firehand

Prometheus 6   

Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same

May 17, 2003

The Public Library

The public domain books I'm converting to web pages are, for the most part, available from Project Gutenberg. I can make them available for download from the library page (I mean the PG files, not the converted web pages which I am hoarding jealously). Keep an eye on what shows up.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/17/2003 11:07:28 PM |

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I'm feeling all thoughtful today

Sun Tsu said (approximately) a very good tactic is to change the ground on which a battle takes place … that, for instance, when your enemy is prepared for a forest battle, it's a good idea to tackle them in the marsh. Conservatives apparently took that advice to heart in the early 90s. By finding a pejorative name for every progressive initiative, they redefined "liberal" and changed the battle to one where the progressive impulse had to be defended, rather than assumed good as had been the case since the 60s.

In order to turn that perception, we need what the Conservatives had in "Liberal" … a label that's simple and readily identifiable with the target. They got lucky or smart and snagged the word that was the actual name by which their opponents were known. I think we need a term for their policies that shows it as not for the benefit of the common man so progessives can step up and protect them from it.

So I've been thinking. What scares the hell out of me about this regime? Well, the fascist tendancies I see developing, the execution of an obviously long-calculated plan that has the removal of our rights as a key element thereof, is pretty fucking troubling, if you ask me. The influence Corporate America is visibly exerting is equally disturbing. And the fact that it is more openly theocratic than several Middle Eastern nations makes them all the more sure they're right as they spread the American way of life across the planet like a paste made from Wonder Bread, mayonaise and Coke.

Militarism, corporatism, fascism, false prophetism. That pretty much sums it up. I think the first two, and the slippery slope to the third, are obvious to everyone. I think some of those who see the fourth one have no problem with it and some who might will have a problem with you for pointing it out. So I think about the simplest name for this that will be recognized as applicable.

What I've come up with as a description is "corporate police state." I think the whole Conservative agenda can be seen as the result of this organizing principle: that all their initiatives either get us closer to absolute corporate freedom or a privacy free, monitored society.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/17/2003 06:31:13 PM |

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The last public whine

I've ported my life to a different platform, i.e. the laptop. Since it's hard drive is only half the size of the ol' desktop machine, I had to purge a lot of stuff I kept around because it was conceivable I might one day decide to investigate it to see if on the off chance it might develop into something I'd consider useful.

Everything is livable since I've been using the little beast all along, but there's no really comfortable place close to the cable modem and I'm not ready for wireless yet. So if I'm going to continue this little venture I have to modify my approach somewhat. There'll either be less random stuff from the net or less mainstream news, just because I won't be online as much. On the other hand, I probably write more commentary and thinking out loud sorta stuff. I think I need to catch up on my blogging software coding too … actually running a blog for the last 8 weeks or so has given me a good idea of what I want to do easily.

Anyway, while I was away, I jiggered the template one more time to list the books in the library. Link box over there on the right. And scanning the page quickly, I see I got some sympathy (thanks!), some commentary (which I'll respond to before trying to catch up on what was blogged out there) and an unfinished discussion (which Esteban, I believe is here).

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/17/2003 04:45:11 PM |

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Back, kinda

It's amazing how central the net has become to me, and I have to seriously consider what that means.

The main machine has suffered a hardware failure, it seems.After two days I've had to give up on it.

I haven't lost any data, but I lost configuration, which on certain levels is worse.

Ah, well. Now to figure out an altered working pattern.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/17/2003 09:15:32 AM |

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May 16, 2003

Still on the laptop

Slash and burn time. My main machine locks up whenever anything remotely related to web browsing is done. I have to reconstruct the beast, which will mean reinstalling one hell of a lot of software. Plus is, I'll wind up with a lot more drive space once I get rid of all the stuff I forgot was there, detritus from uninstalled stuff, etc. Minus is pretty much everything comes to a halt once I start.

Well, here we go. Wish me luck.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/16/2003 09:11:14 AM |

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May 15, 2003

Posting from the laptop

I've been thinking it may be Slash and Burn File Management time, but I may have no choice now. I think I did a Bad Thing to my main machine. Either that or it's just been overwhelmed by cruft and barnacles. Either way I don't know how much gets posted today.

I suppose that could be interpreted as good news …

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/15/2003 10:43:30 AM |

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You think the right wing is annoying now?

Doing my periodic check for interesting referrers, I found someone accessed the page from a Yahoo! search for "prometheus" and "blog." The chances of me not looking at that result set is best represented by a negative trancendental number.

In said result set was a pionter to a discussion board run by Stormfront … basically aWhite Nationalist Internet advocacy group. Seems as of February this year they were discussing setting up weblogs.


There's about fifty billion neoconservative blogs out there, but no white nationalist ones. The closest thing we have is Vanguard News Network, which is certainly an excellent site, but it mainly preaches to the choir. What I have in mind is something more "respectable", i.e. no cursing, no racial slurs, excellent spelling/grammar, etc., but with the same pro-white and anti-Jew message. Something that "mainstream" readers would be more likely to look at and take seriously.

Right now, lots of intelligent things get said on the Stormfront forums, but no one ever reads them except for other white nationalists and the occasional anti. Also, lots of news articles posted here would be of great interest to a variety of people (just look at how David Horowitz takes material from American Renaissance, for example). It's kind of a waste considering that we could be making all this material much more widely available.
Interesting thing is how David Horowitz is so familiar to them …

Anyway, these guys are as full of shit in my opinion as I am in theirs, but I respect their skills. Stormfront as an organization knows how to do this Internet advocacy as well as anyone else and better than a lot of them. In fact, I suspect they're already active in blogging circles … a couple of folks Mac Diva has discussed sound a lot like them.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/15/2003 10:39:38 AM |

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Slight backlog overcome

I'm a couple of hours late, but "The Souls of Black Folks" by W.E.B.DuBois is at its permanent address. Sometime this weekend "Up From Slavery" by Booker T. Washington and/or one of Frederick Douglass' autobiographies will be posted as well as a page to access the books from.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/15/2003 12:15:29 AM |

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May 14, 2003

I think they were in blackface

from DaveyD


BLOOMBERG LP RAP VIDEO INSULTS BLACK EMPLOYEES
by Davey D

This has been a strange week.. thats all I can. Here in NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg's firm Bloomberg LP decided to do a rap video for their employees last week. It was supposedly part of a taping to help the process of management team building. The sessions were held in London... According to the story, several top Bloomberg executives took on the rap personas of MC Matty Matt, MC Bang Bang and MC Uncle Tom. None of the employees in the video were African American..

The rap personas that were depicted in the video along with the names incensed a number of Black employees who felt like this latest scenario was highly insulting and that the managers were trying to make fun of Black culture. When they complained about the video they were dismissed by the human resource department with remarks like; 'It's no big deal-Aren't their white rappers too'

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/14/2003 08:23:28 PM |

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He's not a racist

He's an AAAAAASSSSSsssSssssshole

from MSNBC


Lawmaker won't oppose Pickering
Miss. Legislator wants Black Causus to drop its opposition

ASSOCIATED PRESS
JACKSON, Miss., May 7 - The head of the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus says he no longer opposes U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering's appeals court nomination - a surprising turnabout that could cost him his position.

STATE REP. PHILLIP West, a Democrat, said in a Tuesday statement that he was speaking only for himself and not for the full caucus. The 45-member caucus has vigorously opposed Pickering's nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Pickering, nominated to the New Orleans-based court by President Bush, has been criticized by black organizations for his record on civil rights issues, including his decision to seek a lighter sentence for a convicted cross-burner.

… "I have been ostracized and shunned by both blacks and whites and characterized as a racist myself."
- STATE REP PHILLIP WEST, MISS. D

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/14/2003 04:25:54 PM |

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You figure it out

Rent-A-Negro

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/14/2003 02:38:05 PM |

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Afrofuturistic

Afrofuturistic runs through May 24 at the Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, 212-255-5793. I may have to check this out.

from the Village Voice


Poet Tracie Morris Looks Ahead to the Past
May 14 - 20, 2003

We're five minutes into the future, or maybe a lifetime. The calendar seems indeterminate here. Poet Tracie Morris and choreographer David Thomson walk slowly heel to toe, as if following a white line down a road they can't see. Morris begins reciting from the script she calls a poem collection: "When the buildings split, the big ones, lots of things went with them. Like: luck."

Afrofuturistic had to start with 9-11, "an event that was cleaving," Morris explains later. "It felt like the axis tilted in a way. Because now the world is off." That isn't sci-fi.

And her piece is no star trek. It's about the future inherent in the present, the potential utopias and dystopias-mostly the latter. Morris plays Sirena, a black woman who finds that every time she goes out, the world is different, and every time she comes back, so is home. Her activities include attending an environmentalist meeting, encountering a lynching tree, and working as a student on behalf of the wealthy. In Sirena's world, affirmative action is dead and black people go to college indirectly by accessing classes online and taking tests for rich white people.

Same old "war of the worlds." That's the Afrofuturistic theme.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/14/2003 12:13:48 PM |

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Let's you and him fight

from the Village Voice


Why White America Would Rather Learn Spanish Than Ebonics
Minority Report
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 14 - 20, 2003

&hellip For African Americans, the Latino explosion has no particular significance, except that the mere suggestion of a black-Latino rivalry deflects attention from the most entrenched conflict in American history-the one between blacks and whites. Better yet, Anglos prefer that blacks and Latinos fight it out, allowing them to sidestep race, and black people, altogether.

Last January, when the U.S. Census Bureau announced that Latinos had become the country's largest minority, you'd have thought all of black America had lost a marathon. The south Florida Sun-Sentinel announced we'd been "surpassed"; The Washington Post said Hispanics were "outpacing" us; and The Charlotte Observer cast us in a "slow eclipse." Earl Ofari Hutchinson peered into his scrying pool for the Los Angeles Daily News and divined the headline "Latinos' New Clout Threatening to Blacks."

Hutchinson was not alone. "African-Americans and the African-American leadership community are about to enter an identity crisis, the extent of which we've not begun to imagine," Henry Louis Gates Jr. predicted in a New York Times article. "Our privileged status is about to be disrupted in profound ways." Gates didn't specify how we'd ever been "privileged" or how that status would be "disrupted." Now that there are more Latinos in this country than blacks, would the government start dismantling affirmative action? Would the police start profiling us? Would high-ranking elected officials suddenly start making racist remarks? Oh, wait. . . .

… Still, experts are auguring a national power struggle between blacks and Latinos. Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Latino growth "comes at the expense of other minority groups, especially black people, who have worked for 200 years to get a level playing field, a fair shot."

Even if such a claim were true, don't expect much to come of it, if only for geographical reasons. When the 10 states with the largest percentage of Latinos is cross-referenced with the 10 states with the largest percentage of African Americans, there is not a single match.

… It's kind of hard to go to war with the guy next door when, well, he doesn't live next door.

… Like all people, white Americans enjoy talking about themselves-as long as the conversation makes a hero out of them. When forced to deal with black issues, whites prefer to focus on whatever positive role they have in the story, no matter how minor. This is why in any film about black struggle, one sympathetic white person is essential-it's not a story unless they are the story. [p6: see Amistad, the movie. Rarely have I seen more disappointed Black folks in one place as I did leaving the theater I saw it in]

… If there must be a conversation on race, whites would rather have it with a group that doesn't weigh on their conscience the way African Americans do. Latinos fill in just fine. That 40 percent of them already think of themselves as white is pure bonus.

&hellip As for us, dethroned though we may be, you can trust that black America isn't sweating finishing second. Between "House Slave" and "Head Nigger," we've learned our lesson about dubious honorifics like "Number One Minority." Even so, there is a perception that we want the discussion of race to remain a primarily black-white affair. Hogwash. What we want is a final, honest consideration of our place in this country. Then we can gracefully shed our role as the primary articulator of racial injustice, and get down to doing what we've always wanted to do-get rich and join the Republican Party.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/14/2003 12:06:31 PM |

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Confessions of a bigot

That would be me.

I have steadfastly refused to add links to right-wing sites here, having literally zero experience with rational discussion on them.

[cue X-File theme]Last night's discussion on CalPundit, though not perfect, turned up a couple of possibiites, though. In addition, I'm having a decent discussion of "affirmative action" in the comments of this post on my very on blog. It's conceivable there are folks on the other side of the veil worth talking to.

I'm not specifically searching them out, and I'm not making any promises one way or the other. But stranger things have happened.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/14/2003 10:59:30 AM |

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*ahem* Let's try that again

In the NYC area, the PBS special, "Race: The Power of an Illusion" will air on WLIW, broadcast channel 21 (until Mr. Powell gets his way …)

The Difference Between Us: May 18, 10:00PM
The Story We Tell: May 19, 10:00PM
The House We Live In: May 20, 10:00PM

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/14/2003 10:17:06 AM |

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Counterpoint

On the heels of a positive story by the LA Times (presented by BlackVoices.com, an affiliate, and linked to below) comes this, via Hesiod:


Ex-deputy chief: Probe of mayor cost me my job
Kilpatrick denies claims of wild party, false time cards

May 14, 2003

BY BEN SCHMITT AND M.L. ELRICK
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

Former Detroit Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown alleged Tuesday that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick fired him as the city's top anticorruption cop for investigating whether the mayor, his family and members of his staff were involved in criminal activity.

Brown's explosive charge that Kilpatrick and his inner circle may have held a raucous party at the Manoogian Mansion, covered up a drunken-driving accident and falsified time cards sent the mayor scrambling to defuse a crisis that could undermine his 16-month-old tenure.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/14/2003 09:57:49 AM |

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Related events
or
The comment is in the synergy

Okay,enough is enough. I'm approaching the point where recognizing and promoting a couple of really clever guys becomes stealing their stuff. I'm not going to post their actual cartoons here for for a while.

After these. Click da pics, show'em some luv.


posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/14/2003 07:26:38 AM |

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I'm almost glad Jayson Blair fucked up

CalPundit is still on the Reactionary Right's racial blindness, and I can't decide what pleases me more: CalPundit's kick-off statement:

Affirmative action brings with it a host of problems. Hell, everything about race in America brings with it a whole host of problems. But when guys like Bevan - who's hardly the most doctrinaire conservative around - think we've made so much progress that racism is basically not that big a deal any more, what hope is there of ever finding any middle ground on the issue?

Disagreements about affirmative action programs I can understand. But a refusal to admit that race is even a serious problem any more I can't. What kind of sheltered existence produces such naivete?
or the followup comments by (in order of appearance) Matthew Langer, Atrios, Rook, Brian Schefke, Rob, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and Matthew Yglesias. I can't guarantee they "get it" but they're making a good run at it. (the links are to the commenters' blogs, not to the comments themselves)

Later: Damn, I can't respond in the thread AND keep up with the posts. Some of them do "get it." Two more good ones popped up behind my back, not to mention a question that's actually fair. But I'm satisfied for now and going to bed.

Later later: Drew Vogel's comments.

I'm really going to bed now.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/14/2003 12:08:47 AM |

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May 13, 2003

I don't know who Wouter is

… but s/he's right.

Let me start out by saying I am no more in favor of U.S. isolationism than U.S. imperialism. But when, in comments to this post at No War Blog …

Wrong Target

From a press release by the Cato Institute:

Charles V. Peña, director of defense policy studies, made the following comments regarding yesterday's deadly bomb blast in Saudi Arabia:

"Monday night's terrorist attack in Riyadh, which Secretary of State Colin Powell said "had all the earmarks" of an al Qaeda operation, is a sober reminder that the war against Iraq was a wrong target in the war on terrorism, despite the administration's claims that Iraq is part and parcel of the war on terrorism.

Wouter says this …

In all honesty, many of you just don't get it do you.

It is not Japan or Germany, France or even Russia who control IMF, world bank and expedtion armies on foreign soil threatening everybody and insulting everyone.

Something is very clear to these locals that isn't to the general public in the US.

IT IS YOU that they're after, not the free world, not your riches, your christian faith or even your 2 party "democracy" system. It is the influence that the US has outside the US.

Sever that influence and you have a real shot at controlling your destiny. Without the US the Isreal problem WILL be solved in no time. Without the US support, dictorships will falter in short periods. Without US influence Cuba can develop normally and reformers can get a hold in Cuba. Same for Iran and several other countries. Without a monopolistic US the weak nations have a better negociation position in trade agreements.

Simply put it is of interest to a whole lot of people to shaft the US properly. Let call it "the coalition of opportunity"

And with each new development initiated by your Bush neocons this coalitions is cementing.

… s/he's right in the same way a physicist is when describing the laws of nature. It's then up to an engineer to decide what to do with the information.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/13/2003 10:54:59 PM |

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Good

from The Nando Times, via Oliver Willis


Senate Democrats vow to stop legislation to block gun lawsuits
By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press

… Washington "has a rich and sordid history of special interest sleaze," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. "The gun industry bill merely retires the trophy. This is as bad as it gets." [p6: Actually, I don't think this is worse than the contracts on Iraq that were just handed out, but it's a close second and a lot scarier to me personally]

… Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said that under the legislation, the families of the victims of last year's Washington-area sniper attacks would be barred by Congress from suing the Tacoma, Wash., gun shop that sold the gun to the alleged snipers. The shop has no record of that sale or the sales of more than 200 other guns, and the families believe it was negligent. [p6: Ya damn skippy they were negligent. You don't forget to record 200 gun sales. You just don't]

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/13/2003 10:24:16 PM |

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I'd love to see the demographic this show appeals to

CalPundit posted something I may have been able to live without knowing. Between Ghetto Brawls and regime propaganda it may be time to give television altogether in favor of oil painting.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/13/2003 10:15:02 PM |

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I couldn't have put it better myself

The Onion asks:Last week, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for winning the war in Iraq. What do you think?

"It's about time. I'm sick of them always giving the Peace Prize to all those fucking pacifists."
Ron Hadler
Electrician

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/13/2003 09:50:31 PM |

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Progress report

Six of fifteen chapters of "The Souls of Black Folks" have been converted. By this time tomorrow it will be uploaded to its permanent URL.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/13/2003 09:45:47 PM |

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Nice concept!

Folks have been thinking about how to counter the Conservative Media Juggernaut, a.k.a. The Mighty Wurlitzer.

The Daily Dystopian pointed me at a grass-roots technique promoted by Question W.

dystopia explained it simply:

To participate, just wear a simple question mark of some sort, every day, everywhere you go.

… The object of the game is to make people ask, "What's with the question mark?", thus creating opportunities to ask them your questions, whether about tax cuts or the forged Nigerian documents or the Patriot Act or Cheney's meetings with the energy industry or whatever your priority issues are, and to generate discussion with your fellow Americans about things that matter.

The ultimate goal is to get everyone in the country talking about all the questions that aren't being addressed by this administration before Election Day 2004.

I did something similar once. Several years back Dr. Calvin 0. Butts, III, Pastor of The Abyssinian Baptist Church in NYC, suggested all Black people spend a specific day at home, neither working nor spending, to demonstrate the importance of Black folks to the economy of NYC. Because I had committed to a meeting at work the day he requested participation, I decided to go inmy double-breasted silk-tied finest … but wearing sneakers. The point was to get people to ask why. Most assumed I had foot problems, of course, but I explained exactly what I was doing. Even had a little speech prepared. Had some real interesting conversations that day.

So I know this sort of thing works. And informed conversation with someone you trust has as much impact as a press release.

And (in a way) best of all, the parties responsible for the idea will be familiar to those that do a lot of blogging.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/13/2003 07:35:08 PM |

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Now I can relax a bit

Reasoned commentary on Blair.

Thank you Atrios.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/13/2003 04:29:48 PM |

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The never-ending search

This time it's "Negro Nudist Families," on Google instead of Netscape. That means I don't have to change my hand graphic.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/13/2003 01:41:53 PM |

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Okay, maybe it's not all bad news

The Texas Democrats vanishing is a funny, and brilliant move. I first saw it reported on Wampum, then Atrios pointed out the AG of New Mexico's response to questions about whether or not NM would support extradition procedures:

"Some are speculating this request from the Texas Governor's office concerns an effort to locate missing Texas House Democrats," Madrid wrote. "If so, Texas should understand that since ski season is over, the Santa Fe Opera has not begun and President Bush was just in town, I don't think they are in Santa Fe now. Nevertheless, I have put out an all-points bulletin for law enforcement to be on the look out for politicians in favor of health care for the needy and against tax cuts for the wealthy."

Now it's being discussed all over the place. Hell, I almost think whoever thought of this should be drafted by the Dems to run for President next year. Lord knows some creativity is needed in Democratic party circles.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/13/2003 12:51:59 PM |

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Another slow day

Probably because I've already dealt with a neo-Confederate that thinks he's subtle so I'm not in the mood to actually seek out things that annoy me.

So it's back to my little library project. Today I'm parsing "The Souls of Black Folks" by W.E.B. DuBois into web pages. DuBois is another hero of mine.

I've just about worked out an efficient method of converting the Project Gutenburg texts using HTML-Kit (which is the world's best free HTML editor, and one of the best without qualification). So although the texts are pretty large (420k of pure ASCII text in this case) it's moving pretty quickly. So I need to decide how to present these things in the next few days.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/13/2003 12:14:00 PM |

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May 12, 2003

Weird searches

To the person that reached my blog by entering "nude negroes" in search.netscape.com:

I'm afraid my monitor is one-way only, so I couldn't oblige you if I wanted to. But if I see it again, I may change my flaming hand so it flips you da bird.

I don't know how to react to coming up third on that search, either …

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 11:22:14 PM |

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Maybe it's me

Or maybe it's my selection of blogs, but it seems to have been a light day. Gave me a chance to get something off my chest (see below-it's the long one).

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 09:03:56 PM |

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America's hip-hop mayor

from BlackVoices.com


A Politician Who Runs on Hip-Hop
Detroit mayor's use of rap lures young voters and suggests the music has electoral juice.

By Geoff Boucher
Times Staff Writer

May 12, 2003

DETROIT -- Amid thundering rap music and the cheers of 8,000 young fans, the handsome star moved to center stage and, the way hip-hop heroes usually do, called out the name of that night's arena crowd. "What's up, Detroit? What's up, Detroit?"

The man at the microphone, though, was no rapper. He was Kwame M. Kilpatrick, the elected leader of this city and, according to his introduction at this rally, "America's hip-hop mayor." That description makes the 32-year-old Kilpatrick roll his eyes - it is too limiting to his taste, too gimmicky for a man trying to cure problems in a famously troubled metropolis - but he acknowledges there is some truth and power to the singular title.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 08:59:20 PM |

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An interesting find

The African American Yearbook 2002 is an online national index with which you can locate Black organizations, publications, radio stations and churches. The search engine is very liberal. Once you pick a category it doesn't require very much input … you can generate a national list or narrow it down by a number of categories such as state or zip code. It's the sort of thing that's incredibly useful if you need it.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 08:56:34 PM |

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Okay, let's get to the basics
from the NY Times

'HugeBlack Eye'
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
… Apparently this 27-year-old was given too many second chances by editors eager for this ambitious black journalist to succeed. As he moved to more responsible assignments, some editors failed to pass along assessments of his past shortcomings while others felt the need to protect the confidentiality of his troubles. Result: the con artist gamed a system that celebrates diversity and opportunity.

… Then to the affirmative-action angle: See what happens, they taunt, when you treat a minority employee with kid gloves, promoting him when he deserves to be fired? Oh, we know your editors insist that "diversity" had nothing to do with it. But remember what Senator Dale Bumpers said about our impeachment of Clinton: "When you hear somebody say, 'This is not about sex' = it's about sex." This is about diversity backfiring.

… Now about the supposed cost of diversity: A newspaper is free to come down on the side of giving black journalists a break if its owners and editors so choose. What's more, this media world would also benefit from more Hispanics and Asians coming up faster.
It strikes me that Mr. Safire feels he’s speaking on the side of the angels here. If he really wanted to be helpful though, what he’d note is that the pass given Blair by his editors is not affirmative action.

Let me be clear: I don’t give a damn about Jayson Blair’s self-inflicted problems. Plagiarism is a major crime in writing and journalism circles and he knew he was wrong when he did these things. He, like other cheaters, thought he wouldn’t get caught. He was wrong; que sera sera.

The problem I have is the idea of nature of affirmative action programs that is current, and the way it is used to discredit efforts to redress historical and structural racism. To explain my problem, let’s look at what those who established the term "affirmative action" said, and maybe even what they meant.

The first use of the term "affirmative action" was in JFK's executive order no. 11246:
PART II
NONDISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT BY GOVERNMENT CONTRACTORS AND SUBCONTRACTORS
SUBPART A
DUTIES OF THE SECRETARY OF LABOR
Sec. 201. The Secretary of Labor shall be responsible for the administration of Parts II and III of this Order and shall adopt such rules and regulations and issue such orders as he deems necessary and appropriate to achieve the purposes thereof.
SUBPART B
CONTRACTORS' AGREEMENTS
Sec. 202. Except in contracts exempted in accordance with Section 204 of this Order, all Government contracting agencies shall include in every Government contract hereafter entered into the following provisions:
"During the performance of this contract, the contractor agrees as follows:
"(1) The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. Such action shall include, but not be limited to the following: employment, upgrading, demotion, or transfer; recruitment or recruitment advertising; layoff or termination; rates of pay or other forms of compensation; and selection for training, including apprenticeship. The contractor agrees to post in conspicuous places, available to employees and applicants for employment, notices to be provided by the contracting officer setting forth the provisions of this nondiscrimination clause.
It's pretty clear that "affirmative action" here means, "actively do something that works." The question is have we chosen methods that work? What would ‘working’ mean? In his speech at Howard University on June 4, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson said:
But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.

For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop their abilities--physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue their individual happiness.

To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough. Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in--by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child, and finally the man.
This all pretty self-evident (that all men are created equal; their endowment by their creator with certain inalienable right is the nature of that equality). But even the most casual student of history knows that it didn’t go that smoothly. There was an armed insurrection in response to the first Black students arrival to desegregate high schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, which President Eisenhower responded to by sending in the 101st Airborne Division … far more important than integration was mandating respect for Federal authority. In 1974, Black students in Boston were assaulted regularly in response to court-ordered busing.

But of course, that was then. This is now.

In that 1965 speech, President Johnson made several compelling observations about the obstacles Black Americans faced. I want to compare these markers to the current state of affairs.


Thirty-five years ago the rate of unemployment for Negroes and
whites was about the same. Tonight the Negro rate is twice as
high.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rates for the first four months of this year are:

JanFebMarApr
White5.15.05.15.2
Black10.310.510.210.9


Between 1949 and 1959, the income of Negro men relative to white men declined in every section of this country. From 1952 to 1963 the median income of Negro families compared to white actually dropped from 57 percent to 53 percent.
According to the Census Bureau, the income figures for 2001 are:
MedianMean
Black29,47039,248
White44,51760,512
Black / White66.1%64.9%
Since 1947 the number of white families living in poverty has decreased 27 percent while the number of poorer nonwhite families decreased only 3 percent.
According to the Census Bureau, African American poverty is at 22.7% … and this is an all-time low! Meanwhile non-Hispanic white poverty rose to a startling 7.8%.


And when President Nixon put into place the standard management methods of timetables and goals, those subject to them put into place the standard methods of evading work under those circumstances (look around where you work, see what the lazy bastards are doing and generalize that to a societal level). The easiest way to meet the goals on the specified schedule was to sit a spook by the door. Create empty jobs.

This was by no means universal. Great numbers of white people took this task as a moral obligation. Others did not. Great numbers of Black people worked their asses off in jobs they were slotted into and pushed their kids through school, college and worked their families into middle class positions they will not be shaken from, while others fell off the path to opportunity. Civil service, almost as much of a command culture as the military, responded to government mandates almost as completely as the military … it is the public sector, not the private sector that has been the gateway to what economic and educational advancement the Black community has achieved. And as the statistics above show, it has been enough to keep us even relative to the mainstream

In the face of these results, one would be hard pressed to assert that any action, much less effective, affirmative action, has been taken.

Truly, honestly eliminating racial bias in, say, employment means making a critical review of your criteria for employment to eliminate biases that have no impact on the ability of a person to do a job. In higher education it means recognizing that “qualified” is qualified … period. In K-12 education, it means providing up to date material and motivated, qualified teachers equally, across the board and actually supporting the development of the children as opposed to tolerating their presence. All of which goes against the natural human tendency to do as little as necessary to meet externally motivated requirements … but all of which would be necessary for a truly effective, truly affirmative, action plan to eliminate racial disparities in our nation.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 08:37:16 PM |

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Satire alert

Neil Pollack at The Maelstrom gives the Conservative spin on Jayson Blair's plagiarism the sardonic treatment it deserves.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 11:49:00 AM |

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Obnoxious judges

Bob Herbert has an editorial on the sort of judges Bush is submitting and it's bad … really bad. So bad that I can't just pick a piece to quote. In my opinion, the example he gives of Judge Carolyn Kuhl is bad enough that I'd like to see her disbarred, much less removed from consideration for the second highest court in the land. Herbert's conclusion is correct:

The fight over the most extreme of President Bush's judicial nominations is not a fight against his right to appoint conservatives to the bench. It's a fight to keep the courts within some kind of boundary that is reasonably close to the mainstream of American life.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 11:27:12 AM |

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A federal agency did WHAT??

via 7Online.com


FDNY Accused 0f Racial Discrimination in Promotion
(New York-AP, May 11, 2003) - A federal agency has determined a city Fire Department architect was denied promotion because of racial discrimination.

McLaughlin Harris, 48, who is black, sought promotion to the position of deputy director of construction management. After a white colleague got the post, Harris filed a discrimination complaint.

But the department's Office of Equal Opportunity Employment ruled on April 5, 2002 that his complaint was "unsubstantiated."

… He also complained of the job not being posted. But the department officials balked at the notion saying they "were not obligated to post the job opening because it was a management position."

Still, the EEOC found that the department's failure to post the opening "strongly suggests preselection" of the person who was selected instead of Harris.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 09:01:47 AM |

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Clowning Colin

Every so often I add a word balloon or two to a photograph to make what I hope is a funny. I got the idea from Political Strikes when one in particular struck me as particularly apt.

Well, I think they slipped. The punchline to this one should have read, "How should I know? The President says I'm not really Black, and you know what happens when you disagree with him…

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 08:52:40 AM |

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daughters of yam

These is my homies, and I got no shame in promoting them relentlessly.

devorah major and Opal Adisa Palmer perform individually and as daughters of yam; intelligent, spirited and spiritual and mad talent as poets and performance artists. I wrote of them before but I'm not linking back to that post because they updated their site.

You need to check them. They got Quicktime examples of their stuff, so you don't have to guess or wonder if I'm just gassing them up. I'm not, neither the poetry nor the performances-I don't do that. They my girls and I'd link to them anyway, but I wouldn't say they were that good if they weren't.

Anybody on the left coast ('cause that's where they're at), you get early notice: come Saturday, August 30, they'll be performing at Berkeley Community Theater commemorating Black August. Proceeds to benefit Haiti. Other featured artists include Amandla Poets, Avotcja, Kreative Dwellah, Martin Luther, E. W. Wainwright & the African Roots of Jazz, Company of Prophets, Prophets of Rage, Chrystos, Kumasi, Free Jack Ray love, and (lil)Kumasi, Boots & the Coup.

Opal will be at the Hotel Cosmo on April 23, 2003 7-9 pm as part of the Visual Voice show presented by ArtworksSF. I don't know who else is on the bill.

devorah and some other people get inducted into the SFSU Alumni Hall of Fame on Friday May 23. The ceremony is at the Seven Hills Conference Center, SFSU at 5:30 p.m. and performs Sunday, June 8th, 1:00 - 4:00pm at City Lights!, 261 Columbus Avenue, North Beach with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Nancy J. Peters, Elaine Katzenberger, Andrei Codrescu, Kevin Starr, Dave Eggers, and Emcee James Kass, Director of Youth Speaks.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 12:25:55 AM |

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May 11, 2003

Holy crap! Comments!

I need to tell you, I never really expected comments on my humble efforts here. I mean, I see blogs with a lot more readers than I have with no comments at all. But I check all my reports and Lo!

The kick I get out of that is more proof of how green this blog is. I haven't had time to get cynical.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 11:49:37 PM |

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That MSNBC transcript

Treasury Secretary John Snow

On the deficit:


MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you live from Times Square The National Debt Clock. Our debt is $6.4 trillion. That's $70,000 for every American family. With that in mind, shouldn't Congress vote on lifting the debt ceiling, letting the American people know exactly how much debt we have before they vote for a tax cut?
SEC'Y SNOW: No. No. The two are really different. The debt ceiling is something that we need to do now because it's the product, Tim, of prior decisions, years ago really, on the part of the Congress to put in place various spending programs, various promises to the American people for their retirement and for their health care and prior tax reductions. What we need now, though, and need soon is a major tax relief program to create jobs and growth for the American economy.
MR. RUSSERT: But you just said it, Mr. Secretary, that the debt we have is because of entitlement spending but also prior tax reductions. The largest tax reduction in history in 2001-excuse me-added to that debt. Let me show you the economic record of the first 28 months of the Bush-Cheney administration. And here it is. Dow Jones is down 19 percent. Unemployment rate is up 46 percent. We've gone from a $281 billion surplus to a $246 billion deficit. That's a swing of $527 billion and that's going up, and worst of all, a net loss of 2.1 million jobs.
Now, you used to have a very different view towards deficits, I believe. Let me show you what you said in 1995 and it couldn't be clearer: "The budget deficit puts a hole in the pocket of every American, every day of their lives. It threatens the very foundation of our culture and we must seize and act upon this historic opportunity to solve this, the most pressing issue facing the country." Do you believe the deficit is still the most pressing issue facing the country?
SEC'Y SNOW: No. No. That was 1994 and 1995 when we were in an entirely different set of economic circumstances.
MR. RUSSERT: What was the deficit when you said that?
SEC'Y SNOW: The deficit was around $200 billion and rising as far as…
MR. RUSSERT: It was $164 billion.
SEC'Y SNOW: I said around $200 billion.[p6: a billion here, a billion there … pretty soon, you're talking real money!
MR. RUSSERT: And now…
SEC'Y SNOW: And the projections, Tim-go back and look at what the projections were for the Clinton deficits during that period. They were $175 billion, $178 billion in 1994 rising every year well over $200 billion, going up towards $300 billion during a period-and this is really an important point-when the economy was at full employment. Now, deficits are not all equal. We need to distinguish here. A deficit at a time of full employment and a deficit that's rising over time is troublesome. That's what I was talking about in 1995. Today, we have underemployment. Today, the economy is far short of its potential. If you're going to run a deficit, this is the time to do it because the real deficit we face today-and this is important to make this point-the real deficit we face today is a jobs deficit and a growth deficit.
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Secretary, when you made those comments, the deficit was $164 billion. The debt was only 4.9 trillion. The deficit today is close to $300 billion, heading to $500 billion, and you know that as well as I do. And, at the same time, you were praising President Clinton for showing political courage in dealing with the budget.
SEC'Y SNOW: In 1995, Tim, the deficit was on a track to rise in absolute dollar terms, and as a percent of GDP. That's the important point, "as a percentage of GDP." And it was high in 1995, as a percent of GDP, and no prospect for coming down. So I, and a number of others in the Congress, in the business sector and in academia, took the view that we had to rein in those deficits.
MR. RUSSERT: And now that they're higher, you've taken a different view.
SEC'Y SNOW: Well, they're lower as a percentage-if you look at this budget, as a percentage of GDP, they decline, and they get down to well under 1 percent. That's a modest deficit.
MR. RUSSERT: But it sounds like a dramatic conversion since you've joined the Bush team.
SEC'Y SNOW: No. No. No.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you. This is The Washington Times, hardly a liberal organ: "Until earlier this year, Mr. Snow was on the board of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a debt- fixated organization hostile to tax cuts and a group that has sharply questioned the merits of Mr. Bush's $1.35 trillion tax-reduction plan."
That was his first tax cut. This is what the same group says about his new tax cut: "The hard choices have not been made. The President's proposed policies would produce higher deficits and increase the national debt; deficits would grow nearly $1 trillion and the debt would rise $2.7 trillion through 2013."
SEC'Y SNOW: And at the end of that period, Tim, the debt and, as a percentage of GDP, and the deficit in 2013, as a percent of GDP, will be far lower than they were in the Clinton years.
MR. RUSSERT: But they are record numbers.
SEC'Y SNOW: We are in a very slow recovery with millions of people looking for work who can't find a job. The real deficit today is a jobs deficit. We need to get our priorities right. The deficit we have is manageable. The real problem the economy faces today is jobs and growth. And that's why the president is so intent on getting his jobs in growth plan.
MR. RUSSERT: When the president proposed his 2001 tax plan, he said it would create jobs. Since the enactment of the first Bush tax cut we have lost 1.7 million jobs. Why?
SEC'Y SNOW: Tim, let me say something to you on that. In July of 2000, I was at my corporate headquarters reviewing the papers in Richmond, the headquarters of CSX, and the numbers came in. I couldn't believe them. You know, CSX is a transportation company. It gives you a bird's-eye view of the whole economy, and the numbers from the barge line and from the ocean carrier and from the railroad and the trucking operations and warehousing operations and logistics operations were terrible. We hit a wall. We had gone over a cliff. I called all the leaders of those businesses and said, "Are these numbers right?" And they said, "Yes, they are, unfortunately." And we could-I could see then that the economy was in trouble. And I told the president in Texas, in Austin, at a summit, president-elect in January of 2001, "Mr. President, you are inheriting a recession." That recession would have been a lot deeper, it would have been a lot harsher, it would have been a lot worse but for those '01 tax reductions that the president was behind.[p6: please note the good secretary said NOTHING "on that"]


on wealth redistribution, um, tax reduction

MR. RUSSERT: Watching what is going on in Congress is quite striking. This was the headline Friday in The Washington Post: "GOP senators endorse tax hikes. Republicans broke from their no-new-tax orthodoxy to propose increases... All told, committee members approved more than 30 tax increases or other revenue raisers to help fund their tax cuts… Americans working overseas would be hit the hardest… 'This is a big tax increase' for oil and gas workers from Louisiana who work overseas, Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), said." Four hundred thousand Americans who work overseas are going to have their taxes increased; 29 other tax increases. It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Why would you raise taxes on working men and women?
SEC'Y SNOW: Well, of course, those are called offsets, as you know. And they are the product of negotiations among the senators, the members and the staff on the Senate Finance Committee. They were not in the original proposal of the president.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you oppose them?
SEC'Y SNOW: These offsets are there to make the package larger to accommodate more of the good tax relief that's contained in the president's bill.
MR. RUSSERT: But when you say offsets, Mr. Secretary, what you're saying is: In order to keep the deficit down, in order to keep the debt down, Republican senators are raising taxes on some to provide a tax cut to others.
SEC'Y SNOW: Well, in order to accommodate a larger set of broad and good tax relief.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 09:46:13 PM |

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To Linda

I figured it was time to visit your blog, not just to see who it was that thought well enough of my writing to tell me so but to actually read your stuff. You're good. Tight and clear, which is my goal and hence a high compliment. I blushed a bit at what you posted about this site (as you know, when a Black guy blushed he glows purple). And got to the bottom of the page where to mention you husband who had passed away and I was like "What??"

Then I remembered DS told me DA had passed, and he couldn't tell me how to contact you. All I could say was "Oh, shit," because DA was a good man. A very good man.

I thought about whether or not to say anything. Then I read some more, because that had stopped me cold. In the end because you've had time to heal somewhat and because through the years and distance I've remembered you both as friends, I decided I needed to write something here. In rememberance of DA, and genuine pleasure at the unexpected resumption of our virtual friendship.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 08:19:20 PM |

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So you know I'm not goofing off

My constructive thing that I decided to do yesterday was to convert some public domain texts of particular use to anyone really interested in Black history into a small web library. The first book is basically done. I just have to decide how I want present the collection. I don't want individual links to the books in a sidebar because I think it would be a good idea to write a little introduction to each one. And then there are some that should be collected, like the short stories by G.K. Chesterton.

Decisions, decision …

Anyway, the first one is a history book. Titled "The Black Experience in America - The Immigrant Heritage of America", it was donated to the public domain by the author, Norman Coombs. This is a gesture I will be forever grateful for. If you've ever wondered what the history of the USofA would read like from the perspectie of the Black community, this is it. This book and "The Shaping of Black America" by Lerone Bennett should be folded into every history book in the country. If they were, Black History Month would become a quaint and unnecessary gesture.

It covers a lot of territory, from pre-Colonial Africa through the 1960s. And I have to work an intro page because I put like 3 or 4 anchors to the major sections of the twelve(!) chapters, so I need to work the intro page with links and decriptions of the targeted sections. But I'm making it available now because there will be no more changes to the book itself or its location so it's safe to bookmark.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 06:32:33 PM |

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The best description possible

Okay, so I check referral logs periodically and I click on interesting-looking referers. Today I saw one that was someone's personal site, just to keep a list of bookmarks available to him regardless of where he's accessing the net from. And I'm on there with the description "some kind of site."

I laughed when I read it, but I seriously can't think of a better way to describe what I'm doing here.

I started out wanting to rant about racism and such, felt compelled to go into current events and post links to research material and start doing something on the Campaign 2004 (which, if I keep being lazy about I may have to just start posting links to blogs that have it as their primary focus). Cartoons, random thoughts and the occasional essay/editorial (which I will get back to). And now my little library project. Ultimately an overall site redesign will be necessary.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 06:22:04 PM |

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Returning the favor

CalPundit is talking about mathematical education again. I say keep it simple: make "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper" a required text. It is equally entertaining and enlightening. Amazon has 39 sample pages up … enough to convince you of the value of this book.

Claimer (that is not a typo): I am not an Amazon associate. This recommendation is purely on the basis of the book.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 01:42:58 PM |

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See? I told you

I had to speak on Kaus when he tried to represent Jayson Blair's plagiarism as an affirmative action problem. Well, during my layoff yesterday both CalPundit and Atrios took up the cudgel, for which I am grateful. Atrios in particular went deep and long. Start at the linked article and scroll down.

Again, gentlemen, you have my thanks for putting this in front of a much larger audience than I can reach.

Later: CalPundit followed up in nice rational fashion here and here. The second one is most interesting to me:


I'd like to make my point from the post below ultra clear. Here's a list of possible factors that contributed to the Jayson Blair scandal:
  1. Due to the Times' diversity program, Blair was pushed into a highly demanding position sooner than he should have been.
  2. The Times' personnel department didn't bother to check with the University of Maryland to see if he had actually graduated.
  3. Not enough attention was paid to the concerns of Blair's immediate supervisor.
  4. The Times has a culture where "sloppy but energetic" is considered promising.
  5. Supervisors at the Times never bother looking at their reporters' expense accounts, which would have given Blair's game away immediately.

Now do your best to put away both your liberal and conservative prejudices, and ask yourself a simple question: what changes are most likely to prevent a dedicated and clever fraud like Blair from scamming the Times in the future?

… So out of those five reasons � and there may be others I've missed � why would you choose to insist that only the one that's least likely to have permitted this problem to escape notice is also the only one that lots of attention should be paid to?

I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Sadly, in two of the four comments readers felt up to the challenge and one stood on the very edge of the slippery slope Mac Diva talks about on Silver Rights.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 01:29:49 PM |

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Now I feel better

Kinda. I was wondering/whining about whether of not anyone actually follows the links presented in weblogs. Well the Corante-hosted Brainwaves, as a setup to disagree with a post on the also Corante-hosted The Bottom Line presented this:

Emotional Blog Reading

Blogging is a real-time social sport. Real-time writing, real-time reading. On the writing side, I, like Doc Searls, have tested positive for AKMA. On reading side, there is a whole other set of categorizations to describe the different way people read blogs:
  • T-people: Title readers, rarely follow links, make quick opinions, probably RSS too many feeds
  • D-people: Deep readers, follow all links, think carefully about the blog, rarely comment
  • Q-people: Questioners, read quickly, follow most links, assimilate information, and comment frequently

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 11:20:04 AM |

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I finally foud a use for MSNBC

They provide transcripts for "Meet the Press".

As I speak, Treasury Secretary John Snow is spinning so hard, soon he'll fall down and swear he saw god (who, strangely enough, he says resembles Dubya).

I just wish the transcripts included all the "uhh"s, "umm"s and other stammers.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 10:51:59 AM |

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If only it were so simple I


If only it were so simple II

Not to mention true. I repeat:

  • Bush has had 124 nominations confirmed
  • Bush has had two nominations blocked, one because the candidate "wouldn't fill out his job application," the other because she put her personal views over the law
  • Bush nets a 98.4% approval rate (personally, I think that sucks, but …)
  • Clinton had 50 nominees that never left the committee
  • Clinton had 10 that left the committee, but never got a vote on the floor


Later: That 98.4 percent is the percent of Bush judicial nominations the Senate approved, not the percent of the populace that approves of Bush. I copied the list from an earlier post where, in context, that was evident.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 10:44:29 AM |

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I TOLD you the talking heads would set me off

On the McLaughlin Report, McLaughlin himself just spun the revelation that Bill Bennett has a gambling problem as an attack by Internet gambling interests on Las Vegas!

How … bizarre!

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 10:25:39 AM |

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No, I'm not done yet

There's just two cartoons I can't resist posting here.

Tom Toles (again!)


The Boondocks (again!)

posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/11/2003 10:22:54 AM |

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