I have a lot of thoughts about the latest state sanctioned execution. But the one that is foremost in my mind is the complete lack of support for the accused officers. The officers were fired summarily, there was no outcry from the police union. The usual “law and order” types were not on every station parroting their message of compliance.
It got me wondering, what the difference was?
Was it the body camera footage?
Nope, we’ve had body camera footage before.
Was it the callousness of the act?
Nope, sad to say, we’ve had more callous acts caught on camera.
I cannot put my finger on what the… oh wait.. I think I got it
The police are the enforcement arm of class supremacy. They exist to keep people (not merely non-white people but all people without power and money) under control. As evidenced by a number of Supreme Court rulings, the police are not there for you not matter your skin color. However as with all other structures tarred with the white supremacy brush, it disproportionately affects non-white people and allows white people to think they have nothing to worry about because the enforcers look like them.
The fundamental reason there has been no outcry from the “thin blue line”crowd or a vehement defense from the police union (local or national) is the blue shield is not meant for minority officers. They would like to believe by joining with the overseers they would have the same protections but there is never going to be enough room under there for them.
Realized I have never posted the recipe here.
in the Caribbean there is tradition of Black Fruit Cake at Christmas time, making this cake is an artform, my grandmother; Winnifred; was one of its masters. I’m reproducing her recipe here as it was passed on to my mother and now to me. reading my mother’s handwriting to transcribe here, i’m realising that this is not a single cake recipe and by my calculations it may be too late to get started on cakes for this year.
one of my favourite memories of Christmas was preparing the fruit, not for the current year’s cakes, but for the following year.
Ingrdients
1lb Prunes (pitted)
1lb Raisins
1lb currants
1lb candied Mixed Peel
1/2lb Cherries
1 Cup Rum
1 Bottle Cheap wine (inexpensive, fruity, red)
3lbs Baking Flour
3lbs Butter
3lbs Sugar (brown; real brown, not white washed with molasses)
2 doz. Eggs
3 tbs. baking powder
4 medium limes (zest)
1 bottle molasses
Method
Grind fruit together and put to soak for 2 -3 months in rum and wine.
Blend (or mix) butter and sugar in 1/2 lb batches, adding 1 egg yolk at a time until all sugar grains disappear.
Blend (or whisk) egg whites with lime zest until peaks appear.
Add flour, baking powder and fruit in 1/2 cup, 1/2 teaspoon and 1 cup increments to butter/sugar mixture, mixing constantly until all flour, baking powder and fruit are mixed in. finally add peaked egg whites.
Add molasses incremental for color
Grease 3 – 4 cake tins and line with parchment paper.
Pour cake mixture in pans and place in moderate (250 F degree) oven, lower the temperature to 175 degrees after an hour. insert knife or wooden skewer into cake(s), cake(s) are done when knife or skewers are clean and dry.
Remove from oven and let cool.
When cakes have cooled, turn out onto boards and add rum or wine as desired.
I originally wrote this in 2008 and thought I would revisit and update it.
In a move expected by many analysts, Santa Claus [trading as SNTA on the holiday market] has been acquired by retail giant Amazon (AMZN) in a deal estimated to be worth billions. Santa Claus, a long time family run franchise has been on the rocks for the last decade with increased competition in the manufacturing, production and delivery sectors but still engenders a great deal of goodwill and brand recognition worldwide.
While details of the merger while still sketchy, it is understood that Santa Claus will become a registered Amazon brand and in exchange Amazon will provide a better manufacturing and distribution system. Current Santa Claus employees are guaranteed continued employment through 2025 as long as they remain un-unionized and undergo new skills training, an Amazon spokesman said today. The Santa Claus workforce consists of between three and five thousand skilled minority workers and low overhead, however with the advent of automation and a greater demand for electronics the organization found itself unable to compete.
The merger is expected to go smoothly, with CEO and COO, Santa Claus retiring effective immediately to spend more time with his family. Other long time stalwarts of the organization; Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, and Rudolph; are expected to stay on until December 2024 to help in the transition of delivery systems.
19 years ago, on a beach in Barbados, I embarked on a journey that has seen me grow and develop as a person. There is no perfect relationship. We’ve disagreed, we’ve argued but we tried to work it out before we went to sleep. We’ve been through good times and bad, we’ve handled some gracefully, some in sheer panic and desperation. Thank you for being there with me, thank you helping me to be better, thank you for giving me something to work towards, daily.
As Donald Trump is de-platformed and banned from internet spaces from Twitter to PornHub, there are two camps: those joyously celebrating and those screaming about a violation of 1st Amendment rights. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Donald Trump is being banned from a variety of online spaces, ostensibly for inciting insurrection on January 6 which appears to be in violation of various terms of service. This seems like bolting what remains of the barn doors after the horse has kicked it to splinters. My issue with de-platforming is the uneven enforcement of rules. It has taken Twitter more than four years to remove a large number of accounts from the service. On Facebook black and brown voices are more likely to be silenced for calling white people out than white people are for racist behavior. So while there are a number of people celebrating, it is worth remembering that this is the first time a number of personalities are facing consequences for TOS violations and it still isn’t being applied in a fair and equitable manner.
As many people are learning the hard way, the First Amendment to the Constitution protects your right to say whatever you want, but it doesn’t protect you from the consequences. The First Amendment applies specifically to government censorship, so private entities, as a matter of course, can decide what they want or do not want on their platforms, per their terms of service. Donald Trump, as of this writing, is still President of the United States, and while currently unable to post on any social media sites, he still has ready access to the White House press corps and the ability to preempt anything on television to address the nation. Additionally, the Supreme Court has ruled, on a number of different occasions, there are categories of speech that have little or no protections under the First Amendment. The most applicable, in these times, would probably be “speech integral to illegal conduct”, “speech that incites imminent lawless action”, and “true threats”. Arguing that First Amendment rights are being violated because you can’t post to social media is specious at best and deceitful at worse.
As a creator of content I made a decision to host what I write because a lot of internet companies terms of service give them ownership rights.
And yes Virginia, I do read the the Terms of Service, I almost flunked an online course because I was required to submit my work to Turnitin, who in their TOS said they could reproduce and use anything that was submitted to their service in whatever way they deemed, I refused. That is a story for another day.
The reason I bring this up, is while I host my own content, I don’t currently own the server on which it is hosted, meaning I am still governed by the TOS of my hosting provider and they, in turn, are governed by whatever rules and regulations are put in place by the companies that provide their bandwidth. Meaning, that should I violate the agreed to terms my website can and would be taken offline. Even if I were to run my own server out of my home, I would still be governed by the terms of my internet service provider and they too would be well within their rights to take it off-line for violation of those terms and unless the government told them to do it, my First Amendment rights would not be violated unless it was in the protected speech category.
After the attempted coup, by a right wing fascist mob, emboldened by Donald Trump, many people, mostly all white, were quick to claim this is not America. It is, in fact, America, writ large.
Let’s start with the fundamental reason all these people were there in the first place, to “Stop the Steal”. The primary reason they believed the election was stolen from their white supremacist candidate of choice, is because there was high voter turnout in black and brown communities. The GOP wins elections by suppressing voter turnout. This has been their playbook since they were Democrats. Let me put it another way that’s easy to understand, white supremacy in America is maintained by suppressing the votes of black and brown people. They have been doing it for a while, they are spectacularly good at it. Consider the fact the Constitution, you know the ‘all men are created equal’ document that held up as the shining exemplar, had to be amended twice to allow black people and women the vote. Land ownership, Poll Tax, Literacy tests, Jim Crow, purging voter rolls, limiting early voting, Vote ID Laws, redistricting, this is America.
People have been protesting injustice in America for decades but the only time we seem to get overwhelming uses of force is when white supremacy is being addressed. The Capitol police know for their excessive use for force were incredibly docile and well mannered around this mob. Protestors in wheelchairs, fear not, we will cuff and drag them out of here. People marching to protest systemic racism, don’t worry, we’ll get the military to back us up on that. There is no way I can be convinced that Capitol police were not deliberately unprepared for this. DC is one of the most policed cities in America and no one knew there were thousands of protestors coming, no one knew that there was a protest starting nearby shortly before both chambers assembled. I find that hard to believe. People stormed the Capitol building, destroyed property, removed the US flag (and replaced it with a Trump flag), trespassed in congressional offices, stole items, paraded with, and hung multiple white supremacists flags, but still had time pose for selfies with law enforcement and get assistance leaving the building, mostly uninjured and without penalty. Police attempting to de-escalate with white terrorists, police being passive and non-threatening with white terrorist, giving violent and often armed white protestors the benefit of the doubt, lack of mass arrest in the face of violence by white people, this is America.
The most American thing about this whole incident is the instigator in chief gets a slap on the wrist from social media and members of Congress get to pretend they haven’t been enabling this for years. All the flowery orations and pretty press releases are not going to change the fact that America is build on white supremacy and what happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2020 may have come as a surprise to some people but it shouldn’t have. Black and brown people have been asking the same questions for generations and getting the same platitudes. There will be no real consequences as a results of these events. Not listening to and marginalizing non-white voices talking about white supremacy, prioritizing white comfort over non-white lives, this is America.
wherein your erstwhile narrator looks back on the year that was.
I have experienced the gauntlet that was 2020 and escaped relatively unscathed. I would venture to say, that I may actually have come out a little better for it. I am in a better place mentally today than I was at the beginning of the year. I am healthy, I’m still employed, I’ve appreciated working at home, I like my family enough as people to enjoy being stuck indoors with them for months.
On a larger scale, 2020 was about maintaining the status quo. I know there have been protests and awareness has been raised but seriously look at this year and tell me that there has been any significant change around white supremacy and misogyny. Go ahead, I’ll wait…
State sanctioned violence against black and brown bodies continues unabated while white people are nearly always given the benefit of the doubt. One needs to look no further than the reporting around the Nashville suicide bomber (yes, that’s what he was). Or the rich white celebrity that served two months in prison for bribing their children’s way in a school system, while there are still black mothers serving multiple years for leaving their child unaccompanied, within sight, while on a job interview.
BTW pro tip, if you want to get your under-qualified child into an educational institution, create an endowment or donate bigly, and no matter how unsuited they are, a place will be made.
This would also be a good time to talk about the US elections. There is a fundamental reason so many people (Republicans in particular) believe the election was stolen – they have systematically made it more and more difficult for people to vote. The quote that best sums up the Republican attitude to votes is from US Senator Rand Paul.
I’m very, very concerned that if you solicit votes from typically non-voters, that you will affect and change the outcome.
Rand Paul, December 17, 2020
It is easy to believe you were robbed when you’ve been rigging the game in your favor for so long. This year in its own strange way offered a way to tip the scales, however briefly. The ability to vote by mail in more places, easier voter registration, these things worked and you know they worked because you will see how hard the GOP is going to work to get it shutdown by the midterms. As for who ran, it’s not that black and brown people have an overwhelming love for yet another old, mediocre, white man. It’s just that this one isn’t actively trying to kill us or support people that want to kill us, at the moment.
I have no real faith that anything on a truly fundamental and meaningful level is going to change when the calendar rolls over at midnight. As a friend of mine pointed out in April, “the system isn’t broken, it’s functioning exactly as it’s supposed to.” The political system like everything else in a capitalistic society is run on money. To get elected takes money, anywhere from thousands to billions depending on the office. It’s not about the best qualified or even best intentioned, the winner in most cases becomes who is best financed and in that scenario, even the most well intentioned are fundamentally compromised because at the end of the day, you will owe someone.
Racism and sexism have always been a part and parcel of the American experience. The founding fathers declaration that “All men are created equal” while excluding women and continuing to be active slave owners. Every advance made by people of color and women is usually followed by some manner of systemic retaliation.
There have been improvements but the system of white, male supremacy is rampant and supported, sadly in a lot of cases by white women. The ‘virtue’ of white womanhood has resulted in the death or incarceration of people of color. While second wave feminism opened more doors for women lead to a greater diversity in many workplaces the lack of intersectionality meant these opportunities were open mostly to white women.
Affirmative action programs have pushed more doors open but recently there has been greater push back including multiple lawsuits against school programs. There seems to be a sense that minority populations have more opportunities and place white people at a disadvantage. In truth affirmative action programs barely tip the scales when compared to the institutional disadvantages that most minority communities face.
I was asked to reflect on what my race can do to improve for a class in my Master’s program. This is what I submitted, the last sentence seems so appropriate right now.
This topic, as the colloquial parlance goes, requires a lot of unpacking. I was born and raised on the twin island republic of Trinidad & Tobago and immigrated to the United States as an adult. This gives me a unique perspective as someone raised in a country where the majority of people looked like me, including political and industrial leaders. The other major difference in being raised in a country run by people of color is a difference in historical perspective. While US history tends to whitewash atrocities against people of color, the Caribbean perspective of our neighbor to the North is somewhat less rosy, particularly when it comes to race relations.
As a person of color one of the options available is open rebellion. But this has never really been successful, from superior firepower to biological warfare, the native people of the Americas paid the price. There are tribes who only exist in historical records, while many surviving US tribe were forcefully removed from their lands and corralled in reservations. While the most successful slave revolt took place in Haiti between ongoing indebtedness to France and US intervention in internal politics at the turn of the 20th century, the country remains in shambles.
Another option available to people of color is isolation. There have been a number of successful black communities in the US and almost of all of them have ended with death and destruction and the hands of their white neighbors. One of the largest and most successful black communities in the US was the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, OK, know as Black Wall Street. This community was destroyed and many of its citizens killed during the Tulsa Race Massacre which included firebombs dropped from aircraft by Tulsa authorities.
Finally there is the option of integration. As much as people of color have tried and succeeded in the US in the last 50 years, the propensity for discrimination in everything from hiring practices to housing has been well documented. While there have been successes, anything outside the fields of entertainment and sporting endeavors has been subject to excessive scrutiny.
Additionally for people of color to succeed they have to work much harder and present a much cleaner image than their white counterparts.
People of color in the US have tried every that has been asked of them but still continue to face systemic racism. This system perpetuates micro-aggressions on the low end, to redlining, excessive incarceration, and unnecessary police violence that leads to death. At this point I am unsure what else is left for us to do.
Buckle up, this is going to take a minute or if you have no interest in the politics of race, you can move on now.
Still here? I am being very deliberate in my use of the word THUG especially as a racist dog whistle to describe black men. I would like to say I’m try to subvert the word, but there are tons of ‘nice’ people who take one look at me and automatically assign that word to me. I’m 6’ 2”, 300+ pounds, and have what can generally be describe as resting bitch face when in public. and for that reason i am perceived as a threat.
Think I’m exaggerating? I worked for large corporation and there were employees there that wouldn’t be in the same room with me and one occasion I had someone basically back themselves into the corner of an elevator to be as far away from me as possible. I have been stopped by the police in a rental car because ‘i didn’t look like the kind of person that would drive a car like that and there had been multiple reports of break-ins and car thefts in the neighborhood.’
This my reality. Every time I’m pulled over, I start recording a voice memo just in case I don’t survive the encounter.
Which brings me to the other reason I want to co-opt the usage of the word is if/when my demise happens at the hands of some ‘terrified’ white person, the researcher tasked with finding my ‘THUG’ photo to justify the shooting is going to be incredibly disappointed.
Using words like THUG are part a concerted effort to dehumanize us and make anything that happens to us excusable. This needs to stop.
