An Exellent Letter Describes Electoral Racism As We Know It To Be

Anyone who read Dave Davies piece on race and elections will appreciate this letter that's making the rounds. Keep it going - the more we talk about the subtle racism that exists the less likely it will rear up and surprise us.

From Letters to the Editors @ Fort Worth Star-Telegram
How racism works

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom on of his graduating class? What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to? What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally throu gh her charitable organization? What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of the "Keating 5"(The Savings & Loan Banks demise) ? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?
This is what racism does. It covers up, ration alizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

— Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth

RobStuart's great evaluation

You are 100% correct!!!!!!!!!

Koba

One more...

This could probably be updated with something along the lines of "What if a video surfaced with a witch hunter praying over Barack?"

And by witch hunter, I mean a guy that goes out and hunts witches.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/the-witch-hunter-anoints_b_...

This is the most surreal election ever.

anti semite

Did you catch the preacher talking what good bankers the Israelites are, "even today"? Nothing like watching anti-semitic shit, and then five minutes later seeing the VP candidate appear.

What do you expect?

To a certain percentage of the Christian right, blatant antisemitism merely proves Palin's bona fides.

-Z

The video would seem to be a

The video would seem to be a good message to communicate to a few states, such as Florida.

Anybody want to dress up

Anybody want to dress up like witches and hang out at the Irish Pub tomorrow? Dan, maybe you could get dressed up like a banker???

Maybe we can reenact a scene from "Witches vs. Bankers, the Apocalyptic Throwdown!!!"

Oh, in case people don't get my humor - Palin is apparently going to watch the debate tomorrow night at the Irish Pub.

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=7511496&ver...

To be clear, I'm serious about getting dressed up as witches and raising a ruckus outside of this whole thing.

for example...

We could hold up signs that read

"Hunt Moose, Not Witches"

or

"Witches are People Too"

If people want to understand

If people want to understand the evil that Sarah Palin has helped perpetuate, just watch this video:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/video/2007/dec/09/video

or read this from the accompanying article:

Mary Sudnad, 10, grimaces as her hair is pulled into corn rows by Agnes, 11, but the scalp just above her forehead is bald and blistered. Mary tells her story fast, in staccato, staring fixedly at the ground.

"My youngest brother died. The pastor told my mother it was because I was a witch. Three men came to my house. I didn't know these men. My mother left the house. Left these men. They beat me.' She pushes her fists under her chin to show how her father lay, stretched out on his stomach on the floor of their hut, watching. After the beating there was a trip to the church for 'a deliverance'.

A day later there was a walk in the bush with her mother. They picked poisonous 'asiri' berries that were made into a draught and forced down Mary's throat. If that didn't kill her, her mother warned her, then it would be a barbed-wire hanging. Finally her mother threw boiling water and caustic soda over her head and body, and her father dumped his screaming daughter in a field. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she stayed near the house for a long time before finally slinking off into the bush.Mary was seven. She says she still doesn't feel safe. She says: 'My mother doesn't love me.' And, finally, a tear streaks down her beautiful face.

Gerry was picked out by a 'prophetess' at a prayer night and named as a witch. His mother cursed him, his father siphoned petrol from his motorbike tank and spat it over his eight-year-old face. Gerry's facial blistering is as visible as the trauma in his dull eyes. He asks every adult he sees if they will take him home to his parents: 'It's not them, it's the prophetess, I am scared of her.'

Nwaeka is about 16. She sits by herself in the mud, her eyes rolling, scratching at her stick-thin arms. The other children are surprisingly patient with her. The wound on her head where a nail was driven in looks to be healing well. Nine- year-old Etido had nails, too, five of them across the crown of his downy head. Its hard to tell what damage has been done. Udo, now 12, was beaten and abandoned by his mother. He nearly lost his arm after villagers, finding him foraging for food by the roadside, saw him as a witch and hacked at him with machetes.

Magrose is seven. Her mother dug a pit in the wood and tried to bury her alive. Michael was found by a farmer clearing a ditch, starving and unable to stand on legs that had been flogged raw.

Ekemini Abia has the look of someone in a deep state of shock. Both ankles are circled with gruesome wounds and she moves at a painful hobble. Named as a witch, her father and elders from the church tied her to a tree, the rope cutting her to the bone, and left the 13-year-old there alone for more than a week.

There are sibling groups such as Prince, four, and Rita, nine. Rita told her mum she had dreamt of a lovely party where there was lots to eat and to drink. The belief is that a witch flies away to the coven at night while the body sleeps, so Rita's sweet dream was proof enough: she was a witch and because she had shared food with her sibling - the way witchcraft is spread - both were abandoned. Victoria, cheeky and funny, aged four, and her seven-year-old sister Helen, a serene little girl. Left by their parents in the shell of an old shack, the girls didn't dare move from where they had been abandoned and ate leaves and grass.

The youngest here is a baby. The older girls take it in turn to sling her on their skinny hips and Ikpe-Itauma has named her Amelia, after his grandmother. He estimates around 5,000 children have been abandoned in this area since 1998 and says many bodies have turned up in the rivers or in the forest. Many more are never found. 'The more children the pastor declares witches, the more famous he gets and the more money he can make,' he says. 'The parents are asked for so much money that they will pay in instalments or perhaps sell their property. This is not what churches should be doing.'

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