This Is What Happens To Court Clerks Who Refuse To Issue Same Sex Marriage Licenses

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Robert A. Vella

In Texas, Hood County Clerk Katie Lang had refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples for well over a week after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. The conservative group Texas Values rallied in her defense and even the Family Research Council propped up her discriminatory cause.

[…]

Monday morning, Cato and Stapleton filed a federal lawsuit, which describes their experiences being rejected as “humiliating and degrading.” Less than two hours after the suit was filed, Lang’s office issued the couple a marriage license.

Continue reading: This Is What Happens To Court Clerks Who Refuse To Issue Same Sex Marriage Licenses

The absent black father myth—debunked by CDC

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Robert A. Vella

by Frank Vyan Walton

We’ve been told, quite frequently and repeatedly that the problems in the black community that we’ve seen in Ferguson and Baltimore recently are not the fault of biased, paramilitary, paranoid and violent policing (even if the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that black people are three times more likely to be subject to law enforcement uses of force). They are not the fault of racist red-lining that created these impoverished neighborhoods in the first place. They are not the fault of bigoted lending and hiring practices that create roadblocks for those attempting to escape those neighborhoods. And the fact that black students are disciplined, suspended and expelled far more easily and quickly for the same or lesser offenses, isn’t the problem.

None of that is the problem. Nope. All of that is just too bad. Life is tough all over. Lots of people have got lots of problems. No, instead we’ve heard that the welfare benefits in Baltimore are “too lucrative,” because when you give people nothing they somehow get more, somewhere. That businesses won’t invest in these neighborhoods until something is done about those darn teachers unions. That it’s because of “too many gay marriages.” That ISIS is using Baltimore to recruit blacks. And, of course, when all else fails, blame Obama.

But what we’ve heard the most, is that the real problem is the Breakdown in the Black Family™. That too many black fathers have abandoned their children, allowing them to be raised by the streets like feral cats. They don’t learn morals, and they don’t learn values—so naturally police have to shoot them down like rabid, foaming dogs. Even when they’re unarmed. Even when they have their backs turned and are simply running away. It’s all just their own fault really.

If only black fathers would spend as much time and energy on their kids as white fathers do. If only…

Well, someone—the Centers for Disease Control—actually went to trouble of checking just how involved in their lives all fathers are, whether or not they are married to the mother of their children or live with them. What they found was that, in reality, black fathers are actually more attentive to their children than other fathers generally are.

Continue reading: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/10/1383179/-The-absent-black-father-myth-debunked-by-CDC

American Denial: a profound and revealing sociological study of Racism in America

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Robert A. Vella

By Robert A. Vella

Last night, PBS aired an Independent Lens documentary titled American Denial which examined a sociological study of racism in America begun in the 1930s. It is the most profound and uncomfortably revealing work of journalism I’ve ever seen on the subject of race which I’m rating as MUST SEE for the readers of this blog.

Of particular note is its focus on the abject disparity between the conscious and subconscious attitudes of white Americans towards black people and other ethnic groups. The documentary also exposes how this psychological phenomenon impacts cultural perceptions, expectations, and biases in America which affect all persons regardless of race and ethnicity. Examples include doctors who treat people differently even though the patients suffer from the same condition, black children who choose white dolls as more “beautiful” and “good,” political dynamics which label poor blacks as “inferior,” and law enforcement practices which criminalize the very existence of black people in America.

American Denial also confronts racism more directly with segments showing how southern whites reacted to suggestions comparing Jim Crow laws (i.e. segregation) to the Nazi persecution of Jews in Europe, as well as to suggestions asserting that obsessive white fear of black sexuality concealed deeply-held and culturally taboo emotions.

From PBS – Independent Lens – American Denial:

Follow the story of Swedish researcher Gunnar Myrdal whose landmark 1944 study, An American Dilemma, probed deep into the United States’ racial psyche. The film weaves a narrative that exposes some of the potential underlying causes of racial biases still rooted in America’s systems and institutions today.

An intellectual social visionary who later won a Nobel Prize in economics, Myrdal first visited the Jim Crow South at the invitation of the Carnegie Corporation in 1938, where he was “shocked to the core by all the evils [he] saw.” With a team of scholars that included black political scientist Ralph Bunche, Myrdal wrote his massive 1,500-page investigation of race, now considered a classic.

An American Dilemma challenged the veracity of the American creed of equality, justice, and liberty for all. It argued that critically implicit in that creed — which Myrdal called America’s “state religion” — was a more shameful conflict: white Americans explained away the lack of opportunity for blacks by labeling them inferior. Myrdal argued that this view justified practices and policies that openly undermined and oppressed the lives of black citizens. Seventy years later, are we still a society living in this state of denial, in an era marked by the election of the nation’s first black president?

American Denial sheds light on the unconscious political and moral world of modern Americans, using archival footage, newsreels, nightly news reports, and rare southern home movies from the ‘30s and ‘40s, as well as research footage, websites, and YouTube films showing psychological testing of racial attitudes. Exploring “stop-and-frisk” practices, the incarceration crisis, and racially-patterned poverty, the film features a wide array of historians, psychologists, and sociologists who offer expert insight and share their own personal, unsettling stories. The result is a unique and provocative film that challenges our assumptions about who we are and what we really believe.

Watch the documentary here: http://video.pbs.org/video/2365422025/

Conservative Media Still Denying How Racism And History Fueled Ferguson

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Robert A. Vella

Despite the conservative media narrative that racism against minorities is a thing of the past, race, racism, and inherent biases on all sides are a part of what’s happening in Ferguson and communities across America — as are systemic and institutional factors spanning several generations, from the Watts riots in 1965 to the riots in various cities in 1967 and ’68, to Los Angeles in 1992. While an inciting incident — usually involving the police and communities of color — sparked the violence, a tinderbox of underlying frustrations awaited that spark.

After each of these incidents, reports issued by government commissions seeking answers cited hauntingly identical findings. Police brutality, poor relations between the police and the community, a sense of hopelessness fueled by a lack of jobs, economic inequality, inadequate schools, discriminatory housing practices, an unresponsive political system many felt shut out of, along with policies that created segregated neighborhoods which further isolate communities of color were highlighted again and again. Again and again the recommendations included expanding community policing strategies and social programs, making them more consistent with the extent of the problems.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/12/03/conservative-media-still-denying-how-racism-and/201751

The Injustice of Justice

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Tanya

From Tanya: The author of this post invites League bloggers to write for the The Contrary Perspective.

The Contrary Perspective

Jeffrey Toobin: Win or Don’t Bother?

Richard Sahn

I was appalled by Jeffrey Toobin’s analysis of the decision of the grand jury in the Darren Wilson indictment hearings. Toobin, a legal analyst for CNN is a former prosecutor as well as defense attorney. The reason the DA, Robert McCulloch, did not prosecute Darren Wilson during the hearings was because, Toobin says, he could not have convinced a trial jury that Wilson was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, even of involuntary manslaughter, the least of the possible charges. What good is an indictment—which is based on probable cause—Toobin would have us believe if there is no or little chance of winning at a trial?

So for Toobin, and who knows how many other extraordinary legal minds, it’s win or don’t bother. The legal proceedings in the wake of Michael Brown’s shooting death were all a game, to be won or lost…

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Delhi University officially accepts transgender men and women

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Tanya

Tanya’s Comment: As I read this wonderful news, I am also saddened that transgender people in the United States are not treated as equal citizens. There is still discrimination in housing, employment, and other areas of life that transgender people face everyday, and that many of us are oblivious to. One of my transgender female friends is a nurse and college student, while another is a lawyer and happily married to a woman. They want the same things as everyone else, and they are equally as deserving of those things as everyone else.

GAY ASIA NEWS

New Delhi: Delhi University has officially accepted transgender men and women for their postgraduate programmers this year and have plans to extend this policy to undergraduate courses as well.

Around 90,000 candidates had applied for various postgraduate courses this year of which nine were from the transgender community, according to Delhi University officials.

The change accepting transgender men and women in undergraduate courses will take effect from the next academic year (2015-16) after it introduces space for the third gender in its application forms, reported timesofindia.indiatimes.com.

“We had planned to start transgender admissions in undergraduate courses from this year but could not do so due to administrative reasons. From 2015-16 academic session, we will be introducing the third gender option in centralized admission forms and also make necessary policies for their admission,” the university’s registrar Alka Sharma told timesofindia.indiatimes.com.

Sharma pointed out that his university’s “transgender initiative” was taken before it…

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Study: White People Support Harsher Criminal Laws If They Think More Black People Are Arrested

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Robert A. Vella

A recent study suggests that, if you are white, and you are presented with evidence that our criminal justice system disproportionately targets black people, then you are more likely to support harsh criminal justice policies than if you were unaware of this evidence. According to a study by Rebecca Hetey, a post-doctoral fellow in Stanford’s Psychology department and Jennifer Eberhardt, her faculty advisor, informing white people that African Americans are significantly over-represented in the prison population “may actually bolster support for the very policies that perpetuate the inequality.”

Forty percent of the nation’s prison population is black, as compared to only 12 percent of the population as a whole.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/08/07/3468368/study-white-people-support-harsher-criminal-laws-if-they-think-more-black-people-are-arrested/

Looking into the Mirror of Racism

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Robert A. Vella

This essay is directed at White people. I happen to be Caucasian, and it’s long past the time all of us need to look into the mirror about racism. Most of us don’t think of ourselves as racists. Most of us don’t entertain deliberate thoughts about race. We are confident in our benevolence and wish no ill will towards others be they black, brown, or white. Racism is something evil people do. We are not evil. America is no longer a racist country. Those who still complain about it are either mistaken or are just trying to stir up trouble. Right?

Recently, Colorado state senator Vicki Marble claimed that Black people are poor because they eat too much barbeque chicken. She later apologized for her remarks if they had offended anyone, but she did not apologize for their obviously ignorant and insensitive content. As a political representative of the people, her words carry much more weight than an ordinary citizen. What she said was objectively racist even though subjectively she may not have thought so.

Colorado State Sen. Vicki Marble (R)
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These subtle and seemingly innocuous sentiments are the real faces of racism, and they happen countless times every day in America. Their cumulative effect on society is pernicious, leading to an escalation and intensification of ethnic and racial animus. Such cultural divisions pose an existential threat to the nation in terms of its security and prosperity. The overt racism expressed by small groups like the KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, skinheads, and neo-Nazis, pales in comparison.

Now, let’s look into the mirror.

Have you ever made disparaging comments like Vicki Marble’s? I know I have.

Have you ever heard your friends and family members say even worse things? I know I have.

Have you ever been participant or witness to an ugly act of racial disrespect? I know I have.

Have you ever turned your back on a person who was the target of such an act? I know I have.

Have you ever allowed your innermost feelings to discriminate against someone who doesn’t look like you? Be honest, now. I know I have.

Have you ever rooted for or against an athlete or sports teams solely because of their race? I know I have.

Have you ever observed a racially-motivated crime? I know I have.

Have you ever ignored the racial transgressions of your associates? I know I have.

Have you ever supported a person or organization despite their negative racial attitudes? I have not. If you have ever voted for a politician who favors voter suppression efforts through so-called “Voter Id” legislation, then you most certainly have supported racism.

On this day when we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and the March on Washington, let all of us White folks pause for a moment of self-reflection and look closely into the mirror. What do you see?