Race
Land of the free…
If you’re white. And lucky.
The bullet next time
Ajani Husbands sends a letter to his unborn, Black son:
You will not survive your encounter, so it is important to remember to show investigators, the courts, and critics alike that you were in fact the victim. This will be difficult as the assumption is ever-present that somehow, in some way, you did something wrong. That perhaps there was something different you could have, should have done. Perhaps you should have worn something different or walked in a less suspicious manner. I assure you, my son, this is not the case. Regardless of your actions, you were not meant to survive. All you can hope for is an easier postmortem investigation. This will be of some comfort to your mother and I as we cope through your loss, and so I ask you to follow these directions carefully.
See also how to talk to young Black boys about Trayvon Martin and Etan Thomas talking about how and what he will need to tell his six year old son soon.
Land of the Free
For most privileged, professional people, the experience of confinement is a mere brush, encountered after a kid’s arrest, say. For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision†in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.
Your Happening World (22)
What happens in Austin, Texas when you babysit your black grandchild as a white grandfather. Hint: not a happy story.
NHS “reform: “Cameron’s put his political credibility on the line, not for ideological or populaist reasons, but to ensure McKinely’s bottom line”. Do read the linked Daily Mail article to show how even a reliable rightwing newspaper is opposed to this tomfoolery.
Why is birth control the Catholic Church’s last stand?
“That no anarchist ever taught us to play Smear the Queer is entirely besides the point.”
“The actual circumstances of the raid on the Sun’s hacks may be up for debate. I think they’re pretty standard for today’s exciting world of high profile send a message coppering, but that may be because I’m a bit too used to living in the kind of authoritarian pro-business society that the Sun has always campaigned for. This is also why I’m a bit baffled by the people who seem to think that we’ll ‘lose something’ when it goes. ‘What will remain’ is the problem.