BlackPerspective.net

I watched this morning as the President gave an 8am press conference on his at long last response to the Darfar Crisis. Though not as much direct action is included as I and I’m sure many others would have liked, it did represent a grand step forward for an administration that has offered little more than good rhetoric to date. And though, easily 2 years late for this type of action, finally, at least some action.

The Bush strategy in Darfur seems to be aimed at trying to bring compliance by the Sudanese government through targeting it’s lucrative oil industry. The U.S. will now levy or tighten sanctions against 31 Sudanese government run or connected companies, baring American companies or individuals from transacting in any business with them; along with three specific individuals.

Bush is also directing Secretary of State Rice to draft a proposed resolution to the United Nations that is supposed to call for Sudan President al-Bashir to allow for support packages to go into Darfur for the African Union troops on the ground and to enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur. Ultimately all is supposed to lead to a hybrid AU and U.N. peacekeeping force of about 23,000. The current AU force is 7,000; but they are largely ill equipped and have a hard time slowing down the genocide committed mostly by government back mercenaries called the janjaweed.

Of course from an Afri-centric perspective, anytime white men start talking about entering Africa with arms, in particular and oil rich nations, we have certain reservations about that. But if African nations aren’t willing or aren’t able to step up to the plate to help keep these people from being slaughter, you have to ask what other alternatives are there?

Bush stated that “I promise this to the people of Darfur: the United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world”…”For too long the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder and rape of innocent civilians. My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide. The world has a responsibility to put an end to it.”

More nice words, we’ll wait on action before we cheer too loudly.

By D. Yobachi Boswell

You can go here for some partial video of the press conference: news.search.yahoo.com/search/news;_ylt=A0geu88GbVxG_YIAS8JXNyoA?p=bush%20darfur&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8&fr2=tab-web

By: D. Yobachi Boswell

Last Thursday a bipartisan coalition of both Congressional democrats and republicans, along with the White House; came to an agreement on comprehensive immigration reform. This Associated Press article details the plan.

It’s being attacked on both sides for various reasons. Many conservatives don’t like that the plan allows for what they frame as “amnesty”, i.e. there isn’t going to be a mass deportation of 13 million people. They are also against the principle of a comprehensive immigration, as opposed to just border enforcement first, and then dealing with everything else later. A lot of liberals don’t like what they claim as a new system that devalues family connections. The new plan expressly puts emphasis on education and trade skills as the preferable qualifications for immigration, as opposed to family ties; which has previously been the primary factor.

In this political dichotomy of simply liberal versus conservative, there are perspectives that are lost. While most Blacks, by far, view themselves as liberals or at least democrats; the Black community at large has self-interest in this debate that run contrary to the positions of mainstream liberalism and contrary to the positions proffered by the talking heads of the democratic party. These interests have scarcely been illuminated in the last year’s debate.

I’d like to touch on some of my problems with the plan in general, as well as the unspoken black perspective.

In simple, this is a hodge podge of crap. No one is going to leave the U.S. with some empty promise to be allowed back; especially when it calls for the heads of households (normally the financial bread winner) to go back to their home countries, leaving their families behind. Likewise no one is going to set up his or her life here for two years, leave for a year to then only come back for two years. What they are going to do is get the two-year visa and then when it runs out they’re just going to stay like they’re already doing. We’re more or less going to have the same situation as now if you don’t change immigration enforcement policy drastically; most specifically involving local law enforcement. But further, it’s just kind of ridiculous to have these roving life situations. If we need more workers here, then let them be legal residence, even if not citizens.

To this point form the article: “In perhaps the most hotly debated change, the proposed plan would shift from an immigration system primarily weighted toward family ties toward one with preferences for people with advanced degrees and sophisticated skills”

I don’t favor this portion of the plan either, not because of the family aspect but because you brain draining South America which is part of the problem of why those countries’ economies are so bad in the first place; and you’re giving all preference to the educated and shafting most commoners from having the same opportunity. Not to mention what is this saying about America’s plans for educating its on citizenry? Why are we not planning to educate people here to do such work?

There should only be preference for immediate family, ie spouse and kids. I agree with not getting preference to bring over your entire family tree. Immigration policy cannot simply bend to only what the immigrants want, but first the rights and needs of the people who’s country is being immigrated to.

And where the hell is the provision to come down like a sledge hammer on businesses who court illegals to come here, and who break the laws by hiring them off the books and undercutting lower-end wages in the market? These are the people most responsible for the immigration problem. People come here to work, and American business actively entice them to do so, as government (both Republican and Democrat) has intentionally looked the other away for decades.

Further, I am also highly annoyed that the anti-Haitian (aka anti-black) double standard is not being addressed. For half a century those fleeing Cube have been given special dispensation that allows them automatic entry if they reach the shores of the U.S. Mexican and others in South America come across the boarder at will, with little enforcement. Haitians coming out of the same region as Cubans are routinely turned back even though they are often fleeing violent upheaval and political unrest. This is an unfair and inconsistent policy; which I believe is partly steeped in racial bias.

I will delve into the black socio-political angle of the issue more deeply in the second part of this piece, Comprehensive Immigration Plan Part II – The Black Perspective

Or When Whites Strike Back
By D. Yobachi Boswell

Al Sharpton, who led the charge last month in the ousting of radio talk show host Don Imus from MSNBC television and CBS radio over derogatory attacks on a group of young, mostly black women; is now in a tempest over words he’s used in reference to Republican Presidential Candidate and Mormon Mitt Romney.

In a debate on religion with Atheist Christopher Hitchens, Al Sharpton said, “As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyway.” Of course that’s not all he said and there’s no context there, but that’s thet line the mainstream news media almost solely plays or reads in regards to this story.

In the Monday May 7th debate, Hitchens, previous to the comment introduced discussion of Mormonism into the conversation when speaking of the racist ban that existed against blacks as priest in the Mormon church until 1965, he’s said. Al Sharpton Wednesday night on Paula Zahn’s CNN show disputed that the ban wasn’t lifted until 1978 and my research would agree with’78 as the official year of the lifting of the ban as attested to in the book Neither White Nor Black*

Hitchens point in bring it up was that religion is evil, an example of it’s evil is that it for one it promotes racism, and an example of that was the Mormon Church’s ban.

When speaking with Paula Zahn, Sharpton attempts to make it know that he intended to respond to Htichens claim. He says on the show:

If prior to ‘65, ‘78, whenever it was, they did not see blacks as equal, I do not believe that as real worshippers of God, because I do not believe that God distinguishes between people. That’s not bigotry, that’s responding to their bigotry.

Romney’s response to it all has been to repeat that he thinks Sharpton is a bigot.“His comments were bigoted comments. And it shows that bigotry still exist in some corners”, he would say on Wednesday following a campaign event.

Sharpton points out that since Romney has now brought it up, the question is now did Romney prescribe to Mormonism as the church held as a precept of faith that blacks could not “fully” be apart of the “body of God”, as Sharpton termed it. Specifically the ban on blacks in the priesthood, which they justified by the Curse of Ham; a justification white supremacist of all types have roundly used for the brutal colonization of Africa, the inhuman transatlantic slave trade, for dehumanizing chattel slavery in the Americas, and for Jim Crow Segregation and Apartheid. .

Watching the Frontline documentary last Tuesday night on PBS about the Mormon church, one of the members of the Mormon high council who was in the room the day it was decide to overturn this ban, who’s name I cannot begin to recall (but it’s in the PBS documentary); described this change of heart by the Church leaders, in so many words, as a Pentecostal moment (this referring to The Day of Pentecost in the Bible in Acts Chapter 2) where he says that they all of a sudden had this epiphany that blacks are humans and receive equal favor of God.

One is not a bigot for thinking another’s religion is wrong. If Sharpton thought Mormonism was right, then he’d be a Mormon. The fact that he’s not already lets you know he doesn’t agree with it. But a tenant of Mormonism is that the Latter Day Saints way is the “only way”. That means they thinking everybody else’s religion is wrong. So then by this same charge Mormons by definitions are the same bigots. By that logic there religion is inherently bigoted and so is every other one.

In response to the controversy Sharpton has also told the news wires that his thoughts are that “A Mormon, by definition, believes in God. They don’t believe in God the way I do, but by definition, they believe in God.”

After the comments came to light, Romney and his people pounced. As Sharpton has said, it seems that the Romney camp is simply manufacturing a controversy for publicity. Likewise the media and in particular the normal white bobble head dolls are salivating at the mouth to paint this as an Imus moment by Sharpton, and highlight his supposed hypocrisy; because of course what Sharpton said, even if bigoted, then somehow justifies what Don Imus said.

Like Darth Vader and The Republic after their defeat to the Jedi’s, the obfuscators of racism return with a fierce attack. But unlike Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sharpton’s mentor Jesse Jackson isn’t going to sacrifice himself to slaughter, and this isn’t going to work because it doesn’t hold water. Nice try boys. We’ll see if you can do better in the third installment.

Foot Notes
* Neither White nor Black: Mormon Scholars Confront the Race Issue in a Universal Church. Edited by Lester E. Bush, Jr., and Armand L. Mauss. Signature Books; Midvale, Utah © 1984 by Signature Books.

Something of side interest: Sharpton illuminating the lunacy of comparing his defense of a rape victim to Imus’s sexist and racial attack: