Jun

30

Just to Reiterate the Point About Searches

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Blogs Blogging Blogthropology, Interracial Relationships, Media Praises and Critiques | 14 Comments

My post about interracial sexuality? and it’s impact on the coverage of? the Jessie Davis murder has not surprisingly generated more lovely searches.? Here are some of the crazy ones….

  1. black negro porn
  2. Black Man White Woman Porn 2007
  3. black gay ,s /huge dick,s/white gay,s huge dick,s
  4. black impregnating white
  5. black men breeding white wives
  6. black men sleeping with white girl
  7. black men white couples sex
  8. black mother and daughter sex (Admin’s Note: Ok, it’s not interracial, but it’s pretty disgusting.)
  9. do african americans have an extra muscle (Admin’s Notes: Another one that is not an interracial subject, but I have been getting a few of these everyday.)
  10. interracial breeding during the slavery era
  11. interracial breeding pregnant
  12. interracial pregnant sex
  13. interracial children genetics
  14. Interracial Dating: Black women are too aggressive
  15. jungle fever hentai
  16. my daughter with a black
  17. native african women nude
  18. nude south pacific native girls
  19. white trash interracial
  20. why do white men like to watch interracial porn
  21. Bobby Cutts liked slutty women

Who knows exactly what people were thinking when they wrote those searches.? There’s no way to determine exactly what is going when people conduct these searches.? I also got some that are probably more innocuous interracial searches too…

  1. famous interracial couples with black spouses
  2. interracial relationships and the black community
  3. black women who oppose interracial marriage
  4. obsession with interracial sex
  5. teaching families to accept biracial relationships
  6. Will intermarriage of Blacks and Whites someday reach the same levels as for white ethnics in the US?
  7. father doesn’t accept interracial marriage
  8. truth about interracial porn
  9. what do white women want from black men?

I routinely get searches related to African American sexuality, such as queries about black men and women’s genitalia and alleged sexual proclivities.

Jun

28

Bunch-O-Links 6/28/07

Filed Under Bunch-O-Links | 7 Comments

  1. River Vices, which is a blog about politics in my hometown; has a great post about the problem letting religious zealots control government and media.? The post is called Evanjekylls, which is how many southern Ohioans say Evangelicals.
  2. I get some link love, and I personal compliment from Tereza at anti-Racist Parent in an essay about predominantly white schools.
  3. Also, via Racialicious Carmen is providing a free e-book called “How To Be An Anti-Racist Parent”
  4. Migra Matters on the case of Alex and Yaderlin Jimenez? (a good education for people who don’t know about immigration policy, in particular the myth that marrying a US citizen is just going to solve all of your problems).
  5. (Saw this one on the news, and found it on a blog.)? A New Jersey High School decided to black out a yearbook photo of two male students kissing. I also though it was interesting that the two male students are black (One guy may have been a dark complexioned Latino, but he sure could pass for black in the picture.), and the school appeared to be predominantly white.1? Now before anybody says well they don’t need pictures of students provocatively kissing in the yearbook; I actually agree with that, but that would mean that they should have blacked out? the other pictures of heterosexual students kissing.? The gay black? couple got blacked out,2? and the heterosexual white couples were muggin’ it up all over the book.
  6. Reappropriate on Black/Korean tensions in the $54 million pants lawsuit. (By the way–the judge lost the case.)
  7. Hey, Bomani got engaged!? I should have found out about this sooner, but I admit that since he’s moved to more sports talk, I don’t visit as much, but at least he’s getting paid.
  8. Racists attacked Tariq’s Mosque, and the people at the Mosque need support.
  9. It looks like Isiah Washington may have gotten a raw deal.? He still appears to have made the homophobic slur, but not in the context as it was originally suggested.? Keith Boykin has the details. Here and Here

Ok, this is getting way too long, and it’s also an open thread, so feel free to add your two cents on other issues.

  1. I’m noting this not because I think racism was a motivator, but because people often treat gay and lesbian people of color as invisible [back]
  2. Ironic word choice? intended. [back]

Jun

27

Serious Question for Everyone……

Filed Under Serious Questions, Sociology | 28 Comments

In honor of the fact that part of the subway system? in New York out due to a power failure, I thought I would ask everybody about public transportation.? I think public transportation is good, and is becoming increasingly necessary here in the US, as we face overcrowded freeways, decreasing air quality, and increasing energy prices, but I don’t take public transportation.? So I think it’s good, but I take it very rarely–I’ll get into the reasons for that in the comments section, but for now here are the serious questions….

Do you take public transportation?? If so, what do you take??

If you do take public transportation, does being politically or environmentally conscious factor into your decision, or do you take it for other reasons?

How would you describe the availability and quality of public transportation in your area??

If you don’t take public transportation, what would it take for you to start taking it?

Jun

26

It’s About Interracial Sex Folks

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Duke Rape, Family Issues, Gender and Sexism, Interracial Relationships, Media Praises and Critiques, Original Essays and Analysis, Race and Racism, Sexuality and Heterosexism, Sociology, Uncategorized | 93 Comments

Ok,? I’d be remiss? if I didn’t say something about the latest crime to become a media circus.? I’m sure by now most of you have heard about the? murder of Jessie Davis, who was almost? 9 months pregnant and was likely killed in front of her two year old child by the child’s father.? Since Davis and Cutts were a? black/white couple and I am someone? who? studies black/white interracial relationships and who is in a black/white interracial relationship, I know many people are wondering what I think about this case.? I’m not here to offer any opinions on the particulars of the case1 , but I do want to talk about the media coverage of the case.

I went around to a few blogs, and I visited AOL Blackvoices and a couple white supremacist message boards to see what they were saying, and quite frankly it was horrible.? Many people were saying that the victim deserved it; that she was “white trash;” that her child was ugly; and that she was a sleazy, homewrecking whore.? ? Not surprisingly,? the accused murderer, who is the poster boy for anti-black stereotypes, was also being trashed as? a violent womanizer who? lusted? after white women.? I can’t tell you how many racist and misogynistic comments I read;? and not surprisingly the white supremacists were giddy over this case.2?

Terrence Says has a reasonable post, which anonymous bigots tried to take over in the comment thread, and in his post, Terrence engages with the question that many folks are thinking–is the media circus surrounding this case about race? Terrence cites a recent case of a white man who killed his white? wife and three children:

Today, like Bobby Cutts, Jr. who was arrested in Ohio, Christopher Vaughn was also arrested. Christopher Vaughn was arrested two hours prior to the funeral of his family in St. Charles County, Missouri (suburban St. Louis) where the family originated; yet, so far, there has not been a mention of Vaughn’s arrest that I have been able to observe on the weekend news shows.

As sad and tragic as the Jessie Davis story is, I can’t help but wonder if this story had involved a missing pregnant black or Latina woman if it would have the same media traction.

Well several of the anonymous commenters went crazy, saying that the case received so much attention because Davis was pregnant, because Cutts was a cop, because the child was left in the house alone, and everything but race.? I certainly agree that all of those things make the story more sensational, but I really can’t fathom that it is much more sensational than the Vaugh family case mentioned above.? However, I find myself having a slight disagreement with Terrence.? I agree that white women victims get much more attention than Black, Asian, Latino, and American Indian women, and I agree that race is a big factor in the media attention the case has gotten, but I would be more specific than Terrence.

It’s about interracial sex.? Interracial crimes make big sensational news stories, but crimes that involve interracial sexuality arouse the deepest passions of American bigotry.? The OJ Simpson case, the Duke Rape, the Kobe Bryant rape case, and now this one–they all have tremendous sexual overtones.? For a long time, I was surprised at how much attention the Duke case received, because I was focused on the fact that the accuser in the case was black, but I missed the mark.? It’s more than the races of the people involved; if the crime is perceived as involving interracial sex, something snaps in people, suddenly they perk up.

The truth of the matter is that the US is a culture obsessed with interracial sex, but nobody will say this in polite company.? During the slave era and the Jim Crow era, white people spoke with repulsion and disgust at interracial sex even though many white men were routinely engaging in sexual encounters with black women.? In the colorblind era, people are still obsessed with interracial sex.? However, they do not publicly say, “Wow, interracial sex is: bizarre, disgusting, exciting, adventurous, morally repugnant,” and so on.? That’s part of the reason nobody in the mainstream polite media is going to openly? say–”Damn that negro had two white baby mama’s.? He must have really been packing some heat below the belt.? Why else would those white women be interested in him?”? 3 Nobody is going to say, “Those white women are white trash, whores for sleeping with this black guy.? ? They probably only did it for his big dick.”? Nobody is going to say, “Why can’t these black men just take care of their kids and stopping hopping from bed to bed.? Only a white women with no self esteem will get with a guy like that.”? They are not saying these dispargaing comments? publicly, but when they get home to their families and friends, they are saying it.? When they go on line to search for interracial porn, they are thinking it.? When they can leave anonymous comments on blogs, they are expressing it.

I think my traffic at this site is evidence for the American obsession with? race and? sex.? Within the last week here are a select few searches I have received:

  • black men impregnating white women stories
  • savages on blondes
  • Biracial family pictures black and white
  • BLACK ATHLETE MARRYING WHITE WOMEN
  • Black men breeding white girls
  • black negro slave woman naked pictures
  • black women with white men in adult movies
  • differences between white and black women’s breasts
  • blacks in bed sexing
  • george lucas in love black women
  • how do you feel about interracial relationship

And this was a really slow week, I’ve gotten at least 100 searches over the past few months for “savages on blondes,” which was a popular racist pornographic website featuring black men who act like “savages” who want to have sex with white women.? I mentioned that site exactly one time on this blog, and I still get people looking for it.?

For some reason, people think interracial sex is exotic and daring, particularly when it involves Black men and white women and? Asian women and white men.? Numerous people, who clearly have no random sample to draw from believe that race is correlated with penis size.? They believe? race is correlated with a person’s level of sexual desire.? They believe people who engage in interracial sex are deviant, rebellious, daring, gross, odd, oversexed, and ugly. But,? most of them will not admit it publicly.? Instead they go home and post horrible messages? discussion boards. (Probably while masturbating to interracial porn.)? They try their best to hide their discomfort, but most interracial couples can? see how the stares? they get in public often belie the facade of tolerance.

When it comes to interracial sexuality, the US is still not ready to come to grips with our racism, and the discomfort with? the intersection of race and sexuality? fuels the public obession with many interracial crimes.

NOTE TO READERS: I know this thread is going to be an ultra-sensitive subject, and white supremacist trolls will likely be coming out of the woodwork, so I am limiting this thread to anti-racists and racial abolitionists only.? Moreover, this is not a thread to debate the merits of any of the cases mentioned in the text, so let’s focus on the larger issues.? ? Finally, anyone who leaves bigoted white supremacist comments will be banned immediately.

  1. I also want to say that my heart goes out to the? family of Jessie Davis and her child.? I hope they are able to get justice in this case. [back]
  2. I have a policy of not linking to organized white supremacist sites, but you can check out the big ones to see what they are saying. [back]
  3. I don’t know if his wife is white or not, so I can’t comment on the third baby mama. [back]

Jun

25

I’m Rated R

Filed Under Uncategorized | 14 Comments

Online Dating

Jun

25

This is Making Me Hungry…

Filed Under Sociology | 18 Comments

potato-diversity.jpg

I love potatoes, and there are some really cool looking potatoes in that photo, but beyond eastern white potatoes, russets, yukon golds, and the red ones I haven’t tried many varieties.? I want to taste those dark purplish black looking ones.? The photo comes from an article about how they are trying to preserve different types of potatoes in Peru.

Along the frigid spine of the Andes, men and women in bare feet uproot tubers of multiple shapes and colors yellow, red, blue, purple, violet, pink with yellow spots, yellow with pink spots; round, oblong, twisted, hooked at the end like walking canes or spiraled like spinning tops.

Their names in Quechua, the ancient language of the Andes, evoke an intimate human connection: “best black woman,” “best red woman,” “makes the daughter-in-law cry,” “like a deer’s white tongue,” “red shadow” and “like an old bone,” to name a few.

Respect for the many variations of potatoes is so profound among Aymara’s 650 villagers that it was a natural place for the world’s agronomists to produce seeds for a gene bank to preserve their diversity. The cold climate also protects against parasites that infest low-lying potato farms.

I also thought this part of the article was interesting.

The potato became the world’s fourth most important food source, after wheat, corn and rice, proving so vital that it provoked a national famine when Ireland’s potato crop was wiped out by a blight in the 1840s.

The Lima center, which provides seeds to communities that have lost their potato crops to diseases, freezes or a leftist insurgency, began helping Aymara improve its potato stock in 1990s.

“Our production was not good,” said village leader Carlos Hidalgo, who himself grows about 180 brightly colored and oddly shaped varieties. “We said the soil must be tired. We did not realize it was the seeds.”

Like other villagers, Hidalgo and his wife each eat an average of two pounds of tubers at every meal. Their four children eat almost as much. That’s about 15 times what Americans consume.

Sometimes, she prepares them in a creamy soup, adding boiled eggs, dried lamb meat and crumbled Andean cheese. Usually she just boils them, choosing from dozens of varieties to produce a savory mix of flavors and nutrients. And during the harvest, the village women steam potatoes between layers of lamb in a communal underground pit called a “huatia.”

“There are communities that live off only potatoes and people are healthy,” said Walter Amoros, another gene researcher. “The potato is not a completely balanced food, but it has the basics for good nutrition.”

Aymara’s villagers complement their starch-heavy diet by loading up llamas, donkeys and horses and traveling to lower-lying communities, where they trade their prized crop for corn, barley and wheat.

I often think it’s funny that people in the US? associate potatoes with the Irish, but they actually emerged in South America, and they were domesticated by groups like the Incas.? The Spanish conquistadors took potatoes back to Europe, and? they became a popular crop all over the world.

Jun

24

Cherokee Election Results and the Freedmen’s Future

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Original Essays and Analysis, Politics, Race and Racism, Sociology | 35 Comments

When I went to bed last night, the Cherokee website had Chad Smith leading by a considerable margin, so I figured at that point that he was probably going to take the election. Then, I woke up this morning to this:

Smith received 7,974 votes, or 59% of the vote, beating challenger Stacy Leeds, who received 5,593 votes, or 41%.

The race for Deputy Chief saw incumbent Joe Grayson, Jr. defeating Raymond Vann. Grayson received 8,230 votes, 61% of the total cast. Vann finished with 5,205 votes, or 39%.

They also have the results for all of the districts and the at large representatives? on the Cherokee Nation website.?

I think Stacy Leeds was fighting an uphill battle against Chad Smith’s $$$$$.? The fact that he is an incumbent, didn’t help either,? but she fought fairly, and she tried to look out for the best interest of all of the Cherokee people.

I am fairly certain there will be a challenge to the proposed Constitutional Amendment, since it was introduced so late that many people didn’t even get it on their absentee ballots.? This is the Amendment that would make it so that the? federal government will not? be part of the approval process for the Cherokee Constitution.? I don’t know how the Bureau of Indian Affairs is going to react to this, but I would think they are not going to be happy.?

Then, we have this bill floating around Congress to defund the Cherokee Nation.? I have no idea where that will go.? Paul pointed me to a letter from the BIA, saying that they do not have any plans to cut funding based on the Freedmen lawsuit, unless a federal court or the Congress directs them to do so.

What does this mean for the Cherokee people?? What does it mean for Black Cherokees and more specifically the descendants of the Freedmen?? I have no idea, but I will continue to watch this.? I still firmly believe that banning the Freedmen is morally wrong and blatantly racist.? And, I really hope that people like the commenter below, who I refused to let through moderation? a few weeks ago, do not get their way.

keithee White

HA HA HA, Why dont you Blacks just go away and start your own Black Cherokee tribe and stop always either latching on to real Indians or White people.
You Blacks always have your hand out looking for a freebe. Go away, and take your criminal ways with you, and stay away from us real Indians. Im sure the White people wish you would go away also.
HA HA HA

He’s completely ill informed because the Freedmen didn’t attach themselves to Cherokees.? The Cherokee ancestors? enslaved them, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that people who? enslaved people? were the ones “looking for a freebe.”? In fact, slavery is all about freebies–free labor, right?? The ancestors of the Freedmen walked the Trail of Tears, and they have? lived with the Cherokees for a few hundred years.? We are not talking about “Johnny come lately wannabe Indians.”? Chad Smith and his cronies can’t rewrite history, and trying to purge people from a Nation doesn’t make it stronger.? Today it’s the Freedmen; tomorrow it’s the intermarried whites; next year it the outlanders;? the year? after that? it’s the thin bloods; the year after that it is all of the political opponents of the Chief; and by the time this is over who is going to be left??

That’s the dilemma folks–Who is gonna be left?

Jun

22

One Day Before Cherokee Election: The Freedmen Issue Looms Large

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Media Praises and Critiques, Original Essays and Analysis, Politics, Race and Racism, Sociology | 9 Comments

Rumors are swirling around everywhere, but the biggest news, which is not a rumor, is that the Congressional Black Caucus member Diane Watson introduced a bill? (link is to? s PDF of the full text)? to sever federal ties with the Cherokee Nation.

The bill is the talk of the message board over at Cornsilks, and Principal Chief candidate Stacy Leeds has a statement about the bill on her site.? Time magazine is also covering the Freedmen debate, but they didn’t say much at all about the election.?

Time had? a good interview with a professor, Tiya Miles who is a Native American Studies professor at the University of Michigan.? I strongly agreed with her assessment of the Native American/Black relations:

Perhaps more importantly, they (the Freedmen)? have considered themselves Cherokee their whole lives. “There’s a tremendous amount of cultural identification that former slaves felt with Native tribes, of shared homeland, food, familial ties,” says Tiya Miles, a historian who runs the Native American Studies program at the University of Michigan. Cherokee had slaves. Cherokee also married, and slept with, blacks. And there were blacks who were adopted into the Cherokee tribe though they had no blood or slave ties. They all walked the Trail of Tears with the Cherokee, from the Deep South to Oklahoma.

These are the facts, but for blacks, especially, the mythology holds equally strong sway. A kinship with Native Americans has been a logical way to claim some sort of “non-black” status in a society where black is the most demeaned racial category. It’s also helped ground many black people searching for an original homeland, says Miles. “Native America was connected to freedom,” says Miles. “It was said slaves could run away to tribes and find shelter.” Clearly that wasn’t always the case, and the Cherokee controversy is, for Miles, “the end of innocence about what the historical relationship between African Americans and Native Americans really consisted of.”

The article author? also made the following statement, “And it creates new complications for the relationship between blacks, who have long held a romantic view of their kinship with American Indians, and Native Americans, some of whom owned black slaves and fought for the Confederacy.”? I think? there definitely is a difference in how African? Americans and Native Americans view their relationships with each other.? I have very rarely heard any? anti-American Indian sentiment from? Blacks who? I know.? 1? Most African Americans may be ignorant about? the issues facing contemporary Native Americans, but I tend to agree with the professor; many African Americans do have a romantic notion of Black/Indian relations, and with this whole Freedmen issue, the romance may be over.2? I’m afraid that anti-black sentiment among Native Americans is much stronger than anti-Native American sentiment among blacks; of course, someone needs to do an actually study of this, but for now that would be my hypothesis.? I will also add that there are many Native Americans who are not anti-black and see this Cherokee fiasco and the Seminole Freedmen case as evidence of Native Americans engaging in self destruction.? The people in this group generally believe? that American Indians should not base? tribal and national? identity only? on “blood quantum” and race, opposed to culture and history.? The idea here is that blood quantum was created by Europeans as part of the genocide against American Indian people and cultures, so continuing to use it, is racist and self destructive.? 3

Having followed this very closely, I think it is fair to say that the mainstream media (MSM)? hasn’t done well at covering the complexities of this election and the Freedmen issue.? My first critique would be that many? MSM outlets? consistently ignore Native American political issues, so the Cherokee election is completely off the radar for many media outlets.? 4? A few MSM outlets have covered the Freedmen issue, and very few (mostly local Oklahoma papers) have covered the election.? What so many? of the mainstream media articles miss is how Cherokee politics play into these debates.? They usually let Chief Smith give his “we are a tribe of Indians” answer, but they don’t talk to? the council members and the other candidate for Chief.? I’m glad they talked with David Cornsilk, but they also need to bring in other elected officials, so people realize that this view that the Freedmen need to be ousted is highly contentious, and it hasn’t even been supported by the Cherokee Supreme Court.5

With the Freedmen issue at the forefront, the election will be held tomorrow.? There has been some preliminary voting, and if I have any Cherokee voters reading? this article provides a list of polling places, and a phone number to call for people who are having voting problems.? I will probably be back on Monday or Sunday to talk about the election results.

  1. The same could not be said for Asians and Latinos; I’ve heard plenty of African Americans make disparaging stereotypical comments about these two groups. [back]
  2. I’d venture to say that very few blacks or whites know that some Native American tribes had black slaves. I suspect many Native Americans don’t know that either. [back]
  3. If you really want to see this debate play out go read the comments in this thread over at Wampum, where MB Williams and The Local Crank take on a commenter named Charlotte. [back]
  4. One very obvious example of ignoring Native American politics would be the Jack Abramhoff scandal.? Many of his clients were? Native American Nations, and? he? was caught making many disparaging remarks about his Indian clients and stole millions? of dollars from them.? That angle of the story was buried in much of the coverage. Of course, there are other issues not so directly connected to white politicians, including sovereignty issues, poverty, racial identity politics, and numerous other issues that we don’t even hear about at all. [back]
  5. It really makes the Cherokees look like a huge mass of racists, with only a few dissenters, but I think there are many more dissenters, including powerful political people. [back]

Jun

21

Serious Question…for everyone

Filed Under Serious Questions | 40 Comments

Where are y’all?? Traffic is way down, but it’s not too surprising.? When summer comes around, people leave the house and their computers.? ? So what have you been doing lately?? Have you been on any fun vacations; have you found any new hobbies or other fun activities?

Jun

21

Big News in Cherokee Election

Filed Under Politics, Race and Racism | Leave a Comment

I’ll write more about it tomorrow, but there’s some sneaky, dirty business going down.? Wampum has some of the details. I heard about the rumor yesterday but didn’t believe it.? I’m waiting to hear from the Freedmen spokeswoman Marilynn Vann before I comment.

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