Tag: racism

‘Reclaim Australia’ attracts large crowds

The ‘Reclaim Australia’ protests on Saturday were held in 16 cities and towns nationwide, attracting hundreds of demonstrators, who said they are against the imposition of Sharia law, and the wave of multiculturalism that has swept the country.

Muslim community leaders expressed fear and bewilderment after protesters gathered in over a dozen Australian cities at the weekend to express their opposition to minority groups, who want to ‘change the cultural identity of the country.’

Randa Kattan, CEO of Arab Council Australia, warned such racist type of events could quickly spiral out of control.

“In terms of numbers they might be insignificant, but in terms of damage, it is significant,” she told the Guardian.

She called the protesters “squeaky wheels grabbing attention,” but was careful not to underestimate such groups for attracting interest to their cause.

“It only takes one incident,” she warned.

However, the anti-Islam protesters met stiff opposition from the left-wing umbrella group ‘No Room for Racism.’ Tensions peaked in central Melbourne, where police struggled to keep anti-Islam and anti-racism protesters separated. Medical officials said four people were treated for minor injuries, while police spokeswoman Belinda Betty said two men and a woman were arrested following the violence.

More than 100 police were deployed, with almost a dozen mounted police also helping to keep the situation under control.

Starbucks’ race crusade goes cold

The water got too hot for Starbucks’ ill-defined race crusade.

The java giant is pulling the plug on its controversial “Race Together” campaign, according to a company memo from CEO Howard Schultz.

Baristas were no longer to write “Race Together” on customers’ cups starting Sunday, concluding the most visible part of the company’s diversity and racial equality campaign.

The unorthodox marketing move was supposed to turn the coffee corporation’s stores into impromptu forums for racial dialogues, but even Starbucks staffers seemed confused by it.

Many said they barely had enough time to fill out orders and were never briefed about the campaign before it was launched, the Daily News reported last week.

“While there has been criticism of the initiative — and I know this hasn’t been easy for any of you — let me assure you that we didn’t expect universal praise,” Schultz said Sunday.

Starbucks has no plans to stop other parts of the initiative, including forums and the hiring of 10,000 employees from diverse backgrounds to man new coffee shops in disadvantaged urban areas.

The race crusade was largely panned by employees after it was launched Monday. Schultz maintained the campaign was designed to make sure that “the promise of the American Dream should be available to every person in this country, not just a select few.”

Source: nydailynews.com

Chomsky: American prosperity linked to slavery, racial oppression

American economic prosperity is inextricably linked to its history of slavery and racial oppression, and fears that black people will take revenge are ‘deeply rooted in American culture,’ says academic, author, and dissident Noam Chomsky in a recent interview with the New York Times.

Chomsky talked to George Yancy, as part of a series of conversations with philosophers about race for the Times’ Opinionator blog. Reflecting on Chomsky’s recent book “Western Terrorism”, Yancy — a philosophy professor at Duquesne University — notes that “many black people in the United States have had a long history of being terrorized by white racism.”

Referring to the recently published economic history of slavery, “The Half That Has Never Been Told” by Edward E Baptist, Chomsky connects that terror both to American economic prosperity and pervasive white fear of reprisals:

“We also cannot allow ourselves to forget that the hideous slave labor camps of the new ’empire of liberty’ were a primary source for the wealth and privilege of American society, as well as England and the continent. The industrial revolution was based on cotton, produced primarily in the slave labor camps of the United States.

As is now known, they were highly efficient. Productivity increased even faster than in industry, thanks to the technology of the bullwhip and pistol, and the efficient practice of brutal torture… The achievement includes not only the great wealth of the planter aristocracy but also American and British manufacturing, commerce and the financial institutions of modern state capitalism.”

The myth of American success through free-market capitalism is intimately tied to this early system of racial oppression, Chomsky explains.

Yancy points out that even Thomas Jefferson — who wrote that slavery was “the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other” — nevertheless expressed opinions that “black people are dull in imagination, inferior in reasoning to whites, and that the male orangutans even prefer black women over their own,” demonstrating racism in the most “enlightened” circles of the country’s founders.

But, of course, as Chomsky points out, the systemic attack on black lives and freedom did not end with slavery or even with the death of Jim Crow in the Southern United States.

“Reagan’s drug war, deeply racist in conception and execution, initiated a new Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander’s apt term for the revived criminalization of black life, evident in the shocking incarceration rates and the devastating impact on black society.”

Chomsky calls a historical narrative that ignore this foundation the “most appalling contemporary myth” of American society, and denies that we can just put the past behind us and “march on to a glorious future, all sharing equally in the rights and opportunities of citizenry.”

“The appalling statistics of today’s circumstances of African-American life can be confronted by other bitter residues of a shameful past, laments about black cultural inferiority, or worse, forgetting how our wealth and privilege was created in no small part by the centuries of torture and degradation of which we are the beneficiaries and they remain the victims. As for the very partial and hopelessly inadequate compensation that decency would require — that lies somewhere between the memory hole and anathema.”

Chomsky also commented on the shifting targets of American racism, and addresses anti-Muslim sentiment, which he attacked head on in his critique of the movie American Sniper.

Despite the bleak outlook and the constant efforts to erase the history of the violent racist origins of America’s unequal prosperity, Chomsky does see avenues for change.

Source: Sputnik

‘Exclusively for white people’ stickers appear in Texas

Employees at several Austin businesses have found stickers saying “exclusively for white people” placed on their windows, sparking an investigation into their origin and condemnation from the mayor.

Mayor Steve Adler said the stickers discovered Wednesday morning were “an appalling and offensive display of ignorance in our city.”

The stickers also say “Maximum of 5 colored customers / colored BOH staff accepted,” apparently referring to the “back of house” operations at a restaurant. They featured a city of Austin logo and claimed to be “sponsored by the City of Austin Contemporary Partition and Restoration Program,” though no such program exists. The city has said the use of its logo was unauthorized.

Austin is one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. and is confronting increasing questions about economic and racial segregation as real estate prices skyrocket around its urban core.

Raul Alvarez, board president for the East Austin Conservancy, said the stickers are likely in response to gentrification in the area on Austin’s east side.

“I certainly share the concerns about the history and culture and affordability that’s being lost because of the rapid development, but our organization tends to focus on what it is we can do to preserve what makes East Austin unique and not focus on strategies that divide the community,” he told the Austin American-Statesman newspaper.

“I don’t really understand the message behind it,” said April Jensen, who is African-American. “All types of customers come in here.”

Bryce Bencivengo, spokesman for the city of Austin, tells the San Antonio Express-News that city officials along with the Austin police are investigating the stickers’ origin.

Nelson Linder, president of Austin NAACP, called the stickers “absolutely stupid.”

“Don’t put signs like that on people’s doors because you want to bring attention to your plight,” he said.

Terrifying ordeal for Ramsgate couple

One of the most terrifying cases of late involved a dramatic jump from a top story window by a 57-year-old Ramsgate woman who wanted to alert her husband to two masked black men who had broken in at breakfast time on Monday.

Police spokesman Captain Gerald Mfeka said Arnold Miller (72), of Ilala Crescent, had taken his daughter to school, leaving his wife, Patricia Lorraine Tench-Wilkinson, home alone.

Ms Wilkinson shared her terrifying ordeal with the Herald.

“I had just made coffee for myself and Arnold. I left his cup in the kitchen, went upstairs to watch the news, leaving the kitchen door open for him and our domestic worker. Suddenly there was a knife at my throat and my three gold chains were ripped off my neck.”

Two men tied her hands and legs with cable ties, then taped her mouth. They demanded money and the keys to the safe and threatened to rape her.

When Mr Miller arrived home the men went downstairs to confront him. Mrs Wilkinson managed to break free, jumped through a window and landed on a pot plant.

She couldn’t see her husband, so – badly bruised – she limped to a neighbour for help.

Meanwhile, the black intruders had already overpowered Mr Miller and were pushing him up the stairs. He managed to surprise them and slammed a security gate closed between them.

They shot him twice in the leg and fled.

“I heard my husband shouting for help and ran back into the house.There was blood everywhere and I remember him saying he was going to die. Luckily the ambulance arrived quickly and he was taken to hospital.”

He is in a stable condition. No arrests have been made.

Where Arnold Miller (72) was found by his injured wife
Where Arnold Miller (72) was found by his injured wife

Source: South Coast Herald

White woman assaulted for filming an assault by blacks

A heated debate turned into a violent racial altercation when black staff and management at the Centurion licensing centre apparently assaulted a white women filming an assault.

“I went with my father to the Centurion licensing offices. One of the managers was verbally and physically assaulting a woman waiting in line,” said the white woman, who asked not to be named.

“This came when the centre refused to help the first woman after she was told she would find the necessary forms inside the centre. When she went inside, she was chased away because she did not have the forms she was promised she would find inside. After an extended altercation, she was thrown out of the centre.”

The second woman said some of the other black staff in the centre thought she was recording the episode as she had her cellphone in her hand.

“One of the black testing officials tried to force me to hand over my phone. I refused, and in the altercation with her, she scratched me in my face.”

The woman claimed that black security guards physically tried to force her outside, but she resisted. A black manager then attacked her from behind, and dragged her outside, she said.

Other black staff then started shouting that the white woman had “stolen” a cellphone. The woman said she left and laid a charge of assault at the Lyttelton police station.

“We are not leaving this here. This is unacceptable,” she said.

However when she reported the assault to the police, she learned that a case of assault had been opened against her by a black licensing department official.

The case was dismissed by the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court due to the spurious nature of the licensing official’s claims.

The case against the staff member of the licensing services is still being investigated, and has not been dismissed by the court.

UK teenager arrested after racist soccer tweet

A teenager has been arrested on suspicion of sending a racist tweet aimed at black Arsenal striker Danny Welbeck.coon

The post was made after Welbeck netted the winning goal during an FA Cup quarter-final clash against his former club Manchester United on 9 March.

The slur was one of a number of messages posted in the aftermath of Welbeck’s return.

Tweeted by user @angeIsleftfoot, the offending message was posted after Welbeck’s decisive role in Arsenal’s 2-1 Quarter Final victory at Old Trafford.

Officers in Manchester with specialist training in social media identified the user and passed on the information to Wiltshire Police, who confirmed they have now made an arrest.

Welbeck was shown the door by United boss Louis van Gaal last year, who claimed he was not good enough.

The 15-year-old boy, from the Salisbury area, was arrested on suspicion of racial abuse and released on bail until 13 April, Wiltshire Police said.

Covering Cecil John Rhodes in black poo

Chumani Maxwele threw human faeces at the statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town on Monday in order to eradicate the white liberal scourge he says.

“It is not about me; it is about change. We as black students do not feel at home at UCT,” he said.

Maxwele says blacks want to end the divide between black and white students at UCT since the whites who come to black protests do not “ask us back to their big mansions”.

It appears that the ultra left-wing Max Price is not the most progressive vice chancellor UCT has ever had after all.

“We want whites to be more accommodating of us, to try to understand us,” Maxwele declared.

Maxwele, a 30-year-old political science student, said he threw faeces at the statue to highlight “our shame”.

“We want white people to know how we live – we live in poo.

“I am from a very poor family; we are using portaloos. Are you happy about that? In order for me to bring evidence, I have to give Cecil John Rhodes a poo shower and whites will have to see it.”

“Whose land was it in the first place? I have no problem with the history of Rhodes but it can stay in the books or in a museum.

“I don’t want him at UCT and I don’t want to sit in a hall named after [Leander] Starr Jameson, a brutal racist.”

Is Apple’s latest feature for Whites only?

On the back of the new Apple Watch, there are two sets of lights and sensors. One sends out and receives visible light, while the other works in the infrared part of the spectrum. Together, they form the technical core of the watch’s coolest feature–a heart rate monitor.

This kind of design–using optical sensors to measure pulse–is not unprecedented, but Apple, of course, claims to have improved the system over competitors like the Basis Peak, Samsung Gear Fit, or Mio’s line of activity monitors. Which would be a good thing, because these systems have struggled with their accuracy.

And because of the technology that most smart watch makers, including Apple, have chosen, the problems may be exacerbated if you have darker skin.

The technology is based on a laboratory technique called photoplethysmography, which uses a “pulse oximeter” to measure the components of the blood. A light pulse is sent through the skin and picked up by a sensor. Based on how the light scatters, the sensor can measure how oxygenated the blood is, which allows one to calculate heart-rate based on how often fresh, arterial blood is pumping through.

In the medical context, this oxygen level tends to be measured by a little finger cuff. So the light is on one side of the finger and the sensor is on the other. Even in this more controlled setting, there have been conflicting scientific reports about whether skin color impacts the accuracy of readings.

But no one wants to wear a finger cuff around while they work out, so fitness band companies have had to make do with the wrist. Even a flashlight can shine easily through one’s fingers, which makes the sensing task easier. A wrist-mounted sensor has to rely on the light that’s reflected back from the blood, not shining through it. That’s harder.

The skin on the back of the wrist tends to be darker, too, especially for people with more melanin. “The light has to penetrate through several layers…and so the higher the person is on the Fitzpatrick scale (a measure of skin tone), the more difficult it is for light to bounce back,” explained Basis COO Bharat Vasan to CNET.

Basis, and presumably Apple, try to compensate for skin tone by shining brighter light when someone’s complexion is darker.

Using optical technology to measure heart rate might also mean that people with darker skin will experience a greater drain on their watch battery, because of the more intense light required to power the sensor. The light required to do accurate measurements was enough to push Apple-competitor Jawbone away from an optical system to an electrical one: “Because bioimpedance requires significantly less power compared to optical sensors for same level of accuracy, we can deliver a smaller form factor and longer battery life,” they claim.

Source: Fusion

Relocation of Aboriginals sparks outrage

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised eyebrows for saying indigenous people in the country’s remote areas are making a lifestyle choice as opposed to preserving cultural heritage, the Australian Broadcasting Network (ABC) reported Wednesday.

Abbott’s comments came Tuesday as he voiced support for a plan to shut down over 100 Aboriginal communities and relocate some 1,000 Aboriginal Australians closer to more populated areas with more accessible public services.

“I think it is a very disappointing and hopeless statement by the Prime Minister,” Noel Pearson, an Aboriginal Australian lawyer and land rights activist, told the broadcaster.

According to Pearson, the Australian government’s proposal is part of a policy “thought bubble” that has not been expressed in writing and does not contain a sustainable plan for the community’s future.

“There was time in our history when they kicked us out of town and now they want to bring us back in just by a flick of the policy switch,” Pearson said.

Although Aboriginal Australians retain unique status in the country, they remain unacknowledged by the Australian constitution and Canberra does not recognize the legal force of the UN Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples.

Source: Sputnik News

Racial tension leads to street fight with dangerous weapons

Police on Long Island, New York are investigating after black high school students attacked a white teen using baseball bats and brass knuckles following a lunchroom dispute.

A family member of one of the students involved tells NBC 4 New York the brawl over the weekend was a manifestation of ongoing racial tensions between the students. Black teenage thugs had constantly been bullying the white teen.

The melee broke out Saturday afternoon in an industrial park following a dispute at Connetquot High School in Bohemia, police and family members of those involved say. Authorities say about 10 students were involved in the fight, with black students arriving with deadly metal baseball bats and brass knuckles.

Video obtained by NBC 4 New York shows several teens standing in a street arguing before the fight breaks out.

One person, who is black, accuses a white person of calling him a racial epithet. Then, one of the black participants can be seen pulling a metal bat out and handing it to another teen.

A black teen can then be heard saying, “Take the brass knuckles off, bro” to the teen who initially had the bat.

An African American, an 18 year old, holding the deadly weapon, starts yelling at his white victim: “Listen nigger, I’m from Queens, I’ll beat the shit out of you!”

The video shows another black teen run up and punch the white teen in the face with brass knuckles. At that point, all the students begin brawling in the street.

Another African-American can be heard saying “I brought a bat…but I didn’t use it.”

Police say the fight happened on Remington Boulevard in Ronkonkoma Saturday afternoon, in an industrial area about one mile from the school. A 15-year-old white student suffered a broken jaw and was rushed to Stony Brook Hospital for surgery.

No other students were seriously hurt.

The school district said earlier Tuesday that it tried to intervene following the lunchroom dispute Friday, the day before the brawl, and contacted the students’ parents.

Oklahoma University expells two students over racist song

As the University of Oklahoma expelled two students Tuesday for leading a racist song that sparked outrage across the country, the fraternity involved said it would investigate incidents at other campuses as it faced questions over the chant’s use by members at other universities.

Former members of the fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, claimed on social media that the same chant was used at colleges in other states, and University of Oklahoma officials investigating the episode said they did not believe the song had originated on their campus.

Protests were held in Norman on Monday on the University of Oklahoma campus.

MSM has been buzzing since members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon were shown in two videos chanting a song whose lyrics included racial slurs boasting that there would never be an African-American member. The song also referred to lynching, with the words “You can hang ’em from a tree.” The videos were recorded on Saturday night as fraternity members and their dates rode a bus to a formal event celebrating the national organization’s Founders Day.

The fraternity — started in 1856 in Tuscaloosa, Ala., before the Civil War — celebrates its Southern heritage. Its online magazine, The Record, described an initiative “to bring Sigma Alpha Epsilon closer to its antebellum roots, closer to the original experience and goals shared by the founding fathers.”

A libertarian group, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said Tuesday that it was unconstitutional for the university to expel fraternity members for their speech, no matter how hateful.

A new video spread on social media on Tuesday showing the white woman who was the fraternity’s live-in “house mother,” Beauton Gilbow, 79, laughing as she repeatedly says a racial slur while singing along to a rap song in the background. The footage was posted in 2013 to the video sharing service Vine.

In Stillwater, the Oklahoma State University student newspaper published pictures of a Confederate flag visible in the room of a Sigma Alpha Epsilon member at the fraternity house over the weekend. The chapter’s president told the newspaper, The O’Colly, that the Confederate flag had never been a symbol of the fraternity and that he and other chapter leaders had asked the student to remove the flag.

In 1982, the University of Cincinnati suspended its Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter for two years after it held a “trash party” on the eve of the holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and passed out fliers encouraging revelers to bring canceled welfare checks and “a radio bigger than your head.”

The Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter in Norman has had black members, but very few, and none recently, according to alumni. William Blake James II wrote on his blog that when he joined in 2001, he was only the second black member, “and there still hasn’t been a third black man,” an account supported by some of his former fraternity brothers, writing on Facebook.

Source: NYT

Ferguson: Hunting down white racists only

What better way to quell a black uprising in Ferguson, Mo. than to hunt down white “racists” by exposing a number of carefully selected private emails?

One Ferguson Police Department employee has been fired and two others have been placed on leave after federal authorities identified them as responsible for writing personal emails with a “racist” content, the mayor of the city said.

The Justice Department meanwhile has cleared the police officer of civil rights violations in the death last August of the black Michael Brown.

The decision ends a lengthy investigation into the shooting last August, in which the officer, Darren Wilson shot and killed Brown in the street as he tried to stop him for a possible theft. Several witnesses said Brown, 18, had his hands up in surrender when he died, leading to violent clashes in Ferguson and nationwide protest chants of “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

But federal agents and civil rights prosecutors rejected that story, just as a state grand jury did in November.

The announcement comes as the Justice Department issued a 100-page report that found systematic racial discrimination by the Ferguson police officials and the court system against African Americans. Mayor Knowles said the city “must do better” to address racism.

The report on the shooting, an 86-page report, however demolishes the fanciful version of events that sent blacks and liberal whites into the streets chanting “hands up, don’t shoot.”

Nevertheless the DOJ report cited “racist emails” exchanged by Ferguson city employees as examples of a culture that supported “discriminatory behavior” when Wilson was actually cleared of such wrong-doing.

“Our review of documents revealed many additional email communications that exhibited racial or ethnic bias, as well as other forms of bias. Our investigation has not revealed any indication that any officer or court clerk engaged in these communications was ever disciplined,” the report said.

There were no accounts of senior officials asking others to stop sending the emails or any indication of reports being made about inappropriate emails.

– A November 2008 email about Barack Obama, then the president-elect, wondered “what black man holds a steady job for four years.”

– One March 2010 email mocked African Americans through speech stereotypes, using a story involving child support. One line from the email read: “I be so glad that dis be my last child support payment! Month after month, year after year, all dose payments!”

– An April 2011 email depicted President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee.

– Meanwhile, a June 2011 email described a man seeking to obtain “welfare” for his dogs because they are “mixed in color, unemployed, last, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddies are.”

– Another email, from October 2011, included a photo of a bare-chested group of dancing women apparently in Africa, with the caption, “Michelle Obama’s High School Reunion.”

– A December 2011 email included jokes that are based on offensive stereotypes about Muslims.

According to the DOJ report, each of these email exchanges involved supervisors of the Ferguson patrol and court operations.

A DOJ official told reporters that some of the emails were sent by people still involved in helping to negotiate a settlement with the agency. The DOJ declined to identify them.

Regarding the discoveries made by snooping federal officials, Attorney General Eric Holder said that a “highly toxic environment” existed between Ferguson police officers and the city’s African American residents even before the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The unarmed teenager was killed by Officer Darren Wilson in a confrontation that set of weeks of protests locally and nationwide.

“It’s not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg,” Holder said.

He added that excessive force was overwhelmingly used against African American residents, noting that only African Americans were bit by police dogs. Holder said there was “no alternative explanation” except racial bias exists to explain it.

Racist sexual exploitation on an ‘industrial scale’

A total of 373 girls suffered sexual abuse in Oxfordshire, Britain, a report into ‘indescribably awful’ child sexual exploitation has found – and now fears have been raised that the abuse may have been racially motivated.

Over 15 years hundreds of victims as young as 11 were groomed, raped and forced into prostitution by gangs of men ‘predominantly of Pakistani heritage’, a serious case review has found.

The damning 114-page report said victims were in a ‘living hell from which they couldn’t extricate themselves’ after ‘hostile’ officials wrote some off as ‘difficult girls making bad choices’ when they begged for help.

The vulnerable girls were initially showered with gifts before being plied with alcohol and drugs including crack cocaine and heroin, making them dependent on the men who sexually abused them.

Today Thames Valley’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Anthony Stansfeld, said the abuse may have been a ‘hate crime’.

Mr Stansfeld said that ‘from the outside looking in’ it appeared the abuse was in some way racially motivated.

He said: ‘It needs looking at whether this was hate crime. I think it most certainly could have been and it needs looking at.’

Prime Minister David Cameron said this afternoon that the children in Oxford were abused on an ‘industrial scale’ and vowed laws would be changed in the light of revelations and similar scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale.

Source: Daily Mail