finish reading this one:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/glenn-beck-and-the-912-ma_b_284387.html

Beck fan and 9/12 protest attendee explains why Obama will oppress white America.

H/T CatherineChicago

The reason behind this weekend's March on Washington in full detail.

Obama faces a 400% Increase in Death Threats a Day

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5967942/Barack-Obama-faces-30-death-threats-a-day-stretching-US-Secret-Service.html
The right-wing hate speech polluting the debate over health care is generating more and more threats against President Obama, some truly frightening.

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez reports that when President Obama visited Phoenix, Ariz. on August 17, local minister Steven Anderson of the Faithful World Baptist Church, who strongly expresses hatred for Obama in many of his sermons, told his congregation that he wished him dead. In a disturbing twist, it was discovered that Chris Broughton, the man who brought an AR 15 assault rifle to the Phoenix rally where Obama spoke, had attended Anderson's sermon. In a later interview, Broughton said he concurred with his pastor's wish to see Obama "die and go to hell." As many as twelve men were seen walking around the Phoenix Convention Center with guns on that day.

President Obama faces 30 death threats a day, a 400 percent increase from former President Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, a veteran investigative journalist and conservative who recently authored a book about the Secret Service.

Obama Can't Thumb His Nose at the GOP, and Here's Why

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/obama-cant-thumb-his-nose_b_278161.html
White voters.

On this day in 1989: Desmond Tutu leads biggest anti-apartheid protest march in South Africa

Start:	Sep 13, '09
Location:	Cape Town, South Africa

Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and several other prominent anti-apartheid activists were among three dozen people arrested today as they marched toward police headquarters in Cape Town to protest the alleged beating of clergymen and church workers during an earlier anti-government protest.

In spite of a nationwide police crackdown on dissent, protests against segregated elections for Parliament continued to spread across the country as authorities issued new orders prohibiting marches and other demonstrations planned for the weekend.

Tutu, the 1984 Nobel peace laureate, led a defiance campaign against apartheid and national - whites only - elections.

One Less "Communist" In Obama's Ear...

Comrade Van Jones Resigns...

In a letter released just after midnight Saturday, Van Jones, President Obama's Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality resigned.

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones wrote. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."

Jones said that he had "been inundated with calls - from across the political spectrum - urging me to "stay and fight. But I came here to fight for others, not for myself.  I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past.  We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."

A best-selling author who has been heralded as an innovative thinker in the "green jobs" movement, Jones had come under fire from conservative media and lawmakers for past statements for which he apologized Thursday. 

The tipping point for the White House appeared to be Jones' admission earlier this week that he had signed a petition in 2004 calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into "evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur."

In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of "the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."

An administration source said Jones says he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.

But after that admission, asked if Jones enjoyed the confidence of the president, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs would only say on Fridat that Jones "continues to work in this administration."

A former civil rights activist in the San Francisco area, Jones told the East Bay Express in 2005 that the acquittal of Rodney King's assailants in 1992 in that infamous police brutality case changed him significantly.

"I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist."

Jones and other young activists in 1994 formed a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, rooted in Marxism and Leninsm. Two years later, Jones launched the Ella Baker Center, an Oakland, Calif., based "strategy and action center" which states that it tries to "promote positive alternatives to violence and incarceration."

It was many of the associations formed around this time that served as fodder for conservative critics. In a New Yorker profile of Jones from earlier this year, Jones described his modus operandi as “traditional activism, the politics of confrontation and outrage. I was proud to be hated by the city fathers on both sides of the Bay.”

Over time, Jones focused instead as environmental jobs as a way to lift struggling communities out of poverty, work for which he's been praised as an innovator. Former Vice President Gore told the New Yorker: “I love Van Jones. I love his work. I love his heart and his commitment and his intellect. I love his mission. He has wisely picked a part of this set of interwoven challenges that should have been addressed much more forcefully by me and others long ago.”

But even as Jones lowered his profile in his new position as President Obama's "Green Jobs Czar," critics questioned comments he'd made in his previous incarnation as an activist and advocate for poor and minority communities. What seemed to hurt Jones the most politically, however, was the discovery of his name on the 9/11 "Truther" petition, which suggested President Bush or those in his administration at the very least allowed 9/11 to happen so as to launch wars for oil.

Having expended much time and energy discrediting conservative conspiracy theorists alleging (despite all evidence) that the President was not born in the U.S., and the non-existent "death panels," White House officials found it difficult to justify a top adviser who had associated with similarly fringe sentiments from the Left.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., chairman of the House Republican Conference, said on Friday that given "recent revelations concerning the associations and statements of the president's green jobs czar, Van Jones should resign his position and if he is unwilling to do so, the president should demand his resignation. His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this Administration or the public debate."

Republicans made it clear that they intended to use Jones as Exhibit A in a political prosecution that the Obama Administration has too many "czars" -- unconfirmed by the Senate, with too much power.

Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., ranking Republican on the Green Jobs and the New Economy Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, called for a hearing probing Jones' fitness for the job. 

Jones, Bond said, "is responsible for directing administration policy and spending on tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer funding regarding environmental policy and green jobs programs.  However, since the White House appointed him as a 'czar,' Mr. Jones was able to avoid any oversight or confirmation by the U.S. Senate."

Bond said he was alarmed by Jones' name on the 9/11 "Truther" petition. "Jones in hindsight is embarrassed by the public disclosure of his participation in the petition drive and now asserts he did not read the fine print of the petition," the senator said. "But can the American people trust a senior White House official that is so cavalier in his association with such radical and repugnant sentiments?”

A White Man Asks: “When are we going to get over it?”

http://www.peoplesvoiceweekly.us/wp/?p=13
With all the hate being spewed by the right-wing political fundamentalist, painting a bleak picture isn't hard to do. I thought I'd share something from the other side for a change.

the article immediately cuts to the heart of the matter:

"For much of the last forty years, ever since America “fixed” its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, “When are African Americans finally going to get over it?

Now I want to ask: “When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?"

Recent reports that “Election Spurs Hundreds’ of Race Threats, Crimes” should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in “Bombingham,” Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than 'talk the talk.'"

Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood."

the truth will always set you free...

On this day in 1989: Reverend Al Sharpton leads a civil rights march through Bensonhurst

Start:	Sep 2, '09
Location:	Bensonhurst, New York

On August 23, 1989, a 16-year-old African-American named Yusef Hawkins was shot and killed in Bensonhurst, after he and three friends had been attacked by a group of mostly Italian-American youths. At least four neighborhood residents were tried and convicted of charges related to the assault and murder.

In connection with the Hawkins murder and the subsequent trials, Reverend Al Sharpton led several protest marches through the streets of Bensonhurst. On January 12, 1991, before one such march, neighborhood resident Michael Riccardi tried to kill Sharpton by stabbing him in the chest. Riccardi later remorsefully said that he "thought the act would make me a hero in my community." Sharpton recovered from his wounds, and later asked the judge for leniency when Riccardi was sentenced.

Black Man in an Elevator

Its been a while since I first posted this "somewhere else"  Ithough I would share it again!

Glenn Beck goes after Color of Change co-founder Van Jones

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2009/08/glenn-beck-ignores-ad-boycott.html
Calls Jones a "rowdy black nationalist."

Beck doesn't even know what a black nationalist is.

On this day in 1967: Naomi Sims becomes 1st black model on U.S. cover

Start:	Aug 27, '09
Location:	New York, New York

Naomi Sims was on scholarship at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and began night classes in psychology at New York University. She was short of money and, encouraged by fellow students and teachers, went round to all the model agencies for work. They rejected her, some saying that her dark skin tones only had potential in segregated, lower-paying mags such as Ebony or Jet. She appealed directly to photographers, some of whom, in Bert Stern's words, were noticing that "negroes photograph better against white," blank backgrounds being the norm for fashion. Sims found her photographer, Gosta Peterson of the New York Times, who shot her for the cover of the August 1967 Fashions of The Times.

Naomi Sims lost her battle with cancer August 1, 2009 at the age of 61, nearly 48 years to the day that a black woman appeared on the cover of a mainstream U.S. magazine for the very first time.

Racial Profiling, pt. II

The following is a shortened version of my original post...

* * *

-=[ Racial Profiling: Racist & Ineffective ]=-

...Police deployment these days is determined almost strictly by rates of relative violence/crime in each police district. The rate of violence is not some subjective quotient created by a racist cop, but is determined by counting citizens reporting that they were shot, stabbed, beat up and otherwise assaulted, this is combined with citizen reports of burglary, robbery, theft, etc. You see, your racist conspiracy theory is illogical when you know that police resources are deployed based on crime as reported by citizens and not some racist plot to destroy minorities. That is logical.

 -- Bubba

 

The above quote was part of a response to my first post on racial profiling sent in by someone who chose to remain anonymous. I refuse to call anyone “anonymous” so I called him “Bubba.” Mostly because his is a typical “Bubba” response. No amount of solid evidence would disabuse him from his untenable position. Last I heard from him, Bubba insisted I have “chip on my shoulder.” Yeah, you know how us Latino/as get all too emotional and lose whatever little reasoning we possess.

::insert eye roll here::

Through the use of empirical studies I demonstrated in my original post that racial profiling is wrong and racist. Today I will show that it is also ineffective.

Racial conservatives -- both black and white -- maintain that racial profiling isn’t racist. They argue, like Bubba, that racial profiling is justified since we all know you black muthafuckas and slimy-assed Latino/as commit all of the crime. As Heather Mac Donald of the conservative think tank, the Manhattan Institute, puts it, “Judging by arrest rates, minorities are overly represented among drug traffickers.” Black conservative, Randall Kennedy agrees. He goes so far as to say that arrest rates present a “sad reality” and justifies racial profiling on those grounds. Well, if this is true, scientific examinations of racial profiling should yield results that back up the claims of racial conservatives. In other words, if minorities are the ones committing the most crime, a rigorous examination of the practice of racial profiling should bear that out.

It don’t...

Until very recently, there was no data that gave us any insight into hit rates -- the rates at which police actually find contraband or other evidence of crime when they perform stops and searches. Therefore, when confronted with remarks made by the likes of Bubba, we had little to say in response. In other words, we had to take the word of law enforcement agencies and racial conservatives that racial profiling was justified. However, evidence from a broad range of contexts now allow for a statistical analysis of racial profiling. And the results of this analysis will come as a surprise to many: racial profiling, aside from being immoral, unconstitutional, and racist is neither an efficient nor an effective tool for fighting crime -- bitches.

Driving While Black

Statistics from stops and searches by Maryland State Police during 1995 and 1996 provided some of the first comprehensive data on hit rates. In terms of stops, the data, which came from the police themselves, showed that the state police stopped and searched African Americans disproportionately. Although they made only 17 percent of all drivers, blacks made up more than 70 percent of all those searched. The data were compiled from more than eleven hundred searches. Given the official conservative rationale that what they had been doing was merely sound policing -- not racism -- the hit rates should clearly have borne out the wisdom of the state police approach. Wrong! The hit rates showed something different: the hit rate at which police found drugs, guns, or other evidence of crime in these searches were almost exactly the same for blacks and whites.

Troopers found evidence on African Americans they searched 28.4 percent of the time; they found evidence on whites 28.8 percent of the time *. The researcher found no statistical significance in the difference between the numbers for blacks and whites, given the number of stops and searches included in the data. If in fact there was any difference between blacks and whites, the data showed clearly that racial profiling were not uncovering it. What the data did show was a flaw in the basic assumption underlying racial profiling.

But I -- and many of my darker-skinned brethren -- coulda told you that, Bubba!

Recent statistics from New Jersey provide even more information on hit rates. After a controversial state attorney general report, the New Jersey State Police began to record data for all its traffic stops and searches. Data from 2000 concerning the southern end of the turnpike, the area were complaints on profiling first originated, show that blacks and Latino/as remain 70 percent of those searched. And the hit rates absolutely contradict the idea that racial profiling is just good law enforcement. Troopers found evidence in the searches of whites 25 percent of the time; they found evidence in searches of blacks 13 percent of the time, and in searches of Latino/as just 5 percent of the time. Whites were almost twice as likely to be found with contraband as blacks, and five times as likely as Latino/as -- clearly indicating that racial conservatives and people like Bubba are fuckin full of shit.

Data from North Carolina tells a similar story. In 1999, North Carolina became the first state to pass legislation making it mandatory for some police agencies to report basic data on all traffic stops and searches. A researcher, conducting an analysis required by law, found that African American male drivers were 68 percent more likely than white male drivers to be searched by the good ole boys (Bubbas?) in the North Carolina Highway Patrol. They found contraband on blacks in 26 percent of the searches; for whites, the hit rate was 33 percent.

Walking While Black

Even more telling were hit rates from the New York Attorney general’s study of stops and frisks in New York City, issued in 1999. The context of this study is somewhat different because the data concern stops and searches of pedestrians. However the practice, using race to focus police suspicion -- is basically the same. In addition, the data here is plentiful: 175,000 recorded encounters between officers and citizens over fifteen months. The study tracked hit rates by analyzing the percentage of stops and frisks that ended in an arrest. The data are even more damning than the numbers from Maryland and New Jersey. The attorney general found that police arrested 12.6 percent of the whites they stopped, only 11.5 percent of the Latino/as, and only 10.5 percent of the blacks. This is exactly the opposite of what Bubba would predict. When New York City police officers utilized racial profiling intensively, they found what they wanted less often on blacks and Latino/as than they did on whites.

Those who champion racial profiling claim they believe it is “sound policing” based on hard science. I believe they support such practices because they want to justify racist practices. They are comfortable with such practices because, for the most part, it doesn’t affect them. They are not the ones being taken handcuffed from their homes, or being humiliated while driving or even walking down the street. They condone such acts because for the most part they just don’t give a good goddamn -- until it happens to them...

 -- Eddie