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At the leadership level beyond coaching, Whites dominate the positions of conference commissioners with not one minority sitting at the table. For athletic directors, people of color represent nearly 11 percent of those positions. Eighteen coaches of color led Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools and out of 266 offensive coordinators, only 33 were persons of color. Aside from HBCU Division I schools, all 30 conference commissioners were White, including 5 women.

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The numbers tend to trend in favor of Black student-athlete increases, but a perception lingers that people of color are still not welcomed and as beloved as White coaches. In the popular Southeastern Conference (SEC), however, the major Bowl Championship Series (BCS) conference will have more minority coaches than any of the other groups in men’s basketball, with 8 coaches of color versus 6 Whites. This contrasts greatly with the stigma southern schools have held in regards to the hiring of minorities in the past.

With so many student-athletes of color who do not go on to the pro-ranks, it would seem that the numbers of minorities should spike favorably, although jobs are becoming harder to obtain with the advent of high-profile professional firms involved in the hiring of coaches and other school leadership.

In addition, the old-fashioned approach of being a player transitioning to the bench is looked down upon somewhat, raising concerns that talented leaders of tomorrow are being overlooked because of their lack of connection with the upper echelon of collegiate sports. Yes, there is more diversity than ever but this trend just begs a simple question:

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At the school’s Wax Museum Day festivities, Sean and his parents were waiting for him to perform. When the school’s principal realized that Sean was dressed in blackface, he ordered the child to wash his face.  Sean’s mother, Michelle King-Roca, dismissed the principal’s request and demanded that he remain in his costume.

King’s parents were asked to meet with the principal and two school administrators in his office to discuss King’s blackface. Michelle was reportedly so upset by the administrator’s position that she pulled her son out of school for the rest of the day.

“As a parent I think it’s pretty sad that you’ve got a principal and a faculty member that are acting the way they are when they should be setting an example for children,” said Michelle.

King does not seem to understand the implications of his actions. He says he does not know why people are taking such offense to his costume.  The child wore blackface, a fake mustache, and a dark suit (pictured).

‘They thought it was inappropriate and it will be disrespectful to Black people. And I say it’s not.  I like Black people. It’s just a costume and I don’t want to insult anybody,” Sean told KRDO-TV.

The act of applying blackface has been an extremely volatile issue since the early 1800s, when White performers (pictured right) began rubbing burnt cork on their face during minstrel shows to portray African Americans in a negative way.  Due to its roots, the use of blackface is deemed offensive.

Although the intent of King’s act might not have been hurtful, the school’s principal felt compelled to educate the Kings on the history of blackface. Still, Michelle reportedly insisted on maintaining her point of view.

“When other students are offended by something, it is the principal’s role that the educational environment is safe for all students,’ Stephanie Meredith, a spokeswoman for the school district, told KRDO-TV.

The district said King is allowed back at school, however, his parents are not sure they want him to return to school.

What do you think?

Watch the video here.

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On the videotape, Holley is seen laying face down on the ground, while several officers kick and stomp him. Still, Blomberg testified that Holley was resisting arrest — and while it may have looked as though he was abusing the teen — he was actually using his foot to move Holley’s arm.

Watch the police beating of Holley here:

Even Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland Jr. testified that he believed that Blomberg assaulted the teen.

The Associated Press reports:

Prosecutors told jurors that Blomberg kicked the teenager several times and Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland Jr. testified that he believed Blomberg kicked and stomped on the teen.

Not surprisingly, the all-White jurors still came to the decision that Blomberg was not guilty of abusing Holley. If Blomberg was found guilty of his misdemeanor charge, he would have faced up to a year in prison. Three other police officers will stand trial for the offense. Relieved that he had gotten off, Blomberg contemplated whether he would consider going back in to law enforcement:

“This is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do in my entire life,” Blomberg said referring to being a police officer. “And I’m just glad this part is finally over.”

Obviously, our community wasn’t happy with the outcome of this trial. Rev. James Dixon of Community Faith Church said amid chants of “racism!” and “injustice!” “It is pathetic. It is unacceptable. This kind of expression says to me, to my children and to every Black child in the city, `Your life is not worth manure.’”

Of his client, attorney Dick DeGuerin said, “Andrew Blomberg is truly a hero in what he did that day. I believe that.”

In March 2010, Holley and his three friends stole a piano keyboard and some alcohol from a Houston townhome. When authorities stopped their truck, Holley ran from the vehicle. On trial, Holley said that after police knocked him over with a patrol car, he put his hands up in surrender.

This, and the beating that followed, would be caught on tape.

According to the Associated Press:

That was when “the kicks started coming,” said Holley, who is Black.

“I started feeling people on my back. I felt one hard blow,” he said. “It felt like knees and I don’t know kicks … I lay there,” not fighting back. Holley said he briefly lost consciousness and the next thing he remembers is waking up in the back of a patrol vehicle.

Still, Blomberg gets off scot-free.

Putting aside the fact that you can get off beating someone even when it is caught on tape a la Rodney King style, does anyone else find it intriguing that in 2012 we are still having all-White juries? According to DeGuerin, the reason there were no Black and minority jurors on the jury is because the Black jurors appeared to be biased out the gate.

When asked why there weren’t any blacks or minorities on the jury, DeGuerin said that most of the African-Americans in the jury pool had already made up their minds on his guilt.

I find it intriguing that White people, in this country and world, are consistently seen as impartial and somehow unbiased no matter the situation. Is it not biased that most — if not all — of these jurors likely thought that the White cop was not guilty before the trial took place?

Just the other day, NewsOne covered the story of 19-year-old Kendrec McDade, who was a college student and football star. McDade was shot seven times by police, who erroneously thought that he was armed, and then handcuffed afterward as he waited for the paramedics. McDade died a little more than an hour later.

I said it then, and I’ll say it now: Police in this country are out of control.

While Holley was beaten, he lost consciousness. He could have died. And he would have just been yet another name on the endless list of Black males who are killed by “law enforcement.” The idea that Blomberg is seriously considering being a police officer again is chilling.

Sound off!

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As previously reported by Newsone, Mushnick not only said the players should call themselves “ni**ers,” but that the cheerleaders should be called “bitches.”

“As long as the Nets are allowing Jay-Z to call their marketing shots— what a shock that he chose black and white as the new team colors to stress, as the Nets explained, their new ‘urban’ home— why not have him apply the full Jay-Z treatment? Why the Brooklyn Nets when they can be the New York N——s? The cheerleaders could be the Brooklyn B—-hes or Hoes. Team logo? A 9 mm with hollow-tip shell casings strewn beneath. Wanna be Jay-Z hip? Then go all the way!”

Writing in to the Post‘s “Bob’s Blitz” in response the inevitable criticism, Mushnick fanned the flames even higher by saying that people should take a look at who is really insulting the Black community:

“Such obvious, wishful and ignorant mischaracterizations of what I write are common. I don’t call black men the N-word; I don’t regard young women as bitches and whores; I don’t glorify the use of assault weapons and drugs. Jay-Z, on the other hand…..Is he the only NBA owner allowed to call black men N—ers?”

Jay-Z profits from the worst and most sustaining self-enslaving stereotypes of black-American culture and I’M the racist? Some truths, I guess, are just hard to read, let alone think about. (Same column I provide support for Amar’e Stoudemire at a time when everyone in town is ripping him to shreds. That was my LEAD, too, but what does that matter?)

One could argue that he makes a valid point pertaining to the pervasive stereotypical images that have eroded commercialized Hip-Hop. Still, while Jay-Z is known for letting n-words and b-words fly from his mouth without hesitation, what Mushnick has done is used that as an excuse to say whatever he wants, in whatever tone that he wants, knowing he has the fallback excuse of “but he said it first.”

Noone’s buying it, Mushnick. You insulted women, men and a culture that is separate and apart of Jay-Z, no matter what your feelings may be about his lyrics.

The professional thing to do would be apologize. Otherwise, you look like twice the bigot that you did in the first place.

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The Florida Civil Rights Association is representing Lelia Jackson-Burch, who is suing for violations of civil rights, defamation, and false imprisonment.

Not only did the racially charged statement offend Plaintiff (Jackson-Burch), the manner in which it was stated reveals a level of comfort and bigotry that is usually reserved for private embrace,” the lawsuit states.

Reuters reports:

The lawsuit describes the alleged chronology of events: Willis explained the administrators’ suspicions by saying “you people don’t score that high.” Although no other evidence of cheating was produced, the administrators demanded the women return their test scores and re-take the two-hour test. Jackson-Burch refused and got in her car but Johnson used her body to block the car from leaving. The administrators called 911.

Three deputies arrived, and Jackson-Burch allowed them to make a warrantless search of her cell phone, according to the lawsuit. In the subsequent sheriff’s report, a deputy wrote that they found no evidence of cheating and that Jackson-Burch believed the incident was racially motivated, the lawsuit stated.

The FCRA is now investigating whether racism is widespread in Citrus County. Ocala, where the incident took place, is 80 miles away from Sanford, Florida, whose penchant for racism and cover-up has been exposed during the Trayvon Martin case. Two of the administrators named in the lawsuit, director Judy Johnson and assistant director Denise Willis, are White; the third, Helena Delgado, is Hispanic.

Aretha Thomas, the other woman who was accused of cheating, accepted a $2,500 settlement from the Citrus County School Board. But Jackson-Birch refused, because, according to the lawsuit, “The administrators notified the Florida Department of Education, the Orange County School Board, and Columbia College, where Jackson-Burch had been a student for three years, [and said] she had cheated, and refused to validate her TABE test score for eight months, causing her to miss out on a pre-planned nursing course.”

School officials in Citrus County refused to comment on the case.

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Coining the sponges “Disco,” “Beehive,”  “Punk,” and “Diva,” a spokesperson for Paladone says, “Our range of four washing up sponges are designed to make an everyday chore like washing up more fun.” Each of the sponges has a brillo pad Afro and even caricatures soul icon Diana Ross.

To Unite Against Fascism (UAF), an organization that sees itself as a counter to the growing levels of racism and fascism throughout the U.K., the sponges harken back to what we would call Stateside “Jim Crow memorabilia.” UAF General Secretary Weyman Bennet says:

What are we going to have next, toilet brushes like that? This is not appropriate for the 21st century to show images like that. It reinforces negative stereotypes and ideas. Although it’s aimed at being humorous, sometimes it’s not funny. We’ve spent 40 years removing racist imagery out of general politics, removing golly wogs, removing Black and Qhite minstrels, and it would be a shame if it crept back in.”

Not surprisingly, Paladone is reportedly gaining quite a profit from the new line and have no plans of pulling it, “The Disco, Beehive, Punk and Diva have sold hundreds of thousands of pieces. They have been a phenomenal success,” said the company spokesman.

Still Bennett believes — success or not — that the products should be pulled off of the shelves.

“They need to think again. Is there no way they can come up with positive views of people without just using negative views of Black people.

“Trying to compare Black people’s to brillo pads is not a really positive image – it’s not appropriate.”

What do you think?

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Stein’s disrespectful comments were found to be in violation of the Marine’s code of behavior, which limits political conduct. In March, the military board came to its decision and made the recommendation to discharge Stein.

CNN reports:

An other-than-honorable discharge is given to a Marine who commits a “serious offense” that significantly differs from conduct expected of a Marine, the Corps said.

Calling his Facebook page the “Armed Forces Tea Party,” Stein stated that he would not follow the President’s orders and put the commander-in-chief’s face on a “Jackass” movie poster. He also espoused the teachings of Birther fanatics, demanding in a March 4th posting to see President Obama’s birth certificate. Earlier in the year, he called the President a “liar” and “the ‘Domestic Enemy’ our oath speaks about.”
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The government took screen shots of Stein’s Facebook page and submitted them to the board, who felt that Stein’s behavior was unprofessional and biased.

Soon after, Stein was stripped of his security clearance, removed from his post at the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot in San Diego, and given a desk job with no access to a computer.

In his defense, Stein attempted in vain to invoke his First Amendment rights to free speech. Stein’s defense swiftly buckled, though, since military personnel in uniform have limited free speech. The Associated Press reports:

The military has had a policy since the Civil War limiting the free speech of service members, including criticism of the commander in chief.

Pentagon directives say military personnel in uniform cannot sponsor a political club; participate in any TV or radio program or group discussion that advocates for or against a political party, candidate or cause; or speak at any event promoting a political movement. Commissioned officers also may not use contemptuous words against senior officials.

In response to his discharge, Stein released this statement on his Facebook page:

I have spent the last 9 years honorably serving this great nation and the Corps,” Stein wrote on his personal Facebook page. “Even though I will be discharged no one can take the title of Marine away from me. I thank my family and friends for their support and love. Today is just the start of the rest of my life. Semper Fi.

Tell us what you think!

RELATED: Shameful! Jewish Brothers Who Beat Black Teen Dodge Jury Trial

It’s not yet clear how the loss of the key witness will affect the prosecution’s case.

Brothers Eliyahu and Avi Werdesheim, who are Jewish and white, are accused of beating the black teen while patrolling for an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood watch group on Nov. 19, 2010. Their bench trial opened Wednesday on charges of second-degree assault, false imprisonment and carrying a deadly weapon.

The victim, now 16, cried as he mumbled responses to some of Assistant State’s Attorney Kevin Wiggins’ questions. The teen testified he was walking to the bus stop from his grandmother’s home to go to a doctor’s appointment that day.

He said he didn’t make the appointment because two men in a red car approached him, looked at him the wrong way and told him he was not supposed to be there. At times, the teen did not answer and would bend over to put his head in his lap.

WBFF-TV showed video of the teen being carried back into the courthouse after the lunch break. In the afternoon, his responses were even less audible and eventually he stood up while attorneys approached Judge Pamela White’s bench for a conference.

“I don’t want to testify,” he said. “I want to drop charges.”

White explained that the state brought the charges and it was not his decision to drop them.

Wiggins asked the teen if the reason he didn’t want to testify was because he lied or that the incident didn’t happen. The teen said he just didn’t want to testify. After talking the situation over with the teen, the judge excused him.

The defense objected to the playing of a recording of the teen’s 911 call after the teen was excused because the defendants would be unable to confront their accuser. The judge denied that motion and listened to the call, in which the teen tells the operator he had been cracked on the head with a walkie-talkie and was bleeding.

The teen was taken to a hospital with a cut on the back of his head and a broken wrist, according to court documents.

A day earlier, the brothers withdrew a motion to move the trial because comparisons to the Martin case would make it hard for them to get a fair trial. They opted for a bench trial, saying they believed a judge could conduct a fair trial.

In the Florida case, authorities charged neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman this month with second-degree murder in Martin’s death Feb. 26. Zimmerman claims self-defense, but Martin’s family claims he targeted the unarmed teen mainly because the teen was black. Zimmerman’s father is white and his mother Hispanic.

In opening statements Wednesday, Wiggins told the judge that after two men in the car stared at him and told him he didn’t belong there, the teen, then 15, armed himself with a board as the car left.

When the car returned, Wiggins said the teen dropped the board before Eliyahu Werdesheim grabbed him and Avi Werdesheim hit him in the head with a radio. As the teen reached in his pocket for his cell phone, Wiggins said a third person, who arrived in a van, stepped on his hand. Other members of the watch group, Shomrim of Baltimore, showed up and the brothers left before police arrived and didn’t return, he said.

“Sometimes I think people see things through their own glasses,” Andrew Alperstein, attorney for Eliyahu Werdesheim told the judge in opening statements.

Alperstein said his 24-year-old client, a pre-law student at Johns Hopkins University, was the newest Shomrim member volunteering in his community – doing what he called a mitzvah or good deed. The attorney said the man acted in self-defense.

There were two encounters between the teen and his client, Alperstein said. In the first, Werdesheim told the teen to move on and the teen responded with expletives and referred to their religion. As he left, Werdesheim saw the teen break off a piece of wooden pallet with nails still attached and begin to pace back and forth, and he returned to try to defuse the situation, according to the lawyer.

“If it was intended to be an assault, it would have happened in `Round One,’” he said.

Susan Green, an attorney for 21-year-old Avi Werdesheim, a pre-med student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who was not a Shomrim member, said she would raise questions about the identification of her client.

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A bench trial in a case of this magnitude is a plus for the Werdesheims and their attorneys, as it signifies that only the judge will hear evidence from both sides regarding the case. With such an explosive racial component, a trial with a jury in predominately Black Baltimore would certainly place the brothers under tougher scrutiny and place the case on the the national stage, a development their attorneys wanted to avoid.

On Monday, the Werdesheims’ attorneys argued in written statements against having a jury trial because they believe their defendants wouldn’t be able to receive a fair trial:

Both [this case and Trayvon Martin's case] involve young African-American males walking along on public thoroughfares, who supposedly were accosted by one or more Caucasian members of citizen patrol groups who felt they didn’t belong in the area, and allegedly subjected to unprovoked attacks,” the motion said. The Werdesheims can’t get a fair trial in Baltimore amid all the publicity.

At the time, defense attorneys asked for the trial to be delayed or moved. The following day, they were granted a bench trial.

According to documents, the Werdesheims claim they acted in self-defense, after encountering the teen. The reports conflict from there, though, as charges state the brothers surrounded the teen, threw him to the ground, and struck the boy in the head with a two-way radio. A third man was said to have held the teen down as he was searched for contraband. Eliyahu, 24, said in an interview with a Jewish Baltimore publication that the boy brandished a wooden plank, prompting him and his 21-year-old brother to take action.

Watch the local Black community react here:

The trial is heating up as the judge has begun to allow evidence to be presented in the case. So far, only the Jewish Baltimore Times interview has been entered as evidence, as the article links the men to the scene of the crime. Further in the report, supporters of the teen were outside the courthouse and vocalized their disdain of the brothers.

“We represent every young person in this city who has experienced these kinds of atrocities in this city every single day,” said the supporter of the racially charged case.

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As the nation has discovered in the Trayvon Martin murder, America is not the post-racial utopia it portrays itself to be. This case highlights that race and proper justice are reluctant bedfellows, and a pair of Jewish boys of privilege are exhibiting the clear distinctions between Black and White crime. The Werdesheims should be tried publicly and endure the same invasive media tactics Blacks face across the nation in so-called courts of law.

What do you think?

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Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks decided that the case of convicted killer Marcus Robinson (pictured below) was distorted by race and that state prosecutors were deliberately tougher on Black cases. Invoking the 2009 Racial Justice Act to form his decision, Judge Week’s bold move in the face of scrutiny has made racism involving capital punishment a hot-button issue again.  While Robinson’s crime is deserving of a stiff penalty, it shows that the judicial system is recognizing that the law has some flaws.

Robinson and his co-defendant Roderick Williams Jr. were both charged with killing 17-year old Erik Tornblom in 1991. The pair robbed Tornblom of his car, stole a small amount of cash and killed the teenager with a shotgun blast.  Convicted in 1994, Robinson landed on Death Row and was nearly executed in 2007, but a judge put a stop to it. Williams is currently serving a life sentence for his role in the crime.  At the center of the race debate, a 25-year Supreme Court decision cemented the ugly reality that Black defendants face more racial scrutiny than their White counterparts.

The case of McCleskey v. Kemp became a part of the conversation again, marking an ugly period where the law turned a blind eye to racist practices. After hearing of the racial biases and discrimination Blacks face in court and abroad, the justices voted 5-4 against the charge and said that even with the evidence and statistics saying otherwise, racism does not play a role in how cases are handled.

Ironically, two southern states (the other being Kentucky) that are infamous for their treatment of African Americans have sought to overturn the McCleskey v. Kemp decision and further data supports the idea that Blacks are subject to the very racism the decades-old case alleged. A study from a pair of Michigan State law professors showed that Black jurors were blocked twice more than White jurors, who also helped Judge Weeks form his decision. The study essentially found that the evidence showed an “inference of intentional discrimination.”

Republicans in North Carolina are seeking to eliminate the Racial Justice Act, although 150 cases are pending to be heard by a judge. The inmates will have to present evidence to support claims of racism, and it will undoubtedly become a heated debate for months to come. However, as Marcus Robinson’s mother, Shirley Burns, said, “”Everybody is not guilty, everybody is not innocent, but at least be fair. It wasn’t all about Marcus. It’s about anyone who suffers discrimination.”

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“Many people believe that race is no longer a significant issue in the United States,” says Sarah Rusche, a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the study. “But the fact that a third of servers admit to varying their quality of service based on customers’ race, often giving African-Americans inferior service, shows that race continues to be an issue in our society.”
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The researchers wanted to determine to what extent a customer’s race affects the way in which they are treated at a restaurant so they surveyed 200 servers, about 86 percent of them were white, at 18 full-service chain eateries in central North Carolina.  The survey revealed that 38.5 percent of the servers adjusted their quality of service based on the customer’s race.

The survey also found that 52.8 percent of servers reported seeing other wait staff discriminate against African-American customers by giving them poor service at least some of the time.

Racism is even more pervasive behind the scenes at restaurants as the study also indicated that anti-Black perceptions about their patrons was thoroughly discussed among waiters.  Only a mere 10.5 percent reported never engaging in or observing racial discourse.

The study’s findings indicate that many servers perceive  African Americans as being rude and/or poor tippers, suggesting that black patrons, in particular, are likely targets of servers’ self-professed discriminatory actions.

“’Tableside racism’ is yet another example where African Americans are stereotyped and subsequently treated poorly in everyday situations,” says Rusche. “Race continues to be a significant barrier to equal treatment in restaurants and other areas of social life.”

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Speaking with Reason TV, the four-time former mayor of D.C. sidestepped the controversy with silky political ease. ““That’s not racial,” Barry told Reason. “The fact is that 95 percent of the carry-outs in Ward 8 are owned or managed by Asians. So I’m finished with that.”

On April 3, Barry said:

“We’ve got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses, those dirty shops. They ought to go, I’ll just say that right now, you know. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.”

Barry later tried to explain his comments, stating that he was addressing the difference in culture, “There’s a cultural difference between a number of ethnic groups — whether it’s Hispanics or whether it’s Asian or White people,” Barry said. “There is a cultural difference because of our socialization, because of our segregation, discrimination. All of this adds to it and affects every aspect of our life.”

Barry’s election-night speech prompted an immediate response from current mayor Vincent Gray, who says he was “deeply disappointed” by the councilman’s remarks. Barry did apologize for lumping all Asian businesspersons into one monolithic group, carefully saying he was addressing the “less-than-stellar Asian-American businessmen” in his district.

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In the days after what authorities describe as racially motivated shootings that killed three people and wounded two more earlier this month, the national spotlight was on the crime-ridden neighborhood, where iron bars on windows belie the toys strewn in people’s front yards. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and the national president of the NAACP showed up. Local church and civic leaders pledged things would finally change for the better.

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But after two men were arrested for the shootings and the furor finally died down, Wilson and others in Tulsa’s predominantly black north side were left with more doubts than hopes the area would truly improve.

“Ain’t nothing going to change around here,” said Wilson, 30, who has lived on the north side all his life and inherited his tiny home from his grandmother. “It’s like a little Vietnam here, everyone walking around with their AK-47s.”

Marquis Harley notes he’s still afraid, even though the suspects are behind bars.

“When night comes, I’m inside,” the 21-year-old Harley said. “Around nine o’clock, all I hear is gunshots.”

That’s not to say the shooting rampage wasn’t terrifying. The fear was palpable as police canvassed neighborhoods for a white shooter they said had targeted victims as they were walking near their homes. All of the victims were black.

After a tense two-day search, police arrested 19-year-old Jake England and 33-year-old Alvin Watts early Easter Sunday. Watts is white; England’s attorney has said England is Cherokee Indian. They face charges of first-degree murder, shooting with intent to kill and malicious harassment.

Authorities believe England may have wanted to avenge his father’s shooting death by a black man two years ago. However, England has said he has no ill-will toward black people.

The shootings happened not far from one of the nation’s worst race riots more than 90 years ago, where as many as 300 blacks died. Today, beyond Tulsa’s oil mansions and downtown bustle, some black residents still consider this northeastern Oklahoma city of 391,000 divided. The north side today is pocked with blight, vacant lots and its share of crime – what the past three decades or so didn’t take here, the recession did.

Standing near a sometimes-basketball court overgrown with weeds and sprinkled with glass shards, Harley and 20-year-old Terance Brown describe what summer life is like in north Tulsa for young black men.

“All you see over there is a barber shop and a liquor store,” Harley said, gesturing down the street. He mows lawns for extra money and says he wishes he could buy up some of the abandoned houses on his street – the ones with plywood covering windows and doors, spray-painted with the street addresses because the weeds are too tall to see the numbers on the curb – so more young people like him would move in.

“It’s just crazy what they do out here,” Brown said. “I’ve been shot before. … And I’m just an innocent bystander getting out of the car.”

Theophilus Ballard, an 84-year-old retired truck driver who was born in Tulsa and came back to live here in 1974, said the north side has always been worse off than the rest of the city, and he doesn’t expect that to change now.

“I don’t know. People just live better over there, I think, than they do over here. If you have a good job and plenty of money, you want to get away from here,” he said.

Others, though, do have hope.

At the First Baptist Church North Tulsa where Jackson preached about redemption, senior pastor Anthony Scott said the black community is still riding the euphoria of the weekend, when talk turned to hope and revitalization.

“It’s really incumbent on leaders like myself to bring that to fruition, to rebuild hope and trust and rebuild infrastructure,” Scott said. “I do feel like the common citizen in north Tulsa feels like they’ve finally received genuine sympathy and concern from the Tulsa community, and they don’t want that to go away.

“There might be a sense of, `here we go again,’ but this expression of grief and concern from the entire city has certainly given them a feeling that there aren’t two Tulsas, but one.”

State Rep.-elect Kevin Matthews, a retired firefighter whose district encompasses north Tulsa, said the city needs to acknowledge the “blatant disparity” between north Tulsa and the rest of the city in terms of infrastructure, grocery stores and businesses with good-paying jobs.

“We have so many people leaving right now,” Matthews said. “They want to go where they can drive two blocks to a franchise chain to eat. People are wanting to go to where schools are opening instead of closing. Therefore, what’s left is those people that don’t have that opportunity and they don’t have a voice.”

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That’s the idea behind the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which says it has amassed the nation’s largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond.

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The museum in a gleaming new exhibit hall at Ferris State University “is all about teaching, not a shrine to racism,” said David Pilgrim, the founder and curator who started building the collection as a teenager.

Pilgrim, who is black, makes no apologies for the provocative exhibits. The goal of the $1.3 million gallery, he explained, is “to get people to think deeply.”

The displays are startling. The n-word is prevalent throughout, and many items portray black men as lazy, violent or inarticulate. Black women are shown as kerchief-wearing mammies, sexually charged Jezebels or other stereotypes.

The shocking images exact an emotional cost.

“There’s parts in that room – the main room – where it’s quite gut-wrenching,” said Nancy Mettlach, a student conduct specialist at Ferris. “And the thought that was going through my mind was: `How can one human being do this to another human being?’”

Pilgrim, a former sociology professor at Ferris State, started the collection in the 1970s in Alabama. Along the way, he “spent more time in antique and flea markets than the people who work there.” His quest for more examples was boundless.

“At some point, the collecting becomes the thing,” he said. “It became the way I relaxed.” He spent most of his free time and money on acquisitions.

In 1996, Pilgrim donated his 2,000-piece collection to the school after concluding that it “needed a real home.”

The collection spent the next 15 years housed in a single room and could be seen only by appointment. Thanks to the financial support of the university and donors – notably from the charitable arm of Detroit utility DTE Energy – Pilgrim’s collection now has a permanent home, which will have a grand opening ceremony April 26. Admission is free.

Today, the school has 9,000 pieces that depict African-Americans in stereotypical ways and, in some cases, glorify violence against them.

Not all of the museum’s holdings are on display, but the 3,500-square-foot space in the lower level of the university library is packed with items that demonstrate how racist ideas and anti-black images dominated American culture for decades.

Visitors can forget about touring the exhibits and retiring untroubled to a cafe or gift shop. Some leave angry or offended. Most feel a kind of “reflective sadness,” Pilgrim said.

But that’s not enough. If the museum “stayed at that, then we failed,” he said. “The only real value of the museum has ever been to really engage people in a dialogue.”

So Pilgrim designed the tour to give visitors a last stop in a “room of dialogue,” where they’re encouraged to discuss what they’ve seen and how the objects might be used to promote tolerance and social justice.

Some of the objects in the museum are a century old. Others were made as recently as this year.

Ferris State sophomore Nehemiah Israel was particularly troubled by a series of items about President Barack Obama.

One T-shirt on display reads: “Any White Guy 2012.” Another shirt that says “Obama ’08″ is accompanied by a cartoon monkey holding a banana. A mouse pad shows robe-wearing Ku Klux Klan members chasing an Obama caricature above the words, “Run Obama Run.”

“I was like, `Wow. People still think this. This is crazy,’” Israel said.

One of the first rooms in the museum features a full-size replica of a tree with a lynching noose hanging from it. Several feet away, a television screen shows a video of racist images through the years.

The location of the museum – in the shadow of university founder Woodbridge Ferris’ statue – also catches some by surprise. Ferris, who later served as Michigan governor and as a U.S. senator, founded the school more than a century ago. He once said Americans should work to provide an “education for all children, all men and all women.”

The mostly white college town of Big Rapids is 150 miles from Detroit, the state’s largest predominantly black city.

Pilgrim, who is also Ferris State’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, initially considered giving his collection to a historically black college, but he wanted to be “near it enough to make sure it was taken care of.”

Most of the objects “are anti-black caricatures, everyday objects or they are segregationist memorabilia,” he said. Because they represent a cruel, inflammatory past, they “should either be in a garbage can or a museum.”

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District Judge Robert Blink issued the ruling after overseeing a trial last fall in the class action lawsuit affecting up to 6,000 applicants who were passed over for jobs and promotions dating back to 2003. He rejected attempts to require Iowa to pay tens of millions in lost wages or change its hiring policies to track and eliminate disparities.

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Experts have called the case the largest class-action lawsuit of its kind against a state government’s civil service system, and it tested a legal theory that social science and statistics alone can prove widespread discrimination.

Blink resoundingly rejected what he called an unprecedented claim, saying the evidence did not support the idea that subtle biases were allowed to creep into the hiring process and discriminate against blacks.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Thomas Newkirk said the case will be appealed within 30 days. He said Blink’s earlier decision to allow the case to proceed to trial provided a small step forward toward understanding how racial bias affects minorities, but that his side had been hoping for a bigger step.

In his 56-page ruling, Blink said he was aware of the heavy stakes in the case, including whether blacks were being treated fairly by the state’s largest employer and the potential for millions of dollars in consequences for taxpayers and plaintiffs.

But he said lawyers for the plaintiffs, who urged him to consider the state’s progressive history on civil rights, were asking him to “circumvent clear and timely” U.S. Supreme Court precedent, which would not allow the lawsuit. He said their case failed to challenge a particular employment practice that was discriminatory, an element required under state and federal civil rights laws.

He said the data showed wide discrepancies in the record of hiring blacks at different agencies. While some departments may have disparities, he said the data showed that blacks had an advantage compared to whites in others and that the number of black managers had increased over time compared to whites.

Blacks also fare better when applying for public employment in Iowa than the private sector, he said, which could prove that the state’s merit-based system was working to reduce discrimination.

Blink also downplayed the importance of testimony from University of Washington psychology professor Anthony Greenwald, who developed the Implicit Association Test to gauge racial stereotypes. Greenwald testified about research that shows an inherent preference for whites over blacks in up to 80 percent of test-takers.

Blink said that Greenwald offered no data specific to Iowa about racial bias and could not estimate what percentage of hiring decisions were the result of stereotyped thinking about blacks.

Unlike many other discrimination lawsuits, the plaintiffs did not argue that they faced overt racism or a discriminatory hiring test in Iowa, which is 91 percent white. Instead, their lawyers claimed implicit bias in which managers throughout state government subconsciously favored whites and hurt blacks through their decisions about who got interviewed, hired and promoted. They said state officials failed to follow their own hiring rules meant to prevent such bias.

The plaintiffs called experts during the trial who testified that blacks are hired at lower rates in Iowa than similarly-situated whites and receive less favorable evaluations and lower starting salaries. They also highlighted a consultant’s report in 2007 that warned of disparities between whites and minorities, and argued that steps meant to improve diversity of the state workforce were not effective.

Blacks represented 2.9 percent of the state’s population in 2010 and 2.4 percent of the state workforce despite applying for state jobs more often, statistics show.

Lawyers working under Attorney General Tom Miller, a Democrat, had asked Blink to dismiss the case. They called the scope of the lawsuit – it questioned every hiring and promotion decision made at 37 state agencies, involving 20,000 jobs and 500,000 applications – unprecedented. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office had no immediate comment.

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The U.S. Departments of Justice and Education said Friday that the school has created an Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination. It agreed to expand training for students and staff and revise policies and procedures to ensure they are consistent with federal law.

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The federal government demanded changes after nooses and a Ku Klux Klan-style hood were found on campus in 2010 and students at an off-campus party dressed in costumes that mocked Black History Month.

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David Claussen, owner of the Davie-based Broward County Pictures, shot the image of the class of Sawgrass Elementary school second graders. He was later told that two students had not submitted signed release forms, according to reports.

Claussen, who has been in the school-picture taking industry for more than 35 years, found a unique solution to the problem: Adobe Photoshop.

He took out one student who was at the end of one row using the photo-editing software and inserted a Black cartoon-like smiley face over the face of the other student who was seated in the first row.

Some people have called Claussen’s decision “offensive” and “degrading,” and at least one parent, Gabriella Cans, told local news station Local 10 that the “image was humiliating.”

Local news report said:

Claussen said he was able to use the photo editing software Adobe Photoshop to lift one of the kids out, but had explained to them that there was a problem with the second student. He was sitting in the front row, right in the middle.

He showed me the notes he had written down on a white piece of paper as the pair discussed what to do. He said he would have gladly come out there to reshoot the image. Instead there was talk about putting a star over his face and then, he said,  the P.T.A. asked him to place a smiley face.

According to the local news station, it’s unclear if the boy is enrolled at Seagrass Elementary. School officials told Local 10 that privacy concerns prevented them from being able to confirm or deny if the student still attends the school.They were not able to locate the student or his parents.

The school’s P.T.A. wrote an e-mail message to Local 10 which said:

 ”The PTA notified photographer after finding out that a child didn’t have a signed media release form from the parent. Broward Schools Photography covered the child’s face using an inappropriate sticker. The PTA disagrees with how the photography company handled it and worked with the photographer to have the picture retaken this Thursday. Immediate action was taken on behalf of the PTA. We love and protect our children.”

Parents who ordered a copy of the class photo are set to receive a new print free of charge, according to reports.

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Brett Johnson is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based writer and the founder of the music and culture blog VeryArtistical.com.

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The Marine Corps administrative board said after a daylong hearing late Thursday at Camp Pendleton that Sgt. Gary Stein has committed misconduct and should be dismissed.

The board also recommended that Stein be given an other-then-honorable discharge. That would mean Stein would lose his benefits and would not be allowed on any military base.

The board’s recommendations go to a general who will either accept or deny them. If the general disagrees with the board, the case could go to the secretary of the Navy.

Stein’s lawyers argued that the 9-year Marine, whose service was to end in four months, was expressing his personal views and exercising his First Amendment rights.

“We’re truly surprised and disappointed but it was an honor to fight for a hero like Sgt. Stein and every other Marine’s right to speak freely,” Stein’s defense attorney Marine Capt. James Baehr said.

Stein addressed board members during Thursday’s hearing, tell them he loved the Marine Corps and wanted to re-enlist, Baehr said.

Baehr expressed hope that the recommendation would be rejected by the general, saying the case will go forward. “The issues are too important for this to end today,” he said.

During the hearing, the prosecutor, Capt. John Torresala, said Stein went as far as superimposing images of Obama’s face on a poster for the movie “Jackass.”

Torresala argued that Stein’s behavior repeatedly violated Pentagon policy that limits the free speech rights of service members, and said he should be dismissed after ignoring warnings from his superiors about his postings.

The government submitted screen grabs of Stein’s postings on one Facebook page he created called Armed Forces Tea Party, which the prosecutor said included the image of Obama on the “Jackass” movie poster. Stein also superimposed Obama’s image on a poster for “The Incredibles” movie that he changed to “The Horribles,” the prosecutor said.

Torresala also said anti-Obama comments by Stein that were posted on a Facebook page used by Marine meteorologists were prejudicial to good order and discipline, and could have influenced junior Marines.

Stein’s security clearance was taken away and he has no future in the Marine Corps because he can’t do his job without that clearance, Torresala said.

“The Marine Corps community views the command’s lack of action as some kind of knock on good order and discipline,” Torresala said. “Our own people are questioning why this Marine is not being held accountable.”

Baehr said during the hearing that prosecutors were trying to dredge up any damaging information they could against Stein.

“There is no basis in this case,” Baehr said. “Sgt. Stein has broken no law.”

The military has had a policy since the Civil War limiting the free speech of service members, including criticism of the commander in chief.

Pentagon directives say military personnel in uniform cannot sponsor a political club; participate in any TV or radio program or group discussion that advocates for or against a political party, candidate or cause; or speak at any event promoting a political movement.

Commissioned officers also may not use contemptuous words against senior officials.

Backed by a team of lawyers and congressmen, Stein has said he is fighting for his constitutional rights and should be allowed to stay in the military. His lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union contend his views are protected by the First Amendment.

“Think about how dangerous this could be if the U.S. government can prosecute you for something you say on your private Facebook page,” Baehr said.

Stein has said his opinions are his own and has put a disclaimer on his Facebook page saying so. His attorneys argued service members have a right to voice their opinions as long as they do not appear to be presenting their views as being endorsed by the military. They say the Pentagon policy is vague and military officials do not understand it.

The Marine Corps has said it decided to take administrative action after Stein declared on Facebook that he would not follow orders from Obama and later clarified that statement saying he would not follow unlawful orders.

Stein said he was removed from his job at the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot in San Diego last month and given a desk job with no access to computers.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a former Marine, wrote a letter to Stein’s commanding officer stating the sergeant should not face dismissal for an opinion shared by a majority of Marines. Hunter said he was referring to Stein’s statement that he would not obey unlawful orders. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., also expressed support for Stein.

Stein said his statement about Obama was part of an online debate about NATO allowing U.S. troops to be tried for the Quran burnings in Afghanistan.

In that context, he said, he was stating that he would not follow orders from the president if it involved detaining U.S. citizens, disarming them or doing anything else that he believes would violate their constitutional rights.

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Kenneth Chamberlain

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The police claimed that they acted in self-defense after the 68-year-old former Marine and corrections officer came at them wielding a hatchet and knife, according to a New York magazine report.

Now, more than four months later, a grand jury is scheduled to convene this week to hear the details of the incident and determine if the police committed a crime.

In the wake of the much-publicized Trayvon Martin shooting, the Chamberlain case has thrown another spotlight on how local authorities have handled incidents with potential racial implications.

The Chamberlain shooting occurred on the early morning of Nov. 19 when police responded to an alert from the veteran’s medical bracelet. Chamberlain, who has a chronic heart condition, may have set off the alert accidentally. Since the system’s two-way intercom recorded the entire exchange, at least one officer can be heard yelling a racial slur and taunting Chamberlain before they took the door off its hinges and entered the apartment.

A hallway security camera and a camera on an officer’s stun gun have captured video of the interaction as well.

According to a report in New York magazine:

Chamberlain reportedly yelled, “Semper fi,” to which officers responded, “Hoo-rah!” Another told Chamberlain they needed to use his bathroom. Someone outside the apartment reportedly screamed, “I don’t give a f–k, n—-r, open the door!”

Chamberlain, who was allegedly miffed that he had been awakened, had refused to open the door. But police claim that since they were responding to a medical alert that needed to enter the apartment.

After a stand-off that lasted an hour, the authorities pried the door open.

Available video footage captures Chamberlain was standing in his boxer shorts, arms at his side and his hands empty. No footage beyond that of what happened inside the apartment has surfaced. However, police claim that Chamberlain charged them with a knife.

The family’s lawyer Mayo Bartlett has said:

“The minute they got in the house, they didn’t even give him one command. They never mentioned ‘put your hands up.’ They never told him to lay down on the bed. The first thing they did … you could see the Taser light up … and you could see it going directly toward him.”

The parallels to the Martin case are quiet clear: A black male is killed and it has taken months for a grand jury to even consider if there was any crime committed. There are also audio records to suggest that the incident involved some degree of hate speech by the killer.

Then there’s a question of excessive force: Did the cops really need to Taser and shoot and kill Chamberlain, a 68-year-old man with a chronic heart disease, who was in his boxer shorts standing in his own apartment?

In addition, like the Martins, it seems that in order for Chamberlain’s family to receive a thorough investigation of the incident, that they needed to drum up public sympathy before local authorities paid close attention to the death, and not just take the cops’ account as the final word.

So far, the story has been covered by alternative news organizations like Democracy Now and extensively by local newspaper Daily White Plains. It made the cover of the New York Daily News as well. But the incident has been increasingly gaining traction via social media sites like Twitter, Facebook.

We’re surely going to hear more of this case in the upcoming days.

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Brett Johnson is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based writer and the founder of the music and culture blog VeryArtistical.com.

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On the social media site, Elizabeth would reportedly start conversations  with complaints, such as “wow so insane how one race of people can be so f**king incompetent and disgusting.”  Elizabeth’s comments on her disturbing views of African Americans with her Facebook friends would evolve into rants that her friends co-signed:

“Send them all somewhere [sic] I don’t care where.  They make everything dirty, ignorant and can’t act like normal human beings.”

“I just dropped one (on her f**king nasty face and huge nose.  They are really apes and must not be fully developed.”

“Even when they’re in their 40′s they can’t act intelligent and they wonder why they can’t find jobs.   I’d never f**king hire one either.”

“Should be entitled to nothing they’re f**king animals”

Friend Andy J. Cuthbertson responds:

“Jess you just about summed up what I’ve always felt!”

A Proof representative spotted Elizabeth’s derogatory comments about Blacks and referred to her as “Hitler.”   He also requested that she remove the offensive comments from her Facebook account, because she was in violation of the club’s social media contract.   Elizabeth responded by stating:

r u joking? i have a life outside the club

Proof’s owner Mike Bloem got wind of Elizabeth’s toxic Facebook exchanges and fired her.  Bloem then issued the following statement in response to the incident:

Proof would like to confirm its belief in equality, fairness and tolerance to all our friends and partners, Bloem said, according to Eater Chicago. Sadly, on occasion, we are all exposed to ignorance and racism.  We believe that by continuing to be true to our ideals and leading through our actions that each of us can be an agent for positive change.

Elizabeth’s Facebook exchange has been removed and her account has since been made private.

Still, patrons reported mistreatment as the result of racism from other employees at Proof on the club’s Yelp page.

You can read some of Elizabeth’s posts here at 312 Dining Diva.

Are we really in 2012?

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No, but Rush Limbaugh’s (pictured) transparency doesn’t make his defense of Martin’s killer and assailing of “the left” for its “obsession” with race any less baffling and irritating. The conservative commentator used his platform to peddle some delusional notion that George Zimmerman was just a guy who “loves law enforcement” that “wanted to protect his neighborhood, and he just got a little overzealous and so forth.”

Yeah, and the brick an angry woman throws through the window of her cheating man’s car is just a friendly reminder for him to get them tinted.

Rush also took issue with the New York Times referring to Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic” as “that fits the template” of a Black vs. White crime. Never mind the reality that the term only accurately denotes race and ethnicity for proper context. While he didn’t mean it in that fashion, there’s something supremely shallow and rather predictable about Zimmerman apologists citing his ethnicity as if that prevents him from harboring racist sentiments. One could also consider that viewpoint “mighty White.”

Speaking of such, the fellow racial epithet enthusiast had the gall to declare, “I don’t look at people and see a race or a sexual orientation or whatever. I mean, I’m a red-blooded American guy.” If you can hold in your laughter long enough, Rush also added, “I don’t see feminist or a female victim of some oppressive society.”

This is the same man who once quipped about Blacks, “They’re 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?” the one who just loved the hell out of the song “Barack The Magic Negro” (listen above) and played it numerous times on his show, and the guy who told a Black female caller to “take the bone out of your nose and call me back.”

But supposedly, “I [Rush] don’t see Black-versus-White or anything. The left is the ones who do this.”

Those with ears – including his ever-expanding lists of abandoned sponsors – know how great a crock that is.

As is this trite and faux sympathetic remark: “We have a dead 17-year-old, and this being looked at through a political prism by people is just something that escapes me, just really does.”

The political context of Trayvon’s murder escapes Rush because — as a White man free to spew any and all things patriarchal and prejudice for profit — the only political matters he has to concern himself with are those that boost his bottom line.

The rest of us don’t have the luxury to be so linear in our thinking, which explains why the political factors that helped create the Trayvon Martin slaying are all too apparent and deserving of our outcries. Fact is, the issue of race is one that consumes Americans independent of hue, and in Rush’s case specifically, hubris.

How that interest manifests itself is what separates us.

In one corner you have people like Rush Limbaugh, who pimp racial stereotypes and fuel the hatred of all things “other” to a certain segment of the population. The other corner consists of those who understand the dangerous consequences of their actions and speak out when tragedy strikes, hoping their words might finally make a difference.

Michael Arceneaux is a Houston-bred, Howard-educated writer currently based in Los Angeles. You can read more of his work on his site, The Cynical Ones. Follow him on Twitter: @youngsinick

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“Dr. Boyce, Rick Santorum has a video up in which he refers to President Obama as a n*gger,” she said to me.

“What did you say?” I said, as my face twisted up like a newborn baby eating a piece of broccoli.  Even I couldn’t believe what my editor was telling me, and I thought she’d lost her mind.
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Then, I saw the video,

Yes, he said it.

I’m sure the Rick Santorum campaign team is strategizing faster than Homeland Security after a terrorist attack to find any BS excuse to convince us that we’re not actually hearing what we can clearly hear.  But the evidence shows that Rick Santorum, who reportedly spoke at the Armory at Janesville, Wisc., on March 27th, is running head first into the word “n*gger” as he describes the first Black president.

I’ve watched this video 14.5 times.  I’ve meditated on it, prayed over it, laid hands on it, and sent it to my mama.   I had to take a moment to thank God that Rick Santorum, in his conservative brilliance, has finally released videotaped evidence of the kind of smoking gun that many millions of us can use to prove that he is every bit as racist as we’ve always known him to be.

This is the same man who said that he would tell Black people to get off of food stamps, and he tends to perform well in states where the citizens don’t like Black people very much.  Santorum serves as yet another reason that millions of conservative African Americans would rather endure their discomfort with Obamacare, gay rights, and abortion than to vote for Republicans who seem to think that we should all be in prisons or on plantations.

If the Republican Party would let go of its commitment to protecting the rich and oppressing minorities, they could get quite a bit of support from the African American church.

“Rick Santorum was written off as a joke in the past, and has only risen again as a result of the resurgence of racism,” said Political Commentator Yvette Carnell.

I’m sure Santorum will have a good explanation for why half of the word “n*gger” slipped out of his mouth as he stumbled over his words to catch himself after his glaring mistake.   After realizing his obvious slip up, Santorum’s rhetoric was as sloppy as a drunken, uneducated rapper trying to explain Astrophysics to the United Nations.  He couldn’t even say the word “boo” without using four syllables, for I’m sure that even his warped little mind suddenly realized that his presidential campaign might be over.

Rick, my friend, you’ve been caught red-handed.   It was only through a random twist of chaotic, discriminatory, counter-productive fate and distorted political reality that someone like you could become a legitimate contender for President of the United States.  From every indication I’ve received,  you are no better than a white Herman Cain.  I look forward to watching your enemies eat you alive, for America has no room for leaders who feel compelled to refer to the President of the United States as a n*gger.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

Trayvon Martin

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No matter our professional prowess, academic pedigree or legal citizenship, we cannot feel safe walking the streets of our own communities without sensing imminent danger from the George Zimmermans of the world who are hellbent on criminalizing our every move.

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That someone cannot be safe walking in their own neighborhood after making a run to a 7 Eleven proves that Black men continue to shoulder the heavy burden of other people’s stereotypes and suspicions.

My colleague, Leigh Davenport, penned a passionate, yet disciplined column on the travails of being a Black man in America and how we have yet to truly transition from the racially inclement days of Emmett Till. The line in her piece that resonated with me most was, “There is no space in this country where Black men can’t be threatened.”

Here I expound her thought by saying that there is no space in this world where Black men can walk in peace.

As a Russian-speaking brotha who lived in Eastern Europe for nearly four years as a Peace Corps volunteer, journalist and more, I know this to be true from personal experience. My most challenging experiences with racism occurred during my Fulbright Scholar days in Ukraine, where I was a Russian language student and freelance reporter.

Those were harrowing days indeed.

Black Man in Ukraine

On a breezy autumn afternoon in October of 2009, I walked into the Universitet Metro station in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, to catch a train to Russian class. I was standing in line waiting to purchase my train token, when from my peripheral vision, I caught sight of a police officer a mere 10 feet away staring at me suspiciously.

He was joking with some gentleman, who I assume was a friend of his, when he pointed in my direction, then whispered something unintelligible to the man in Russian. At that point, I knew I was going to be stopped and asked for my documents. (WWB or Walking While Black is enforced beyond U.S. borders) True enough, the officer approached me, gave me a hangover Soviet-era salute and demanded I present my passport. After a brief perusal, the young officer signaled that I should follow him in to the metro station’s mini-police station.

As a Black man who had lived in Eastern Europe for four years, I had long become used to being stopped by police officers who assumed that I was an African immigrant who they could scare a bribe out of, or worse, make an object out of their sadistic fantasies of physically dominating a Black man. Unfortunately for them, however, my American passport normally curbed any incident from going beyond a racial slur or brief embarrassment. Americans, for better or for worse, seem to get “special treatment” in sticky situations on foreign soil.

Not on this October day!

The officer escorted me into the police holding room, where a plainclothes officer was sitting at a worn, wooden table shuffling through passports. When I asked in English what I had done to warrant an additional inquiry beyond the typical document check, the young officer, who looked fresh out of the academy, shot me a sinister smirk.

Narrowing his eyes, he pointed his right finger inches away from my face and said in Russian, “You’re a n***a and we know you are bringing drugs into our country, so hand over your drugs.”

I had never been so disrespected by someone in authority before, so his words took me off guard. The officer and his plainclothes partner went on for nearly a half an hour, shouting racial slurs and intimidating demands in Russian.

“Where are you from,” the young officer shouted. “What are you doing in our country?”

“To whom are you selling drugs,” the other asked. “Do you speak Russian?”

Actually, I speak the language of Pushkin very well but was warned by my African friends to never, ever communicate with Ukrainian police officers in their mother tongue as they are notorious for trumping up charges of verbal abuse, giving them cause to arrest their unsuspecting victims.

Frustrated with my “poor Russian skills,” the plainclothes officer asked me, “How long have you been in Ukraine?”

“Three months,” I replied. Damn, I had slipped, but fortunately, the cop didn’t notice.

“So you’ve been here for three months and you don’t understand a word I am saying,” he asked in an exasperated tone. I shook my head in ignorance.

While the officers eventually let me go, I was gravely shaken. I reported the incident to the American Embassy, and they took it very seriously, giving me a special ID that stated I was an official employee. My American friends, fellow Fulbrighters and Facebook pals all rallied to my emotional aid.

Thinking I would get sympathy from my African friends at the church I attended in Kiev, I shared my unpleasant encounter with Ukraine’s finest. The facial reactions from those in the audience were either blank or indifferent. I thought they were being cold, until one of them coolly shook my hand and said, “What you experienced is nothing. We Africans experience far worse in this country. Now you have a taste of what we experience every day.”

The worst he was referring to included beatings by law enforcement officers, attacks by neo-Nazi groups, and daily discrimination in innumerable facets of everyday life. Some unfortunates even died during a wave of of racist attacks before my arrival in July of 2009.

I would be stopped 29 times in total during my year-and-a-half stay in Ukraine.

Some of the stops were more humiliating and unfounded than others. When cops weren’t harassing me, I was racially taunted and accosted by skinheads. The racism didn’t damper my resolve to enjoy my time with my truly wonderful Ukrainian friends, though, which was thankfully 90 percent of my cultural experience.

But those stops and run-ins with skinhead groups taught me that, despite my Fulbright grant, my education and my unending efforts to make sure I didn’t look like “a thug,” I was still Black.

Trayvon Martin’s Death Is A World Issue

Throughout the new millennium, Blacks across Europe have died at the hands of racists. Roma, known as Gypsies, are looked upon with disgust in Western Europe and are often attacked because locals feel they are destroying the culture. In September of 2011, CNN aired a detailed report on Black soccer players who face constant verbal abuse by European fans.

More recently, a Russian soccer fan hurled a banana at a Black player, Chris Samba, during a match in Moscow. Sambe tossed the banana back. Such flagrant displays of racism are common during games in which Black players are on the field. In Moscow, 60 percent of the African population report being assaulted in racially motivated attacks. At the beginning of the year, two White men were found guilty for killing a Black teen in London, England, back in 1993.

While Europe has never been a homogenous continent, it has seen a significant hike in immigration in the past 10 years. Many migrate because of conflicts in Libya and other countries in Africa, for example.

I met many Blacks and dark-skinned peoples in Ukraine and across Europe who feared walking the streets because of racism. A Nigerian friend of mine, Chris, told me of the time he battled a towering skinhead of perhaps 6’4″ in broad daylight. No one came to his aid. Another good African friend of mine, who enrolled in a Ukrainian medical school, was attacked on at least five occasions. Although he hates living there, he is getting a great medical education, which he cannot afford to give up, even though he wishes he could.

A popular African music performer reported being beaten by Ukrainians cops and robbed of his money.

“Do you know where you have come?” one of them reportedly asked, adding, “We must punish you, you n***er,” according to his account to the Kyiv Post.

The Trayvon Martins of the world are also women.

One of my closest Black Ukrainian friends, Angelina Diash (pictured), told me that at times she didn’t feel safe in her own country. During a conversation over tea in a downtown cafe in Kiev in the spring of 2010, Angelina recalled an encounter, in which she was accosted by two skinheads who yelled racial slurs at her in a train station.

She noticed that a police officer had observed the harassment, but he did not come to her aid. A sympathetic male passenger pretended to be her friend and waved her over, averting further persecution. Angelina has never left Ukraine and has a Ukrainian passport, but her skin color is a signal to the racially ignorant of the Ukrainian populace that she is not one of them.

Or as her Black Ukrainian cousin, Violanta, aptly said, “I look at my passport and I laugh. It says I am Ukrainian, but I am not treated like one.”

Violanta and Angelina are Trayvon Martin, too.

The World Is Trayvon Martin

George Zimmerman’s lawyer claims that his client is not racist, and now he is playing the “I-have-Black-friends-and-mentor-Black-kids” card,  as if his 40-plus phone calls to police and his eerily racist 911 call do nothing to undermine the validity of his claim of innocence.

There are many George Zimmermans in the world. Men who want to play cop without the proper authority. Fans who feel they they are the ultimate judges of who belongs and who doesn’t. Ordinary citizens treating those who don’t look like them as second class citizens–or worse– in their own countries.

The beauty of the web is that we can send out a call to the world that we in America feel the pain of all of the Trayvon Martins who live on this planet in fear. As human beings and concerned citizens, we must unite and summon to justice all the George Zimmermans of the world, whether they be in the United States or Ukraine. Wherever injustice currently exists, we must demand true justice to move in and prevail.

Most importantly, we must realize that being a Black man or woman is not a stigma: It is our God-given birthright. Let us all stand as one. Let us all have the ethnic pride to walk proudly in our own brown skin and claim our Blackness.

We are Trayvon Martin.

Blogger Tara Servatius (pictured below) posted a story Monday on the John Locke website that discusses Obama’s recent decision to take a public position against North Carolina’s proposed marriage amendment just to boost his chances of winning the state in November.  The editorial was accompanied by the controversial altered shot of Obama.

Hood claims that he did not know about the photo until late Wednesday evening, when outraged civil rights activists got wind of it and demanded that it be taken down from the site.  The fetish-wear photo, which has been referred to as blatantly racist and homophobic, was removed from the site as of 10 p.m. Wednesday night.  Hood issued the following apology about Servatius’ bad call on the company’s Facebook page:

John Hood is embarrassed and angered today. Earlier this week, a freelancer who blogs at the John Locke Foundation’s Charlotte site posted a piece about President Obama’s opposition to North Carolina’s marriage amendment. It included an illustration that was offensive and utterly inappropriate for our blog or anyone else’s.

A reader brought it to my attention yesterday, and I had it removed immediately, but…the damage was done. I’m sorry I didn’t see it earlier and I’m deeply sorry it was our site for any length of time. The political discourse in our state and nation has grown increasingly coarse, unnecessarily personal, and destructively vitriolic. This is the kind of episode that can only make the situation worse. We should be able to disagree about controversial issues without it coming to this.

Critics are suspicious of the site’s slow reaction in taking the photo off their site, wondering why there were no registered complaints from readers, editors, or writers over the two days that it was posted.  Afterward, Hood relegated Servatius to the title of “freelance blogger.”  Yet the woman, who has since resigned from her position, seemed to have had a key leadership role at the company as the author of most of the blogs on the site.

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Servatius, who was the host of a radio talk show in Charlotte, North Carolina, was fired from her position last year due to her controversial opinions on politically sensitive issues.  Now, the “journalist” has also issued a laughable apology according to WRAL, which has left many stupefied:

I am genuinely sorry my inclusion of the photo along with my blog post has caused controversy for the John Locke Foundation.

If it has offended anyone, I sincerely regret that. That was certainly not my intention and I would feel awful if that was the case. It was meant to illustrate Obama’s southern political strategy, nothing more. An honest reading of the piece itself shows there is nothing offensive in it.

If you read the piece that goes with it, you will see that I actually think that holding the marriage ban vote this year is a bad political move in North Carolina because it could distract voters from the economy, which should be the main issue.

Best Wishes,

Tara Servatius

PS: At the time, I was searching for a picture of the president in drag to illustrate his southern political strategy of courting young voters, 70 percent of whom support gay marriage. It was one of the first photos to come up on Google Images.

“Regrettably, I didn’t think about the racial implications of the picture when I posted it. I simply don’t think in those terms. Unfortunately some people do. To me,  fried chicken is simply a Southern Cuisine.”

NAACP President Rev. William Barber met with Hood on Thursday, according to WRAL to discuss the graphic image that was posted on the conservative think tank site.  Barber issued the following press statement on the foundation’s Art Pope Exposed site, regarding the offensive image:

We at the NC NAACP have learned of the disgusting picture of our President on the John Locke Foundation blog and website. What we have seen so far has both racist and homophobic overtones, both of which are contrary to the fundamentals of our democracy. It’s outrageous and it shows the kind of racialized, mean-spirited and divisive political attitudes that still exist in the South.

On Thursday, we will demand to know who authorized and developed such a racist and bigoted portrayal to be placed on the site of an organization that seeks to have so much influence into the shaping of public policy in NC. Whoever did it is completely over the line. It is reckless and dangerous. And should not only be an afront to the black community, the civil rights community, the LBGT community, but every North Carolinian.

So far, there have been no comments from President Obama about the disturbing graphic.

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After the letter made its rounds on the Web via blogs and other social sites, Union County officials saw fit to address the offensive note. Via a statement, the school district apologized for the letter, but not before mentioning that this same letter has been used for the past eight years without any complaints from parents:

“While it was well-intended, it was poorly worded,” Ingram said in a statement. “We are reminding all of our principals to be very sensitive in word choices when communicating with parents concerning different ethnic groups and cultures that make up our world.”

Intention aside, school officials seemed clueless and defiant after explaining to the Charlotte Observer that their suggestion of African-American attire simply referred the traditional African clothing that students learned about during Black History Month in February.

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As Jordan Shumate recalls the incident to The Post, the teacher didn’t hold back in punches in expressing her displeasure with how he was reading the poems.

“She told me, ‘Blacker, Jordan — c’mon, blacker. I thought you were black,’ ” said Shumate, who is African American.

When he refused to comply with her ridiculous request, the teacher read the poem herself. “She sounded like a maid in the 1960s,” Shumate told The Post. “She read the poem like a slave, basically.”

Watch a video report of this story to see Shumate express his shock at his teacher’s behavior. And check out the rest of the print version of The Post article here.

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Circulating on Facebook, a picture of a bumper sticker, reading, “Don’t Re-Nig In 2012,” (pictured left) is making feverish rounds. While Obama’s iconic red, blue, and white logo is crossed out, the bumper sticker makes it very clear that Obama opposers are going above and beyond the idea of just being against Obama politically.

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More to the point, the word Re-nig, which, we’re sure the architects of the message thought was a clever play on the aforementioned word renege mixed with the word n*gger (LOL!), takes the anti-Obama sentiment to a whole other level.

According to Technorati, this slogan originally appeared on a T-shirt on a website called “Zazzle.com” back in 2010. The website sells customizable T-shirts, mugs, and other paraphernalia. The author of the slogan, reportedly called “XUBERALLES,” took his name from the Nazi slogan “Deutschland Uber Alles” or “Germany Over All” — so you already see where this is going. Back then, there was a backlash to the shirts and the subsequent Facebook page that cropped up last year.

I guess folks thought it would be even more creative to resurrect this pithy message on a bumper sticker….

While many a racist — at least those who would actually know what renege means; after all, we wouldn’t want to go around making assumptions — is sure to get a hearty laugh at this one, the real truth is that displays such as this, whether real or photoshopped, show why Republicans have increasingly been tagged as the party that is also against women, gays, immigrants, the poor, and really just anyone who doesn’t look like … the sexy John McCain (pictured above)

Good luck with the 2012 presidential election, GOP! We’re guessing your party is going to need all the help it can get, since most of your supporters will be unable to crawl away from their walkers and nursing homes in order to vote.

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BDS, which is also applicable to Black cats, is a disturbing phenomenon that can supposedly be traced to a few factors.  Large Black dogs are typically stereotyped as aggressive and menacing.  Then there are some schools of thought that associate Black pets with evil or bad luck as with the superstition surrounding Black cats. Finally, some people are just afraid of their look, often referring to these Black dogs as ominous creatures that inspire fear.

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In Hollywood, White has always been depicted as heroic and Black as villainous.  Black dogs throughout time have also been cast in this vein.  In “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” a big Black dog called “the Grim” stalks Harry. In British folklore, there are stories where Black dogs are depicted as scary, ghostly objects that are omens of death.

While many argue that Black dogs are indeed the last to be adopted and the first to be euthanized, there are some naysayers who contend that BDS is simply a misperception.  According to Dr. Emily Weiss, a certifed applied animal behaviorist and vice president of the American Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ shelter and development division, “Right now, there is no scientific data – or research on length of stay – to prove that Black dogs and cats take longer to be adopted. But we do have some anecdotal information from shelters that it can be more difficult for them to [be] adopted.”

Why judge a pup by its color?

There has been some additional speculation as to why Black dogs and cats may be hard sells.  One reason might be because some Black animals have bits of White hair on their mugs that might contribute to an older appearance. Many dogs with Black coats tend to be larger. These Black animals might have also developed reputations that have stereotyped them as aggressive, such as the Rottweiler and Doberman pinscher breeds.

Another reason why some folks just don’t want to deal with Black dogs is because they don’t like the look of the animal’s dark hair shedding on their furniture. A final guess as to the shortage of Black pet adoptions could be attributed to the over abundance of Black dogs and cats at shelters. Potential adopters may conclude that due to the sheer numbers of them, there is something  wrong with them.Although the aforementioned reasons are merely published theories by animal activists, Dr. Weiss adds yet another reason as to why these pets may not be the pick of the litter:

Understanding BDS can change the odds for homeless Black dogs and cats. It should go without saying that the color of an animal’s coat is not a true measure of a pet’s temperament.  Black animals are just as loving and playful as lighter colored ones.  The selection of a pet should be based on what is the best fit for a potential owner regardless of coat color and once this is understood, perhaps that Black doggie in the window can find a home filled with love.

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In a test of volunteers who took the beta-blocker propranolol, results showed that were less racially biased than subjects who took a placebo.

Two groups of 18 participants took part in the study. Each volunteer was asked to undertake a “racial Implicit Association Test” (IAT) one to two hours after taking propranolol or the placebo, according to an Australian Associated Press report.

The volunteers categorized positive and negative words and pictures of Black and White individuals on a computer screen. Those who took propranolol scored much lower on the racial IAT and a third of them achieved a negative score, meaning a majority of their subconscious associations were non-racist. No one in the placebo group had such results, according to the study.

Researchers believe that since racism is linked to fear, propranolol may have affected the volunteers’ responses.

Propranolol works to temper nerve circuits related to heart rate and the part of the brain that monitors fear and emotional responses.

Oxford University experimental psychologist Sylvia Terbeck, who led the study and published it in the journal Psychopharmacology, explained:

“Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias. Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality.”

However, Oxford professor Julian Savulescu, a co-author of the study, wouldn’t concede that the finding puts a “cure” for racism around the corner.

He noted that biological research aimed at improving people’s morals has a dark history. He says:

“Propranolol is not a pill to cure racism. But given that many people are already using drugs like propranolol which have ‘moral’ side effects, we at least need to better understand what these effects are.”

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Brett Johnson is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based writer and the founder of the music and culture blog VeryArtistical.com.

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However, white students who listened to Top 40 pop acts like Gwen Stefani or Akon were more likely to be fairer to other ethnic groups, according to a Daily Mail article about the study published in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media‘s March 2012 issue.

Researchers tested nearly 150 students by having them listen to different genres then asking them questions on how funds should be distributed in college between a range of ethnic-based groups.

The findings showed that because rock is associated with white people, white listeners unconsciously favored their own race after listening. During the study, the students recommended that money be doled out mostly to other white students. When they listened to more pop songs from artists like Fergie, the students divided money more equitably between whites, blacks and Latinos.

Heather LaMarre, an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Minnestoa, explained the results.

“Rock music is generally associated with white Americans, so we believe it cues white listeners to think about their positive association with their own in-group. That was enough for them to show more support for a student group representing mostly whites.”

Associate professor Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, who also worked on the study, explained further:

“Music has a lot of power to influence our thoughts and actions, more than we often recognize. It has the power to reinforce our positive biases toward our own group, and sometimes negative biases toward others.”

Read more here.

Do you agree with the study’s findings? Does listening to rock music make whites racist? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Brett Johnson is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based writer and the founder of the music and culture blog VeryArtistical.com.