tees's Blog

MADISON, Wis. -- The parents of a 14-year-old Town of Madison girl are accused of beating, choking and kicking their daughter in what a detective said is the worst case of child abuse that he's seen.

 

The parents are facing more than two dozen felony charges. Minerva Lopez and Porfino Olivas-Lopez appeared together in Dane County Court on Thursday afternoon.

 

A criminal complaint charges Lopez with 16 counts of child abuse. Olivas-Lopez is charged with 11 counts of abuse.

 

The alleged abuse involves all five of their children, the youngest of whom is just 2 weeks old.

 

The complaint said that the girl's mother beat her daughter with a broomstick, a metal rod, a frying pan and other objects. Prosecutors said that Lopez admitted scalding the girl with hot water, choking her, cutting her wrist with a kitchen knife and biting her face.

 

Court documents said that Olivas-Lopez hit the girl with his fists, kicked and choked her by lifting her off the floor by her neck.

 

Madison police said a social worker went to the couple's home on Pheasant Ridge Trail and found evidence of serious child abuse -- including a frail and likely malnourished child in the closet, WISC-TV reported.

 

The complaint said that the emaciated girl also had broken fingers and a broken kneecap.

 

All five of the children, ranging in age from 2 weeks to 14 years old, appeared severely malnourished, police said.

 

The alleged abuse first came to light when one of the children showed up at school with bruises on her face.

 

School officials then alerted Dane County Social Services.

 

The couple is being held in the Dane County Jail on $40,000 cash bond. They are forbidden from having any contact with the five children; all of them are in protective custody.

 

Detective Robb Hale said that the girl is recovering at a local hospital.

http://www.channel3000.com/news/17617259/detail.htm
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Although, honestly speaking, after the stuff I've read on this site: http://www.parentsbehavingbadly.com/ nothing is surprising anymore.....

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The unlikely stars of Ice Cube's new video are the grieving relatives of a 17-year-old high school football star who was shot to death outside

The song "Why Me?" speaks out against senseless violence and gun crime devastating communities. Cube says Jamiel Shaw Jr.'s family is a powerful illustration of the pain that lingers after a murder. "It just was a tragic, tragic story of why," Cube says. "Young people are dying for no reason all over the world that don't know why. It's ugly, everywhere."

 Shaw had been on track for a college sports scholarship when he was gunned down in March a few yards from his house in a working-class neighborhood south of downtown Los Angeles, California.

 His mother was serving in the Army in Iraq at the time. Pedro Espinoza, an illegal immigrant and suspected gang member who had been released from jail a day earlier on weapons charges, has pleaded not guilty to murder.

Prosecutors say Espinoza drove to Shaw's neighborhood and shot him after asking him about his gang affiliation. Police have said Shaw was never in a gang.

The rap video begins with the tightly framed, sorrow-filled faces of Shaw's parents and aunt. His father recounts a final conversation with his son.

"To drive this home, it was only right to use real family and not use a bunch of actors," Cube says. His video features photographs of dozens of other crime victims blowing from a tree, then across the sand in the desert. It also depicts a young man in a football jersey being gunned down on a street. As he lays dying, he asks, "Why me homie, why me?"

Espinoza's early release from jail led the Shaws to call for the passage of "Jamiel's Law," which would push Los Angeles police to crack down on illegal immigrant gang members.

Cube says the video is not meant as an endorsement of the move. "It ain't really a commentary on that," he says. "You've got a person being killed by a person he don't know for a reason he don't know ... Who cares if it was an immigrant or if it was a taxpaying citizen?"

For the Shaws, appearing in the video was a chance to further their petition drive to qualify the proposed law for the November ballot. "Every time I start watching it, I start crying," Jamiel Shaw Sr. says. "At the same time, I feel good that we are getting the word out."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/06/athlete
.ice.cube.video.ap/index.html

Children aware of voter prejudice in US

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Children are aware white males have monopolized the US presidency, and most attribute the trend to racial prejudice, according to a study published Sunday.

Calling into question the idea children live in a color- and gender-blind world, researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, reveal "most elementary-school-aged children are aware there has been no female, African-American, or Hispanic President."

In addition, "many of the children attribute the lack of representation to discrimination," said Rebecca Bigler, professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, and lead author of the study, published in the journal Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy.

The research team interviewed 205 children aged five to ten in 2006, a year before Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama began their historic bids for the White House. Clinton lost to Obama in the primary fight for the Democratic nomination. The study asked the children, from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, about their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about the US presidency, and specifically about similarities between presidents and the absence of female, African-American and Hispanic presidents.

A third of the children said the white male monopoly was due to "racial and gender bias," and another third believed members of the excluded groups "lacked the skills to hold the position," according to the study. One in four participants told researchers they thought it was "illegal for women and minorities to hold the office of president."

The study found children were generally optimistic about the possibility that they could be president. Girls who attributed the lack of female presidents to discrimination, however, were more likely to believe they could not become president. "The US presidency is a high profile case of racial and gender exclusion," Bigler said in a statement. "And because this topic is not typically explained to children, they appear to create their own explanations for the exclusion," she said.

The 2008 presidential election between Republican candidate John Mcain and Obama, who is black, has the potential to significantly alter children's view, said Bigler. "If Obama loses his bid for the presidency, there may be little change in children's attitudes, but it could fuel their perception that American voters are racially prejudiced," she said. "In contrast, if Obama wins children may believe that exclusionary laws and racial prejudice no longer shape the outcomes of the presidential elections."

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gf5pS0btl8W7HLoK
CsK7ZmnWr4FQ

Explaining White Privilege to the Deniers and the Haters

September 18, 2008, 7:52 am

Explaining White Privilege (Or, Your Defense Mechanism is Showing) 

Sigh.

I guess I should have expected it, seeing as how it's nothing new. I write a piece on racism and white privilege (namely, the recently viral This is Your Nation on White Privilege), lots of folks read it, many of them like it, and others e-mail me in fits of apoplexy, or post scathing critiques on message boards in which they invite me to die, to perform various sexual acts upon myself that I feel confident are impossible, or, best of all, to "go live in the ghetto," whereupon I will come to "truly appreciate the animals" for whom I have so much affection (the phrase they use for me and that affection, of course, sounds a bit different, and I'll leave it to your imagination to conjure the quip yourself).

Though I have no desire to debate the points made in the original piece, I would like to address some of the more glaring, and yet reasonable, misunderstandings that many seem to have about the subject of white privilege. That many white folks don't take well to the term is an understatement, and quite understandable. For those of us in the dominant group, the notion that we may receive certain advantages generally not received by others is a jarring, sometimes maddening concept. And if we don't understand what the term means, and what those who use it mean as they deploy it, our misunderstandings can generate anger and heat, where really, none is called for. So let me take this opportunity to explain what I mean by white privilege.

Of course, the original piece only mentioned examples of white privilege that were directly implicated in the current presidential campaign. It made no claims beyond that. Yet many who wrote to me took issue with the notion that there was such a thing, arguing, for instance that there are lots of poor white people who have no privilege, and many folks of color who are wealthy, who do. But what this argument misses is that race and class privilege are not the same thing.

Though we are used to thinking of privilege as a mere monetary issue, it is more than that. Yes, there are rich black and brown folks, but even they are subject to racial profiling and stereotyping (especially because those who encounter them often don't know they're rich and so view them as decidedly not), as well as bias in mortgage lending, and unequal treatment in schools. So, for instance, even the children of well-off black families are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than the children of poor whites, and this is true despite the fact that there is no statistically significant difference in the rates of serious school rule infractions between white kids or black kids that could justify the disparity (according to fourteen different studies examined by Russ Skiba at Indiana University).

As for poor whites, though they certainly are suffering economically, this doesn't mean they lack racial privilege. I grew up in a very modest apartment, and economically was far from privileged. Yet I received better treatment in school (placement in advanced track classes even when I wasn't a good student), better treatment by law enforcement officers, and indeed more job opportunities because of connections I was able to take advantage of, that were pretty much unavailable to the folks of color I knew growing up. Likewise, low income whites everywhere are able to clean up, go to a job interview and be seen as just another white person, whereas a person of color, even who isn't low-income, has to wonder whether or not they might trip some negative stereotype about their group when they go for an interview or sit in the classroom answering questions from the teacher. Oh, and not to put too fine a point on it, but even low-income whites are more likely to own their own home than middle income black families, thanks to past advantages in housing and asset accumulation, which has allowed those whites to receive a small piece of property from their families.

The point is, privilege is as much a psychological matter as a material one. Whites have the luxury of not having to worry that our race is going to mark us negatively when looking for work, going to school, shopping, looking for a place to live, or driving for that matter: things that folks of color can't take for granted.

Let me share an analogy to make the point.

Taking things out of the racial context for a minute: imagine persons who are able bodied, as opposed to those with disabilities. If I were to say that able-bodied persons have certain advantages, certain privileges if you will, which disabled persons do not, who would argue the point? I imagine that no one would. It's too obvious, right? To be disabled is to face numerous obstacles. And although many persons with disabilities overcome those obstacles, this fact doesn't take away from the fact that they exist. Likewise, that persons with disabilities can and do overcome obstacles every day, doesn't deny that those of us who are able-bodied have an edge. We have one less thing to think and worry about as we enter a building, go to a workplace, or just try and navigate the contours of daily life. The fact that there are lots of able-bodied people who are poor, and some disabled folks who are rich, doesn't alter the general rule: on balance, it pays to be able-bodied.

That's all I'm saying about white privilege: on balance, it pays to be a member of the dominant racial group. It doesn't mean that a white person will get everything they want in life, or win every competition, but it does mean that there are general advantages that we receive.

So, for instance, studies have found that job applicants with white sounding names are 50% more likely to receive a call-back for a job interview than applicants with black-sounding names, even when all job-related qualifications and credentials are the same.

Other studies have found that white men with a criminal record are more likely to get a call-back for an interview than black male job applicants who don't have one, even when all requisite qualifications, demeanor and communication styles are the same.

Others have found that white women are far more likely than black women to be hired for work through temporary agencies, even when the black women have more experience and are more qualified.

Evidence from housing markets has found that there are about two million cases of race-based discrimination against people of color every year in the United States. That's not just bad for folks of color; the flipside is that there are, as a result, millions more places I can live as a white person.

Or consider criminal justice. Although data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration indicates that whites are equally or more likely than blacks or Latinos to use drugs, it is people of color (blacks and Latinos mostly) who comprise about 90 percent of the persons incarcerated for a drug possession offense. Despite the fact that white men are more likely to be caught with drugs in our car (on those occasions when we are searched), black men remain about four times more likely than white men to be searched in the first place, according to Justice Department findings. That's privilege for the dominant group.

That's the point: privilege is the flipside of discrimination. If people of color face discrimination, in housing, employment and elsewhere, then the rest of us are receiving a de facto subsidy, a privilege, an advantage in those realms of daily life. There can be no down without an up, in other words.

None of this means that white folks don't face challenges. Of course we do, and some of them (based on class, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other factors) are systemic and institutionalized. But on balance, we can take for granted that we will receive a leg-up on those persons of color with whom we share a nation.

And no, affirmative action doesn't change any of this.

Despite white fears to the contrary, even with affirmative action in place (which, contrary to popular belief does not allow quotas or formal set-asides except in those rare cases where blatant discrimination has been proven) whites hold about ninety percent of all the management level jobs in this country, receive about ninety-four percent of government contract dollars, and hold ninety percent of tenured faculty positions on college campuses. And in spite of affirmative action programs, whites are more likely than members of any other racial group to be admitted to their college of first choice.* And according to a study released last year, for every student of color who received even the slightest consideration from an affirmative action program in college, there are two whites who failed to meet normal qualification requirements at the same school, but who got in anyway because of parental influence, alumni status or because other favors were done.

Furthermore, although white students often think that so-called minority scholarships are a substantial drain on financial aid resources that would otherwise be available to them, nothing could be further from the truth. According to a national study by the General Accounting Office, less than four percent of scholarship money in the U.S. is represented by awards that consider race as a factor at all, while only 0.25 percent (that's one quarter of one percent for the math challenged) of all undergrad scholarship dollars come from awards that are restricted to persons of color alone. What's more, the idea that large numbers of students of color receive the benefits of race-based scholarships is lunacy of the highest order. In truth, only 3.5 percent of college students of color receive any scholarship even partly based on race, suggesting that such programs remain a pathetically small piece of the financial aid picture in this country, irrespective of what a gaggle of reactionary white folks might believe.**

In other words, despite the notion that somehow we have attained an equal opportunity, or color-blind society, the fact is, we are far from an equitable nation. People of color continue to face obstacles based solely on color, and whites continue to reap benefits from the same. None of this makes whites bad people, and none of it means we should feel guilty or beat ourselves up. But it does mean we need to figure out how we're going to be accountable for our unearned advantages. One way is by fighting for a society in which those privileges will no longer exist, and in which we will be able to stand on our own two feet, without the artificial crutch of racial advantage to prop us up. We need to commit to fighting for racial equity and challenging injustice at every turn, not only because it harms others, but because it diminishes us as well (even as it pays dividends), and because it squanders the promise of fairness and equity to which we claim to adhere as Americans.

It's about responsibility, not guilt. And if one can't see the difference between those two things, there is little that this or any other article can probably do. Perhaps starting with a dictionary would be better.

*U.S Federal Glass Ceiling Commission, Good for Business: Making Full Use of the Nation's Human Capital. (Washington DC: Bureau of National Affairs, March 1995); Fred L. Pincus, Reverse Discrimination: Dismantling the Myth. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003), 18; Roberta J. Hill, "Far More Than Frybread," in Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics, ed. Bonnie TuSmith and Maureen T. Reddy. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), 169; Sylvia Hurtado and Christine Navia, "Reconciling College Access and the Affirmative Action Debate," in Affirmative Action's Testament of Hope, ed. Mildred Garcia (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), 115.
**U.S. General Accounting Office, 1994. "Information on Minority Targeted Scholarships," B251634. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, January; Stephen L. Carter, "Color-Blind and Color-Active," 1992. The Recorder. January 3.

http://www.timwise.org/

'Racially charged' vagary may cost American teacher a lot

An American middle-school teacher has been suspended for ten days without pay after claims he wrote a racially charged interpretation of Barack Obama's presidential campaign motto, a local paper reports.

Officials in Jackson County, Missouri, are now gathering evidence before considering Greg Howard's fate. Some activists are insisting Howard be permanently expelled.

Larry Moore, deputy superintendent for the Jackson County School District, said school officials say Howard wrote an acronym with an explanation on a class board at Marianna Middle School.

It read, "C.H.A.N.G.E. - Come Help A (N-word) Get Elected."

Howard was suspended on Monday. The reprimand was elevated to a 10-day suspension without pay starting Thursday. Howard was also told to write a letter of apology to students.

Some parents are indignant that the teacher used the "N-word" in classroom.

"To me, it's hurtful," said Audrey Wad, a Marianna resident with nieces and nephews at the school. "The idea that he would impose his political opinion on the children is wrong to me. That's where he crossed the line."

Meanwhile, area director Elmore Bryant, who has taught in Jackson County for more than 40 years, said Howard's action was "totally inappropriate, out of place, out of character and bad timing."

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/31364

Racism as Reflex

By Tim Wise
September 29, 2008
counterpunch.org

If hypocrisy were currency, conservatives would be able to single-handedly bail out the nation's free-falling financial system in less than a week, without the rest of us having to front so much as a penny.

So on the one hand, folks like this always tell others--especially the poor and people of color--to take "personal responsibility" for their lives, and not to blame outside factors (like racism, or the economic system) for their problems. But on the other hand, these same persons then demonstrate that their own ability to blame others for their personal setbacks, or the nation's problems, knows no rival.

So, for instance, if they or someone they know didn't get the job they wanted, it must be because of affirmative action or because the job was "taken" by an illegal immigrant; if their child didn't get into the college of his or her choice it must be because of some preference given to a black kid; if they can't afford to send their child to college it's because all the scholarship money was given to students of color; if their local schools are falling apart it's because of integration or multiculturalism; if their taxes are too high it's because of all those government programs for "those people." On and on it goes, with never so much as a nod to personal responsibility. Whatever goes wrong in the lives of white conservatives is almost always the fault of black and brown liberals, or so the story goes.

The right is so predictable when it comes to this kind of thing, that you can almost set your watch by their daily eruptions of stupidity.

And so in the past several weeks, we have been treated to three fresh examples of conservative scapegoating and buck-passing, in which they seek to blame the poor or folks of color for various social problems for which the latter are not the least bit responsible.

First, we have Neil Cavuto of Fox News, followed by Rush Limbaugh a few days later, along with smaller-market talk radio hosts and commentators, insisting that the nation's current financial mess is not the fault of greedy investors, free-wheeling bankers, speculators and other assorted rich people taking advantage of a largely deregulated market for bogus investments. Rather, it is the fault of poor people and those who seek to serve their communities, and especially folks of color, and those who insist on such things as civil rights.

How so? Simple: according to these blowhards, laws like the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which seeks to steer investments to economically marginalized communities so as to stimulate economic development and reverse the longstanding process of racial and economic redlining, is the real culprit. If banks hadn't been forced to throw good money after bad, and make loans to "minorities and risky folks" as Cavuto said on September 18th, none of this would have happened.

Of course, none of the reactionary cranks making this argument has seen fit to present even a single, solitary piece of statistical evidence to support their scapegoating of CRA. Evidence doesn't matter. Simply saying it, simply insisting that it's the black and the brown and the poor who are to blame is supposed to be enough. Sadly, for lots of Americans it will be. The kind of people who listen to the Limbaughs of the world, after all, rarely care much for facts. But for those who still put a premium on truth, and who place more value on honesty than their own need to nurture their anger, here are a few things to keep in mind.

First, the Community Reinvestment Act only applies to banks and thrifts that are federally-insured. This means that the independent mortgage brokers, who are responsible for half of all the nation's sub-prime lending--and who have been writing such loans at more than twice the rate of banks and thrifts--aren't even covered by the law. And make no mistake, it was the hand of the mortgage broker, more than any other, that precipitated the housing bubble. These are folks who were writing "stated income" loans (which means you don't have to prove your income, you can just tell them a number and get the OK), not caring about whether the borrower might default, since they were going to turn around and dump the loan at a profit, onto the secondary market, by pawning it off to investors who were gobbling up debt, betting on the further expansion of home values. In this scenario, neither the original broker nor the investor who bought up the debt was concerned about what would happen to the borrower who took out the initial loan. After all, if a borrower defaulted, but the housing market was still going up in value, they could swoop in, foreclose and sell the house again at a profit.

On neither end of this equation were poor people to blame. The persons getting stated income loans were overwhelmingly middle class, perhaps hoping to keep up with the richer folks down the block, but certainly not the poor. Most poor folks are still renters, or just hoping to get a modest home. And let it suffice to say that none of the vultures snapping up the mortgage debt on the secondary market were poor, and very few were persons of color. These were affluent white people, willing to gamble on the potential misfortune of others.

Secondly, the idea that loans to the poor or to moderate income folks could create this mess is almost inherently absurd. Fact is, the risk involved with loans to such persons is quite low. The amount of money lost, even when a low income family does default, is quite minimal. On the other hand, when a middle class family, striving to live above their means, takes out a note that eats up half of their income, the amount lost when the bubble bursts is quite a bit more substantial. This is one of the reasons that, according again to the evidence, loans to those with more moderate incomes are actually less risky than those to the affluent. Looking at CRA-related loans, for instance, the fact is, these represent nearly one-fourth of all loans written, but less than 10 percent of the high-cost, high-risk loans that precipitated the current crisis. These loans actually have lower default and foreclosure rates than non-CRA connected loans, and are twice as likely to be retained in the portfolios of the banks that originated them than other loans. In other words, it is not CRA loans being dumped into the hands of greedy speculators, and then falling flat, taking the economy with them.

Finally, to the extent low-income folks of color are shuttled into the sub-prime market, and then unable to pay their house notes, this unhappy fact owes more to discrimination than anti-discrimination efforts such as CRA. As several studies have shown, banks often reject borrowers of color, even when they have credit records similar to whites with the same incomes. Then, these rejected applicants are steered towards sub-prime lenders which charge far higher interest and place the borrowers in great jeopardy by driving up the amount they must repay.

A few years back, a study of Citigroup (which includes Citi, the group's sub-prime lender), found that Citi in North Carolina was charging higher interest even to borrowers who could have qualified for regular loans. In the process, over 90,000 mostly black borrowers were roped into predatory loans, and as a result paid an average of $327 more per month for mortgages than those getting loans from a prime lender. This added up to over $110,000 in excess payments over the life of the loans, on average. In other words, folks of color who could have qualified for lower-interest loans (that they would have been able to pay back far more easily) were steered to higher-cost instruments by greedy financial institutions, looking to make a quick buck at their expense. That's not the fault of civil rights protection, it's the fault of economic civil rights violations.

As if blaming the global financial squeeze on the poor wasn't putrid enough, along comes the National Review Online, which descended even deeper into the pit of obvious racism on September 26th. To wit, the blog entry entitled "Cause and Effect?" by Mark Krikorian, executive director of an anti-immigration group in DC, in which he notes failed S&L Washington Mutual's stellar record on corporate diversity, as if this were somehow connected to their insolvency. The fact that WaMu had been ranked as one of the top ten businesses in the Hispanic Business Diversity Elite, and had received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equity Index (which focuses on equity for lesbian and gay folks), are, in Krikorian's mind, linked to their financial troubles. Because, ya know, if you have too many Latinos and gays working for you, well, clearly you can't care anything about the bottom line. That Krikorian presents no evidence, or even logic, to suggest a linkage between workplace equity and financial incompetence doesn't matter: his readers, predisposed to scapegoat the non-white and non-straight for anything and everything, can be expected to take the bait.

And then there's Louisiana state lawmaker, John LaBruzzo, who proposes solving the problem of poverty by giving financial incentives to poor women on public assistance to be sterilized, so as to cut down on their birthrates. LaBruzzo, whose legislative district was once represented by neo-nazi David Duke (who also proposed something like this in 1991), insists his plan isn't racist, sexist, or classist, but merely aimed at cutting down on excessive welfare costs. He also claims that his plan would reverse the current pattern, whereby poor women are encouraged to have more babies so as to collect more welfare.

Putting aside the inherently Hitlerian, eugenic rationale for such actions, LaBruzzo, as with Duke, and most right-wingers, ignores every bit of logic and evidence so as to push this kind of nonsense. First off, he ignores the now-twelve-year-old welfare reform law, which prevents additional payments for persons on welfare who have additional children. Although these "extra" monies were never very much (in Louisiana they amounted to less than $100 per month at the time the law was changed), now they are essentially non-existent. Secondly, LaBruzzo ignores the evidence from more than twenty years of research, which indicates that persons receiving public assistance do not, in fact, have more children, on average, than non-welfare receiving families. So the idea that poor women need incentives not to have babies is nonsense. What they need is decent-paying jobs, something LaBruzzo has no idea how to create.

And finally, the underlying premise of LaBruzzo's plan--which, if the public comments posted to Nola.com (New Orleans' main media website) are any indication, is quite popular--is entirely bogus. Contrary to conventional wisdom (or at least, contrary to what a lot of white people think, whether wise or not), the numbers of people even receiving cash welfare in Louisiana are ridiculously small. LaBruzzo, who said the idea for this bill came to him after seeing folks in New Orleans during Katrina who were dependent on so-called government handouts, apparently doesn't feel the need to do any homework. For had he done so, he would have discovered that at the time of the flooding, there were fewer than 5000 households in the entire city receiving cash assistance, out of nearly 200,000 households in all. Fewer than four percent of black households, and only about one in ten poor households were receiving the kind of welfare that LaBruzzo would seek to tie to sterilization. Since Katrina, the number of persons on state aid have fallen even further, as the poor muddle through with very little assistance of any kind. But rather than push for rental assistance for low-income folks, which would improve the lives of poor folks and their communities dramatically, LaBruzzo is content--as conservatives almost always are--to blame the poor for their condition and seek to change their behavior (or in this case, compel their infertility) so as to solve the problem of economic deprivation. How very typical.

So there you have it: white conservatives who simply cannot bring themselves to blame rich white people for anything, and who consistently fall back into old patterns, blaming the poor for poverty, black and brown folks for racism, anybody but themselves and those like them. That anyone takes them seriously anymore when they prattle on about "personal responsibility" is a stunning testament to how racism and classism continue to pay dividends in a nation whose soil has been fertilized with these twin poisons for generations. Unless the rest of us insist that the truth be told--and unless we tell it ourselves, by bombarding the folks who send us their hateful e-mails with our own correctives, thereby putting them on notice that we won't be silent (and that they cannot rely on our complicity any longer)--it is doubtful that much will change.

Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at: timjwise@msn.com

Tim Wise: White Privilege, White Entitlement & the 2008 Election

By Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fu*****’ redneck," like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fu****' BLEEP," and talk about how you like to "shoot BLEEP" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist. White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole "change" thing.

Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1755

This is an old article, but interesting information nonetheless:

A Fur Rondy founder's secret reveals racial bigotry of Alaska, America

For more than 20 years, Anchorage's first paid fireman kept a secret that, if exposed, could have cost him everything: The wealth he accumulated through business and real estate investments; the power and status he acquired as an assemblyman, fire chief and civic booster; the attention he attracted from enamored women.

The secret that could unravel a lifetime's work?

Tom Bevers was a black man pretending to be a white man.

Credited with helping establish and name Fur Rendezvous, Bevers came to Anchorage in either 1920 or 1921 and quickly became one of the fledgling city's key figures.

He owned an apartment building with partner Emil Pfeil at Fourth Avenue and E Street. He helped start the Alaska Fur Farm Association, which ran an eight-acre mink farm in the South Addition. He was a member of the Elks Lodge. He helped develop the Buffalo Coal Mine near Chickaloon. He was a fan of the airport on what is now the Delaney Park Strip and kept the field clear of snow in the winter. In the 1941 city election, he kept his Assembly seat by claiming 772 of the 1,106 votes, more than any other winning candidate.

Bevers was 55 when he died of a heart attack while hunting geese with friends -- including Mayor William Stolt -- on Oct. 4, 1944. His death was front-page news.

What happened next never made the news, but it sent shock waves through Anchorage nonetheless: Bevers' sister came to Alaska to settle her brother's affairs, and to everyone's surprise, she was black.

So was Bevers. But his skin was light enough for him to pass as white.

Such subterfuge seems almost appalling today. Did he not respect his race enough to want to represent it?

But this was long before "black pride" became part of the American experience. Tom Bevers was no Uncle Tom. He was a man trying to exist in a world he knew would spurn him if it knew the truth.

"It was a matter of survival, absolutely," said longtime city employee Jewel Jones, who is black and in 1970 directed a program to bring more minorities into the city's workforce.

" 'Be black, be proud' goes without saying these days," she said, "but you really need to go past the current history and read about the whole Harlem Renaissance and the whole struggle of moving from the South to the North. It may not be in the regular history books, but go to those books devoted to the African struggle and you will learn that was the way people survived."

Bevers, who was born in South Boston, Va., never married, even though "he was reputed to be quite the ladies man and more than one woman asked him to marry her," according to an Anchorage Fire Department yearbook.

Knowing what we know now, it's safe to conclude Bevers stayed single because having children might have revealed his race.

Alaska has long been a place where hard work and good ideas can turn paupers into princes. If the truth had come out, wouldn't the people who worked and socialized with Bevers choose to judge him by his character and not his color?

Maybe. But not likely.

Louis Overstreet's "Black on a White Background," a history of blacks in Alaska, notes that well into the 1950s, Anchorage had only one hotel willing to let blacks in.

And consider the attitude expressed by Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, the head of the Alaska Defense Command during World War II, when he learned black troops would be stationed in Alaska to help build the Alaska Highway. Buckner warned in a letter to Army officials that high wages for unskilled labor might entice soldiers to stay, "with the natural result that they will interbreed with the Indians and Eskimos and produce an astonishingly objectionable race of mongrels ..."

That was the world Tom Bevers was born into in 1889, 24 years after the Civil War and 66 years before the Civil Rights Movement. In a still-untamed Alaska, where a man's history could start anew the day he arrived, Bevers saw a chance to reinvent himself. He took it.

http://dwb.adn.com/news/alaska/story/8622271p-8514873
c.html

FERRIDAY, Louisiana (CNN) -- The blaze engulfed Frank Morris' shoe repair shop in minutes, bright orange flames stretching 60 feet into the air. Morris was so severely burned, only the soles of his feet were spared.

He clung to life for a few days, before dying in a hospital. It was December 1964. Morris, a 40-year-old African-American, repaired shoes for blacks and whites in Ferriday, Louisiana, a small town near the Mississippi border terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan at the time.

On his deathbed, he never named his killers, but he said two "white friends" carried out the attack, according to the Rev. Robert Lee Jr.

"He thought they were his friends and he said, 'Yes, I thought they were my friends,' " Lee recently told CNN.

Lee, now 94, said Morris was sprawled out on the hospital bed. "The doctors wondered why he survived those two or three days. You never seen something so dreadful looking."

Yet nearly 44 years later, not a single person has been charged in the killing of Morris. The Justice Department last year made investigating about 100 civil rights era killings, including Morris', a top priority after urging from the Urban League, the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups.

Time is of the essence -- witnesses are dying, as are the possible perpetrators.

"The average age we believe of those who would have carried out these crimes is probably going to be in his mid-70s if he is alive," said U.S. Attorney Donald Washington, whose district includes Ferriday. "We are concerned about whether there are live witnesses and live subjects."

Washington hopes publicity will help move the Morris case forward. He wants people to think, "Do I know someone or do I know personally any information that can help these federal prosecutors?"

It was in the early morning hours of December 10, 1964, when the front window of Morris' store was shattered. Someone poured gas in the cluttered building and torched it. Morris was sleeping in a back room and tried to run through the inferno, according to authorities.

Jake Davis was a young teen back then. He often played with Morris' son, and had begun working at the store a few weeks before the killing. He's still haunted by what happened.

"It bothers me to this day and I'm 56. It's a thing constantly on my mind," he told CNN.

Today, Davis wears cowboy boots and jeans with a crease so sharp it looks like it would cut your fingers. He spends his time working on old cars and playing Zydeco music. Davis recently shared his story with the FBI after years of silence. He said he was simply too scared to talk about the incident at the time it happened.

He says he remembers three white men coming into the store the day before it was torched.

"I was hearing a whole lot of talking, loud talking, cursing," Davis said. "After a while, [Morris] came back up front and told me and my brother to leave and come back tomorrow. That's what we done.

"We didn't ask no questions. I had an eerie feeling, but I left and went home and told my mom, 'Some white folks and Mr. Frank, they arguing and cussing, what could we do?' She said, 'Ain't none of our business.' "

The next morning, the storefront was still smoldering when Davis stopped by. He later visited his boss in the hospital -- what he described as a wretched sight.

"He was burned all the way from his head all the way to his feet," Davis said. "When I saw him -- actually saw him -- I just turned around and walked out."

As the years passed, he sometimes regretted not speaking up about the incident.

But growing up black in rural Louisiana meant living in fear of being tortured or killed for looking the wrong way.

"When you [saw] a white person, you couldn't look them in the eye. You had to look down. You couldn't walk on the same side of the street," he said. "Our life hung in the balance of keeping your mouth closed."

Davis added, "As I got older, I wondered, 'Should I say something?' I had no one I could turn to to talk about this."

Washington, the prosecutor, has read through the case files and says the FBI had about a dozen agents on the Morris killing in the 1960s. He says the order came from the very top, President Lyndon Johnson and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

"It was handled in very professional, very aggressive manner," Washington said.

But they came up empty.

"Maybe they couldn't make the proof at the time. Maybe there were other cases that required that they not take down this one case in order to go forward on another case," Washington said.

Morris' old friend, the Rev. Lee, whose grandfather was a slave, is glad the case has been reopened, but laments, "Why did they wait so long?"

"Most people who knew about that is gone. But the few that's left feel like, if justice could be achieved there would be a sense of satisfaction."

Whether that is still possible remains to be seen

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/16/civilrights.killi
ng/index.html

I'm traveling abroad to visit family, which I haven't done in a few years (home is where the heart is, so I'm going home for the holiday).

Thought I'd pop in right quick before I leave and wish you all a safe holiday and New Year.

Hope you get to spend it with family and good friends, as I will be.

-Tees

Commentary: Blinded by the Lure of Stolen Bling, Sean Taylor’s Killers Took His Life – and Ruined Theirs

Date: Wednesday, December 05, 2007
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com

I feel pity for the guys who killed Sean Taylor.

Not mercy toward them, mind you, but pity. It’s a pity that I feel for the scores of young, misguided black males who have been fooled into believing that their futures are worth far less than a few trinkets that they can grab by resorting to criminality.

Sadly enough, it looks like that might be the mentality -- I don’t deign to call it a strategy -- that guided the four suspects who are accused in Taylor’s slaying while trying to burglarize his suburban Miami home Nov. 26. They didn’t expect for the 24-year-old Washington Redskins safety to be there, and when he surprised them, he wound up being shot in the leg and groin.

The gunshot severed Taylor’s femoral artery. He died from the bleeding a day later.

Police have said that the four suspects -- two of whom are juveniles -- didn’t visit the Pro Bowl star’s house with murder on their mind, but theft. Yet if they are found guilty, they all may wind up spending the rest of their lives in prison.

Under Florida law, if someone dies during the commission of a felony, everyone involved can be charged with murder -- regardless of who pulled the trigger.

I doubt if the suspects who broke into Taylor’s home would have taken the time to read the law, though. If one is to believe Richard Sharpstein, Taylor’s former attorney, and reports by The Miami Herald, they were too blinded by the promises of stolen bling to see how they would wind up stealing Taylor’s life -- and their own futures.

Sharpstein said that at least one of the suspects had attended a party at Taylor’s home, while the Herald reported that another did yard work and chores for him. Another suspect is the cousin of a man that Taylor’s sister, Sasha Johnson, dated.

So they figured they’d rather steal from Taylor than aim for wealth in their own lives. Instead of being inspired to plan for their own success and to live well after seeing the football star’s home, they were inspired to commit a criminal act.

Things didn’t always work that way.

There was a time when black people who worked in the homes of wealthy whites used that exposure to dream and to plan, not to commit acts that would get them locked up. The fact that young black men like the ones accused in Taylor’s slaying no longer do that says a lot about the hopelessness and the lack of vision that governs too many of their lives today.

It’s a hopelessness that says it’s cooler to steal from someone like Taylor than to start a lawn service, or go back to school, to obtain the preparation they need to live well.

Instead, they’d rather risk a murder charge, a burglary charge or any other felony charge just for some designer clothing, jewelry or other items that have, in all likelihood, been either deteriorating or depreciating from Day One.

Again, it’s not worth it.

There’s also another sobering sadness here, the one that says that it’s risky for NFL players like Taylor be as down-to-earth as they’d like to be. To have parties for family members, or to share their largesse with old friends could become a dicey proposition, as those friends might have friends who steal.

As I said earlier, I don’t feel mercy for the suspects. The life of yet another young black man has been snuffed out, gone because some other young black men decided to plot a felony instead of planning their lives.

But I do feel pity for them. Pity because, like so many others, they squander their smarts on acts that won’t lead to real success, but to prison and the statistic books. Pity because for some reason, they continue to waste their lives and the lives of others for material things and to settle scores that, in the long run, aren’t worth it.

They know the cost of bling, but they don’t know the value of their future. And I can only hope that at some point, more of them will stop being blinded by it long enough to learn.

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/sayitloud/
weathersbee1205

Commentary: The Deaths of Young Black Men is an Ongoing National Crisis, Yet is Met with a Giant Shrug

Date: Sunday, December 02, 2007
By: Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com

On day in the early 1960s, a patch of interstate highway was opened in my hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. Reporters described the first car to touch the new pavement and quoted state officials about what the multi-lane stretch would mean for commerce and commuters’ convenience.

That day, a teenage black boy took to the interstate on his bicycle. He was struck and killed -- a horror at any time, but especially in those days when you seldom heard about young black boys dying. So shocking was the accident that people talked about it for months.

The death of black boys and young black men is so common now that the news doesn’t even bother to keep up. It takes the death of a superstar, like pro footballer Sean Taylor, to get communities talking.

If only Taylor had been the only young black man cut down by senseless violence last week. But he was just the most famous one of many.

It’s been that way for two decades now. Twenty years of self-destruction that, for the most part, the country has met with a giant shrug. What we have here is an ongoing national emergency, albeit undeclared.

“A telling thing happened in the wake of the Columbine massacre,” I wrote in my 2002 book, Yet A Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don’t Feel at Home. “The entire country turned inward, tearing itself apart for answers, for reasons, for anything to explain how two young white boys from supposedly solid, comfortable homes and a community that prided itself on old-fashioned values and religious fealty -- two boys with whole lifetimes ahead of them -- became so possessed of anger, so diabolical, so obsessed with revenge, so obedient to evil, so racked with hatred.  We investigated the whole of modern American culture. Was it television programming, rife with gratuitous violence and sex? Could it have been the seedy, violent video games the boys favored? Is that how they learned to kill so cavalierly?

“Might alienation from, and bullying by, the school’s in-crowd have had anything to do with it? What about music, like the raging, screeching rock they preferred? Had a satanic cult consumed their innocence? Parental supervision, was it too lax? Did illegal drugs drive them to it? Was a chemical imbalance to blame? How about the availability of firearms; could that have been it? Did the absence of prayer in public schools leave a hole big enough for the devil to come in?

“A nationwide search for answers, an all-points bulletin, was launched. Law enforcement authorities, sociologists, physicians, psychologists, educators, parent groups, students, even the U.S. Congress and the White House kicked into high gear, searching for the demons that had invaded the young minds, commandeered them and directed the slaughter. There was consensus that some external force had compelled the boys to murder and, with all urgency and determination, the country set out to apprehend that mysterious provocateur. It was a state of emergency.

"But it was a tardy declaration. Since more than a decade before the Columbine tragedy, black youths have been killing one another at dizzying rates. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the homicide rate of young black men blasted off the charts. Funeral directors, who used to handle young bodies only occasionally by way of disease or accident, began keeping undersized caskets in their inventory and honing their skills at repairing holes in the chest and face and making young skin look as natural as possible. Support groups for mothers of slain youngsters sprang up around the country. Ministers got more calls for counsel in the middle of the night. Kids in impoverished neighborhoods that were susceptible to violence began writing down instructions for their own funerals -- the clothing they wanted to be buried in, the color of the coffin, the music they wanted played at the funeral service.”

“Yet no state of emergency had been called. There had been no haste to discover what on earth was bedeviling black youths. No search party had been dispatched to nab the monster, to cut off the cancer that had metastasized, spelling our demise. It was as if the country had decided violence was an inherent impulse among black youths, an internal force to reckon with, while in the Columbine case it was believed to be the work of outside influences ... ”

Our sons and brothers are not born to kill nor are they destined to be killed. External forces turn the sweet baby in the cradle into a menace in the ‘hood. Could we track them down with the same determination that we employ in writing off their prey?

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/sayitloud/
mathis1203

Commentary: If an Acquitted O.J. is Reviled by White America, Why is Snoop Dogg So Acceptable?

Date: Thursday, December 06, 2007
By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com

So Calvin Broadus’ reality show “Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood” is set to debut on the E! channel this Sunday. Anybody see something wrong here?

Let me put it this way: one O.J. Simpson, acquitted of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in 1995, is widely reviled by white America. You used to see him running through airports on car rental commercials. He used to have an occasional movie or television role.

You don’t see him in any today.

Snoop Dogg was acquitted of being an accessory to murdering Philip Woldemariam around the same time O.J. walked. Snoop continues to get record deals. You do see him in commercials, on television and in films. Earlier this week, he was on Ellen DeGeneres' show promoting “Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood.”

What’s more, Snoop may still be a Crip. He hinted at such in one of his hit songs. The Game, who’s a member of the Bloods gang, was even more direct in one of his lyrics: “Game still Bloodin’, and Snoop still Crippin’.”

So white America continues to bust O.J.’s hump, and Snoop gets record deals and TV shows?

Believe me, I hate to even use a term like “white America.” It implies that all white people in this country are monolithic, that there’s no difference between them when it comes to matters like race, political affiliation, abortion and other hot topics. The truth is white America, like black America, is far from monolithic.

The one exception might be this O.J. thing. On that matter, there is indeed a “white America.” When I come across even ONE white person who doesn’t have a meltdown when the matter of O.J.’s acquittal comes up, I’ll change my mind.

Over 12 years after the verdict, I’m still waiting to run into that one white person. But hey, if you’re out there, you really need to holla at a brother.

Why does white America treat O.J. like a viper and Snoop like a celebrity? Well, let’s look at the skin color of the victims in each crime.

Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman were white. Woldemariam was an immigrant from Africa -- Eritrea to be precise. Could good, old-fashioned, down-home racism be the reason?

When black folks across the country were in an uproar about the Jena Six case, the rallying cry was how the exorbitant charges of attempted first-degree murder against the young men somehow “proved” that racism still existed in America. It was as if some black Americans couldn’t wait to find a concrete example of white racism, as if it would somehow validate our sense of victimhood if we did.

But we didn’t need to even look at the Jena Six case. All we had to do was look at the different treatment white America gave two black celebrities who had each been acquitted of murder: Unrelenting hostility toward the one accused of killing two white people and fawning adoration of the one accused of killing a black man.

I think I’m on fairly safe ground if I call that racism. But black folks aren’t entirely blameless in this. We’re as accepting of Snoop as white folks are, albeit when it comes to both Snoop and O.J., we’re a darned sight more consistent.

Snoop’s continuing flirtation with the Crips doesn’t seem to bother most of us. But a few have made the connection to the growing problem of gang membership among our youth to Snoop’s attitude about belonging to a gang -- which is at best, nonchalant; at worst, zealous.

About a week ago, a brother asked me if I thought Snoop’s negative influence contributed to gang membership among black youth.

“You’re danged skippy I do,” I answered. “The young folks see Snoop doing the commercials, the movies and getting the record contracts. They don’t see a downside to being in a gang. And if they don’t see a downside, then why WOULDN’T they join a gang?”

Most of America’s big cities that have seen a rise in the numbers of young black men murdered by other black men have a growing gang problem. Black folks in Newark, N.J., where I was last weekend, are up in arms about their rising homicide rate and point to the proliferation of gangs as the problem. Ditto for my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, so bad it’s called Bodymore, Murderland.

The next time Snoop’s face appears on TV, Americans of all races need to ask themselves why one accused murderer gets a free pass while another one is relegated somewhere down on the morality scale only slightly below the anti-Christ.

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/sayitloud/
kane1206

Muslim helps Jews attacked on New York subway

Story Highlights

Incident began when man said "Happy Hanukkah"

Members of a group of young people allegedly responded with anti-Semitic language

One of the Jews was punched during the altercation

A Muslim student from Bangladesh jumped to his aid

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A Muslim man jumped to the aid of three Jewish subway riders after they were attacked by a group of young people who objected to one of the Jews saying "Happy Hanukkah," a spokeswoman for the three said Wednesday.

Friday's altercation on the Q train began when somebody yelled out "Merry Christmas," to which rider Walter Adler responded, "Happy Hanukkah," said Toba Hellerstein.

"Almost immediately, you see the look in this guy's face like I've called his mother something," Adler told CNN affiliate WABC.

Two women who were with a group of 10 rowdy people then began to verbally assault Adler's companions with anti-Semitic language, Hellerstein said.

One member of the group allegedly yelled, "Oh, Hanukkah. That's the day that the Jews killed Jesus," she said.

When Adler tried to intercede, a male member of the group punched him, she said.

Another passenger, Hassan Askari -- a Muslim student from Bangladesh -- came to Adler's aid, and the group began physically and verbally assaulting him, Hellerstein said.

"A Muslim-American saved us when our own people were on the train and didn't do anything," Adler said.

Adler pulled the emergency brake and the train stopped at DeKalb Avenue station, where police came on board.

The 10 suspects, ages 19 to 20, were taken into custody, said Brooklyn district attorney spokesman Sandy Silverstein.

Askari was first handcuffed alongside them, but he was released when Adler told police he was not an attacker, Hellerstein said.

Alder was treated at Long Island College Hospital for injuries that included a fractured nose and a cut lip that required several stitches, while Askari suffered a black eye, Hellerstein said.

The suspects are to appear in Brooklyn District Court on February 7 on charges that include assault, attempted assault, menacing, harassment, unlawful assembly, riot and disorderly conduct, Silverstein said.

The New York Police Department's Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident, and will determine whether the suspects will be charged with hate crimes, Officer Philip Hauser told CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/12/subway.attack/index.h
tml

A lot of Muslims/Moslems could learn a li'l something from him.

-Tees

'Green Card Marriage' ad nets arrest

Story Highlights

Feds allege Russian and husband engaged in sham marriage over green card.    

Yuliya Kalinina accused of placing "Green Card Marriage" ad on Craigslist.    

Woman's attorney says client didn't know it was illegal to marry for green card.   

Agent: It may be first criminal case in which Web allegedly used for sham green card.    

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- At least she was being honest.

Russian national Yuliya Kalinina, 24, is accused of placing an ad on Craigslist for a "Green Card Marriage."

Yuliya Kalinina, 24, spelled out exactly what she was looking for in a husband in her Internet ad:

"Green Card Marriage -- Will pay $300/month. Total $15,000," the Russian national wrote in an ad placed on the Craigslist Web site. "This is strictly platonic business offer, sex not involved."

The ad caught the attention of the man who would eventually marry her on February 17, 2006. But it also alerted agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Kalinina, from Russia, and her husband, Benjamin C. Adams, 30, were arrested last week for what federal prosecutors allege was a sham marriage.

Robert Schoch, special agent in charge of ICE investigations in Los Angeles, said it is the first criminal case he is aware of in which people allegedly used the Internet to engineer a sham marriage for a green card. Watch as the Craigslist ad for a husband lands the woman in trouble »

Attorney Dale Rubin, who is representing Kalinina, said she didn't know it was illegal to marry for a green card, which he said was evidenced by the blatant language in her ad.

Adams' attorney, public defender John Littrell, declined to comment to the Los Angeles Times.