“We are Black People and We Shouldn’t Have to Feel Like This”
A 9-year-old girl’s tearful speech has gone viral after she spoke out from her home town of Charlotte, North Carolina, against police brutality.
Zianna Oliphant bravely stood before the city council meeting on Monday to share her personal feelings concerning the death of Keith Lamont Scott and other black Americans at the hands of police.
I feel like that we are treated differently than other people. I don’t like how we’re treated. Just because of our color doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Oliphant tried to be strong as she shared her thoughts, but when she talked about her fears of losing her own life, she broke into sobs.
Look, I feel for the minorities in our country legally and especially the plight of black people in America. I think racism is a terrible, terrible thing and I seriously wish that people were judged on their actions rather than the color of their skin. I honestly feel this way.
Racism is when you take an entire population, the Black people of America, and ascribe to them the actions of a small minority of their population, e.g. "but...based on their actions..." by pointing to a video about gang violence.
It gives the lie to assertions of empathy, e.g. "I feel for the minorities in our country legally and especially the plight of black people in America," and exposes assertions about being against racism, e.g. "I think racism is a terrible, terrible thing and I seriously wish that people were judged on their actions rather than the color of their skin. I honestly feel this way," for the bare faced hypocrisy that it is.
And yet you explicitly linked it to the "plight of black people" and "based on their actions".
Yeah, judging people based on their actions and not their skins. Do you think police in Charlotte only deal with old people shoplifting at Walmart? No, that video documents what they really have to deal with.
Why does that point fly over your head? You're a smart kid.
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InfraBlue
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Wed 28 Sep, 2016 02:13 pm
@McGentrix,
McGentrix wrote:
You didn't watch the 2nd video. I can tell because you think it was only about black people. Gang's in Charlotte are multi-cultural.
So, take your **** and sling it elsewhere.
Ascribing the actions of multi-cultural gangs in Charlotte to the Black people of America isn't any less racist.
Ascribing the actions of multi-cultural gangs in Charlotte to the Black people of America isn't any less racist.
Only one here doing that is you. Go be racist elsewhere.
0 Replies
bobsal u1553115
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Sat 1 Oct, 2016 04:59 am
Racial Profiling of Black Men Starts in Preschool
Even the youngest black children are treated with undue suspicion.
By Kali Holloway / AlterNet
We know that the shootings of unarmed black men, women, teenagers and children are the violent outcomes of irrational white fear. To paraphrase author Claudia Rankine, “because white people can’t police their imaginations, black people are dying.” A new study finds the racial stereotypes and discrimination that lead to numerous black-white disparities, from education attainment to police violence and mass incarceration, begin long before adulthood and adolescence. Even the youngest black children—in particular, boys—are overly scrutinized and treated with undue suspicion.
Researchers from the Yale Child Study Center found that implicit bias—the unconscious prejudices and stereotypes that inform our attitudes and interactions with others—affects how teachers treat African-American male students as young as 4 years old. The study, which included 135 pre-K educators, was conducted at a “large annual conference of early care and education professionals.” The educators were told that researchers were “interested in learning about how teachers detect challenging behavior in the classroom.” Before being shown a series of 30-second video clips, they were provided with a simple set of instructions:
“The video segments you are about to view are of preschoolers engaging in various activities. Some clips may or may not contain challenging behaviors. Your job is to press the enter key on the external keypad every time you see a behavior that could become a potential challenge. Please press the keypad as often as needed.”
The study subjects were advised that “sometimes [spotting misbehavior] involves seeing [it] before it becomes problematic.” The video clips included four children—a black girl, a black boy, a white girl and a white boy—partaking in everyday preschool activities. The one detail subjects were left in the dark about was the fact that “none of the videos [actually] contained challenging behavior.” Researchers used eye-tracking software to determine where the teachers, primed to look for potential trouble and troublemakers, fixed their gaze most intently. The intersection of race and gender was a key determinant of where educators looked; they kept their eyes on the black children more than the white children and gave more attention to boys than girls. Out of all four children, the teachers spent the most time studying the black boy for subtle signs of emerging misconduct.
It’s worth noting that these teachers, almost all of whom were female, were both white (66.7 percent) and black (22 percent). The across-the-board hypervigilance of the black boy is proof that to some degree, regardless of our own race, we all internalize the American dominant culture’s narrative of black criminality.
When directly asked which kid needed the most negative attention to proactively forestall bad behavior, 42 percent of teachers identified the black boy. The numbers dropped off from there, with 34 percent indicating the white boy, 13 percent the white girl and 10 percent the black girl.
In another study section, early childhood educators were asked to read a short story involving a misbehaving 4-year-old, who they were then advised to pretend was one of their students. Though gender and race were not explicitly mentioned, both were implied by the character’s name, given either as Latoya, Emily, DeShawn or Jake. Childish infractions described in the vignette included difficulty napping, speaking loudly or out of turn, taking other students’ toys, and hitting classmates or instructors. In select cases, teachers were provided the following information about the imaginary student’s home life in an effort to determine whether it might impact their conclusions:
[Child] lives with his/her mother, his/her 8- and 6-year-old sisters, and his/her 10-month-old baby brother. His/her home life is turbulent, between having a father who has never been a constant figure in his/her life, and a mother who struggles with depression but doesn’t have the resources available to seek help. During the rare times when his/her parents are together, loud and sometimes violent disputes occur between them. In order to make ends meet, [child's] mother has taken on three different jobs, and is in a constant state of exhaustion. [Child] and his/her siblings are left in the care of available relatives and neighbors while their mother is at work.
The teachers were asked to assign a rating of 1 to 5 in three areas: severity of the child’s misbehavior; level of educator hopelessness (i.e., “the degree to which they felt that nothing could be done to improve the behaviors”); and likelihood the teacher would recommend suspension or expulsion. In cases where either was suggested, they were also asked to state the number of days that would fit the bill. It’s here that a curious trend emerged, one that has everything to do with expectations.
White teachers viewed the behavior as more severe when the child was depicted as white, but less so when the 4-year-old was imagined to be black. Researchers suggest that this correlates with previously studied racist notions and stereotypes around black behavior. That is, if you already believe that black children, black boys in particular, are more likely to behave poorly (and the scrutiny teachers gave black students suggests that’s precisely what they believed) you’ll probably find their misbehavior less surprising, disappointing or problematic than with white students, from whom you expect better.
Conversely, black teachers saw black students’ misbehavior as more severe than their white cohorts. Researchers suspect they unconsciously held black students to higher standards than participating white teachers did, and regarded black student misbehavior as a greater concern than for white students. This, the researchers note, was consistent with previous studies cited.
In contrast with previous scholarship, which found that “Black students are rated as less disruptive and are suspended less often when they are rated by black teachers than when they are rated by other-race teachers,” black teachers in the Yale study “recommended expelling or suspending children more days than white participants.” Study authors connect that surprising finding with theories about black cultural notions of corporal punishment, for example, as a method of toughening up children for encounters with racism, discrimination, and other forms of anti-black oppression and even violence.
Just as black parents feel the “need to prepare [black] children for, or protect them from, a harsh world,” Yale psychologist and study lead Walt Gilliam told the Washington Post, “t seems possible that the black preschool teachers may be operating under similar beliefs... that black children require harsh assessment and discipline.”
There was another fascinating aspect of the study. In cases where teachers were given background information on the naughty child, their level of empathy increased only when teacher and student were of the same race. When the student and teacher were of differing races, the teachers actually viewed the child’s behavior as worse when they learned of her or his troubled home life. Empathy, it seems, has difficulty crossing racial boundaries.
All of this is massively important. Numerous studies show that students who are suspended or expelled are more likely to do poorly in school, to drop out before graduation, and to enter the criminal justice system. That’s the school-to-prison pipeline in a nutshell, and the Yale study suggests teacher biases begin propelling black boys along the carceral route at a startlingly young age. The Yale psychologists open their report by pointing to investigations showing black preschool-age children are 3.6 times more likely to be suspended than white preschoolers. Though black kids make up just 19 percent of all pre-K students in this country, they are 47 percent of those who are suspended at least once, though frequently more often.
The teachers who participated in the Yale study are not unique in their implicit biases against black kids. Their deeply held attitudes are actually closely in keeping with what we already know about the pervasiveness of racism and implicit bias, and the devastating impact both have on the lives of black children in this country. Previous studies have found that black children are seen as older and less innocent by many white Americans; that they are more likely to be placed in correctional facilities even when they commit less crime than white teens; that they are more likely to be tried as adults than white youngsters; and that they face longer sentences for the same crimes young white offenders commit. Gilliam rightly states the study is more evidence that anti-black racism is inextricable from black lives and American institutions, and that it poisons every aspect of the black American experience and outcomes.
“Implicit biases do not begin with black men and police. They begin with black preschoolers and their teachers, if not earlier,” Gilliam told the Washington Post. “Implicit bias is like the wind: You can’t see it, but you can sure see its effects."
Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.
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bobsal u1553115
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Sun 2 Oct, 2016 07:19 am
Attorney: DOJ close to indicting officer who shot John Crawford III
Parents met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch in D.C.
Updated: 11:24 PM EDT Sep 30, 2016
A federal investigation is getting closer to a possible indictment of a Beavercreek police officer.
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The parents of John Crawford III and their attorney met with top-ranking federal investigators and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch in Washington on Friday.
The family's attorney, Michael Wright, said the meeting was a status report on the investigation's progress involving the death of Crawford.
Crawford was shot and killed by a Beavercreek police officer on Aug. 5, 2014, while shopping at Walmart.
The 22-year-old from Fairfield had picked up a pellet gun off a shelf. He was carrying it in the store while talking on the phone.
A 911 caller told dispatchers Crawford was waving the gun and pointing it at people. Beavercreek police officers who responded inside the store shot and killed Crawford. Police have said the officer believed the gun was real and Crawford did not comply with commands to drop the weapon. The officers were cleared by a grand jury, but the Department of Justice began its own investigation.
"This has been going on for a long time, two years, and just to know that they are still doing those things necessary to gather the information they need to move forward with indicting this officer was encouraging," Wright said.
"We're hoping that it's going to end with the Department of Justice indicting this officer for killing John."
Wright told WLWT the DOJ investigation is looking into the officer who shot Crawford, other officers on scene and the entire Beavercreek Police Department.
Wright also represents the family in a federal wrongful death lawsuit. He currently has more than 30 depositions completed but has not been able to get a deposition from the officer involved because of the DOJ investigation.
"I believe that it gave them the sense of hope that at some point in the near future that there will be some closure to this," Wright said.
Wright told WLWT he expects a decision to come "in the near future," hopefully by the time of "a change in the administration," referencing the upcoming presidential election this November.
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bobsal u1553115
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Thu 6 Oct, 2016 04:51 am
The Short Hard Life of Alfred Olango: From U.S.-backed Persecution to U.S. Police Execution
by Ann Garrison
October 4, 2016
The El Cajon Police shooting of Alfred Olango is one of the most recent police shootings of unarmed Black men to make national and international headlines and inspire Black Lives Matter protests. Olango and his family fled war and persecution by the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a longstanding U.S. ally and military partner who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist since 1986.
Much of the press, including The Daily Beast, have reported that Alfred Olango survived the reign of Idi Amin. However, 38-year-old Olango would have been little more than a year old in 1979, when the Tanzania People’s Defense Force and the Uganda National Liberation Army drove Idi Amin from power.
A Ugandan American friend of the Olango family who preferred not to be identified by name confirmed that Alfred Olango’s father had worked for the governments of Milton Obote, then Tito Okello, whom General Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Army overthrew in 1985. The friend also confirmed that the family is from the Acholi people of northern Uganda. According to federal court records, the Olangos fled to the United States after Museveni, who became president in 1986, threatened to kill the whole family. In a grimly ironic gesture, the Ugandan government ordered its embassy in the U.S. to investigate the killing of one of their citizens.
