All things Racist...USA edition (5 Viewers)

[Farb]

I was looking for a place to put this so we could discuss but didn't really find a place that worked so I created this thread so we can all place articles, experiences, videos and examples of racism in the USA.

This is one that happened this week. The lady even called and filed a complaint on the officer. This officer also chose to wear the body cam (apparently, LA doesn't require this yet). This exchange wasn't necessarily racist IMO until she started with the "mexican racist...you will never be white, like you want" garbage. That is when it turned racist IMO

All the murderer and other insults, I think are just a by product of CRT and ACAB rhetoric that is very common on the radical left and sadly is being brought to mainstream in this country.

Another point that I think is worth mentioning is she is a teacher and the sense of entitlement she feels is mind blowing.

https://news.yahoo.com/black-teacher-berates-latino-la-221235341.html

 

[Optimus Prime]

I will say this is the least visible Black History Month I’ve ever experienced

I feel like I’ve only seen it mentioned a half dozen times so far

Used to see it more than that daily

Saw a rare black history month commercial yesterday

From Target

Cancelling all diversity initiatives, stopping promoting black owned brands

But come spend some money with us

 

[fooferdoggie]

Saw a rare black history month commercial yesterday

From Target

Cancelling all diversity initiatives, stopping promoting black owned brands

But come spend some money with us

yep they benefited from DEI. but corporations are going to go where the pressure takes them so it's hard to really go after them. but they sure got good sales from DEI. but the thing is if black people stop buying from them those black-owned companies will suffer far more then target does.

 

[Optimus Prime]

…….In the first weeks of Trump’s second term, hesigned an executive order eliminating federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs – including initiatives for diversity in federal contracting or grants that help farmers and minority communities – and instructed that DEI staff be laid off. Shortly after, corporations such as Target, Walmart, Lowe’s and Meta followed suit in eliminating their DEI programs.

Even the NFL capitulated to Trump’s DEI demands, ending its end zone slogan “end racism” at this year’s Super Bowl and replacing it with “choose love”. The “end racism” slogan had been stenciled in the end zone at Super Bowl games since 2021.

But those who participated in the 1960s civil rights movement are not surprised by Trump’s executive orders or divisive policies. They have seen this before.

As they fought against Jim Crow laws, these activists faced staunch segregationists who battled integration, including Eugene “Bull” Connor, Jim Clark and George Wallace in Alabama; Orval Faubus in Arkansas; Lester Maddox in Georgia; and Ross Barnett and other segregationists in Mississippi.

David Dennis Sr grew up on a plantation in Louisiana and later attended Dillard University, a historically Black college in New Orleans, on a scholarship. Dennis faced violent segregationists as a Freedom Rider and in Mississippi as a co-director of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project.

After civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were killed at the beginning of Freedom Summer, Dennis’s fiery eulogy of Chaney expressed the exhaustion of fighting injustice.

America is experiencing a “surge backwards” in terms of race, after decades of progress, Dennis said. An example of a “surge forward” was the Reconstruction era after the civil war, Dennis, 84, said.

Then there was a “surge backwards” during the presidency of Rutherford B Hayes, in which troops that had protected the formerly enslaved were moved out and a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan followed. Dennis noted that Jim Crow laws were enacted and there was a conservative supreme court.

“If you look at that period of time, what happened then, and what’s happening now, this surge back, there’s quite a similarity of what happened politically and what the issues were then as it is right now,” Dennis said.

There was another surge forward during the Eisenhower administration and with the civil rights movement, which saw the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Dennis said.…….

‘There’s quite a similarity’: US civil rights pioneers warn of ‘surge backwards’ under Trump

They faced violence and racism as they fought on the frontlines for justice and equality. Now Trump is reversing the progress they toiled for

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

For Nevaeh Parker, the president of the Black student union (BSU) at the University of Utah, Black History Month is usually a buzzing time on campus.

The school’s BSU hosts several events – kickback parties and movie screenings – throughout the month. The Black cultural center, where students would usually congregate and attend activities, would be full. And the month’s crown jewel would typically be a conference at the college for Black high schoolers in the area.

But in July 2024, the center was shut down and turned into offices. The BSU budget, previously a guaranteed $11,000 a year to fund various gatherings to support the school’s marginal Black population, has been slashed. And the group has been forced to officially disassociate from the university in order to keep Black students at the center of their programming, all thanks to a new anti-DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) law passed in Utah last year.

“It really hurts my soul to feel like we’re going backwards,” Parker, 19, told the Guardian. “We aren’t able to be as strong of a resource as we could be to Black students here.”

Black student unions at US colleges are fighting to stay in operation as state laws targeting DEI initiatives threaten their existence. Founded largely in the 1960s and 1970s, the campus groups support Black students at predominantly white universities by securing additional educational and financial resources, demanding more Black faculty, and building spaces for Black students to socialize. Activism by Black student unions helped spur the creation of African American studies programs across the US.

BSUs are often the first line of response to racial discrimination on campus, organizing protests and holding universities accountable. Dozens of the groups held demonstrations after George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

But anti-DEI bills are restricting what BSUs can do on campus, and how universities are legally allowed to support them. Since 2023, at least 11 states have passed laws targeting DEI initiatives in higher education. And conservative lawmakers in more than 30 states have also introduced such bills. At the federal level, Donald Trump ordered US universities and schools to eliminate DEI measures, threatening to withhold federal funding from those that do not comply.

DEI programming at the collegiate level was initially conceived to support marginalized students, who are disproportionately affected by discrimination, financial hardship and feelings of alienation. But Republican legislators have argued that such initiatives are unfair and discriminate against white students. The flurry of anti-DEI bills, which have sharply increased since 2022, comes after the US supreme court struck down affirmative action, or the practice of race-conscious student admissions, in June 2023.

Anti-DEI legislation and culture as a whole has had a chilling effect on colleges. Several universities have cancelled scholarships specifically aimed at students of color. Multicultural and LGBTQ+ student centers have been shuttered. And staff overseeing DEI initiatives have been terminated or reassigned.

In January 2024, the Utah legislature passed House bill 261, known as the Equal Opportunity Initiatives. The law prohibits state schools and public offices from engaging in “differential treatment”, essentially banning DEI efforts centered around a particular identity.

In response to the new legislation, the University of Utah closed its Black cultural center, a major loss for Black students on campus looking for a physical location to socialize, especially as only 3% of Utah students are Black. “It was a home away from home for a lot of students, especially those who lived out of state,” said Parker. “[The state of] Utah is less than 2% Black, [so] obviously, you are going to need spaces that are safe.”...............

‘We’re going backwards’: the Black student unions forced to close on US campuses

Black student unions at US colleges are fighting to stay in operation as state laws targeting DEI initiatives threaten their existence

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

 

[fooferdoggie]

Notice Trump is not trying to eliminate DEI in sports?

 

[Optimus Prime]

Black educator hired after school’s ‘slave auction’ says job was racist nightmare

Exclusive: Treda Collier Dickenman “is both resilient and extraordinary in her courageousness,” attorney Rebecca Brazzano told The Independent

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Optimus Prime]

Good read
========


Almost a decade ago, I started a business called Rent-A-Minority, which enabled companies to hire a minority ethnic person whenever they needed an injection of diversity to boost their image.

I had a variety of inclusivity-enriching hires available, including an “ethnically ambiguous” category and a selection of smiling Muslim women (guaranteed not to support Islamic State or your money back).

Like every good startup, Rent-A-Minority posted testimonials from clients and influencers on its website. I made up all the blurbs, because that is the Silicon Valley way: fake it till you make it.

One of those fake comments was from Donald Trump, who was still considered a long shot for the presidency in January 2016, when my business launched. “When I’m president, I’ll shut this site down,” Trump’s blurb read.

My business, just in case you are reeling in horror, was a joke. I launched it to satirise the superficial and patronising way in which many companies were approaching diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Not to toot my gay Palestinian horn, but the website went viral. Ironically, it briefly got one minority ethnic person (me) a lot of business speaking to companies around the world about how to approach diversity in a more meaningful manner.

Rent-A-Minority may have been a joke, but that fake Trump testimonial seems to have been a prophecy.

Trump’s second term has become a crusade against DEI. Hours into his presidency, he signed two executive orders targeting “radical and wasteful” DEI programmes. If a federal initiative has anything remotely to do with the issue, Trump has decreed that it must be eliminated.

References to the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, for example, were marked for deletion by the Department of Defense. Why? Because the aircraft’s name has the word “gay” in it.

DEI has been turned into a scapegoat. When a passenger jet and a US army helicopter crashed over Washington DC in January, killing 67 people, one of the first things Trump said was that the collision could have been the result of diversity hiring.

This has been a favourite talking point of the right for a while – in January 2024, Elon Musk spluttered on X about how the aviation industry had “prioritized DEI hiring over safety” – but it has gone from the fringe of politics to the frontline.

Now that the political landscape has changed, many companies that used to talk the big talk about inclusivity have changed their tune. Some, such as Costco and Apple, have defended their diversity policies and chosen to stay the course.

But roughly 20% of companies in the S&P 100 – including Meta, Amazon, Target and McDonald’s – have retreated from DEI commitments since Trump’s re-election, according to a Bloomberg News analysis……..

“We all want a meritocracy, but too often we don’t have them,” Williams says. “There is one group in professional workplaces where over 90% believe they are working in meritocracies – and that’s white men. Every other group has sharply less confidence that they are working in meritocracies because they feel that they are being held to a different standard.”

And those people tend to be correct. “We did 22 DEI experiments inside companies,” says Williams. “One company was horrified to find that they were hiring white men who had lower ratings than women and people of colour who weren’t hired.”

In short, DEI should always have been treated as a serious business issue. Instead, it has often been approached as a box-ticking exercise or a PR manoeuvre.

Never was that truer than after the murder of George Floyd in 2020: as racial justice demonstrations erupted around the world, corporations suddenly started shouting about DEI from the rooftops.

Listings for roles in DEI increased by 55% in the two months after Floyd’s death, according to the recruitment website Glassdoor……

The idea that being white or male puts you at a disadvantage in the recruitment process is not reflected in reality, says Williams.

“We have over 10 years of data, including very recent data that shows that, in professional workplaces, white men report wildly less bias and wildly more fairness,” she says.

“There are some white men who are really hurting, but those are non-elite white men. The economic and cultural position of elite white men is still pretty peachy.”

White men still occupy most of the top-level roles in US companies. According to a 2023 study, “ethnically and racially diverse executives hold just 12.5% of CEO, CFO and COO positions in Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies … while women occupy 13.7% of the seats”.

Plenty of studies show that white-sounding names get called back for jobs more than Black‑sounding ones.

No matter what the data says, however, there is still a sense among a lot of white men that women, LGBTQ+ people and racial minorities are suddenly the ones getting every advantage in life while they are being discriminated against.

The podcast host Scott Galloway, who is very far from a rabid rightwinger, has argued that anti-discrimination laws exist already and there is no need for DEI: “Corporations and universities are now advantaging 76% of the populace [minority groups and women in the US] – and when you’re advantaging 76% of the populace, you’re not advantaging anybody.”………..

‘Guess what? You don’t matter’: what Trump’s war on DEI means for every American who’s not a straight white man

The US government’s move to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion policies is a naked attempt to appeal to prejudice – but it may well backfire

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

The United States is now embracing its racist past thanks to the GOP.

The US defense department webpage celebrating an army general who served in the Vietnam war and was awarded the country’s highest military decoration has been removed and the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address.​

On Saturday, US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a “404” error message. The URL was also changed, with the word “medal” changed to “deimedal”.

Rogers, who was awarded the Medal of Honor by then president Richard Nixon in 1970, served in the Vietnam war, where he was wounded three times while leading the defense of a base.

According to the West Virginia military hall of fame, Rogers was the highest-ranking African American to receive the medal. After his death in 1990, Rogers’s remains were buried at the Arlington national cemetery in Washington DC, and in 1999 a bridge in Fayette county, where Rogers was born, was renamed the Charles C Rogers Bridge.
As of Sunday afternoon, a “404 – Page Not Found” message appeared on the defense department’s webpage for Rogers, along with the message: “The page you are looking for might have been moved, renamed, or may be temporarily unavailable.”

Black Medal of Honor recipient removed from US Department of Defense website

Page honoring Charles C Rogers for his Vietnam war service is now defunct with letters ‘DEI’ added to website address

www.theguardian.com

 

[fooferdoggie]

The United States is now embracing its racist past thanks to the GOP.

The US defense department webpage celebrating an army general who served in the Vietnam war and was awarded the country’s highest military decoration has been removed and the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address.​

even the dead military is not free of the DEI.

 

[Optimus Prime]

For John Boyd, Jr., a farmer and civil rights activist, the first months of the Trump administration have felt like déjà vu of the worst kind.

“It’s just like going back in time,” Boyd, founder of the National Black Farmers Association, told The Independent.

Boyd is a fourth-generation farmer who raises corn, soybeans, wheat, and livestock in Virginia. He has spent years lobbying Congress and fighting in the courts to correct the federal government’s well-documented, longstanding exclusion of Black farmers from loans, subsidies, and other forms of support.

“He's totally dismantled the work I've been doing for the last 40 years,” Boyd said of Trump. “I don’t think people understand the magnitude.”

Through changes large and small, the Trump administration looks set to drastically alter the direction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), a federal agency that has in recent years dispersed billions trying to make up for a long legacy of racial discrimination in farming.

And it couldn’t come at a worse time: Black farm ownership has been declining for decades. Advocates warn a community whose agricultural labor helped build the United States economy may now no longer have a future in it.……

Trump could ‘dismantle’ decades of work to fix discrimination against Black farmers

After decades of discrimination against Black farmers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been trying to change course. That all could come to an end under Trump, Josh Marcus reports

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Optimus Prime]

If the government ran Major League Baseball Jackie Robinson would be erased

Think about how insane that would be

and think about how that isn't any different than what they are doing now

 

[Optimus Prime]

 

[superchuck500]

of course

 

[Optimus Prime]

Exclusive: Navajo Code Talkers disappear from military websites after Trump DEI order​

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

This country is purposely excluding its non-white citizens and the GOP is cool with it!

 

[cuddlemonkey]

of course

It's white right on the tip of my tongue...