Parents Upset After Georgia Elementary School Uses Slavery Examples In Math Worksheet

Parents in Norcross, Georgia blasted school officials at Beaver Ridge Elementary School after teachers gave third graders a math worksheet that used examples of slavery in word problems. Following the uproar, district officials said the school’s principal will work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons, but that didn’t go far enough for parents who called for an apology and diversity training for teachers at Beaver Ridge, where a majority of the students are minorities. (More)

Barack Obama And Slavery Reparations – Source: Open Salon

The Law of Punishment and Reward

Anyone who captures a free person, brings them to another country against their will, forces them to do manual labor without pay, while physically and psychologically abusing them – denying them equal rights to resources are creating a moral and ethical system by which redress is inevitable. Although the era supported this type of behavior and it was acceptable by the legitimate government one could argue that no wrong was committed – except the one who was subjected to the treatment. For them, it was not consensual therefore it’s illegal and degrading. Let’s say he/she was subjected to this type of treatment suddenly and unexpectedly. The psychological ramifications would be astronomical leaving mental scars for generations to come. (Read more)

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Reparations

PURE UNADULTERATED RACISM – A MUST READ ARTICLE by THE BLACK LONG ISLAND ICED TEA PARTY

PURE UNADULTERATED RACISM

 

By Helen L. Burleson, Doctor of Public Administration

 

The President of the United States cannot say what I’m going to say. I am going to say it loud so that it resounds all over this land.  Racists, racists, racists! Racism is alive and SICK in America. Racial hatred is alive and SICK in America.

Can I prove it? Yes, I can.

 

I am 81 years old so I have lived through 13 administrations of presidencies: some weak and ineffective, some strong and yet neglectful; and yet a few, passionate, caring and humane.

These Republicans and Libertarians today are still fighting the Civil War! There is Texas where the governor is Republican Rick Perry. This Southern state wants to engrave the Confederate flag on the license plates of all the citizens in the state. There are Southern boards of education including, but not limited to Tennessee, Texas and Virginia who want to rewrite the text books either to omit slavery or to revise and rearrange history to fit their biased views. These three states all have Republican governors. The Tea Party, a group of extreme right-wing conservative theorists are among the proponents of this revisionist, altered version of American history. There are those semi-literate legislators, like Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, who say the Founding Fathers fought to eliminate slavery. There’s a Southern governor, Republican Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, who knows nothing about slavery and racial tensions in the South. Ignorant! Yes, that’s a part of it; but, the main thing is their psyche. Taught at an early age to look down upon and to hate people of African descent, this hatred is buried deep, deep, within the throes of every fabric and fiber of their beings. Just as a light weight object put into a glass of water will float to the top, no matter how long racism has been festering in their bodies, confronted with a president of African descent, the covert racism rises to the top. All of the subliminal messages weighing them down for years since infancy, now surface; and unabashedly, they would rather see this Nation, this Democratic Republic crumble as long as they can blame this Black man and cause his Waterloo! This is not my position. This is not my inference. This is exactly what some of these racists legislators have said. There is concrete evidence that they said it. I don’t have to make it up or falsify what they said, it is there on video preserved for the lifetime of this Nation for the whole world to see that a group of racists legislators, like Republican Congressman Mitch McConnell, are so determined to make the presidency of President Barack Obama, a one-term presidency that they frankly, as Rhett Butler said, …don’t give a damn,,,”

 

Collective bargaining came into existence in Wisconsin; but Republican Governor Scott Walker, a governor influenced by Libertarian billionaires, destroyed it with the stroke of a pen. Social Security signed into law by Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the more effective, caring and humane presidents, is about to undergo the chopping block despite the fact that workers have paid into the system all of their working years. Medicare and Medicaid, humane programs signed into law by Democrat President Lyndon Baines Johnson, designed to aid the elderly, the infirm and women, infants and children are about to come under the blade of the guillotine!

These programs benefit people most of whom have worked on minimum wage jobs all of their working years. Some of them are unmarried and/or divorced women, failed by the declining education system, find themselves unprepared to find work that will sustain themselves and their children.

 

Combined with racism is also classism; and, viewed and pursued by some, they are one and the same. Classism divides Americans by social strata with three defined levels: upper class (those with wealth accumulated either by top earning occupations or by inheritance), middle class (those who are either professional, have managerial positions or government workers with wages above the minimum income level, sometimes referred to as white collar workers), and lower class (those who work in production whose manufacturing jobs for the most part have been shipped overseas, often referred to as blue collar workers). Then there’s the undefined and often ignored underbelly of society who are invisible because they make no demands on society. They are the ones who roam the streets at night or sleep over the grate or under bridges, in bus stations or wherever they can lay their heads as they use what little belongings they have as a pillow under their heads. They are the unemployed, the homeless and hopeless, many are former military personnel who served their country all the while being neglected by their country. Many Americans of African descent have managed to escape the net and the web woven that would keep them out of the middle class, have benefited from these social programs after retirement years which has sustained them, along with their pensions,and have managed to remain middle class.

 

As one legislator decried, “This is class war!” Yes, it is! Though some semi-literate, misinformed legislators called President Obama an elitist, it is they, many formerly poor boys, who through their positions living off the dole of the citizenry, now look down on the very people from whom they rose. There are some ill reared and ill bred who call the President of the United States, a liar! Because my mind is alert and fertile, I challenge any American to refute any of the facts that I am stating. Never in the history of this country has an American President been openly disrespected as has President Barack Obama. One “pretender to the throne,” Republican part-time governor, Sarah Palin, while in India spoke derisively about the President while on foreign shores, all the while saying that this is inappropriate. One thug of a legislator, Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, of South Carolina, called out, to President Barack Obama, “You lie!” during the State of the Union Address. Just the other day in July, 2011, another barnyard pig of a legislator, Republican Congressman Joe Lucas, of the 8th District of Illinois, called the President of the United States a liar.

Of course American ethics, morals and morality have gone to hell in a hand basket; but, when this same “pretender,” Sarah Palin, featured on the cover of a major magazine, Newsweek, dressed inappropriately in a tight sweater opened a bit too much, then the world can see for itself the depravity and degradation of American principles and the American people.

 

As Republican President Abraham Lincoln stated eloquently, “ A house divided against itself, cannot stand,” we have reached that fork in the road and America is on the path to destruction at the hands of a few, petty, pampered, pretty boys who in their efforts to appease their “masters” are driving this country off a cliff!

Until we get a Secretary of Psychiatry to free racists of the hatred they are harboring, America will not prosper. America is already close to being displaced by China as the world’s greatest power; and, this is only because of the pure unadulterated racism pervasive throughout this land.

Source: The Black Long Island Iced Tea

Confederate ghosts in the South’s attic – Source The Institute for Souther Studies

Facing South is your weekly source for in-depth coverage and fresh perspectives on the South, published by the Institute for Southern Studies. Visit here to join or donate.

DATELINE: THE SOUTH – News and trends
FEATURE – Virginia reawakens the South’s Confederate ghosts
INSTITUTE INDEX – Disaster in the coal fields
DATELINE: THE SOUTH – News and trends

DISASTER-STRICKEN WEST VIRGINIA MINE HAS A HISTORY OF TROUBLE: So far 25 coal miners are reported dead in an explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, W.Va. — and federal records show the facility has a history of safety problems. (4/6/2010)
NEW FED RULES ON MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL OFFER HOPE FOR APPALACHIA’S ENVIRONMENT: The EPA intends to curb damages from surface coal mining operations with an innovative approach to limiting water pollution allowed in affected streams. (4/6/2010)
TAXPAYERS LOSE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN OFFSHORE DRILLING: President Obama’s push to expand offshore oil and gas drilling will force his administration to confront a dysfunctional federal program that has cost taxpayers billions of dollars in corruption and lost royalties. (4/6/2010)
EPA MOVES TO VETO MASSIVE MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL OPERATION IN WEST VIRGINIA:The Obama administration takes a step toward keeping its promise to crack down on the environmental damage related to mountaintop removal coal mining. (3/29/2010)
LOUISIANA ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM CASE GETS INTERNATIONAL HEARING: An international human rights body has agreed to consider a petition charging the U.S. government with violating the rights of predominantly African-American communities exposed to alarming levels of toxic industrial pollution(3/29/2010)
THE SOUTH AND AMERICA’S PRISON EMPIRE: Robert Perkinson’s new book explores why the criminal justice system in the American South is so punitive, and why that history is so hard to overcome. (4/5/2010)
FEATURE – Virginia reawakens the South’s Confederate ghosts
By Chris Kromm
When Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared April as the state’s Confederate History Month, Republican operatives likely thought it was a safe and symbolic gesture that would please the state’s older conservatives.

Instead, it’s exploded into a national news story, raising sharp questions about how race is used in politics — and how the South’s Confederate past still haunts its political present.
The biggest scandal is what McDonnell’s proclamation left out: Not once, in five "whereas" clauses, did it mention slavery. McDonnell batted away criticism about the oversight, saying:

"There were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia."

Which apparently didn’t include 4 million African-Americans held in slavery. By the end of the day, after critics including the GOP-inclined Richmond Times-Dispatch denounced him, McDonnell shifted gears and added another clause stating "the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice."
But it was too little, too late — and didn’t hide the fact that McDonnell’s "omission" wasn’t an accident: As Adam Sorensen at Time points out, earlier Republican proclamations for Confederate History Month did include references to slavery; McDonnell just cut them out of his version.
NEO-CONFEDERATES AMONG US
For Southerners, the McDonnell affair is hardly Big News. As historian James Loewen documented in his excellent book Lies Across America, Southern states are filled with thousands of historical markers, tourist sites and other remembrances of the Confederacy that downplay, or entirely omit, the essential racism behind the Confederate project.
The end result is that Southerners grow up surrounded by one-sided history, etched into the very landscape. Attempts to romanticize and rehabilitate the Confederate past can take on near-comical proportions. As Loewen wrote for Southern Exposure magazine in 2000:

Although many Confederates were conquered in spirit in 1865, between about 1890 and 1930, neo-Confederates declared victory on the landscape all across the United States, including places that never existed or never were Confederate during the war. A Confederate monument dominates the lawn of the east Bolivar County courthouse in Cleveland, Mississippi, for example, "To the memory of our Confederate dead, 1861-65." The only problem is, Cleveland, Mississippi, had no Confederate dead. Cleveland did not exist during the Civil War or for some decades afterwards.

Even when historically accurate, these ever-present memorials usually go beyond remembering Confederate "heritage" and end up glorifying the Confederacy.
Consider the Arlington Confederate Monument, where even President Obama felt obliged to lay a wreath in 2009, like all presidents before him. As leading neo-Confederate scholar Ed Sebesta pointed out in a letter to Obama at the time, the goal of the monument was not just to remember the Confederate dead, but to champion the Confederate cause.
Indeed, the Arlington monument’s Latin motto is "Victrix causea Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni." That translates into, "The winning cause pleased the Gods, but the losing cause pleased Cato" — the implication being that Cato, the stoic advocate of "freedom," would have sided with the Confederacy, a sentiment that descendants of slaves would find deeply ironic.
The same is true with the Museum of the Confederacy, also in Virginia. As Southern Exposure reported in 2000, future President George W. Bush was a donor to the museum’s annual Confederate ball, which each year draws hundreds of all-white guests in period costumes.
But the Museum of the Confederacy is hardly an innocent history operation: Its store is stocked with far-right literature on race and politics, including books by neo-Confederate ideologue Ludwell Johnson, who in 1993 was appointed as a "museum fellow" — author of "Is the Confederacy Obsolete?" and other calls for revival of the old Southern system.
Sometimes, the racial motives of Confederate remembrances are subtle. Other times, they are crystal clear, as with the decision to adopt Confederate flags in Georgia (1956) and South Carolina (1962). Today, historians agree these moves were timed by white leaders to protest the growing civil rights movement and its attack on Jim Crow.
So McDonnell’s antics and appeals to Southern white racial resentment are hardly new, or news, in the South.
But the scandal does pose hard questions for conservatives: How will such thinly-veiled racial codes by Southern politicians play out nationally? What does this mean for their efforts to reach moderates and independents?
And as the South and country grow more racially and ethnically diverse, how do appeals to Old South racial politics help conservatives’ long-term political prospects?
(To comment on this story, please click here.)
INSTITUTE INDEX – Disaster in the coal fields

Number of miners confirmed dead in an April 5 explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia: 25
Number still missing: 4
Date on which U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the miners died "unnecessarily": 4/6/10
Number of times miners were evacuated from the Upper Big Branch mine over the past two months due to dangerously high levels of methane, suspected to have been a factor in the explosion: 3
Number of times the mine was fined for ventilation problems last month alone: 3
Number of times federal inspectors shut part of the mine since 2009 after finding serious safety violations: 54
Number of workers previously killed at Upper Big Branch since its 1994 opening: 3
Number of workers who suffered injuries there during that time: 229
Number of regulatory citations and orders issued against the mine since it opened: 3,035
Number of citations Massey received last year alone for serious safety violations there: 50
Number of those citations it appealed: 37
Date on which a congressman complained at a hearing that the number of appeals by coal companies since the 2006 passage of tougher mining laws threatened to render "meaningless" accountability efforts: 2/2010
Percentage by which the appeal rate has grown since the 2006 law was passed: 300
Percentage of underground mines nationwide that are in compliance with the 2006 law: 10
Number of criminal charges a Massey subsidiary pleaded guilty to in 2008 after two miners were killed in a fire and it was discovered that the company had removed ventilation controls:10
Date on which Massey CEO Don Blankenship told a West Virginia radio network that safety violations are "a normal part of the mining process": 4/6/10

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Speaking Truth to Power – Thanks, But "No Thanks!"by William Reed Columnist

This is right on target. C. Dancy II – DCN Publisher

Sorry, but “sorry” just won’t do. 

By now you know that the U.S. Senate has been moved to apologize for slavery.  Those drafting the resolution said it was important for Americans to apologize for slavery “so they can move forward and seek reconciliation, justice, and harmony for all people of the United States.”  But, there is trickery in this contriteness. The Senate tacked a disclaimer to the resolution saying that nothing in it authorizes or supports reparations for slavery.  The only Black in the 100-member body, Roland Burris said: “the disclaimer in no way would eliminate future actions that may be brought before this body that may deal with reparations.”

African American descendants of slaves have to show their loathing for this farce.  Jesse Jackson calls the act "a meaningless gesture with no meaningful commitment to deal with the impact of something as serious as slavery."  American history shows that a substantial debt is owned to descendents of slaves for the 250 years of free labor and another 100 years of economic subjection after slavery. Blacks willing to accept the Senate resolution should consult with Randall Robinson, author of "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks" first.  Robinson says: "Much is owed, and it is very quantifiable.  It is owed as one would owe for any labor that one has not paid for, and until steps are taken in that direction we haven’t accomplished anything."  America’s debt to descendants of slaves ranges over 400 years.  After being freed, for the next century generations of Blacks were relegated to a damaging second-class status.  Obstacles to Black’s economic justice included the Jim Crow; prison camps that provided free labor, lynching, redlining and educational and job discrimination.

The Senate’s apology follows a pattern of government contriteness.  In 2008, the House of Representatives also passed an apology; the key difference being that the Senate version explicitly deals with the issue of whether slavery descendants are entitled to reparations, saying the resolution cannot be used in support of claims for restitution.  And the scam will continue.  The House is expected to revisit the issue to conform its resolution to the Senate version.  After doing some basic calculations, African Americans should tell Congress to “slow your roll”.

Much is owned the descendants of slaves for three centuries of free slave labor and their housing and clothing allowances don’t count.  Early America’s South became a formidable agricultural society through the expansion of tobacco, rice and indigo plantations and later cotton.  Cotton became America’s leading export, exceeding in value all other exports of the period combined.   When “Cotton was king” it helped place America on the world stage as a viable economic entity.   Slave labor and underpaid black workers not only picked the cotton but laid the railroads, worked in the factories and erected the nation’s buildings.  Ironically, the Congress that doesn’t want to pay reparations was meeting in one of two important buildings built by free slave labor.  Black slave labor was involved in construction of the U.S. Capitol and the White House.  Slaves hoisted the Statue of Freedom atop the dome of the Capitol in 1863. Basic calculations prove that the amount of reparations owed for slavery is a staggering sum, with estimates ranging from $2.5 trillion to $8.3 trillion.

Despite any rationale whites declare that the liabilities of slavery are passé, today’s establishment continues to reap the benefits of slavery: Jim Crow, restrictive covenants, and all the other crimes and abuses of their forefathers.  Despite the increased numbers of Blacks in middle and upper income levels, and measurement made among Americans today will show racial disparities persist in income or wealth, education and home ownership and, are growing.

It’s time for sensible African Americans put an end to this foolishness.  Before we know it, Blacks will be denied legacy due them forever.  Expressions of apology have also been considered in a number of states, and eight: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Jersey have apologized for slavery without any payments allocated.  Nebraska and Missouri – are considering similar resolutions.

(William Reed – www.BlackPressInternational.com)