A better life is available to you.
If you want it, and will work for it,
you can have it.
I will recite that often on The William Tell Show. It’s the sort of thing one hears from Barack Obama.
Tag Archives: Race
James Bible
Attn: White people
NEVER —
do not EVER —
question any thing a black man does.
Continue reading James Bible
A theory of campus turmoil
Jack is a short, skinny, old white man with short, wiry gray hair and a short, wiry gray beard. He uses a walker. He’s been with us about three weeks.
Every day, he gets more irritable, more combative and more obscene.
Q. What’s up with this?
A. It’s so nice here, he can’t stand it.
Related: Learning curve
Been there, done that. I had a temp assignment at yet another major, prestigious law firm. The atmosphere here was unlike that at any other law firm where I’d worked. No cursing. No stress. On this one lawyer’s birthday, his secretary baked him a big cake, that he shared with staff, including people he didn’t even know. Some unknown person paid my way to the offsite office Christmas party.
I didn’t know how to act. I began to act like it. They kept me on for six months, but I’m not welcome back.
Some months ago, riding a bus northbound on York Road, I gazed out the window wistfully as we passed Towson State University. That campus: the vast, manicured lawns; neatly trimmed shrubbery; stately buildings; utter tranquility. Young people of one background can be utterly happy there. Young people of a different background might can’t.
It’s a question of how much malice pervades the world in which one grew up.
The reality is that some grow up in a world where one must be eternally vigilant for one’s own personal safety. Where walking down the street, one may meet intense hostility at any time, and must be ready to answer that with hostility of one’s own in order to survive. Where “watch your back” isn’t a metaphor: one turns one’s head slightly with every step, right and left, so that with every step one’s peripheral vision takes in 360° — lest some predator be stalking who means you bodily harm.
For such a person to be thrust into a world where none of that is necessary, can be unsettling.
Perhaps the pent-up hostility, previously essential to survive, may begin to come out. Certainly the former real threats and danger can be succeeded by new, imagined ones. One persists in feeling that the whole environment is hostile.
And one may want to respond in kind.
I have no solutions. It may only help, to understand where some of these folk come from.
The Travelers
Violent funeral of career criminal killed by homeowner ‘cost £15,000 of taxpayers’ cash’
Henry Vincent was a burglar. An elderly man whose house he broke into, killed him. The funeral is somehow estimated to have cost £100,000.
The funeral procession became an “uprising.” The police were ready. They had had intelligence about it. This was planned.
Vincent was a Traveler. More about them shortly. If you Google “Henry Vincent traveler,” you’ll come up with a lot about him. He and accomplices were predatory.
I suspect the film At Close Range deals with Travelers. It proves to be a true story, and very sad and grim. Continue reading The Travelers
Why racism?
Three clips from the WBFF Fox 45 newscast of 5:00 p.m. Tuesday, May 1:
My hope is built
I may no longer believe a word they say, but I can take great comfort in the hymns I learned in childhood.
My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
No merit of my own I claim,
but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On what is my hope built?
Stupid psychics, and other briefs
The Kimberly Leto murder; and other news
(Originally posted 2014-02-17.)
Bookmarks:
The Kimberly Leto murder
Controversial books
Governor candidate Mizeur’s crime plan
The Kimberly Leto murder
February 3 – Police arrest two teenagers in killing of Highlandtown woman
February 4 – Woman’s death in burglary leaves Southeast Baltimore reeling
Random comments:
(1) We must get past the twin scandals of race and class.
(2) My greatest concern is to find out where these two young men “come from.”
(3) Had she had a gun, could that have saved her?
(4) Gorham-Ramos, at age 14, has a daughter?
(5) What was the sentence from the August 19 crime? N.B., police identified Gorham-Ramos through fingerprints.
(6) Was Gorham-Ramos’ involvement with the August 19 crime sufficient basis to bring him in for questioning concerning the January 31 crime?
(7) I know from my own time in jail why, if at all possible, children should not be incarcerated with adults.
(8) Pinkney appears to have a mental illness, and was off his medications. The treatment-resistant patient is always problematic.
(9) Does this neighborhood deserve a greater police presence than, say, Barclay? Actually, during my time there, the police presence was pretty darn high; its visibility heightened by the inexplicable consistent police use of white unmarked cars and white officers.
Controversial books
These have been on display in the main hall at EP, and I get to browse them while waiting for a computer. I have not read either one.
American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Harvard University Press, 1998)
“This powerful and disturbing book clearly links persistent poverty among blacks in the United States to the unparalleled degree of deliberate segregation they experience in American cities.”
Not to short-sell the book, this is wholly consistent with the politically correct proposition I questioned in “My Homeless Self.” I wonder how the authors account for that portion of the underclass which are white, and how they got there.
Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation
This was originally published in 2002. Author Molefi Kete Asante (born Arthur Lee Smith Jr. on August 14, 1942) has an impressive page at Wikipedia and appears to be a leader in all things Afro-centric.
He demands reparations.
This fits squarely within the definition of ideology I set forth in “The Gospel vs. George F. Will.” As I said there, it says, “‘We’ cannot be happy unless ‘they’ change their ways.”
Mizeur’s crime plan calls for shift from ‘mass incarceration’ to prevention in Maryland
I have no desire to ally myself with anything liberal; and my first, personal, gut response to Heather Mizeur is to dislike her. And most critically, I have no idea what she means by “prevention.” Aside from all that, I find her proposals exciting.
- Incarceration — From what I saw in my own time in jail, in general incarceration accomplishes nothing, and does so only at a tremendous financial cost to the taxpayers. My estimate is that as many of 60% of those in prison have no good reason to be there. Be aware: these are not nice people. But there’s no need for them to be incarcerated. And without having the exact figures, my guess is that my own 40 days in jail may have cost the taxpayers $10,000.
- Juvenile detention — I am without an opinion as to her plan. The one individual whose advice I look forward to on this question is the Hon. Martin P. Welch, who may or may not publicly opine.
- Backgrounds — Click the link to see my previous remarks on this subject.
- Gun laws — OK, maybe she’s tossed a bone to the anti-gun lobby. The proposal seems reasonable enough to me. I hope to hear pro-gun folks’ opinions.
Why do roses have thorns?
Are thorns happy?
Friday, December 1, Bounce showed Steven Seagal’s Above the Law.
He always plays opposite some eye candy, a term I learned from a Doonesbury strip about Uncle Duke’s presidential campaign. In Above the Law, it was Sharon Stone. In On Deadly Ground, it was Joan Chen, a Chinese actress cast as a Native American, with no real function but to look nice and follow him around.
“Eye candy” isn’t a mere phrase. I saw again that when I see a pretty woman, such as Stone in that scene, I get a sweet taste in my mouth. This is a physiological reaction, and potentially raises lots of questions about how we respond to beauty — or ugliness.
Related: For us.
I have much the same reaction whenever I see a rose.
Which recalls my interactions with that rose bush in the garden. Continue reading Why do roses have thorns?
Them white trash off the hook, yo.
5 Teenagers in Michigan Charged With Murder
Man tortured girlfriend’s son to death because he thought he was gay: prosecutor
[Couldn’t find any stills. Trust me, he’s white.]
Images released of teen who sucker punched man, breaking his jaw
Parents charged in death of infant found rotting in swing
Man found guilty in death of girl locked in box
Related: Wikipedia: Ame Deal
Related: Arizona woman becomes 55th sent to death row in US
Later news: Death sentence upheld in death of Arizona girl locked in box | AP News
Related: Tag: Names
Manhunt under way for parents accused of torturing, killing daughter
Mother of Livermore murder suspect says girlfriend talked about it days prior
Monster
Father pleads guilty to avoid death row after rape, murder of teen daughter
“Mesiti had hundreds of thousands of images involving child pornography. Hundreds of those images showed Mesiti’s daughter being sexually assaulted while she was obviously unconscious. Videos also showed the defendant setting up a hidden camera in the bedroom of an 8-year-old girl who lived in the apartment with him and his girlfriend in Los Angeles County at the time. Other videos and images showed a 16-year-old female Mesiti had befriended being sexually assaulted.”
Question
Are the white people who go to jail different from those who don’t? Are the black people who go to jail different from those who don’t?
The Homeless Blogger 