Race and Gender Issues

Anita Hill

Wednesday night I saw Anita Hill speak on campus, and she was awesome.

From her speech, I really took away some good food for thought: she said when it comes to Supreme Court nominees, we need to worry more about judicial philosophy as much as we do about credentials. She said the fact that credentials are emphasized over philosophy is elitist (looking for Ivy League degrees) sexist, and racist.

She also said that the way that Bush introduced Harriet Miers versus the way he presented Samuel Alito and John Roberts shows his own sexist bias. Bush emphasized Alito's and Roberts's experience and legal pedigrees while saying of Miers that he "knows her heart."

To be fair, Miers has no experience as a judge, while Roberts had at least two years and Alito has 15 years.

At the end of the speech, I asked her who she would pick for the Supreme Court. She mentioned Sonia Sotomayor, a Yale classmate of hers. But she emphasized that if the president were looking for qualified women, that the list is long.

A little incoherence

I began to notice on oh, Tuesday, that the overwhelming majority of the people photographed as being stuck in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and its horrible aftermath were black.

I'm disappointed that I cannot find the "offending" picture and caption, in which an Agence-France Presse photographer wrote that a white family had "found" some food, while in almost every other caption, black families had "looted" food.

Protecting people who have little protection themselves is, at base, what I believe the job of the government is. The president would have you believe that that is the role of Christian organizations. (Let's get something clear — "faith-based programs" are really all Christian-based programs.) But they don't have the money, resources, power, and planning mechanisms to relieve suffering. For goodness sakes, the government wasn't even allowing the Red Cross into the center of New Orleans until yesterday.

Just a quick rant

I've been quite silent for some time, just absorbing the Katrina coverage. And I have to wonder: why was there a huge lack of response? Why was there no plan? Why, in a city that's 70 percent black and 20 percent below the poverty line, were folks told to just go to the Superdome and everything would be just fine? Why are black people being called looters and white people finders?

Executed black woman pardoned 60 years later

Lena Baker, a black woman who was the employee of a white man in Cuthbert, Georgia, was executed in March 1945. She was convicted of murdering his employer by an all-white, all-male jury (pretty standard in those days).

Most interesting is that this event is not really an assertion of her innocence, rather saying that she should have been convicted of manslaughter.

Best quotes from the story:

Roosevelt Curry, Baker's great-nephew, said he cried when the board informed him of its action. He had campaigned for the pardon.

"Now we can all cry tears of joy," Curry, 61, said Monday. He said the case signified how life was stacked against black people at the time. "She had nothing and no one stood by her," he said.
. . .
Garland R. Hunt, the parole board's vice chairman, said Monday the board did not see the pardon as striking a blow against racial injustice or righting a historical wrong.

"We just felt that this was a situation that was unique," Hunt said. "We felt it was a good thing to do for the sake of the family."

I honestly wonder whether Georgia has considered pardoning any black men who killed their employers under equaly dubious circumstances.

Story posted in continuation.

Bushie disses black folks

Big suprise. Prez Bush is again skipping the NAACP's annual convention for the fifth straight year! And yet, the Republican Party is saying it wants to reach out to African Americans! Now, I know that NAACP does not represent the interests of all black people. But if you can't even muster the effort to go to a convention, wave your little hand, and say "I love black people!" you don't deserve the votes or time of anyone who the NAACP represents.

Los Angeles blacks still fare poorly, study shows

I found this kind of surprising. I know that there is an exodus of black folks out of Los Angeles, and of course, this may be why.

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By Alexandria Sage
Story here
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Blacks in America's second-largest city fare the worst among all major races in education, health, economics, housing and criminal justice, according to a study released on Wednesday.

"The State of Black Los Angeles," prepared by the United Way and the Urban League of Los Angeles, said the promise of the American Dream was still out of reach for many blacks in the city.

"At the heart of this shortfall is a fundamental issue of equality — not simply equality as a right but equality as a reality and practice," it said.