So there’s a “Django” action figure being sold now; and, of course, some of my cousins are upset about it — yep, yet another reason yo hate this movie for some. The action figure isn’t actually a stocking stuffer, but I hope it doesn’t have a Kung Fu grip like G.I. Joe. Nope, no need to get Spike Lee any angrier about the movie than he already is at this point. Seriously, how much more disrespectful can they get with this thing? Oh well, it could have been worse. Yes, somebody could have had the bright idea to start selling a crack head action figure after the movie Do The Right Thing.

Oh, and speaking of “angry black men who hate white men with the audacity to make movies that illustrates what it was like for black folk back in 1853″. Did you hear what Tavis Smiley had to say about Tarantino and the movie Django Unchained? Well, like Spike Lee, he too hasn’t seen the movie nor intends to “pay to see it,” like he said in a recent interview featured on The Daily Beast. Like Lee, he too takes issue with a white movie director using his craft to bring to the big screen a film that revels in the painful but often avoided legacy of slavery. Responding to a question about his first reaction to the film, Smiley opens up the interview with the following:

Quentin Tarantino’s film, Django Unchained has as much to do with the history and culture of American descendants of African slaves as Dumbo has to do with the plight of Weimar Jewry. Spike Lee says that it disrespected his ancestors. It does not. It has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with one white man’s fevered, second-hand vision of what it would be like to be something he probably can’t conceive. It’s like me attempting to write an intimate account of the pains of childbirth. I may have held a baby and changed a diaper, but one would doubt my authority on the subject.

Tarantino obviously knows black people, but only a white man in America could believe that this provides him with the authority to speak on the black American experience. Like 99.9999 percent of the white population, he has minimal intimacy with the culture of the descendants of American slaves. That culture, imbibed from birth by American blacks raised in black American households, involves an intimate, often subconscious acknowledgment of history, of a unique place in the American hierarchy, of a struggle against mainstream paradigms of who and what we are. These are intimacies of which whites are necessarily ignorant — they’re white. Just as I, as a male, have no intimate knowledge of birthing pains, whites have no knowledge of being black. They can gain an abstract conception, but that’s it.

Um, excuse me, I know Tarantino is white and all, but I sincerely doubt whether anyone alive today — including black folks — are able to have more than an abstract conception of what slavery was like. Yes, though many of its scars still run deep throughout the diaspora, to suggest that by virtue of one being charged with melanin comes with a certain esoteric knowledge of slavery even if we’re fifty years removed from Jim Crow. Which is funny because it’s as though being able to endure “the struggle” was woven into our cultural and biological DNA — it’s as if unlike any other race, we’re predisposed to endure any struggle. And thus, we’re exceptional or something.

Of course, Tarantino has every right to make a film on any subject he chooses, and he knows his audience well. The film has become the white literati’s preferred lens into the forbidden territory of black rage (a sort of reverse Uncle Tom’s Cabin). But when blacks discuss it as if this product of white Hollywood is a legitimate expression of our culture or our rage, we do ourselves a gross injustice; we follow the pattern of outsourcing our history and self-image to the majority; we marry ourselves into the grotesque self-images that their history has tried to stamp upon us.

Django Unchained is nothing more than one white Hollywood director’s fantasy of what black revenge would look like. It would be no more to us than another big screen cartoon if we dealt honestly and independently with our own history — a history white studios or directors would never touch. Such history puts the lie to the frames and simplifications with which Americans maintain our halo of historical innocence on matters related to race.

If we lavished similar imagination upon the history of the blacks who fought for the British during the American revolution to escape slavery, the German Coast uprising, the Prosser and Vesey rebellions, the ‘Crazy as St. Paul’ Nat Turner rebellion, the Black Seminole rebellion of 1835, the innumerable anecdotal tales of black resistance against slave-owners, perhaps we wouldn’t glom onto the work of a white director who (with his infantile insistence on his right to fling the word “nigger”) seems frightfully similar to the clueless character in Lou Reed’s infamous, “I Wanna be Black.” If we taught ourselves to regard the Civil War as “a failed war to protect and extend slavery,” and not “a war to free the slaves,” we would be less seduced by the siren song of second-hand revenge fantasy. If we debated among ourselves the virtues and vices of real old-west outlaws like the notorious Rufus Buck Gang, Cherokee Bill and Isom Dart, perhaps one white man’s notion of blacks in the old west would be less noteworthy. If we knew that black freedman populated Indian Territory and that a black lawman named Bass Reeves served as a Deputy U.S. Marshall for “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker, we’d have a far richer, more complex view of our history than that promoted by the likes of Hollywood and Tarantino.

Yes, blacks are giving this film too much credence, but it’s our own fault. We have outsourced our history to the majority and failed to devise the means to teach our history to ourselves. In a country in which we have been historically subjugated and reviled, we accept instruction about our history and our place in it from those who subjugated and reviled us. That’s a bit insane. As long as we continue to do so, the likes of Django Unchained will rise from the level of mainstream curiosities from black-cultural dilettantes, to fake nipples mimicking the teat of cultural sustenance.

Listen: We can only imagine just what it must have been like for African slaves not just in America, but also those spread all throughout the new world; but even so, we have no earthly idea, despite the documented research, of just how bad it actually was. So what is the point to this post? That I can’t wait for Tarantino to do the sequel where Django and Madea try to bust John Brown the abolitionist, out of prison for killing white folks so everyone can be happy. Yep, let’s try to rescue a white man in the next one, since folk wanna act like he had Harriet Tubman giving lap dances in this one. as cathartic as this film isn’t for some, maybe my suggested sequel will be received with open arms only if a black guy produces, writes, and directs it. Because quite naturally, who else is there better to tell stories of the black struggle than black people, right? After all, last time I checked, black kids are still picking white dolls over black dolls; and, it ain’t like y’all Negroes supported Akeela And The Bee anyway.

So yeah, blame Tarantino for that too.

The post Slavery, Django Action Figures, & Why Tavis Smiley is Wrong appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Remember that iconic photo of Malcolm X peeking out the window while holding gun with what’s known on the streets as a banana clip? as I think of this week’s ongoing gun control debate, I’ve come to rest on that very picture probably being the biggest reason why I’m opposed o an assault weapon ban. I can provide numbers to support the argument that an assault weapon ban will do very little as a solution to America’s gun violence problem. But being a black man, that very photo says it all. Not that I’m paranoid or afraid of “the man” coming after me like they did Malcolm — nope, never that. You see, I’m reminded of the fact that at one point in this country’s history, it was against the law for anyone black to own a gun. And in so many ways, the existence of that law further enabled “certain people” when it came to terrorizing the lives of black folks in America.

Here’s a stupid conversation on gun control:

Any gun control we enact will have a limited effect. But this should not be cause for despair. Much of the recent hysteria over gun deaths is misplaced.

A lot of people have been citing a recent report, “American Gun Deaths to Exceed Traffic Fatalities by 2015.” The article shows that gun deaths in America are slowly rising, and now stand at 32,000 per year — a staggering toll. Now, 32,000 deaths per year is a lot of death, and I’d never minimize that. But what the article’s authors fail to mention is that gun murders comprise less than a third of that total — about 9,000 per year in recent years. With accidental gun deaths steady at around 500-600 per year, the bulk of those 32,000 “gun deaths” are suicides.

In fact, murder by gun has been falling steadily since the early 1990s. Some of that is due to improvements in emergency medicine, but most is a result of the overall decline in violent crime that America has enjoyed over the last two decades. The fact that overall gun deaths has risen since 2000, despite the fall in murders, suggests that increased gun suicide has accounted for more than 100% of the increase in gun deaths. Obviously, suicide is a tragedy, and I don’t want to minimize it. But people aren’t panicking over suicide, they’re panicking over murder, and gun-related murder is on the way down.

Of course, 9,000 gun deaths a year is still a lot. Still more than other rich countries, still a disgrace, still far too many! But people who have been watching the round-the-clock coverage of the Newtown massacre need to understand that “mass killings” of the Newtown type account for a very small percent of that 9,000. Most of those 9,000 gun murders are of the more mundane, but no less deadly variety — drive-by shootings, gang wars, personal quarrels, and other easily comprehensible crimes.

And if we really care about those 9,000 souls who are shot to death each year, there is an extremely effective policy that we could enact right now that would probably save many of them.

I’m talking about ending the drug war.

Now I can think of many reasons to end Americas 40-year-long failed War on Drugs; and, I’m sure we can have a debate on just that. However, since we’re all up in arms about guns since last month’s tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. Given the many ill-formed opinions and positions posited by more than the NRA’s Wayne La Pierre. Again, in the interest of public safety, isn’t it time we treat drug use, abuse, as well as gun violence like a public health crisis much like we did with HIV/AIDS in America and abroad? No seriously, think about that for a second. Yes, think about how a necessary paradigm shift — that is, decriminalizing illicit drugs — as far as policy can produce the desired results for the greater good.

Reliable statistics on the number of drug-related murders in the United States are hard to come by. A 1994 Department of Justice report suggested that between a third and a half of U.S. homicides were drug-related, while a recent Center for Disease Control study found that the rate varied between 5% and 25% (a 2002 Bureau of Justice report splits the difference). Part of this variance is that “drug-related” murders are hard to define. There are murders committed by people on drugs, murders committed by addicts to get money for drugs, turf-war murders by drug suppliers, and murders committed by gangs whose principal source of income is drug sales.

But very few would argue that the illegal drug trade is a significant cause of murders. This is a straightforward result of America’s three-decade-long “drug war.” Legal bans on drug sales lead to a vacuum in legal regulation; instead of going to court, drug suppliers settle their disputes by shooting each other. Meanwhile, interdiction efforts raise the price of drugs by curbing supply, making local drug supply monopolies (i.e., gang turf) a rich prize to be fought over. And stuffing our overcrowded prisons full of harmless, hapless drug addicts forces us to give accelerated parole to hardened killers.

Ending the drug war would involve reducing all of these incentives to murder. Treating addicts in hospitals and rehab centers, instead of sticking them in prisons, would reduce demand for drugs, lowering the price and starving gangs of income while reducing their incentive to wage turf wars. Decriminalization would relieve pressure on our prison system, allowing us to focus on keeping violent people off the streets instead of pointlessly punishing drug users for destroying their own health. And full legalization of recreational marijuana — which is already proceeding quickly among the states, but is still foolishly opposed by the Obama administration — is an obvious first step.

In other words, yes, gun control is good. BUT don’t expect it to be a panacea for America’s gun violence problem. If we really want to save some of those 9,000 people, we need to end the self-destructive, failed drug policies that have turned us into a prison state and turned many of our cities into war zones. (source)

Now, does this sound crazy, or what? Of course to some of you it does; however, alcohol is considered a drug, yet I don’t see Mexican drug cartels murdering people by the thousands each year to be able to control the market for alcohol. Nope, you don’t hear about headless bodies being found in deserts along the southern border because of alcohol. Which is really funny because more people die annually because of alcohol than they do because of guns. So if we’re really serious about doing something about gun violence in America, why not start with drug legalization? After all, if that were to happen, what’s the worse that can happen other than a reduction in gun crimes in cities in Chicago? A city that had 506 homicides in 2012, with 80% of them being gun-related; with only 4% of the guns used being assault weapons. This makes sense in my head, but what about you?

After all, like “Nino Brown” said, “Ain’t no Uzis made up in Harlem,” which they might not be. But, it’s undeniable that more money is made by the presence of guns and drugs in our neighborhoods by the folks responsible for the task of keeping them out, than the ones engaged in the trade.

Although the overall U.S. prison population declined slightly in 2011, the federal prison population continued to rise, with rates of drug and immigration offenders that eclipse those held for violent crimes. While only 8 percent of federal prisoners were sentenced for violent crimes in 2011, almost half of federal inmates – 48 percent – were in prison for drug crimes, according to Department of Justice statistics. Another 11 percent were held for immigration offenses – one of the largest-growing segments of the prison population.

These numbers reflect the impact of the aggressive U.S. “War on Drugs,” a major contributor to the United States’ standing as the number one jailer in the world. Overall declines in U.S. prisons of 0.9 percent are attributable to state prisons, as some states have been moved by budget crises to adopt innovative reforms, and some jurisdictions have moved toward decriminalizing minor drug offenses.

But federal drug law remains draconian, with harsh mandatory minimum sentences for sometimes minor nonviolent roles in drug deals. What’s more, one of the major causes of the state prison population decrease was the 2011 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that California state prisons are cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment. A drastic decrease in California’s prison population has resulted from what is known as realignment, in which prisoners are moved from state prisons to county jails, where local sheriffs have greater discretion over how to deal with offenders – for better or for worse — and may send them to mental health treatment, home surveillance, or community service rather than hold them behind bars. The California shift accounts for more than half of the decrease in the U.S. prison population, and overall state spending on prisons continues to be the fastest-growing budgetary item after Medicaid. (source)

Now watch the following video and ask yourself: What would change if drugs were made legal in America?

The post Why Ending the Drug War is Good Gun Control Policy appeared first on Madness & Reality.

OK, let’s get something straight: Django Unchained is not about Martin Luther King Jr, nor is it the black version of the epic The Birth Of A Nation. However, it’s a very timely film.

I doubt very seriously whether it was Quenten Tarrantiino’s intent to spark a conversation on race. But with his new movie Django Unchauined, boy did he ever. Having said that, I’m just going to go on record and say that if Jammie Foxx wins an Oscar for his role as Django, that’s when I’m going to start believing all this post-racial talk I’ve been hearing for the last four years. Now, about the movie, I’m not offended that the word “nigger,” is used 110 times. I have yet to see the movie, so I’m not sure why this may be offensive to some.What offends me, however, is that Django has excellent command of the English. No diss to my ancestors, but I’m having a hard time accepting the fact that a slave in the 1950s is able to understand that the ‘D’ in his name is silent. But hey, maybe I shouldn’t complain; yep, at least they didn’t make him come off a bit Green Mile-ish when there are black folks today who you’d swear they’re looking for Harriet Tubman when you hear them speak.

Now of course this movie has seen it’s share of controversy even before its Christmas Day release. In fact, I blogged about how “certain people” were a bit put off by a joke told by Jamie Foxx while hosting Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago. Yes, and apparently it’s beyond reason for an enslaved African with a gun to “kill all the white people,” like Foxx does in this movie. I suppose, to some, the notion of a slave murdering the un-melanined seems to be bad for race relations in America. Of course this was all bullshit, as I’ve already pointed out. That said, you can imagine my surprise when I heard that there were more than a few black folks who took issue with a few things in the movie. Not surprising, however, was the critique that came from my man Spike Lee, who believes the film is “disrespectful,” to his ancestors who were slaves.

This from Rolling Stone:

Although he hasn’t seen the movie, director Spike Lee tells Vibe that Quentin Tarantino’s new Civil War-era Western Django Unchained is “disrespectful to my ancestors.”

Lee, whose latest film Red Hook Summer deals with race and class in the South Brooklyn neighborhood, said he has no plans to see Django Unchained. He elaborated on his dissatisfaction on Twitter, writing, “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.”

This isn’t the first time Lee has taken issue with Tarantino’s films, particularly when it comes to the use of a racial epithet that is used myriad times in Django and appeared frequently in Tarantino’s 1997 film Jackie Brown.

Lee spoke out about the film after apparently telling Django star Jamie Foxx that he wasn’t going to. In a separate interview withVibe, Foxx recalled an encounter with Lee at the BET awards saying, “You know Spike, he’ll let you have it whether it’s good, bad or ugly. And he said, ‘I’m not going to say anything bad about this film. It looks like y’all are getting it.’”

Now I respect Spike Lee, and I’m a huge fan — hell, can’t you tell from the banner above? — and he is of course entitled to his opinion. However, I don’t agree with his assertion. Why? Well, maybe I’m wrong, but I’d like to think that African slaves had more important things to worry about other than being called “niggers.” Was it degrading to them? Assuming that they had a grasp of the English language like “Django,” I’m sure it was. However, I’d like to think that they were more concerned about escaping the horror that was slavery, and maybe even trying to get a paycheck. The way I see it: What better way is there to “honor” our ancestors than to use a film to illustrate just what they endured for a very long time? Sorry, Spike, you’re my man and all, and like you I love the Knicks; but, until Kunta Kinte comes forward and says he feels “disrespected,” I’m not hearing you, bro. But Spike isn’t the only one, as I found out while watching Melissa Harris-Perry last weekend

Case in point, check out this from Melissa Harris-Perry:

So, for Melber who writes:

Django is fighting for his life against slavery, torture, rape, and murder, arming him with a moral clearance to go on a killing spree…

[...] The spectacle is more like pornographic violence than a dénouement, and even if the corpses are not total innocents, the nation’s tolerance for wanton, mass shootings is quite low right now.

[...] There is nothing to be gained from sanitizing our nation’s violent, racist history, to be sure, but Tarantino has shown that sensationalizing it is not worthwhile, either. That is unfortunate, because Django Unchained ultimately boils down to a tragedy in search of a point.

I suppose for him and others who share his opinion, the fact that a black man is doing the this killing makes them a little uneasy. I mean, lord forbid if someone makes a movie about John Brown, the white abolitionist who enacted his “vengeance” upon white men for no reason. Yep, for some, it’s as though Django should have employed Martin Luther King Jr’s strategy of non-violence. Because we all know how well that worked out for black folks during slavery. I’m sorry, but something tells me that Dr. King wouldn’t be above bussin’ a cap in more than a few asses to get back to Coretta.

The post Django Unchained Isn’t About Martin Luther King Jr. appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Way back in the day, well before we were known as Niggers, Negroes, and subsequently African-Americans, we were known as Spearchuckers. It was meant as a derogatory term as did most other terms used to describe Blacks of African descent in America. But you know what? I do not think Spearchucker is a bad term. Actually, I wish we were Spearchuckers today, or rightfully called that in a literal sorta way.

Ok, bear with me as I explain. You see, way back when, when Africans lived on that other planet called Africa, we carried spears as a weapon, right? I was not there, but I suspect, that back in the day in Africa, a Black man without a spear was as worthless as a Black man without a job and unable to pay his child support today. Yup, possessing a spear was important, without it, there was no food, or means of defending the homies in your crew from some other crew that claimed to either be a Crips or Bloods, or whatever. Plus, I seriously doubt the chicks took a Black man without a spear seriously. I mean, why would she if he cannot even bring home a rhino or elephant periodically, right?

Some where along the line, some White guy decided to show up in his space ship on planet Africa. Being from another world, and not knowing what he would run into, he carried with him what was known as a gun. And you know what happened? The White guy being forever the forward thinker, decided to trade his guns for a few Africans (who were sitting in the county jail) to give them their freedom to come help said White guys tend to his flower garden. Was not that so nice of the White guy who landed on planet Africa? Of course the ever so curious African do-gooders accepted the guns as bail money. Yup, and the rest is history as they say.

This is why I always say that the gun, is worst invention known to man. Yup, Africans got guns in exchange for other Africans. Then, they put down their spears, (which made it even easier to be kidnapped) and now White people are using spears in an Olympic sport called the Javelin. Ain’t that a bitch? And now here we are centuries later, Black people here in America are killing one another in record numbers every year by using a guns.

If we Black people of African descent here in America had spears, there would more than likely be less murders or Black on Black crime. I mean lets face it, the Bloods & Crips in Africa never really ran around doing throw bye’s, and killing innocent bystanders like they used to do out in L.A. back in the 90′s did they? Seewhumsayin? I mean, just keeping it real, a spear is kinda hard to hide and tuck into the small of your back under a jacket.

Seriously, I think it would be quite uncomfortable to carry a concealed spear. Yeah, you just cannot expect to sneak a spear up in the club, and shit just like that. Are you crazy? And what would that mean for the Black community? Less Black on Black crime, or in particular murders. Not just that, but less cops harassing Blacks like they do looking for guns. Yup, no more racial profiling and all of that racial shit, and we would all be able to live in peace and harmony. Yes, life in America would be different for us folks of African descent if they had just left their guns at home. Now all we have to do is figure out how all these guns get onto our streets everyday.

Can you take a guess how they do?

The post Gun Control: If Only We Could Be Spearchuckers Again appeared first on Madness & Reality.

There is something sick and perverse about George Zimmerman selling autographs to raise money for the cost of his upcoming trial. What this says about Zimmerman or willing participants of such a sordid transaction, I’m not sure. But hopefully, it doesn’t reflect the insidiously pervasive direction of larger society. The last thing we need are twisted individuals receiving stars on Hollywood Boulevard for murders in spite of how justified they may be deemed in a court of law.

Speaking of which, by now, hopefully you’ve heard about yet another senseless murder of yet another 17-year-old black male at the hands of a “responsible” law-abiding white gun owner . I wrote about my initial feelings with regard to the lack of national outrage yesterday. But ironically, as I punch keystrokes, I can hear my man Rev. Al Sharpton speaking (very loudly as always on Politics Nation) about the incident itself. Ask any black person: When it goes down, you want Al on your side.

I take some comfort in knowing that if anybody is on the case to give it the national coverage it deserves — unlike the Daniel Adkins case — it is the good brother, Rev. Al Sharpton. Let’s just say that I can sleep a little better tonight knowing that the brother is watching this one very closely.

Having said that, check out what the shooter, 45-year-old Michael Dunn’s attorney is saying:

Now, for the first time, we’re hearing Dunn’s side of the story, from his attorney Robin Lemonidis. She said, “They were blasting some rap music. And he said he rolled down his window, pulled up on the passenger side, and rolled down his window and asked, would you mind turning that down? And said it very politely.”

The attorney says the teenager in the front seat turned down the radio. But then she says her client heard the teens cussing at him, making threats. She says Dunn rolled down his window and said, “He said excuse me, are you talking to me?”

At that point, she says one of the teenagers told Dunn he was dead. “And that’s when the guy in the back seat raised the barrel of a shotgun over the rim of the window,” said Lemonidis. “At that point, he just snapped into self protection mode.”

Dunn’s attorney claims that’s when her client reached for a gun he had in the glove compartment of his car, loaded it, and fired. “Firing at the car, because they’re showing him a gun, and he can’t see their hands,” she said. “And he doesn’t know. They’re about to blast him in the face with a shotgun, as far as he knows.”

Sounds reasonable, right? I mean, if someone gets a bit upset and refuses to acquiesce my request to turn down loud aggravating hippity hop music, and points a shotgun in my direction after exchanging pleasantries (remember this?). Yes, like me, you too would feel threatened and feel the need to protect your life by using the necessary deadly force it requires, right? Because of course, everybody knows how rap music if played loudly, gives black teens super human strength known to rival that of the Hulk. There’s only one problem, however, there was no guns recovered from the car.

How’s that for being a “responsible” legal gun owner?

So yeah, as Michael Dunn’s attorney says, this case is nothing like the Trayvon Martin case. You hear that? This guy isn’t the obvious racist many perceive George Zimmerman to be. Nope, according to his attorney, he is no “vigilante,” Unlike Zimmerman, he was fearful for his life, And listening to her in the video above, if I was a white man, I’d be afraid too. Again, forget the fact that there was no gun, the fact that there was more than one scary black teen in a car with tinted windows, clearly means there had to be a gun involved somewhere — after all, the music was loud.

As a matter of fact, supposedly Dunn’s attorney also stated that police didn’t find a gun because police didn’t look hard enough. Yep, no need to even plant a gun; nope, the kids were black and the windows were tinted;yep, there had to be a gun in that car. Hell, if the cops looked hard enough, I’m sure they’d also find empty KFC fried chicken boxes,empty malt liquor bottles, and a watermelon-chitlin juice mix on the upholstery. After all, the four occupants of the SUV were all black, no? Not that it should matter; but, I’m just sayin’.

“There are no comparisons to the Trayvon Martin situation,” said Robin Lemonidis, Dunn’s attorney. “He is devastated and horrified by the death of the teen.”

Yep, he was so devastated that he drove off, and slept knowing that a black kid was dead…

Listen, I could go on and on about how this is yet another example of how the negative stereotypes of black people in general, and black males in particular often lead to grave consequences. Yes, we’ve been down this road before on numerous occasions. Instead, I’ll close by saying that other than the obvious, what’s overlooked is how the culture of violence in America facilitates a mindset that’s foreign to the concept of proper conflict resolution. After all, America has taught us that if there’s a problem with someone or something the best way to deal with it, clearly, is to kill it.

Don’t blame the NRA, folks; nope, in American culture the bad guy always wears black.

The post Attorney: Jordan Davis Killer Michael Dunn is no George Zimmerman – But is He? appeared first on Madness & Reality.

It has almost been one year since the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman. You remember that case, don’t you? You now, the black teen armed with Skittles and Ice Tea who was gunned down by an over-zealous neighborhood watch captain for wearing a hoodie and looking suspiciously black? Yeah, I’m only asking because the media hype surrounding the case has all but died down — at least to me it has. I mean, it’s not like anyone on is talking about it.

Well, no need for me to restart that debate; heck, I’m still a supporter of the now infamous “Stand Your Ground” laws across the country; and no, I’m not a card-carrying member of the NRA, nor am I one of these lunatic right-wing lunatics. Simply put, I do believe that if my life is threatened and I’m in imminent danger, I have the right to defend myself without having to retreat as the law allows. Having said that, it’s going to be hard to convince me that the law is designed to kill innocent black people. But just in case you might, check out the following story from Florida.

This via jacksonville.com:

17-Year-Old Jordan Russell Davis

Michael David Dunn will be brought from Brevard County to Jacksonville after entering a not-guilty plea to charges of murder and attempted murder in the Friday shooting death of a 17-year-old student at a Jacksonville gas station.

Dunn, 45, of Satellite Beach, waived extradition and should be en route back to Jacksonville before Thursday to face charges in the death of Jordan Russell Davis, according to Lt. Tod Goodyear, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

A gun collector in Jacksonville for his son’s wedding, Dunn told police he felt “threatened” after an argument with the Wolfson High student over loud music coming from a sports-utility vehicle parked next to him at the Gate station at 8251 Southside Blvd. Davis was in the back seat when “there were words exchanged,” followed by gunfire at 7:40 p.m., said Jacksonville homicide Lt. Rob Schoonover.

“Our suspect produced a weapon and started firing into the vehicle. Our victim was shot a couple of times,” Schoonover said. “ … They were listening to the music. It was loud; they [other teens] admitted that. But I mean that is not a reason for someone to open fire on them.”

[...] Davis family members couldn’t be reached for comment. They requested that the school district and Wolfson employees not speak to the news media, according to school system spokeswoman Jill Johnson.

Dunn lives in an oceanfront townhome in Satellite Beach. He is listed on his LinkedIn web page as vice president of software development since 2004 at Dunn and Dunn Data Systems in Fort Pierce.

Schoonover said Dunn and his girlfriend were next to the red SUV containing Davis and three of his friends. Dunn’s girlfriend was inside when Dunn and Davis exchanged words. Shots were fired, leaving Davis hit and eight or nine bullet holes in the SUV, Schoonover said.

The couple drove off after Dunn told her he had “fired at these kids,” Schoonover said. They went to their hotel, then returned to Brevard County when they learned what had happened from local news.

Witnesses gave police Dunn’s license plate number, which led police to his home. Schoonover said Dunn was planning to turn himself in when he was arrested.

Oh, so another black kid gets killed in Florida by a non-black man and not n’aan black person is protesting? Nope, nobody is holding press conferences? Nobody is asking President Obama questions about the case? Hell, nobody is even calling the shooter in this case racist? Shit, where is Sean Hannity and the New Black Panther Party on this one? I mean, unlike the Zimmerman case, this sounds like a serious disregard for black life. Hell, how else can unloading a clip into the backseat of an SUV with kids be characterized if the occupants happen to be black.

But hey, maybe we can do something like a million booming system procession instead of a million hoodie march in protest of the senseless murder of Jordan Russell Davis. Not that playing music too loud is worth dying over; but, maybe it’s the only way we can gain attention and maybe even some justice. Not that this homicide was racially motivated as far as the evidence shows — which is a good thing if you ask me — but let’s hope it stays that way. Really, there’s no need for more talk of race riots in small Florida towns, or any town in America for that matter.

But hey, that’s just me. According to Dunn, Davis had a gun so he shot him to protect himself. Kind of hard to believe his story when you consider that he drove off without as much as making a report to local police. But beyond that, no gun was recovered at the scene by local law enforcement.

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I’m heading to New York City for my brother’s wedding next month. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the bright lights of the big city, so to say that I’m excited is an understatement. Hopefully this trip doesn’t end with a run-in with the NYPD like I did on one of my visits years ago. You see, my mother lives in Brooklyn — Brownsville to be exact — and her neighborhood is considered to be a high crime area. And of course in the interest of public safety, there’s a heavy police presence. For the safety of my mother and the people who I love, this is a good thing.

However, as I’ve written before (here, here, and here), the NYPD’s policy of police harassment — otherwise commonly known as stop-and-frisk — is very problematic. How problematic? Just check out the following from Russ Tuttle at The Nation to understand what’s happening in America:

On June 3, 2011, three plainclothes New York City Police officers stopped a Harlem teenager named Alvin and two of the officers questioned and frisked him while the third remained in their unmarked car. Alvin secretly captured the interaction on his cell phone, and the resulting audio is one of the only known recordings of stop-and-frisk in action.

In the course of the two-minute recording, the officers give no legally valid reason for the stop, use racially charged language and threaten Alvin with violence. Early in the stop, one of the officers asks, “You want me to smack you?” When Alvin asks why he is being threatened with arrest, the other officer responds, “For being a fucking mutt.” Later in the stop, while holding Alvin’s arm behind his back, the first officer says, “Dude, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ arm, then I’m gonna punch you in the fuckin’ face.”

Screen grab from video of Harlem teen named Alvin recording of himself and police during a stop-and-frisk incident on June 3, 2011. The video is titled ‘The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy.’

[...] Alvin’s treatment at the hands of the officers may be disturbing but it is not uncommon. According to their own stop-and-frisk data, the NYPD stops more than 1,800 New Yorkers a day. A New York Times analysis recently determined that more than 20 percent of those stops involve the use of force. And these are only the numbers that the Department records. Anecdotal evidence suggests both figures are much higher.

Check out the video below. In it, you can listen to Alvin’s story in his own words. And if what he has to say isn’t disheartening, check out what one cop has to say about them being forced to “violate people’s rights,” as instructed by his watch captain. As you could imagine, this strategic policing is mostly employed in communities of color. Yep, black and brown people are targeted daily by city sanctioned racial profiling which is supposed to be against the law. So yeah, hopefully when I return from New York City next month I won’t have a similar story to share.

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I’ve been trying to “get over slavery,” as some of my Conservative friends who I prefer to call racial enablers of the Republican party always say. But the problem is that I’m not rich. Because of this fact, I cannot afford to spend the kind of money it requires to law on a shrinks couch in an attempt to, “get over it.” Be that as it may, with me being a professional racism chaser, my Conservative friends aren’t making getting over it any easier. Take Arkansas lawmaker, Jon Hubbard for example. Hubbard who is white, just so happens to be a “frustrated” conservative. Gotta love post-racialness…

Not that I know Hubbard personally, but the fact that he wrote a book in 2010 entitled Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative, tells me that he has a lot of pent-up frustrations to get off of his chest. And according to The Arkansas Times, some of it has to do with his feelings about African-Americans. In particular, it would seem that part of his frustration has to do with our lack of collective gratitude for the genocidal institution that was slavery.

Slavery was good for black people:

“… the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.” (Pages 183-89)

If you think slavery was bad, you should have seen Africa:

African Americans must “understand that even while in the throes of slavery, their lives as Americans are likely much better than they ever would have enjoyed living in sub-Saharan Africa.” “Knowing what we know today about life on the African continent, would an existence spent in slavery have been any crueler than a life spent in sub-Saharan Africa?” (Pages 93 and 189)

Black people are ignorant:

“Wouldn’t life for blacks in America today be more enjoyable and successful if they would only learn to appreciate the value of a good education?” (Page 184)

You kno’ if you stop wit dat runnin’ away they’s gon’ give us BET, Kunta?

Hubbard has since come under fire from the Arkansas GOP who has decided not to continue funding his current re-elction campaign. But in true “I’m white and I can do no wrong fashion,” Hubbard says his writing is being taken out of context: “They attacked me because I’m a conservative, and they’ve taken small portions of my book out of context, and distorted what was said to make it appear that I am racist, which is totally and completely false.” Context? What other meaning is there to be drawn from his words? Surely he isn’t suggesting that slavery was atrocious, was he?

Now I don’t know about you, but if you were black like me it would be nearly impossible to “get over slavery,” as long as racist minds like Hubbard’s exist. What’s even more troubling is that this man works in Arkansas state legislature. But of course for many of you reading this, his expressed views aren’t problematic. In fact, I’m willing to bet that many of you reading this, actually agree with Hubbard’s opinion. How do I know, you ask? Because the sophistry of the position that slavery was a blessing in disguise for black folks, is one that is rooted in White Supremacy.

And of course, when you’re white, you’re right:

“If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?” – Rep. Loy Mauch (R-AR.)

Yep, what’s a little oppression and dehumanization for centuries when it gives you the privilege of being called an American, right? After all, “the blacks” were a people who could “endure” the circumstance of slavery in the new world and should be grateful because Africa didn’t have BET.

Forgive me for being an ingrate, but I wasn’t sure whether laws permitting me to read still existed.

The post Jon Hubbard (R-AR): Slavery Was A “Blessing In Disguise” For “The Blacks” appeared first on Madness & Reality.

So the kids were out of school yesterday; all banks and government offices were closed as well to observe Columbus Day. For many it’s just another day off and nothing special. Which is pretty sad when you think about it, because if it wasn’t for Chris, well, there’d quite possibly be no jobs, schools, or banks here in the not-so-new world back then. Let’s be honest, it’s not everyday that someone on their way to the store for some goodies, will “discover” something or anything that will forever change the trajectory of existence and life as we know it. That is with exception to the onetime I found out that touching a certain body part not only gave me fuzzy feelings; but also a real sticky substance reminiscent of okra. I kinda sorta digress, but you get my point.

Discovering a whole new world is a pretty bug fucking deal; so big, that I’m sure Joe Biden will endorse it as such. Which when you think about it, there’s some irony to Mitt Romney giving a major speech on foreign policy, on Columbus Day of all days. After all, there’s something sleazy about Romney in a slave-trader sorta way like Christopher Columbus, O.G. of all one-percenters.

The post Columbus Day: A Celebration of Imperialism, Racism, & Death appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Yeah I know, black people like me should be forever grateful to O.J. Simpson. Once upon a time we were told by Conservatives like Ann Coulter that we should be grateful to Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party. Yes, because it if wasn’t for such righteous men line Lincoln, black folks would be picking cotton, even in Black History Month. But I suppose we’re post-racial now; so, now we owe a debt of gratitude to the great liberator, Oranthal J. Simpson. Yep, Johnny Cochran would be proud that his courtroom rhyme made history.

I swear, white folks say the dumbest shit at times when it comes to race. Pardon me, I meant to say some white folks say the dumbest shit when it comes to race. Lord knows I have to be careful not to generalize and be mistaken for being racist like some of you people out there.

Pugnacious conservative commentator and eight time bestselling author Ann Coulter is out with a new book on race that is bound to provoke and upset, in true Coulter fashion.

In Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama, Coulter posits that the left consistently plays the “race card” in order to keep the black vote, by accusing Republicans of racism when it’s not deserved.

[See: Latest Barack Obama cartoons]

“These are fictional battles with nonexistent racists,” says Coulter, who devotes several pages to debunking supposed instances of Tea Party racism. Many, she argues, were exaggerated by the media, “liberal infiltrators” pretending to be Republicans, or never happened.

Coulter, who does not mention Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Mugged, says Democrats pretend that Republicans are racist because it’s the only way they can win.

“It’s the only way this guy got elected and will be re-elected,” Coulter says of President Barack Obama. “The theme of 2008 was that it was historic and you’re a racist if you don’t vote for the first black president. Someone with his youth and lack of experience would not be elected if he was white.”

Fast forward four years and Coulter says the media are still treating Obama with kid gloves. She cites the recent proteststhat spread across the Middle East and North Africa over an anti-Islam video, and what she sees as the media’s lack of scrutiny of the Obama administration’s response to those protests. “The world is exploding, and the media treat him like a child.”

But Obama supporters say the media is just as critical of the president as anyone else. “The president has gotten crazy coverage down to his birth certificate,” liberal commentatorRev. Al Sharpton told Whispers. Coulter accuses Sharpton in her book of having historically played the race card. “When I see bias, I call bias, even if it’s a Democrat,” he says. “I don’t see liberals as playing the race card at all.”

Coulter believes Sharpton “is probably the only black person” who won’t like her book. She dedicated Mugged to “the freest black man in America,” with no further explanation about who that person might be.

Jamelle Bouie, a staff writer at the American Prospect who writes on politics and race, is actually another black person who doesn’t like her book. He says Coulter’s thesis is “insulting.”

“Black people don’t support Democrats because white liberals ‘play the race card,’ they support Democrats because their interests—material and symbolic—are best served by the Democratic Party,” Bouie wrote in an E-mail to Whispers. “This view that blacks have a Pavlovian response to politics is insulting, to say the least.” (source)

I’m not too sure of the point Ann attempted to make in the following interview when she appeared on The View a few days ago. However, I’m kinda glad that there were at least two black women on the panel to properly snatch her wig for the silly commentary. Truth be told, she’s lucky she didn’t say that stupid shit on the set of Real Housewives Of Atlanta. Not that those sisters on that show could properly check her with fats or anything. But it would have been nice to see them pull off some ear rings and go to work on Rageddy Ann as she deserves for insulting my intelligence.

Sorry Ann, but I don’t remember O.J. being a freedom fighter!

It’s like I told you earlier this week when she appeared on Fox & Friends and said that racism would be dead if it weren’t for the media and Democrats. If racism ever died in America, it damn sure wouldn’t be because Ann Coulter killed it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see more people engaging in discussions on race. However, when it is the goal of an individual to say whatever the fuck he or she wants, however inaccurate, nothing is gained. Nope, not when you wanna smack ‘em.

Having said that, check out the video and tell me what you think. Seriously, the following is rich with right-wing bullshit. You know, silly talking points like, “The Democrats are promoting voter fraud,” like Ann so eloquently stated in response to being questioned about Republican backed racist Voter ID laws. Or, how about the one that takes the cake where Coulter says, “The ‘Southern Strategy’ was a myth.” You know, the same racially divisive campaign strategy coined by the Nixon campaign that successfully managed to stoke the racial resentment of southern whites — you know, it’s like the West Coast Offense in the NFL: everybody in the GOP is doing it. Yep, just ask Mitt Romney about his talk about “free stuff” and welfare work requirements. Or maybe former RNC chair, Ken Mehlman who apologized for the use of racially divisive tactics to get votes for Republicans.

But enough of that talk, just watch the video and tell me what you think.

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