Acting White: Jena Six

On July 30, an all-white jury in Jena, Louisiana found black high school student Mychal Bell, guilty of aggravated second degree assault and conspiracy, related to injuries to a white student. The assault was the culmination of events following black student desire to sit under a heretofore ‘whites-only’ shade-tree at their school.

Upon review of the facts, as we know them (and this is not easy) it appears that the entire town, from school leaders, to the students, to the district attorney and including law enforcement, have lost their collective ethnic minds – or probably never had them. Unfortunately, the Jena Six boys are destined to pay the most significant price for the town’s resulting cognitive and behavioral meltdown, which began with three hangman’s nooses.

To cut to the chase, once the townsfolk hostilities entered the arena where people were grabbing their guns and getting knocked unconscious, someone should have realized that charges would eventually follow, and be serious. It may very well be racism that had this game of ‘musical chairs’ stop on the lives of the black boys, but no one should have been surprised – certainly not the black parents or the boys themselves. Why sacrifice your kid to remind us that the world is not fair?

Now America may, once again, be ‘surprised’ and embarrassed that racism is still alive and well. Some of us may indeed double our efforts, locked arm-in-arm with our favorite Reverend, to bury racism next to the N-word. But the truth remains. Ignorance is all that is required for people to square-off. And there is a lot of ignorance in this country about how we arrived at our present calamity.

To add salt to the wound, it seems that young Bell’s court-appointed attorney put up no real defense of the lad – certainly grounds for appeal. I guess the NAACP was too busy planning the next symbolic funeral instead of trying to save these kid's real futures.

I can only hope for a measure of divine intervention in Jena that somehow recovers the opportunity these people could have, if only their brains worked properly. However, it seems that I am probably asking too much.

James C. Collier

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Acting White: When Race is NOT the issue.

Today I took my daughter to see Barry Bonds try to tie the home run record of Hank Aaron. The record will eventually fall, but not this day. However, the afternoon did give me motivation to catch-up on the latest discussions of Mr. Bonds, steroids, baseball, and racism.

I have seen numerous headlines asking whether Bonds is being subjected to a double-standard of behavior vis-à-vis white players who have alleged to, or admitted to, use of performance enhancing drugs.

I have also heard blacks say that if Bonds gets an asterisk by his name in the records books, so too should Babe Ruth. The logic here, which I needed help to comprehend, was that Ruth set the record during a time when blacks were barred from the majors, therefore all the records of that time are suspect in similar fashion.

Regarding the asterisk defense, I would say that everyone knows that Ruth never faced the likes of Satchel Paige, arguably the greatest pitcher in the Negro Leagues, for reasons having nothing to do with either man, but rather the times. Baseball history will forever suffer the consequences of those times. But beyond this loss, sometimes the times should simply rest in peace. Put the shovel away, declare victory and move on.

Regarding the Bond’s double standard, it’s too bad that race goes so well with every argument. If we do not like someone who is black, it must be because we are racist, or self-hating, no matter what form of behavior that person presents to the world. Race is like the joker in a deck of cards, it trumps everything to the point of uselessness.

I have said it before; I am no fan of Bonds because he is as bad a sportsman as he is a great hitter. Blackness has nothing to do with it. I do not think anyone should have to pretend to like him or lay off him in any way, in some guilt-induced attempt to prove they are not racist. This would be insulting.

I think the absence of Aaron himself, a classy guy if ever there was one, says it all about the validity of this record breaking event.

James C. Collier

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Acting White: Harry Potter and Black Boys

My 12 year old son is a Harry Potter maniac – and has been from the start. I have always looked upon this as a sign of his healthy development, but his fascination takes on even greater significance as we consider the disparities between black and white and how they are reinforced. We have encouraged him to have heroes of all types, especially color. To do anything else would be to limit the dream engine powering him towards all that he can do and be in life.

However, my son is not like most black boys. He is so fearless of the accusation of ‘acting white’ that he would gladly stand in a line for hours to buy the latest Potter book, movie ticket, or a high-tech wizard’s wand. Less we worry, he is truly agnostic, having pursued Star Wars, and Jedi Samuel Jackson’s Mace Wendu costume, with a vengeance. A white kid in his school pointed out on Halloween that Harry Potter was white, to which my son replied, ‘so’.

We are bombarded daily, including this blog, with the differences between black academic achievement and the rest of America. Black males graduate at less than 70% the rate of whites for a myriad of reasons, including the notion that boyhood emulation of non-black heroes, athletic or academic, is somehow not right for black kids. Well this is definitely a position to re-consider. The boy doesn’t want to be white, he just wants to turn his sister into a hamster, for heaven’s sake!

It is great that millions of white kids wanted to be like Michael Jordan, and it is perfectly okay for black boys to believe in Santa Claus and want to be like Harry Potter. Tragic is the only word that comes to mind when I think of a kid with no dreams because none seem to fit the color of his or her skin.

James C. Collier

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NAACP Symbolically Burys N Word

NAACP Symbolically Burys N Word - AP

Gestures are good. Saying hello, for instance, to people in an elevator is a nice thing to do. Slowing to allow cars to merge into traffic is another. But some gestures, like burying the N-word are silly, even at the hands of the once mighty NAACP. Not because the N-word is good, for it certainly is not. However, ‘nigger’, or any of its variations, is a vessel of ignorance, regardless of whose mouth it exits, and it is this ignorance that needs a real funeral – not one for show.

Burying the word in a ceremony is no different than putting departed Aunt Sadie’s favorite dress in the ground, while her body lays somewhere unattended and in open-air decay. The ignorance that has blacks and whites using the N-word so creatively, in all directions, sits fully nourished away from the spotlight of the cameras, microphones, and salivating ‘info-tainment’ hounds reporting on its faux demise.

I attended an open-air farmer’s market this past Sunday and in the midst of the organically grown fruits and veggies was the drone of an amateur gansta-rapper whose ignorance was ever-present, without a single utterance of the N-word, the H-word, or any other expletive begging for deletion. I was nonetheless annoyed and embarrassed by what he was saying, as well as how he was saying it.

When the young, thuggishly adorned, man finished his serenade, I was amazed that some people clapped their seeming approval and encouragement. I did consider that their reward may have been to secretly encourage the sweet silence following his finish. In a world where good is bad, and up is down, I would have desperately taken the long-odds that the clapping would tell this kid that he needed to get back to his real future - the books. But no such luck.

Fortunately, I had a back-up plan – an unceremonious exit to my car, organics in hand, where Fourplay was waiting on the CD to take me home.

James C. Collier

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Acting White: Vitamin D, Autism, and Learning Disadvantages in Black Children

Hypovitaminosis D is a medical phrase that we should all begin to get use to hearing, as it relates to our health. It is the medical description for the numerous and varied maladies stemming from vitamin D deficiency.

While the medical community scrambles, some would say haplessly, to get the word out on the critical importance of vitamin D, the leading edge of that same community continues to unearth data pointing to its widespread health impacts in whites, people-of-color, and particularly in blacks.

In this latest installment, the implications of inadequate D levels are linked to autism, analyzed by factors of race and latitude – the determinant of intensity of sunlight. Autism, a psychiatric disorder of childhood characterized by marked deficits in cognitive and intellectual development, represents the tip-of-the-iceberg analysis of vitamin D effects on women of childbearing age, pregnancies, and fetal and early childhood development through adulthood.

If autism is, in any part, the worse possible result of epidemic-levels of vitamin D deficiency, showing itself in 6 of each 1000 children (US), how might millions of children and adults manifest lesser symptoms in ways that correlate to D levels from the melanin in their skin and the amount of sunlight they are getting each day? Black children in the US score an average of 15 points lower than white children on the same controlled intelligence tests, for reasons that continue to elude the best psychological and educational research.

So not only are we coming to understand that the higher rates of internal cancers, diabetes, hypertension, et al, in black adults has correlated origin in vitamin D deficiencies, but that black children are likely at the front of the line of getting short-changed in their neurodevelopment, beginning nine months before taking their first breath.

New York City Schools will shortly begin a highly-publicized cash incentive program for coaxing improvement out of under performing black kids, and this may be well and good, but paying kids money to learn when their essential vitamin D levels are slowing them down, like a drag-shoot, makes little sense. The vitamin D levels of most of these kids, like their parents, are so low that they fail to register at all in health screening.

Innovate sure. But, while we are at it, how about wrapping some free vitamin D around a promotional campaign? It's just a cheap pill and our future, regardless of race.

Take D and live! (and get some for your kids, too!)

For more information, check out www.vitamindcouncil.com.

James C. Collier

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Regrets of a School Dropout

The Regrets of a School Dropout -

Thoughts for Larue Campbell et al,

"In the end, all things being equal or not, success in life is a self-selecting process. As individuals we option ourselves in or out, depending largely on the choices we make on our behalf, regardless of externalities. Those who succeed, do so by ‘hook or crook’, against overwhelming odds. Those who fail can always point to the behavior of others, but also with an invisible wink-and-nod to their own complicity. Advantage over the daunting odds is to be found in innumerable places along the way. For the privileged, it can often be purchased, or arrive as a bestowed right, or legacy, of the past. Whether this is fair or not, is a question of moral debate, but unquestionably it remains how the world operates. For the poor masses, advantage almost always comes through education, acquired with determination, and against systems designed to maintain the status quo, despite contrary rhetoric. In all cases, assimilation is the cornerstone, or lever, to achievement of change for the better."

James C. Collier

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African American Seeks to Prove A Genetic Link to James Madison

African American Seeks to Prove A Genetic Link to James Madison - Washington Post

I do no care if the founding fathers personally held slaves. Whether each owned slaves does not change the fact that they were, individually and collectively, responsible for a system of government and laws that enslaved people, period. Those that did not hold slaves were no better or worse than others, for they all benefited from and enforced the practice.

Furthermore, any offspring of slave women and slave masters, founding fathers or not, deserve no special recognition beyond any other slave offspring of the time. To recognize them as special is to somehow, posthumously, recognize, and thereby reward, these white men who exploited black women in the most despicable of manners.

As for the comparison between George Washington, who is believed to have freed his slaves upon death, and James Madison, whose slaves were sold instead, we must be careful not to read too much into this difference. Slaves were generally affixed to the actual plantation property, and mortgaged along with it. Settling the indebtedness of the estate was the overriding determinant of whether slaves were sold upon the master’s death. Inasmuch as this settlement was carried out by executors, with only a fiduciary responsibility to the estate and debt holders, the slave master’s wishes, whatever they might be, could only come into play after all debts were paid.

I, for one, am dubious of black people who go looking for their white ancestry with the implicit hope of proving themselves worthy of any kind of attention, due to the fact.

James C. Collier

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Court Limits Suits on Pay Discrimination

Court Limits Suits on Pay Discrimination - Washington Post

There is little doubt in the minds of most women and minorities that they must make a greater effort to achieve pay equal to White males. This is the case whether one is the singular Lilly Ledbetter at Goodyear, or nearly 80 million African-Americans and Latinos.

While protection from racism initiated the 1964 Civil Rights laws, it was good fortune that had sexism tacked on, in a failed last-minute attempt to thwart the act. Nonetheless, the legal protection for the two is the same. On the surface, the recent Supreme Court ruling against Ms. Ledbetter’s discrimination award seems based on a technicality – a 180-day filing requirement - and the prevailing justice’s predictable interpretations. But there is more to it.

If we accept, for the moment, that minorities and women must work harder for the same pay, relative to White males, might we ascertain a measure of how much harder they must work? What of this effort is due to discrimination? Could reasons exist beyond these traditional culprits of gender and race?

This debate begs the clarifying distinction of whether the minority worker is required to produce more output for the same pay, or does circumstance, which we shall review, cause him or her to expend more effort to produce the same result as a White male.

Historical data, compiled by many sources, including the National Urban League, a long-time leading civil right organization, tells us that for every $1 that a White man in America earns, a black man will earn approximately $0.73. Wage disparities exist for males and females as well, with the rate for men being higher relative to women. Under these terms, the Black man earns 27% less than does his White male counterpart, for possessing the same qualifications and performing the same work. However, if we examine what is required to produce the same output as a White male, yielding true equivalency, the question is really about why the Black man, as folklore describes it, is working ‘harder’ than his White peer. In fact, if he is truly working harder, in effort or hours, to produce the same result, would this not describe him as relatively less efficient and therefore deserving of a lower compensation? Alternately, if he consistently produces the equivalent or greater output of a White man, for a similar effort and time, a disparity in wages means the case for racism would exist.

The logical question for a wage disparity analysis is whether the differences we experience are predominantly skills based, and therefore a market-driven response in pay, or more simply they are related to sex, race, or some other non-objective criteria. Central to the study is the point at which skills development disparities reveal themselves, prior to hire, along with the degree to which the employer can accurately assess any divergence and legally act upon it. Organizations act on what they know, or suspect, by either not hiring an individual or hiring and, more reactively, employing that person at a reduce wage over time to reflect any revealed disparity in output, or efficiency.

Studies of school-age children have shown that divergence of skills occurs early and sustains itself through adolescence and into adulthood, at rates comparable to the wages disparities we see. The best measure of this skills disparity is graduation rates, at nearly 30% lower for blacks in high school, and 43% lower for White females versus White males in college (engineering sciences). It is counter-intuitive to expect wage rate disparities in women or African-Americans to be anything other than consistent with this divergence in performance established in early childhood through working-age. Importantly, this data is not saying why the skills disparity develops, just that it is real, and wage disparities are a market response.

The Supreme Court may have chosen a technicality for explaining their reversal of Ms. Ledbetter’s victory, however, our misunderstanding of the origins and relationship between long-term skills development and wage disparity, which the high court failed to illuminate in their decision, is a side-step of the issue. This maneuver will have supporters of each position preparing for a rematch down the road, rather than moving toward better programs to close the performance and wage gap.

James C. Collier

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Pope: Injustices Done in Colonization

Pope: Injustices Done in Colonization - Washington Post

With all due respect to his holiness, the Pope is blowing smoke at the people of Brazil, and the rest of the world, for that matter. The missionaries that brutalized, raped and pillaged all corners of the world in the name of Catholicism, did so with the full knowledge and support of laws tailored by and for their religious expansion.

If the pontiff is really sorry for the sins of his predecessors, I would personally ask why his Church is spending $200 million in Oakland CA, to build a downtown cathedral, with architectural splendor glorifying God, while failing the community the Church is claiming to serve? A community, by the way, whose poor are in crises, not including sexual abuse by Catholic priests under cover of Church leadership.

Less there be any doubt in our minds, a quick trip to Rome educates us to the export business of the Church and the historical and economic benefits received. The city, including the Vatican, is awash in wealth derived from forcing vulnerable communities into their brand of Christianity, including remunerations to the mother Church for the privilege.

There is no doubt that the church should be embarrassed by their past, considering that it claimed to be the moral ‘compass’ at that time, as it does now. The truth, of course, is that the church’s moral authority has been no better or worse than any other organization or sovereignty, in search of selfish fulfillment. In fact, the number of people killed in the name of God has always ranked well ahead of all other second place atrocities of man.

Apologize all you want, but what about the people?

James C. Collier

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Finding Ways to Better School African American Boys

Finding Ways to Better School African American Boys - Washington Post

I just drove a black male classmate of my sixteen year-old daughter to his home, after he and my girl worked together on a class project, under the watchful eye of her mother. Our not-so-baby-girl has not earnestly begun dating, so this boy captured my yet-to-be-throttled interest.

He is in the process of transferring to a better school, in academics and sports, so we had something else to talk about, aside from any hidden hormone-driven agenda I might ferret out, accidentally (of course). The fact that the boy was damn handsome, in a geeky sort of way, did not help his case one bit.

Not too surprising to me, I liked the boy. He is smart, serious and funny, respectful, proud, and best of all, he wants to make something out of himself. Now clearly, he was putting on a show for me, but damn if he did not put a very good display of what success in a young black male might present, 3.6 GPA and all.

This boy was so impressive that I introduced the subject of my son, age 12, and some of his growing pains, firmly planted in my backside. Again, the kid stepped up. He gave me some advice, base on his own experience, which I will surely try to utilize on my son.

All this is to say that meeting this kid gave me optimism that I have not felt for a long time regarding what will become of black boys-to-men in this country. He is just one kid, and certainly he is lucky to have parents who care greatly for his well-being. However, I parted with him thinking that this kid will succeed in life, and just maybe my daughter will be fortunate to fall in love with someone like him, when they are ready.

James C. Collier

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Sally Jenkins - Landis: Doping Or Just A Dope?

Sally Jenkins - Landis: Doping or Just a Dope? - washingtonpost.com

James C. Collier

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Lawmakers Find $21 a Week Doesn't Buy a Lot of Groceries

Lawmakers Find $21 a Week Doesn't Buy a Lot of Groceries - Washington Post

James C. Collier

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Obama Downplays Campaign's Racial Factor et al

Obama Downplays Campaign's Racial Factor - AP

A Question Of Race Vs. Class - Washington Post

Barack Obama can soft-shoe around the issue of affirmative action for his two daughters if he wants, and this might be well and good for this stage of his candidacy. However, his words do not mitigate the fact that at least two ‘little’ issues in this scenario remain unaddressed.

The first issue is that affirmative action is arbitrary in applying to his rich kids and to poor black kids as well, while ignoring poor and deserving non-blacks. In this way, AA does more damage than good because many more blacks are injured by a resentful society of whites, still largely in control. Their bad attitudes prevail after more than a generation of getting short-changed, amidst black malaise.

The second issue is that regardless of rich or poor, the ‘plus-factor’ points handed out by admissions committees cannot translate into academic performance on par with kids who earned their place, via the textbook trenches. Whether as legacies or AA admits, mediocre grades follow arbitrarily placement in classrooms over their academic heads.

So, in the end, America is left to guess at what Mom and Pop Obama really believe about themselves and all the folks who either want to keep or jettison affirmative action. The soft-shoe may work for now, but dancing in the middle of the road ultimately sets up two-way road kill.

James C. Collier

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The Sting of the Bee

The Sting of the Bee - Washington Post

My kids pushed me to see the movie ‘Akeelah and the Bee’. In fact everyone who knows me seemed to push me to see this movie. Once I watched it, I understood why they saw me all over the screen. I have said, some might say droned, that academic competition fosters intellectual advancement – something first forbidden by slavery law, and now shunned as a part of black culture.

Competition, via academic contests, may be bad for white kids suffering from Advanced Placement overdose, but for black kids, it is essential medicine. The fierce competition on the schoolyard playing fields and courts desperately needs to occur in the classroom as well, in order for us to escape the ‘bottoms’. Competitive spirit and mastery that follows are not beyond the abilities of black kids, but they are currently beyond the dreams of too many.

Pedagogically, good spelling is right up there with mastering nouns, verbs, adjectives and the like. Why? Because there is a logic, or critical reasoning skill, to good spelling, that becomes part of the learning base and which reinforces confidence. Without this knowledge base, all learning becomes much more difficult, leading blacks away from the competitions that accelerate development.

Upon entering my Jesuit high school, thirty-five years ago, the kids with the weakest verbal scores were required to take four years of Latin. Now it may indeed be a dead language, but it certainly brought to life my understanding of grammar, sentence structure, and the critical thinking all good communication demands. The nuance of words is expressed in the variations of spelling. Poor spelling and poor thinking go hand-in-hand.

As for competitive pressures - acknowledging accomplishments is important, but too often society is celebrating it’s ‘first black’ this or that, ignoring the question of why it took so long, except when racism is deemed the culprit. The day when black kids look forward to spelling bees, math bees, writing contests, and debate teams, will be the sounding bell of blacks meeting, en masse, the intellectual disparities the group and the rest of society suffers.

Making black contributions to advancement commonplace, rather than exceptional, in our own eye for starters, is what we really need.

James C. Collier

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O.J. Tossed From Steakhouse On Derby Eve

O.J. Tossed From Steakhouse on Derby Eve - AP

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50 Years Later, Little Rock Can’t Escape Race

50 Years Later, Little Rock Can’t Escape Race - New York Times

The story of the sacred cows.

In the beginning, the first cows into the barn let all other manner of cows, weak and strong, join, even though resources are scarce and the farm is in difficulty. It is this burden, in part, with weak cows, that is holding back the progress of the farm. The lead cows justify their actions by saying, ‘we are just doing what the previous cows did’. But the previous cows paid the price for their misdeeds – they are now wandering the fields, hungry - and this too is the looming fate of the current cows.

Now along comes a special cow with proven leadership, who says he knows of ways to progress. With difficulty, he releases the marginal cows into the field and focuses on the opportunities of the cows that remain. The farm begins to improve and everyone is glad, except the first cows and their remaining cohort. They feel vulnerable because their status is no longer protected by friendship and seniority, but rather is based on their contribution to the farm.

The disgruntled cows look for opportunities to thwart their new leader, and return to the past. They say he smells and acts different than them, and that other cows should not be fooled by the apparent progress of the farm, by his hand. They confront him with issues unrelated to the objectives of the farm, as proof that he is unworthy.

In the end, the first few cows re-establish their domain so that they are to be happy once again, while the farm threatens to slip back into poor health. Cows who believed in the new leader will retreat and leave for better opportunities, while the farm and its sacred cows will ultimately cease to exist.

James C. Collier

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Acting White: Cho Didn't Get Court-Ordered Treatment

Cho Didn't Get Court-Ordered Treatment - Washington Post

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Republicans Defect To Obama Camp

Republicans defect to the Obama camp - TimesOnline

While time and the electorate will decide if Obama can be president, he is playing it smart so far. He is really an immigrant-minded politician who happens to be black, rather than a man vying to be the first black president. The distinction is very important.

The background and the behavior model that lead him to his current spotlight is one of assimilation and competition, not redress for past sins. This has put off many blacks who remain steeped in outmoded civil rights strategies and tactics. But, it has also has invigorated blacks and whites who are looking for someone pushing something other than the familiar black is good, white is bad rhetoric.

Of course, there is a potential downside to his approach. Conservative whites entering Democratic politics can also purposely push Hillary to second place, thereby leaving the eventual Republican candidate to a one-on-one with the ‘black guy’, with all the race-card politics that are available for play by the Lee Atwater note-takers. Call this getting 'Bushwhacked'.

Finally, the leadership of current President Bush has left the whole political landscape in such rubble that the entire electorate may just be as disenchanted as his approval rating suggest. In that case, it could be a real ‘horse race’, where people honestly vote their hopes for a leader who will pull up on the stick.

James C. Collier

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Acting White: Paris Heads To Jail

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Acting White: We Are Hokies!

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