What Racism Looks Like
As usual, Ta-Nehisi Coates is correct, and cuts right through the standard rhetoric to truth:
...read moreIn modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist. In 1957, neighbors in Levittown, Pa., uniting under the flag of segregation, wrote: “As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens, we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.”
“Racism Still Exists”: The Power of Art
I frequently hear people say that art has no political power, that it is merely aesthetics and/or money. Many countries repress the power of art by punishing the artists. Here the dominant culture disparages art’s power and commoditize it and among other things turn it into a speculative consumer product. Nevertheless, art in our country can be politically powerful and these posters tell it all.
...read moreWhat would King learn from us?
An elementary school teacher told a story to me once. I was still struggling to learn English, so over the course of the year I asked her often to retell the story.
Years ago in Alabama, the wife of a young preacher received a delivery of red carnations from her husband. They were beautiful, but as she touched them, she noticed they were artificial. When her husband came home, she asked about the flowers. He said, “I wanted to give you something that you could always keep.”
...read moreLet the kids start white student unions
Students want to start white supremacist groups on campus? Let ‘em (although I’m heartened to hear that they’re having trouble finding a faculty adviser). Encourage them to put that on their resumes. List the group membership on the campus website so that future employers know the kind of liability they’re opening themselves up to when they hire these little jerks in the future.
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Reverse Oppression: A Fad that Needs to End
It’s not a new idea – we’ve certainly seen it raising its ugly head in media repeatedly, but it’s become popular again – the “flipped prejudice” fiction.
...read morePutting the money where their hearts are
This story about an elderly widow who was hit with a major tax burden because she was married to a woman and not a man is a sad read. The women were together for decades and made a series of great real estate buys, amassing quite a bit of wealth. Ms. Windsor (the surviving wife) cared for her partner for years through an illness, to which her wife eventually succumbed. Then, because of the Defense of Marriage Act, she was forced to pay enormous sums on her wife’s share of their assets — sums she would not have had to pay if she had been married to a man. Yes, it’s Rich People Things, but it’s still a wildly unfair application of the estate tax. The end of the piece, though, particularly stood out to me:
...read moreWe Are the 53%. Or not.
Oh man this “We Are the 53%” movement. It is actually very sad! Basically, conservative pundit Erick Erickson has started a campaign called “We Are the 53%,” to counter the “We Are the 99%” and Occupy Wall Street movements. According to Erickson’s (very simplistic) math, 53% of Americans pay more in federal income taxes than [...]
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Class war? Or one-sided attack?
If I don’t have it, why should you? It’s the basis of the resentment I hear and see on the part of people who snarl about those unions (who get so! much!) those striking Verizon workers, those students on the J-1 visa, teachers, public service workers, and others. Instead of thinking, “Hey, that’s fucked. We [...]
...read moreReturning to the scene of the class war
Aggravated today by a New York Times story in which striking Verizon workers were forced to argue that their wages weren’t, in fact, “too high”–seeing them make the very valid point that living in the New York area and raising a family on $40,000-$70,000 a year doesn’t actually make them rich–I tweeted angrily: “How the [...]
...read moreHey, anti-tax conservatives
Read this. Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it’s simply somebody else’s problem. About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. Middle [...]
...read moreIRS Targets Single Mother Because of Her Low Income
This is absurd. Via Raven’s Eye, Danny Westneat at the Seattle Times has uncovered a case in which the IRS audited a single mother with two kids, who earns $10 an hour at Supercuts and lives with her parents. What was their reason for doing so? Random selection? An incorrectly completed return? No, they just [...]
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