Housekeeping

*The contest

I have heard nothing from Bear about the erroneous count for Silver Rights in the Showcase. The missing votes are still missing. Therefore, I am going to suggest voting again if you voted prior to Thursday morning. You can cast your vote here.

*Silflay Hraka

Brian Linse has informed me that I partly misremembered his comments about Silflay Hraka. The 'tech site' reference is an error.

However, Brian did support and still supports the use of the word "nigger" by SH. He rationalizes it on the grounds that it is somehow a literary usage. I disagree. I believe the person just wanted an excuse to cover his arse for using the slur.

I have changed the title of that entry and added the new information.

*Del Simmons.

He continues to carp. However, I wll probably not be saying more about him. It is obvious intelligent conversation goes right over his over-sized and underoccupied head. For example, Del thinks my reference to the doctrine of the elect means I called him a religious fundamentalist.

*Victor

Read him. Link to him. Add him to your blogroll.

In his own words

I write about the neo-Confederate movement and individuals and other groups who promote white supremacy quite often. However, sometimes I think it is best to let people who are white supremacists speak for themselves. The comments below were gleaned from the blog of a fellow who is the taste of the week among the bigotry set. The entry he wrote to engender beaucoup backslapping from them is cited above. Without further ado,

The 'wisdom' of Clubbeaux

I.

What gets me is how the North blamed the South for slavery. Ha! That's like Nike's wholesale customers blaming Nike for underpaid sweatshop labor in Indonesia.

Slavery was always ever only an economic institution, and the only reason it stayed around as long as it did was because textile mills in Haverhill and Lawrence and the rest of the North were willing to buy as much slave-produced cotton as the South could produce.

If the North had given the first damn about slaves all they would have had to say was "We won't buy any slave-produced cotton" and boom, there's the end of slavery right there.

But that's one advantage to winning the war, you get to write the history books and be a rank two-faced hypocrite about everything.

II.

Somebody whose kids are bused to sucky schools thinks "I'm sorry, but it's not my fault there are schools which aren't as good as others, we worked a lot harder than those people did to be able to afford a house in a good school district, so why should my children's education to be compromised for the sake of moral cover for somebody who wants to salve his own guilty conscience about something he really can't do anything about in the first place and who doesn't even believe what he's saying about how busing's good for white and blacks, since if he did he'd be putting his own kids on the bus?"

That's the sort of thing that drives people to look for an organization which will stand up and articulate their concerns. [Note: He means the Ku Klux Klan.]

III.

Rich vs. poor, yes, you're correct about that -- O.J. got off because he was rich -- but the difference between rich conservatives and rich liberals is that rich liberals feel the need to muck up other people's lives -- affirmative action, busing, minority set-asides, racial quotas, reverse discrimination, etc. -- to atone for the fact that they feel guilty being rich. Rich conservatives lose no sleep over the fact that they're rich.

I define as a liberal one who thinks government legislation is an effective means of solving perceived social problems, and one who thinks in terms of groups instead of individuals. Such a person, rich or poor, thinks racial quotas, busing and affirmative action "solve" racial "problems."

IV.

If I were Emperor of the United States the first thing I'd do -- after eliminating all agricultural -- well, of course the first thing I'd do as soon as my butt hit the chair would be to ban all car alarms, then after that I'd eliminate all agricultural subsidies, but once those two were taken care of I'd eliminate every single race-based law, statute, Constitutional Amendment, club, college dorm, TV show, magazine, NGO and anything else I could find that defined people as members of artificially-limiting social constructs instead of as unique human beings. There would be no law, policy or practice that treated anyone as anything but an individual person. [Note: He is not a legal scholar, obviously. Let's not even discuss common sense and Clubbeax. The two don't know each other.]

V.

Accepting that everything you say is true it perfectly explains the approach taken under the (unfortunately) passe noblesse oblige system and really how it was done in America before the advent of governmentalized welfare (read Marvin Olasky's The Tragedy of American Compassion for all the details). Forcing people to share what they have so those who do the forcing don't have to share what they have, which is what racial redistributionist policy in America works out to, is reprehensible and indefensible.

Clubbeaux's disingenous remarks are met with equally telling comments by his admirers. The overall effect is a manifesto for white supremacy, though the usual disclaimer of 'I'm not a racist' appears quite often.

The N-word rides again

*Not gone, not forgotten

Hold on to your seats, folks. Remember Brian Emanuels, the schoolteacher who called children 'niggers' in at least two classes on the same day at a high school in Seattle? He supposedly resigned to avoid being disciplined. Only, he didn't. *Victor of Balusubramania's Mania, who is one of my best sources, sent me the heads-up this morning.

A Cleveland High School teacher who announced his resignation last month after being reprimanded for using a racial slur in class has not quit, and instead is working at the school in another capacity.

Brian Emanuels never submitted a letter of resignation. He said yesterday he was invited back to the school by assistant principals Ryan Stevens and Richard Harwood to develop a Web site and build a computer database.

Emanuels had been on paid administrative leave since May 9, and returned to the school this week.

"I didn't technically quit," he said. "When they asked me to please come help, I said OK, that I'd be happy to."

The rest of the story leads me to conclude:

1) Staff at the school are colluding with Emanuels to keep him there, despite the wishes of the children, their parents and the community.

2) Said individuals are contemptuous of nonwhites or they would not so readily disregard the desires of those constituencies.

3) The principal of the school, who is African-American, does not actually run the school. His white underlings do.

Brian Emanuels needs to leave that school and the education system in general. He does not have the temperament to be a teacher and his bigotry makes the situation even worse. Cleveland High School must be aired out. The stench of Emanuels will not dissipate as long as he is present there. His enablers might want to move on to a place where they can have their own whites-only party, too.

I gather that Emanuels is being watched by people who care about the students and want to take away the carte blanc he has been issued to emotionally abuse children of color. I urge parents, the NAACP and other interested parties to keep the pressure on, using legal means to hold the Seattle School District responsible, if necessary.

*Just a place for bigotry?

I have not forgotten my first visit to Silflay Hraka. I remember it because a big print entry promoting the site proudly patted SH on the back for calling Cynthia McKinney a "nigger." Brian Linse told me that Silflay Hraka didn't mean anything by the banner, which was up for at least a month. He is entitled to his opinion. Subsequent entries on the site, including this one today, make me wonder.

Klan Memories

Clubbeaux sticks his neck out on the Klan.

I'd guess there's an equal number of genuine racists in both the KKK and the Rainbow Coalition, and the rest of them are members because "Well, they're the ones who stick up for what matters to my daily life, forget the rest of the crap."

A Klansman once pulled a shotgun on my father while we were playing catch in the front yard of our house. I was about 4. I'll blog about it one day, if I can find his notes from that occasion. It had something something to do with a Vietnam protest his students had organized. He was the "commie preacher who spit on the American flag" if my memory of the quote is correct. When dad ran for town council 12 years or so after that the same guy bought a tape machine and recorded a two-minute phone message about how horrible my father was. We spent most of August dialing it up and playing it for our friends at the pool.

I found out later who he was. His daughter and I had been in the same class since first grade. She was thin, quiet, nervous, and picked last for every team sport. I don't recall her ever having a friend. She was part of the rejected troika; the fat clumsy guy who came out in college, the poor incest victim, who never bathed as a result, and her. She wasn't marked on the outside like the other two, but she was rejected out of hand just the same.

I expect she was just as much a victim of the Klan as any black person with a burning cross in the front yard, but she wasn't as lucky.

When you're black, the Klan eventually leaves you alone.

There is more in a long-winded, linked entry by said Clubbeaux, a fellow who reminds me of Brian Emanuels, including the capacity for self-deception. Fellow travelers have piled onto his comments thread to congratulate him for his 'honesty.' Hold your nose and give the entry and the comments a read.

Silflay denies there was a banner, but not the use of the word "nigger." I am sure the headline, used as a promo for the site, was made to stand out somehow. Perhaps that was through large print, color or graphics instead of a banner.

*Trish fisks "nigger"

Trish Wilson wrote her entry about Brian Emanuels after the roundup of posts I did here. I am not sure it ever received a link to Silver Rights. That's a shame because I am a big fan of her entry.

Dr. Hunt said "the thing we often overlook in the post-civil rights era, is that racism isn't just about attitudes. And it isn't just about the actions of individuals. Racism has everything to do with group relations, it has everything to do with a dominant group systematically taking advantage of a subordinate group. And if you look at data from our most recent census, you'll see that there are still important elements of this systemic domination in place today."

If you never read anything else about the man, T.W.'s treatment of the topic will put you in good stead. It completely belies the idea that a white person cannot understand why racism is wrong. So, read the whole thing. You might want to drop Clubbeax a line when you're done.

Note: *Victor is too unassuming to promote his blog. I am not too unassuming to step in and take over the task. He is a tireless interrogator of many of the topics that impact our lives, from gun control, to minorities in society to Blogospherics. If you have not yet added Balusubramania 's Mania to your blogroll, you should.

The New Weblog Showcase: An update

I.

I don't know what is going on with Silver Rights' entry in The Truth Laid Bear's New Weblog Showcase. The original link to "Some logs and a bottle of wine" broke some time Wednesday. I asked Bear to repair the link Wednesday night. On Thursday, the entry's count changed from nine votes to one. It seems logical to me to add the prior links to any new ones that occur. Having no explanation of why the voting has regressed, I can only recommend continued use of the current link.

II.

I have heard from Del Simmons, the blogger somewhat assertively appraised in Part I of the Showcase reviews. He has written a comeback to that entry. After reading it, my conclusion is Del fails to grasp that democratic societies seek to foster the common good, not a ranking of citizens as worthy or unworthy based on income or skin color. His continuous plaint that the poor are undeserving of tax refunds because they pay low taxes is evidence of that failure of imagination. The poor pay low taxes because they make very little money. The taxes they do pay impact them more severely than the taxes paid by middle and upper-class people. Depriving them of tax refunds has a similar impact because they need the money more than other citizens do. A society in which the poor have at least the basics needed to live helps us all by lessening the suffering of the current and future population. (Assuming one does not like stepping over the bodies of starving people, that is.) Furthermore, some of those poor children have the potential to become our future leaders. Depriving them of clothing, food or shelter, as Del desperately desires, is depriving ourselves of their talents in the long run.

A way of explaining Del's warped perspective is via the doctrine of the elect. One belief of a branch of traditional Christian theology was that people deserved whatever fate they were born into. The poor deserved to be poor because God had ordained it. The rich had been 'elected' both for prosperity in their natural lives and Heaven once they died. Because God ordained it. I doubt Del has ever heard of the doctrine of the elect, but his contempt for the poor and worship of the wealthy is a striking reflection of the idea.

Another analytical error Del makes stems from the fact he does not distinguish between what is generally considered a middle-class income and super-wealth, i.e., incomes within the top ten percent of American society. Those individuals are more likely to have inherited their wealth instead of deriving it from professional status. It is they who will benefit most from the Bush administration's tax policies.

Del's entries are amusing in a way. I haven't read so many Horatio Algerish claims since I was a child. It is brow-raising to observe an adult think in such a simplistic way, though one hopes he doesn't get to put his thoughts into action. I am also entertained by Del's arrogant and clueless assumptions about moi. He could not be more off base. However, the fellow has been generous in a way. He has deemed my blogging inferior to his and offered me a guest account on his misnamed effort, Free Speech. Apparently, I am to abandon my own blogging and join a weblog that will earn me, a peon, a place in the blogosphere. Yes. He really suggests that. Poor J. If only I could fare as well as Del does in Bloggersville. Entertain yourselves by going to his blog and reading Del's new entry.

III.

Strangers in town aren't shy at all. So, why aren't some of my friends from my days as a commenter and contributor letting me know they have entered their new blogs in the contest? Much of the early 2003 gang from Atrios', Daily Kos' and Matt Y.'s sites have graduated into blogging themselves. Among them are Billmon, Gary Soto and David Ehrenstein. (Does anyone know whether Rea or The Farmer has succumbed yet?) I learned David had an entry in the contest by stumbling across a mention of it on a blog I had never visited before. The entry is an intriguing inquiry into the McCarthy era based on the experiences of gay composer Aaron Copland. Do read "Fait Divers: An Unmarried Pixie," at David E's Fablog.

I haven't absorbed all I've read from the showcase yet, so I will return later with more reviews.

In the meantime, I urge you to vist my blog family's pads, Atrios' Eschaton, Roger Ailes,' Prometheus 6 and Mac-a-ro-nies, which has an entry in the New weblog Showcase. All the family's on the blogroll to your right.

Part I: The New Weblog Showcase

I've read some of the other entries in The Truth Laid Bear's New Weblog Showcase, a contest to introduce new blogs to readers. Following are summaries and my opinion of each entry. There will be a Part II, featuring other blogs entered in the contest.

*I Protest.

We already know Frank from the "Two white guys just sitting around talking" entry here. In fact, he has become one of the Silver Rights 'set.' His entry in the New Weblogs Showcase, "Weapons of mass retraction," meets his usual high standards. It is succinct, but gets right to the core of the issue.

I read during the early days of the war that if those weapons were not found, Blair would face a serious crisis at home and it looks like that chicken has come home to roost.

... Mr Cook said the Prime Minister's claims that Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes were patently false. He added that Mr Rumsfeld's statement "blows an enormous gaping hole in the case for war made on both sides of the Atlantic" and called for MPs to hold an investigation.

Meanwhile, Labour rebels threatened to report Mr Blair to the Speaker of the Commons for the cardinal sin of misleading Parliament - and force him to answer emergency questions in the House.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mr. Blair were to join Mr. Majors as an ex-Prime Minister within no more than a few months' time.

Blair may go down. However, in my opinion, Americans are much more gullible than the British. Will the electorate ever realize the claim of WMD in Iraq was the Big Lie technique at its worst?

Read the rest of Frank's entry to learn what he makes of Bush's role in the deception and how he reached this conclusion: "Lies, lies and more lies. And our "liberal" media laps it up and pants for more."

*World War Bush

I think there is a myth abroad in the blogosphere that original design is good design when it comes to blog templates. That belief is wrong most of the time. The page template for this blog, which is large red type on a black background, with no identifying information until the bottom, is likely scaring readers away. It is hard on the eyes and much too loud.

Another aspect of World War Bush that needs fixing is the matter of namelessness. A blogger needs a handle. It does not have to be his real name. Even if I knew Atrios' real name, I would probably still call him Atrios. Initials are fine, though "J." is taken. There should be something to call the blogger by. Complete anonymity is a no-no.

The blogger's message is an apt one.

I read this 'news' on the AOL homepage earlier.

'Al-Qaeda terrorists and their supporters are set to use nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in deadly strikes, a CIA report claims.'

The story was basically cent[e]red around the idea that Al Qaeda may attempt to use unconventional weapons against us in the future. I'd read the entire article before it occurred to me that it didn't say anything. There was no new information. Hell, there wasn't even old information, just pointless scare-mongering.

It strikes me that this war against terror is only being kept alive by this constant, deafening flood of overblown rhetoric about the 'threat' that we all face. Without the cons[t]ant noise we may be more inclined to think for a moment about how real the threats are. We would ask questions like 'is there a great chance of myself or a friend or relative being involved in a terror attack?' The answer, of course is no.

I've reached pretty much the same conclusion. I've even found a way to make use of those ludicrous color-coded terrorism threat level alerts. They work reasonably well as a way to make up your mind about what colors to wear on a given day. However, there is a definite shortage of orange in my wardrobe.

Do finish reading this blogger's entry. But, you might want to don sunglasses first.

*Free Speech

Another red, white and blue site with a picture of dead presidents in the masthead. Funny, I thought Patrick Ruffini used up all those crayons. The content is a close match to the design, unimaginative and lacking in insight.

The name of the entry in the contest is "Bob Herbert forges forward with his class warfare." The blogger, Del (for Delusional perhaps) Simmons, has quite a bee in his or her bonnet over the talented an insightful editorial writer for the New York Times, Bob Herbert.

Well, I was hoping the New York Times class and race warlord, Bob Herbert, would give us all a break this week, since his last column was so ridiculous, but evidently he won't be happy until he's convinced the world that President Bush is stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

In his latest column, entitled "The Reverse Robin Hood", Bob accuses the GOP and the President of being "mean-spirited" and describes their "outright hostility toward America's poor and working classes".

As readers of Silver Rights know, the tax cut does nothing to help low-income Americans. In fact, by depriving such families of the child tax credit, it deals them a severe blow. They would have used the money to buy neccessities such as clothing for school. The upper-income parents who were favored instead of them will probably spend it on Nintendos. Other policies of the Bush administration are equally inequitable. Herbert's premise, that the Bushites have no empathy for the low-income and cater to the wealthy is accurate.

Del is incapable of seeing, not to mention, grasping that reality.

But even more dispicable (sic) is the statement regarding African-American and Latino children. He obviously implies that the tax cut was structured to benefit Whites. The rules of the tax code are based completely on income numbers, but Bob can't help throwing the race issue in where it obviously doesn't belong.

In these days of questioned (sic)ethics at the New York Times, it seems they would take care not to put forth such a blatant misrepresentation of the facts, but I guess they just haven't learned their lesson. Between Maureen Dowd's twisting of the words of President Bush, Paul Krugman's left slanted take on economics and Bob Herbert's silly race baiting, it's amazing to me that anyone considers the New York Times oped section worth reading anymore.

You may have noticed race is the subtext of Del's remarks. He is very uncomfortable with Herbert voicing his opinion, and the fact he has an excellent soapbox to voice it from. I don't believe Del would be equally uncomfortable if Herbert were a middle-class white man voicing his opinion. (If Herbert were black and a woman, we would not be discussing this blog because Del would have succumbed to a heart attack after reading her by now.) His entry is replete with other evidence of racism, including the blunder he makes in the first paragraph above. Since black and Latino (and Indian) children are more likely to be poor, a tax policy that favors high income Americans obviously will have a negative impact on their parents' being able to provide even basic needs. To dismiss this fact based reality as 'race-baiting' by Herbert is to ignore both American history, which explains why minority Americans are more likely to be poor, and contemporary resources such the U.S. Census. And, what is it with conservatives and claims that African-Americans are the ones with a race problem anyway? The historical record definitely suggests otherwise.

Del does not stop there. Herbert's intelligence is dismissed with the claim he is merely emotional. Here's hoping Del could be as 'emotional' as Bob Herbert.

Del's bigotry is not limited to race. There is a palpable contempt for anyone who is not at least middle-class in his entry.

First, he refers to the higher achievers in our society, that is, the people who pay the vast majority of the federal income taxes already, as 'fat cats', as if somehow the fact that these people have worked hard and achieved success makes them a fitting target for this derogatory term.

. . .And what exactly is Bob refering to when he talks about how the lower income earners won't be getting their fair share? As you can see from the numbers, they come nowhere close to paying 'their fair share'!! (sic)

In other words, the people who actually do the nuts and bolts work of society, instead of cashing their dividend and trust fund checks, are undeserving.

I know what you are thinking: This person sounds as ignorant as he does bigoted. You are probably right. A clever person would know wealth is generally inherited and has nothing to do with how hard a person does or doesn't work. That income is often a proxy for race, so that burdening the poor inevitably burdens the black and brown. That the Republican Party has long relied on strategies that are divisive in regard to race and class. That need should have more to do with social and economic policy than want. However, Del's racism and classism are so apparent, I found myself focusing on them instead of the inanity of his remarks.

Bigots with trite opinions are a dime a dozen in the blogosphere. Del's blog, which has nothing to do with free speech, a concept I doubt he understands, adds nothing of worth to our community.

I really should not have read this rubbish the night before doing my weekly morning stint at the food bank.

If you choose to read this entry, which I have chosen not to link to because a link would mean I am voting for it, you can do so by going to the main site and looking for it on June 2.

Side note: Not only is Del's blog entry repulsive, he is not very observant. I just received a smug email from him. He believes Silver Rights received only one vote in the contest.

Note: For the first and I hope only time, I'm posting a reprint. My entry in The Truth Laid Bear's New Weblog Showcase. I've learned from another blogger that the mercurial Blog*Spot has 'disappeared' the link to it, making it impossible for readers to vote for Silver Rights in the contest. Disappeared links are, unfortunately, the norm on Blogger Basic. I look forward to upgrading this blog to Blogger Pro in hope of rehabilitating the sorry state of my archives. If you want to help, there is a PayPal button to the right. To vote for Silver Rights, just link to this entry. So, again, presenting:

Some logs and a bottle of wine

Jeff Hauser had an entry at the Hauser report May 19, that I have been meaning to discuss, along with a companion piece from Alas A Blog by Barry, from May 6. Both are about something that seems like a good topic for a slow long weekend. Dishonesty. I could say crime, but the actions we are talking about though considered misdemeanors if prosecuted, are hardly what most people envision when they hear that word. No blood. No weapons. Rarely even a shove or slap.

We will look at Jeff's entry first.

Moral Dilemma. Okay, I decide to pick up some groceries at the uber-trendy (by DC standards, that is; coolness mileage varies by context) Whole Fields on the way back to the HR's international HQ from DuPont Circle.  I get on line behind a somewhat trendy looking mid-30s-ish married woman.  I set up one of those things which separate out groceries.  It keeps falling, and I think that's why the cashier doesn't notice that the woman's last item, a bottle of wine, was actually not mine but the woman who she was ringing up.  The cashier then has to go deal with something for a second, during which time the woman in front of me. .  . . grabs the [wine] and places it into one of her already filled up bags.

Should I have said something?  Is it some weird fear of confrontation generally, or with strangers?  Was there a gender dynamic at work?  Totally unclear to me. 

It may be more clear to me. I wonder if Jeff would have responded the same way if the woman had been black or Hispanic or perhaps male and black or Hispanic or maybe any race, but poor looking. Poor looking? I know the phrase is stereotypical. But, most people have a picture in their minds about what a poor person looks like. Unkempt hair. Bad teeth. Jeans from Kmart or Target instead of Levi's or the Gap. Probably with a couple young kids along because low-income plus offspring equals poverty in the U.S. of A. So, the person looked like that instead of being the well-coifed, business suit from Ann Taylor wearing and probably SUV driving person she was. Would Jeff have said, 'That's not your wine,' to the person of the 'wrong' color or class?

This is not an attack on Jeff Hauser, who I don't know and who could be a stand-up guy. He is just standing in for white, middle-American Everyperson in the scenario. My guess is that Every man or woman would not only be more likely to speak up if the shoplifter were our stereotypical poor person instead of someone like him or her. I also believe the observer would be more likely to alert an employee or store security.

As Jeff notes, gender might have had something to do with the outcome, but I believe race and class would have outranked them.

Barry had a confession to make.

Years ago, when we lived in Boston, we were broke and (by and large) unemployed. It was a very cold winter, and our heat had been cut off. We had a fireplace - but we didn't have wood to burn. I therefore became fairly expert at shoplifting those faux-log things from the nearby Caldor's. I didn't feel bad about it then, and thinking back on it I still don't feel guilty. It's okay to shoplift from large corporations to get things you actually need. The harm to Caldors of losing the faux-logs is considerably less, realistically, than the harm to us of having nothing to burn in our fireplace.

He goes on to say he does not believe it is immoral to shoplift. The entry generated 143 comments. Some people suggested he should have found work somehow or applied for charity. A few, typical of the folks who are increasingly taking over his comments section, egged on the theft is beneficial, property is a crime, perspective.

This is not an attack on Barry. In the same way Jeff represents white, middle-class Everyperson as witness Barry represents Everyperson as actor. Bad actor? You decide.

Examples of events like those that happened to Jeff and Barry can mean many things at once. The aspect I want to focus on is my belief they are evidence of race and class privilege.

Jeff did not intervene in the theft of the wine. Other people did not intervene in Barry's thefts of the logs, though I am sure some saw him steal them. I believe that in both situations, the observers deferred to the race and class of the perpetrators. If Barry had been nonwhite or recognizably poor, instead of a middle-class man temporarily unemployed, he would be telling us about jail in Boston and the sleaziness of bondsmen.

The two examples strike me as paradigmatic of how white privilege and class privilege work. People engage in the same act, 'liberating' an item from a store. One group gets a warm house or free wine for dinner. The other gets at least a night in jail and a trip through the criminal justice system. People on the Right love to point out the high incidence of incarceration for young African-Americans and Hispanics. While not doubting that people repeatedly accused of criminal acts over a period of time are probably committing them, I wonder how many of those incarcerated for minor infractions are being penalized for their race and class more than the acts they were convicted of. Would they have even been accused if they had not been the 'wrong' color and/or class?

As far as I can recall, whenever I've seen someone steal something in a store, it was a white person, with one exception -- a homeless black man in Seattle. He walked out of the Bon Marche wearing a brand new suit and barefoot. Security failed to notice. Most recently, I watched a fellow, white and middle-class in appearance, put a can of soup in the pocket of his jacket at Fred Meyer's, our largest retailer. I thought his action ridiculous because he had a cart full of groceries he would be paying for and did not look poor. In addition, he was accompanied by a wife or girlfriend. Call me a prude, but I still think of stealing as the kind of thing you would not want other people to know you do.

Furthermore, I believe the response in the blogosphere to a black or Hispanic blogger making the same admission Barry did would be quite different. A few champions would say, 'So what? He has moved beyond that.' Some liberals would mount a half-hearted defense while most remained silent. Many on the Right would attack the person either on their blogs or through email. His admission of wrongdoing, no matter how small, would be seen as proof 'there's something wrong with those people.' Meryl Yourish would declare him immoral, while associating with some of the most bigoted bloggers in Bloggersville.

When I began reading blogs, in late December of 2002 and early January of this year, I noticed Oliver Willis, despite bending over backward to do so, was unable to please many of the white bloggers and blog readers he believes he needs to have a successful blog, especially the conservatives. He was lambasted by a 'scientific' racist for daring to mention the lack of diversity at a bloggers conference. His blog was subjected to service attacks. If I remember correctly, someone circulated emails with spoofed headers in which Oliver appeared to say mean things about liberal bloggers. Later, his conservative readers went out of their way to find fault with him for complaining about being stopped and questioned by the police while walking down the street. However, I doubt that only people on the Right are involved. His success has likely engendered some jealousy and resentment among white bloggers who believe they deserve it more. Even though most of us in the blogosphere will never meet each other or even speak on the phone, the same unthought loyalties apply.

Again, this entry is about more than petty theft -- some logs and a bottle of wine. It is about how most people unthinkingly favor some of their fellow citizens and disfavor others.

On another channel

*What is a civet cat and what does it have to do with SARS?

*Is fining senders of spam under state law feasible?

*Why can't you take pictures if you celebrate a memorable event at Starbucks?

Update: Wednesday afternoon's real entry is below. Please give it a read, too.

No sympathy for the devil:
Biracial white supremacist deserves his fate

An article in the New York Times last week focused renewed attention on Leo Felton, a mixed-race white supremacist. He was convicted of serious crimes last year and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Two white supremacists were found guilty on July 26, 2002, of plotting to blow up Jewish and Black landmarks in Boston in an attempt to ignite a racial war between Blacks and whites. A federal jury convicted Leo Felton, 31, and Erica Chase, 22, of conspiring to build a destructive device, counterfeiting, obstruction of justice, and several firearms violations. Felton was also found guilty of bank robbery, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, and trying to obtain explosives with the intent to kill and injure and to damage property.

When I first learned about Felton last year, I read a story by a biracial reporter, Farah Stockman, who probed the situation deeply in The Boston Globe. She says his mother believes he is brain damaged in some way. That seems more feasible than the reasons he offers for his behavior. That conduct stretches from an armed assault as a 10-year-old, to several near murders, to the plot to bomb buildings frequented by Jews and nonwhites referred to above.

Leo Felton has been incarcerated for all but a few months of his adult life. During his first decade of life behind bars, he became a member of several racist organizations and a devoted white supremacist. He hid the fact his father is a Canadian of African descent.

Felton, a convicted felon covered in neo-Nazi tattoos (including the word "skinhead" on his scalp), was a member of several white supremacist groups, including East Coast Aryan Brotherhood, a violent white supremacist prison gang, and the White Order of Thule, which embraces Nordic symbolism and mythology. Chase was a member of the racist and anti-Semitic World Church of the Creator, and was active in a prison outreach program run by that organization.

We have discussed nonwhite racists here before, usually in reference to the 'scientific' racism weblog Gene Expression, which is the stomping grounds of people of color who hate other people of color, though it is the brain child of longterm white white supremacist Steve Sailer.

The piece in the New York Times sheds more light on how a person of African, Asian or Indian descent might become attracted to white supremacy, and, actually believe the ideology has a place for him.

Felton began reading pamphlets and magazines distributed by contemporary American fascist groups, and he read the writings of Adolf Hitler and various Nazi ideologues. But he couldn't escape one crucial fact in those racist doctrines: race, for them, was a biological fact. Felton, to those writers, and to most of the racists with whom he had begun to correspond and associate, was indisputably black (whatever his appearance) and thus part of an inferior race, someone to be shunned. It was a situation that seemed to Felton not so much ontologically wrong as simply unfair. "I had an investment in these ideas that most people in the movement didn't have," he said, "despite their blond hair and blue eyes."

Then in 1995 he discovered a book that offered him a way out: Imperium, a strange work of philosophy and occult religion written just after World War II by an American fascist named Francis Parker Yockey. "The main thing to understand in Yockey's idea of race," Felton explained to me in a letter, "is that he considered it to have its center of gravity in the spirit rather than in biology. He considered the National Socialist or Nazi concept of race to be a product of 19th-century materialism." The quote from Imperium that Felton was most eager to draw to my attention was this one: "Race is, in the first instance, what a man feels."

. . .For Felton, in his prison cell, this idea changed everything. Race was a choice; it was what a man feels, and Felton knew he felt white. By defending white culture, he would literally become white -- as pure as anyone else who shared the same beliefs.

In other words, a nonwhite person can 'become white' by adopting racism as his ideology and devoting himself to serving white supremacy. The thinking resembles the French belief that 'unevolved' Asian and African French colonial subjects could 'evolve' by adopting French culture.

The pernicious notion has also sprang up in a branch of the multiracial movement associated with Ward Connerly. Some of its leaders encourage parents to tell mixed race children, usually of African-American descent, that they are white. I believe this sets the stage for the development of more Leo Feltons.

And, yes, there are people like him in the blogosphere. A Gene Expression member, Jason Malloy, is a dead ringer for Felton, including the pretense of being white and belief blacks are an inferior race, despite his own African ancestry. The other nonwhite members of the group also share the warped perspective Felton attributes to having read Yockey -- they will become white by being white supremacists. An aging Chicano participant, who should know better, is an equally lost soul. He clings desperately to the claim he is white, though no one looking at his picture would think so.

What would I tell a mixed-race child about his identity? That he is a mixture of the so-called races and that one 'race,' is no better than another. Any other statement would be racist.

I don't believe Leo Felton is the bizarre person he is because he is racially mixed. The brain damage his mother implies in Stockman's article, mental illness or choice strike me as better explanations. Whatever his problem, I am comfortable with the idea of Felton spending the rest of his life in the place he knows best -- prison. Though he will be eligible for release at 41 under his current sentence, he has a record of assaulting other prisoners that is likely to lengthen his sojourn there. A person as violent as Felton belongs behind bars, whether he is black, white or in-between.

On and off the Web

Off the Web

*The Practice

It is going back where it belongs -- Sundays. I'm looking forward to the new season, curious to see how the writers handle Bobby separate from the firm. I believe they can pull it off because they have done excellent work with non-firm characters, such as Helen, the prosecutor, in the past. There is also the romance between Jamie and Eugene to develop. The upcoming season may rejuvenate The Practice.

*All that jazz

One of my favorite summer events, the Mount Hood Festival of Jazz is also returning. It was canceled last year due to financial problems. The festival will take place at the city park in Gresham instead of its traditional venue, Mt. Hood Community College. It will also be shorter than usual. Quite a few people travel to the Pacific Northwest partly to attend one of the best jazz events in the country. If you will be in Vancouver, Seattle or Portland near Aug. 2-3, do drop in.

*Dating

I'm going to start answering some guys' emails and returning their calls, again. I can be very remiss when it comes to dating. I must get over the 'been there, done that' attitude.

On the Web

*Where we're going

I've been thinking about the blog ecosystem and Silver Rights. My intentions in regard to this blog are to keep it relatively small and separate from any other Web endeavors I try. Civil rights is a delicate subject, so I believe maintaining a blog focusing on the topic is a challenge in itself. Once I upgrade to Blogger Pro, I hope to turn SR into more of a compendium of information about civil rights resources, as well as a blog.

*Hot links

My links are mainly motivated by who is saying something of note about a subject I'm writing about. Sometimes, I start writing and then search out links. Other times, a link at another blog inspires the entry. I have no particular policy in regard to linking other than rarely, if ever, linking to blogs that are hostile to civil rights. I seldom link back to SR because of the hopeless state of its archives. A quick glance at ecosystem data says my most popular link to Silver Rights has been, Alas a Blog, Barry's place. I suspect Prometheus 6, Smart Genes, Balasubramania's Mania and Mac-a-ro-nies, when its archives are working, are next in line.

However, my linking history is very varied. If you are a blogger writing about a civil rights related topic, feel free to email me. There is a high probability I will link to it.

*Mad people

One of the motivations people have for blogging is anger. That may partly explain the dearth of visitors to an estimated 90 percent of the blogs that exist. On the other hand, some 'angry blogs' are quite popular as readers show up to gawk at the outrageous behavior, much as they do at traffic accidents. One angry and exploitive blogger has landed in court and the New York Times.

Strange bedfellows: Gays and the GOP

Conservative blogger Jan Hauglund of Secular Blasphemy draws our attention to an issue that refuses to behave like the love that dare not speak its name -- lowkey and afraid. Increasingly, the GOP is being forced to confront the reality of conservatives who are also homosexuals. Haugland observes,

The Bush administration wants to come across as inclusive, but conservatives are not too happy about them even talking to groups like the Log Cabin Republicans.

GOP representatives are doing the math to find out of they win or lose by embracing gays.

Who else should conservatives vote for anyway?

The impetus for the discussion is an article in the New York Times. It describes what appear to be inroads into the bosom of the Republican Party made by Right Wing homosexuals.

WASHINGTON, May 31 — On a rainy Friday in early May, 200 members of the Log Cabin Republicans, a political advocacy group of gay men and lesbians, boarded buses at Dupont Circle, a popular neighborhood among gays here, for a pilgrimage of sorts. Their destination, the White House, was about a mile away. But for many, it had long seemed out of reach. To gay Republicans, the visit, which included a policy briefing with senior administration officials in the Old Executive Office Building, symbolized their progress under President Bush. Although Mr. Bush did not attend, gone are the days when Bob Dole, a Republican candidate for president, refused a campaign contribution from the Log Cabin group, founded 25 years ago to promote the interests of gays in the party.

The article also describes the backlash those perceived inroads have resulted in.

"Candidate Bush said in the second debate that he felt marriage was a sacred covenant, limited to a man and a woman," said Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council, an advocacy group in Washington. "That was not a huge issue in 2000. Mark it down. It will be a big, big issue in 2004."

Mr. Connor and other conservatives say they are incensed over a March meeting between Marc Racicot, the Republican national chairman, who is expected to become Mr. Bush's campaign chairman, and the Human Rights Campaign, a nonpartisan group that advocates equal rights for gays. The session was the first time a Republican Party chairman had met with the group, said David Smith, its spokesman.

A case about to be decided by the Supreme Court, Lawrence vs. Texas , case No. 02-102, may become a bellweather for the conflict. The far Right is poised to take to the warpath if SCOTUS knocks down a Texas statute banning sodomy.

It seems to be that tension between being gay and being conservative is inevitable. Homosexuality has only been removed from classification as a psychiatric disorder since 1973. Most Americans still hold strong reservations against homosexuality and believe marriage should be between a man and a woman, national polls reveal. Anyone who is gay must know he or she is a member of a frowned upon minority, usually estimated at about 1.5 to three percent of the population. Yet, white gays are also an invisible minority. Unlike people of color, the elderly or the handicapped, they can 'pass' as 'normal' white Americans. Therein lies the rub. Even as they pass, they are hindered by the discriminations against homosexuals built in to the system they so much want to be a part of.

Consider George W. Bush's record in regard to homosexuals.

As president, Mr. Bush has appointed several openly gay people, including Michael Guest, the ambassador to Romania, to high-level jobs, and he has also declined to overturn executive orders issued by President Bill Clinton that bar discrimination against gays in federal employment and security clearances. Mr. Bush's effort to triple federal spending on the global AIDS epidemic has brought him praise from many gays.

But Mr. Bush does not favor giving gays the legal protection that would grant their domestic partners health and tax benefits, and he is against rolling back the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, under which gays can be expelled if they disclose their sexual orientation.

In return for very little recognition, conservative gays are expected to share a tent with other members of the far Right who hate them. And, surprisingly to me, many, such as the Log Cabin Republicans, are willing to.

Among those on the Right who give gays no quarter are the neo-Confederates, who are key to a winning Southern strategy that relies on black versus white, rural versus urban and aging versus young demographics. Blogger Dave Neiwert of Orcinus observed the commonalities between the GOP's relationship with nonwhites and its relationship with homosexuals in an entry last month.

One of the interesting subtexts of the current dustup over the recently outed homophobia of Republican Sen. Rick Santorum is that even though the GOP is officially standing behind him, party leaders must be discomfited by how deeply the controversy cuts against the GOP's current national electoral strategy.

It's also worth considering for a moment what the situation reveals about the politics of being gay and lesbian in America today. Ten years ago, Santorum would have been backed by a chorus of fundamentalists decrying everything homosexual, and there would have been little hesitation by party officials in their support. Now they're hoping the controversy just goes away. That quietly suggests a sea change that lurks beneath.

A month later, an effort to reverse that sea change, or at least the perception of a sea change, is being waged by bedrock conservatives.

Leaders of socially conservative and Christian groups also demanded — and got — their own meeting with Mr. Racicot. Participants said they told the Republican chairman they would bolt the party if leaders continued to make overtures toward gays.

"The main message that we delivered was that you are playing with political fire if you are seen to be in any way compromising with the homosexual lobby," said Paul M. Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation, who was present.

As a neo-Confederate watcher, I've also noticed the far Right tends to have as little use for gays as it does for nonwhites. Among its forays against perceived enemies this year has been a movement to force the National Parks Service to either withdraw or edit a video about President Abraham Lincoln that suggests he would have supported the gay rights movement. Conversations in neo-Confederate forums are as anti-gay as they are racist and sexist.

I think the Republicans will distance themselves from gay conservatives this electoral cycle. A bird in hand. . . Christian fundamentalists and neo-Confederates are that bird. I also think Right Wing gays will continue to support the GOP no matter how much it insults them because their allegiance to the Right trumps the shabby treatment they are accorded by it in their minds. As Jan Haugland said, "Who else should conservatives vote for anyway?"

Heartthrob actor was gay all along

In a revelation that is bound to have disappointed many women in their sixties and older, actor Richard Chamberlain has announced he is a homosexual. Chamberlain, nearing 70, was a romantic leading man for most of his career, starring in television dramas and movies that appealed to women. He has been in his current relationship with a man for 26 years.

My mother, who died several years ago, would have been among the disappointed older ladies. She was quite the Chamberlain fan.

Vote for Silver Rights!

Silver Rights has been entered in the New Weblog Showcase at The Truth Laid Bear this week. The showcase is an effort to get blog readers to read new blogs. A reader can support a favorite blog by:

1) Linking to the blog entry each contestant was asked to submit,

2) Linking to or blogrolling the blog itself.

I urge Silver Rights readers who already have this blog blogrolled to link to my submitted entry, "Some logs and a bottle of wine," here.

If you don't have Silver Rights on your blogroll, you are invited to add it and vote for the submitted entry.

To summarize, the way to show your support for Silver Rights overall in regard to the contest is to vote for the specific entry. Linking to the blog's URL or blogrolling it does not count for the contest.

Your support will be appreciated.

I also encourage my readers to read some of the other entries in the New Weblog Showcase. You can do so by clicking on the link at the top of this entry.

Bigotry watch: Emanuels, Pickering and Moon

*Seattle teacher insulted students in second class

It has been revealed Brian Emanuels, the first-year teacher who quit rather than accept a reprimand for calling a student a 'nigger' twice, had other conflicts with students at Cleveland High School. One occurred in another class the same day. In addition, students have now thoroughly described their encounters with Emanuels.

"He said it was very inappropriate to say 'gay' in class. I said I didn't know it was inappropriate. I say it all the time. This is the first time you are telling me I couldn't use it," the student recalled. (The students interviewed are not being named, at the request of their parents.)

He said the two argued a few minutes about the use of the term "gay," and then Emanuels became irate.

"He told me, 'It's like me saying (slur). How would you like me to call you a (slur)?' I said, 'What do you mean?' and he told me, 'If you say 'gay' then I can say (slur). All right (slur).' "

"Before I got into the class I heard him say (slur), and the whole class was looking at me and I didn't know why. I was like, 'What's going on?' "

Contrary to having used the slur once, as Emanuels said he had, he seems to have used it as many as a dozen times that day, including hours later in the second incident.

In the second class, according to two students who were there, one student also used "gay" to describe an assignment.

After another student used the term, students say, Emanuels responded much as he had in the first class.

One student recalled Emanuels saying, " 'This is like saying this is so black or so Jew or so (slur)ish.' He said (using gay in that way) is like saying black is ugly. We were all thinking, what's this guy's problem? But he kept on going."

Meanwhile, support for Emanuels from conservatives continues unabated. Stefan Sharkansky, the Gene Expression participant who has strongly defended Emanuels, continues to idolize him and blame problems caused by Emanuels on the NAACP.

Another ally, the Seattle Safe Schools Coalition, tempers its language, but still treats the remark the student made as if it were directed toward another person, and supports Emanuels.

On behalf of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community, we want to commend first-year teacher Brian Emanuels for trying to take steps to correct the pejorative use of the term "gay" that so many adults choose to ignore. We need to say, too, however, that the WAY in which Mr. Emanuels intervened was inappropriate. It is NOT the wish of the LGBT community to have its allies use counter-punches when a student steps over the line and expresses a prejudice. Using a racial epithet as a means of empathy-building doesn't work and is frankly wrong.

I'v also learned Emanuels is trying to capitalize on his reputation as a hero among Right Wingers. He has agreed to speak about his efforts to 'teach values' to children of color on talk radio. The program I intended to monitor was rescheduled, but I will continue to follow the strange career of Brian Emanuels.

*Pickering's man in Bloggersville stands pat

Chris Lawrence of Signifying Nothing still refuses to hear any evil about the Klansman without the robes known as Judge Charles Pickering. Keeping true to his roots as a privileged white Mississipian, he has apparently refused to read either the earlier revelations about Pickering in Salon and other publications, blog entries by bloggers Atrios, Josh Marshall and Mac Diva, or the famous article in the WaPo last week. All these sources make it painfully clear to anyone without a bias in favor of the status quo in Mississippi that Pickering is unfit to be a judge period and even more unfit to be elevated to a higher judgeship. Lawrence also sees no evil when it comes to a fellow member of the club.

I stand by my position that Pickering is being unjustly pilloried. If the Democrats dislike him for his politics or his overall jurisprudence, that is a fair objection; however, I don't think this particular case is in any way emblematic of either, but instead has been blown out of proportion because screaming "racist" is easier than articulating philosophical objections to the appointment of a sitting district judge to a higher court.

Though the blinders Lawrence has probably been wearing since childhood may prevent him from realizing it, the problems with Pickering are beyond philosophical.

Not that all Southern white men would agree with him. My friend and mentor, writer Richard Ford, a white Mississipian like Lawrence and Pickering, probably has an earful to share about Pickering when I get a chance to ask him about the Lying Judge. My former longterm significant other, a white Virginian, would probably fall out of his chair laughing after reading Lawrence's entries. A blogger from Texas considers Pickering "a lying racist scumbag."

I believe Pickering has overplayed his pathetic hand and almost everyone realizes it.

*Moonies question response to anti-gay remarks

A Washington Times columnist is bewildered by the reaction of some Washingtonians to a commencement speaker expressing a bias against homosexuals.

It was only three words.     

But a Catholic cardinal's statement at Georgetown University's May 17 commencement that the family is "mocked by homosexuality" has sparked protests from dozens of faculty members and students.     

The brouhaha, which has been publicized on Catholic and homosexual Web sites around the country, pits a liberal Jesuit university against the strict traditions of its Catholic founders.

The cardinal was invited to speak about Christian-Islamic relations.

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church, which owns the Times, has expressed opposition to homosexuality, reportedly telling gay male Moonies to castrate themselves.

Eric Rudolph nabbed in N.C.

Suspected terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph has been arrested in North Carolina, near the mountains he disappeared into five years ago.

MURPHY, N.C. (AP) - Eric Rudolph, the longtime fugitive charged in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing and in attacks at an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub, was arrested early Saturday in the mountains of North Carolina.

Rudolph had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list and had eluded a massive manhunt for five years, much of it in the western North Carolina mountains near where he was caught Saturday.

The Rudolph case is intriguing in several ways. His mother, a Christian Identity partisan, reared her children in isolated communes. They were rigorously home schooled in far Right ideology, including white supremacy and opposition to abortion. At least two have engaged in bizarre acts as adults. A brother's response to Rudolph's indictment was to cut off his hand with a saw to show faith and solidarity.

Some of us had wondered if the FBI was really trying to capture Eric Rudolph, especially after the fall-out it encountered in the case of Randy Weaver, also a white supremacist and anti-government advocate. In fact, it appears from the circumstances that Rudolph may have wanted to be taken into custody, or at least was not trying very hard to remain on the lam.

He was captured when Police Officer Jeffrey Postell spotted a man near a grocery about 4:30 a.m. in the small town of Murphy. Worried that he might try to break into a business, he arrested him.

``I did not have a clue'' who he was, Postell said.

The fervor with which the FBI has pursued Muslims who have sent money abroad or traveled to the Middle East post-September 11 renews that question. Are home-grown alleged terrorists less important than Muslims who sent money to their home countries?

A third aspect of the case that makes me curious is whether Rudolph will be prosecuted and sentenced to the full extent of the law. One of the two victims killed in the various attacks he is alleged to have carried out was an African-American woman in Atlanta. There is little history of a white person receiving the death penalty when his victims are black.

Law enforcement is presenting Rudolph as pleasant and cooperative. But, what we need to remember about him, assuming the allegations are true, is summed up by a victim of one of the attacks.

``You don't have to go to the Middle East to find terrorists. Rudolph is one of them. He terrorized and he murdered,'' [Emily] Lyons said.

Blogger Mike Silverman of Red Letter Day asserts that he is not among the conservatives who regret Rudolph's capture or who will try to make excuses for him.

The news that Eric Rudolph has been captured is wonderful and welcome. Rudolph bombed the 1996 Olympic games, a gay bar, and an abortion clinic before going to ground several years ago.

This is an excellent chance to show that when we go to war against terrorists, it shouldn't matter what ideology they spout or where they come from. . .the justice should be the same.

The blogger at Twinkle, twinkle, blah, blah, blah, Cowboy Sally, agrees with Silverman about Rudolph's capture. She also has doubts about whether law enforcement was searching all that hard, suggesting he might have been found "in a dumpster behind a store." I second that. Local police should have been keeping an eye on hiding places near stores for years since they knew Rudolph needed supplies. Sally goes on to express a lack of solidarity with the fellow.

Shit. Nothing would make me happier than to hear Eric Rudolph was apprehended. I realize it's a bad obsession, my desire to see him apprehended and punished in a Biblical way, but no one since Tom Metzger has inspired so much personal fervid, foaming-at-the-mouth hatred in me. . . .

Manish at Damn Foreigner is curious about how the media will treat the capture of a Christian white guy with good manners who happens to terrorize people.

It's great that they've caught him. I'd personally like to offer a prize to the first mainstream news organization that calls him a suspected terrorist. Double points if his capture is cited by an Administration official as a victory in the war on terror.

Of course, Attorney General John Ashcroft has already taken credit for the capture, though the FBI had nothing to do with it. But then, Ashcroft takes credit for just about everything. When the sun comes up tomorrow. . .

The resumption of the strange saga of Eric Rudolph has just begun. We will be watching as it continues to unfold.

A haven for extremists

Eric Rudolph is not the only white supremacist to find Asheville, N.C., an amenable habitat. Kirk Lyons, a leader in the League of the South and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, moved his operations to the town about a decade ago. The article about Rudolph explains why.

Pockets of western North Carolina have had a reputation as a haven for right-wing extremists. Some there mocked the government's inability to find Rudolph with bloodhounds, infrared-equipped helicopters and space-age motion detectors - and some said they would hide him if asked.

Lyons, long associated with the Aryan Nations and Holocaust denial, has also been linked to espionage.