This Week In Blackness

One of the six girls who was suspended from her Arizona high school for spelling out the N-word with their shirts after being part of a larger senior class photo has publicly apologized:

“I have come here to say that I am incredibly, incredibly sorry,” she said according to AZ Family. “I have love for everyone in my heart. I am not a racist and I’m asking everyone for forgiveness.”

The girls also explained that they took the picture because one of the girl’s boyfriends is black, and that was who the picture was intended for. Well, that makes everything just fine and non-racisty then!

Team Blackness also discussed the Houston grand jury who indicted the videographer behind the fake Planned Parenthood videos, the Delaware House apologizes for slavery, and Obama bans solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons.

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She’s Not Racist But…Post + Comments (13)

In what should surprise no one, Stacey Dash–best known for her role in the movie Clueless and these days known for her ignorant conservative soundbites–had some eye-opening things to say about the lack of diversity at the Oscars and holidays in general:

“We have to make up our minds,” she said. “Either we want to have segregation or integration. And if we don’t want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the (NAACP) Image Awards where you’re only awarded if you’re black. … “Just like there shouldn’t be a Black History Month. You know?” she said. “We’re Americans. Period. That’s it.”

Doocy then asked if she meant there “shouldn’t be a Black History Month because there isn’t a white history month?”

“Exactly. Exactly,” she responded.

Yeesh.

Team Blackness also discussed Oklahoma City cop Daniel Holzclaw’s 263 year prison sentence, actress Julie Delpy’s apology, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ taking on Bernie Sanders and the liberal imagination.

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Stacey Dash Is Indeed ClueluessPost + Comments (20)

For the second year in a row, there has not been a single Oscar nomination for people of color in any of the four acting categories. Last year there was backlash. This year, Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith have called for a boycott. But not everyone agrees with that line of reasoning, such as Janet Hubert, best known as playing “Aunt Viv” on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air:

Hubert uploaded a grainy, four-minute video in which she addressed Pinkett Smith as “Miss Thing,” then accused her of boycotting the Oscars because Pinkett Smith’s superstar husband, Will Smith, wasn’t nominated by the academy for his role in Concussion. It went downhill from there, with Hubert adding, more or less, that the Smiths’ concern about the Oscars is frivolous in the face of greater injustices against Americans of African descent, and calling the Smiths “a part of the system that is unfair to other actors.”

Team Blackness also discussed our big plans for what to watch instead of this year’s Oscars and comments by Alveda King, MLK’s niece, on Fox News about the “war on police.”

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Aunt Viv Weighs In On The OscarsPost + Comments (19)

Another murder of a Sikh-American man in Fresno, California–the second in as many weeks–shows a wave of violence against Sikhs and Muslims which has grown more intense after the Paris and San Bernadino attacks. During the first attack, which took place December 27:

[Amir Singh] Bal’s assailants reportedly broke the his collarbone in the process of the December assault, yelling racial slurs and asking, “Why are you here?” Three months prior, on Sept. 10, a 53-year-old Sikh American cab driver named Inderjit Singh Mukker was viciously beaten and called a “terrorist” and “Bin Laden” by a teenager in Darien, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Both incidents have a lengthy and troubling precedent. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, hate crimes against Muslims and people misidentified as Muslims in the U.S. have risen from an average of 20-30 per year to 100-150, as Mic has previously reported.

And Sikhs aren’t even Muslim. So way to do your research before you commit a hate crime.

Team Blackness also discussed Bernie Sanders’ money trail, Al Jazeera America’s swan song, and the link between the Charleston church shooting and Louisiana theater gunman.

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The Power of HatePost + Comments (6)

It was with a heavy heart that we watched Obama’s last State of the Union. And like always, he managed to spin a tale of optimism and hope while also calling out his critics:

“As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background,” Obama said, voicing a familiar critique of Democrats and some Republicans at the rhetoric of the billionaire real estate mogul whose populist campaign has taken American politics by storm. “We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world.”

Team Blackness discussed the ups, the downs, and why we’ll miss our 44th president.

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Obama’s State of the UnionPost + Comments (3)

Maine Governor Paul LePage has found himself in hot water for some racially charged comments he made at a townhall meeting on Wednesday night:

“These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty – these types of guys – they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home,” LePage told a large crowd. “Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.”

He later clarified, after lots of outrage, that he meant “Maine women” not “white women.” Well, that just fixes everything.

Team Blackness also discussed babies, an Alabama chief justice’s attempt to block judges from granting same-sex marriage licenses, and Satan.

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D-Money, Smoothie, And Shifty Are Impregnating White Women In MainePost + Comments (19)

It wasn’t Obama’s announcement that he was taking executive action to expand background checks and gun safety measures that infuriated conservatives, it was the fact that he had emotions. And according to the hosts of Fox’s Outnumbered, the emotions weren’t even real:

Andrea Tantaros said that she didn’t buy the emotion because “he would have spoken out a long time ago.”

“This is how many years? Almost eight years, he’s almost at the end of his term,” she continued. “And you haven’t heard him go to Chicago and really speak out about this issue. So, I would check that podium for like a raw onion or some No More Tears,” Tantaros quipped. “It’s not really believable.

Keep it classy, Fox. And let’s remember, we’ve never seen Republicans get emotional *cough* Boehner *cough*.

Team Blackness also discussed more developments in the Cosby case and the Oregon standoff and a new game called Block Lives Matter.

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According to Fox News, Obama Sheds Crocodile TearsPost + Comments (12)

Team Blackness talks about the internalized effects of white supremacy and how oppressive systems turn marginalized folks into tools of oppression for other marginalized groups. Plus, white terror continues in Oregon.

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White Supremacy and Bill CosbyPost + Comments (2)

Good to see that even though we’ve been off air, the horrible things keep coming. Bill Cosby has finally been charged with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2004. Camille Cosby is being forced to testify in the defamation suit:

U.S. Judge Magistrate David Hennessey in Springfield, Massachusetts, said Camille Cosby failed to prove that she and her husband were protected by the state’s marital disqualification law. He also rejected claims that the value of the testimony would be outweighed by the “undue burden” the deposition would cause.

So that’s one down, 5o-some more to go.

Team Blackness also discussed #OregonUnderAttack and the Tamir Rice verdict.

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It’s 2016 And It’s All Still AwfulPost + Comments (2)

So much for her body, her rules: Anna Yocca, a Tennessee woman, was arrested last week and charged with attempted first-degree murder after she was rushed to the hospital following a failed attempt with a coat hanger to abort her 24-week pregnancy. At the hospital she delivered a 1.5 pound baby boy:

Pro-choice advocates see Yocca’s situation as the end result of a rash of highly restrictive laws that have choked reproductive rights throughout Tennessee, largely since voters approved a November 2014 amendment to the state constitution that awarded lawmakers sweeping powers to chip away at access to reproductive health care. … “Tennessee’s homicide law explicitly doesn’t apply to [Yocca],” explained Farah Diaz-Tello, senior staff attorney at the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, “but this arrest tells women that if they try to seek emergency medical assistance, they may end up behind bars. That won’t stop women from having abortions, but it will stop them from getting help.”

Team Blackness also discussed video footage of a Baltimore police officer attacking a protestor for no reason, two high school students who were jailed over wearing baggy pants, and an update on the police officer who killed Amadou Diallo (spoiler alert: he’s just doing fine).

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Her Body, The Government’s RulesPost + Comments (13)

The wait continues for justice for Freddie Gray. A mistrial was declared Wednesday in the case of Officer William G. Porter as jurors deliberated three days only to continue to be deadlocked:

At trial, prosecutors accused Porter not of brutality but indifference, saying he “callously” failed to take simple steps required by Police Department rules — securing Gray with a seat belt and getting him medical attention when he asked — that could have saved his life.

During closing arguments, Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Janice Bledsoe held up a seat belt and clicked it for jurors.

“That’s all it would have taken,” she said.

Porter is the first of six officers to be tried for Gray’s death while in police custody.

Team Blackness also discussed W. Kamau Bell’s call for white people to come and get your boy Trump, Rutgers University cancels a black feminism class, and a look at little diversity there is in tech.

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The Wait Continues For Justice For #FreddieGrayPost + Comments (5)

Last night’s GOP debate was a lot of fearmongering talk about ISIS. Let’s also not forget Ted Cruz’s love of the word “carpet bombing,” Ben Carson’s need for boots on the ground, and Trump making bold statements about not only representing the Republican party as opposed to running independently and his call to ban Muslims from entering the US.

Team Blackness had a lot of words–some fueled by whiskey–about the debate, the Planned Parenthood attacks, Daniel Holtzclaw’s conviction and other news that has happened in the last month while we’ve all been moving.

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We’re Back … And The World’s Still TerriblePost + Comments (13)

Have you heard people saying that the racist incidents at the University of Missouri are just isolated incidents and not indicative of culture of racism on college campuses? Well, you can tell those people to put it in their pipes and smoke it. Students at Harvard Law School found that all the portraits of tenured African-American law professors, which are displayed in the main building, had black slashes of tape across their faces. And this was the morning after students had rallied in support of national calls for racial justice on campuses:

Leland Shelton, the president of the Black Law Students Association, told ThinkProgress that he viewed the incident as a hostile action. It “wasn’t done by an ally. It wasn’t in support of black students and black professors,” Shelton said.

Team Blackness also discussed former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle questionable defense of his pedophilia, the House approves the Syrian refugees bill, and more outrage in Minneapolis in response to Jamar Clark’s death at the hands of police.

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Racist College Campus Incident #30,042: Harvard Law SchoolPost + Comments (7)

So you know that whole separation of church and state this nation was supposedly founded on? Well, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich feels differently. In fact, he’d like to form a government agency to push Judeo-Christian values to China, Russia, Iran and the Middle East. ‘Cuase that’s a good use of government time, energy, and funding:

“We need to beam messages around the world” about the freedoms Americans enjoy, Kasich said in an interview with NBC News Tuesday. “It means freedom, it means opportunity, it means respect for women, it means freedom to gather, it means so many things.” He defended creating a new government agency at a time when fellow Republican presidential candidates discuss eliminating government agencies to making the government smaller. “There’s nobody who’s spent more time shrinking government and cutting budgets than I have.”

Team Blackness also discussed Ben Carson’s questionable grasp of foreign policy and more Republicans being the worst when it comes to refugees.

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Kasich’s U.S. Department Of JesusPost + Comments (28)

So this is incredibly disturbing: two brothers in South Carolina are facing charges that they treated Christopher Smith, a mentally handicapped black employee, like a slave, beating him regularly and paying him what amounted to less than $3,000 a year in salary. He also lived in a cockroach-infested apartment described as “sub-human.” Two attorneys are filing a civil suit on Smith’s behalf after he was rescued by social workers after an anonymous tip:

Smith was routinely called the N-word, according to the suit. He was savagely beaten with a frying pan, hot tongs, butcher knives, belt buckles and fists. He worked 18-hour shifts Monday through Saturday and 11-hour shifts on Sundays with no breaks, receiving little pay. … He was targeted for abuse by the Edwards brothers, they said, because he is black.

Team Blackness also discussed a House member who claims he’s not racist concerning Syria because he had a black roommate, Democratic presidential nominee fails on Black Lives Matter, and what an “anti-white” symbol looks like.

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Filed Under: Little Shop Of Racist HorrorsPost + Comments (8)