Two Races.

Viktor Frankl, after his captivity and abuse at the hands of the Nazis divided humanity into two distinct "races", decent men and indecent men. Frankl noted even amongst the Nazis, despite the rarity, decent men existed.

In particular, the SS commander of his camp, who took pity on the prisoners, and purchased, out of his own pocket, medicines from the nearest market town. At the same time, the senior camp warden, a prisoner himself, beat the other prisoners at every opportunity. Frankl goes on to say that, this SS commander was rewarded for his humanity. After the war, three young Hungarian Jews hid the commander in the Bavarian woods, then went to the commandant of the American forces, who were very eager to catch this SS commander, and stated that they would only disclose his location if it was promised no harm would come to this man. Not only did this commander escape harm, in a sense, he was restored to his position. The American forces put him in charge of distributing the clothing collected from neighboring towns to the former prisoners who had nothing but the now tattered clothes inherited from those immediately sent to the gas chambers upon arrival.

"...that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two -- the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of "pure race"..." -- Viktor E. Frankl "Man's Search For Meaning" p. 137

From Frankl's distinctions, all of the intrusive and/or presumptuous classifications -- red, white, yellow and black...gay, straight, bisexual and asexual...Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Hindu...tall, short, fat and skinny -- used to catalogue man can be markedly minimized. Because all humans, despite the various groups to which they have been assigned, invariably will fall on one side or the other of this fundamental divide of decent and indecent.

A civilized man and a savage diverge not by their style of dress, type of dwelling, choice of food, nor number of possessions; rather a civilized man and a savage diverge in the way they treat another human being, despite the group, that human being has been assigned.

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Color of Wealth Gap is Now a Canyon.

For every $1 the median white family owns, the median Latino family owns .12 cents, and the median black family, only one dime (Federal Reserve's triennial Survey of Consumer Finances completed in 2007). This is an alarming acceleration in the growth of the racial wealth divide – the large gap between the value of the assets that are controlled by people of different races - in the last 30-years, especially in the last ten.

How can this be, when, more than ever before, African Americans and Latinos are taking part in the educational process, therefore earning more than they ever earned in the past?

Part of the answer lies in our tendency to confuse wealth and earnings income. Wealth goes beyond education and earnings, and is the broader measure of prosperity, or the total value of all material possessions and resources owned by an individual or group. Wealth or asset growth require time and opportunity, and gradually build through inter-generational inheritances and transfers.

Whereas, many white families have had the opportunity to build wealth through past generations, African Americans and Latinos, if educated and earning a decent salary, are not only put in a position of making up for the legacy of wealth stripping that defined their past, they find themselves in a place of providing for the future, as well.

In the past, slavery, forced relocation and the confiscating of tribal lands served to expand the wealth of some groups while suppressing the growth of wealth in other groups. Today, in much the same way, government policies are set in place, or removed, in order to continue and grow the wealth divide.

Over the last ten years, the reversal and erosion of progressive fiscal policies originally designed to include the working poor amongst the middle class, combined with tax code, created to encourage asset building for the affluent, have transformed the racial wealth gap into a racial wealth canyon.

Today, the two-day Color of Wealth Policy Summit kicks off in Washington DC. The economists and policy experts will discuss ways to close the racial wealth gap.

Sources:

Barbara Robles author of The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide, and one of the people attending the summit, along with minority businessman Earl Stafford who "paid $1 million for more than 300 rooms and an array of amenities to create opportunities for less-fortunate guests to take part in the inauguration of Barack Obama" joined NPR's Tell Me More.

The Wealth Gap gets Wider

Links:

Redlining in Philadelphia in 1934

Wealth Building Links

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Browser Racism?

Blackbird is a web browser for the African American community, developed by a group of African American entrepreneurs, under the direction of Ed Young, CEO of Blackbird. At face value, it is a regular browser, however, intrinsic to its creation, just two or three clicks away, the user can access expanded content that is targeted toward the black community, not easily found elsewhere.

Rather than segregating black content, this browser pulls out black focused information, into the web, bringing it to the forefront. This information could be found in a GOOGLE search, however, it may show up as result number 17,100,000. In other words, this browser sorts the information differently than Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari.

White Bird was created in response to the Blackbird project. Of course, by default, all popular downloaded browsers are "whitebirds", making the creation of White Bird nothing more than a spoof.

White Bird was developed on the simple proposition that we, as the White American community, can make the Internet experience better for ourselves and, in doing so, make it better for everyone. Primarily we believe that the White Bird application can make it easier to find White American related content on the Internet and to interact with other members of the White American community online by sharing stories, news, comments and videos via White Bird.

So, is the Blackbird browser racist? Is the White Bird browser racist?

First, we should define racism. If we define racism as hatred or intolerance of another race or the prejudice that members of one race are intrinsically superior to members of other races...Blackbird does not qualify. Nor does it segregate, as it only rearranges information...it does not take away information. The user is also given the choice (radio button) to use it as a "regular" browser.

Second, Blackbird affords a certain part of our population the opportunity to obtain information the same way the majority does - leveling the playing field, in a sense - therefore, if anything, Blackbird counters an intrinsic "racism", that is almost impossible to eliminate because it is generated by demographics, and is not the result of malicious intent.

The White Bird browser, on the other hand, might be a tad "racist". That is, if it does not allow the user to include results other than "whitebird", especially considering "whitebird" browsers are a dime a dozen. Other than providing a little amusement, White Bird serves no purpose, as - like I said before - all browsers are "whitebird".

In conclusion, the Blackbird browser is not racist at all and despite what I said before, I believe White Bird is not racist either...just useless or funny, depending on your perspective.

Jay Smooth, host of NY's WBAI's Underground Railroad, and founder of one of the first hip-hop websites, hiphopmusic.com does a very good job clarifying racism, including how best to respond to it.

"I don't care what you are; I care what you did." - Jay Smooth

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Dangerous Rhetoric May Provide Answers to the Wrong People.

John McCain poses the rhetorical question, "Who is the real Barack Obama?". Rhetorical, because Sarah Palin eagerly provides the answer...he is a terrorist! What else could Sarah Palin mean when she accuses Obama of "palling around with terrorists".

Enough's been said about Obama's supposed Muslim affinity that even "Joe six-pack" can visualize the graphic image the republicans are trying to paint. Being black isn't enough to scare the voters away any more. However, an African-American, Muslim terrorist should be enough to send all the red-blooded, patriotic, apple-pie and mom loving Americans running to fetch their six-shooter. Doggoneit!

This type of emotionally manipulative rhetoric - Sarah Palin's first and only language -

"For me, the heels are on, the gloves are off." -- Sarah Palin telling a group of Republican donors in Naples, Fla.

is dangerous at a time when society is caught up in a maelstrom of political, economic, social and technological change. People feel angry, desperate and abandoned. Confused and anxious, they search out simplistic explanations and are actively searching for someone to blame...the evildoer, who is responsible for causing their pain. Nine times out of ten, a scapegoat is targeted instead, and nine times out of ten, that scapegoat is of a different race religion, sexuality etc.

While this type of rhetoric will not cause anyone to make an attempt on Obama's life, it certainly could provide the final justification. After years of listening to "evildoers", "axis of evil", "you're either with us or against us" and "we can either fight the terrorists here or over there", is there anything worse than a terrorist? Is there anything worse than a Muslim? Is there anything worse than a black man running for President of the United States?

At a rally Monday in Albuquerque, when McCain asked, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" one supporter yelled back, "Terrorist!" Across the country in Florida that day, Palin's criticism of Obama and Ayers drew resounding boos and prompted one person, according to the Washington Post, to shout out, "Kill him!"

Who is the real John McCain? I've asked myself that many times. No, not because I think he is a terrorist, far from it...however, John McCain, the "Maverick" the man we knew at the beginning of the decade disappeared completely. The John McCain running for President, although he looks the same and sounds the same, is not the same.

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The More Whites Try to Appear Color Blind The More Unfriendly They Are.

New research shows that whites often avoid using race to describe other people, particularly in interactions with blacks. However further research reveals that such efforts to appear colorblind and unprejudiced are associated with less-friendly nonverbal behaviors.

"Many whites seem to think that appearing colorblind -- avoiding race during social interaction -- is a good way to appear unbiased," said Samuel R. Sommers, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University. "Despite that perception that colorblindness may make a positive impression on others, our data suggests that it often backfires."

In one study, researchers examined whites' reluctance to admit to their ability to categorize others on the basis of race. This study tested how fast whites categorized people in photos using different characteristics, including race, and compared that data with whites' estimates of how quickly they would be able to make those categorizations. A second study examined the consequences of whites' reluctance to identify other people according to their race.

The studies appear in the current issue of "Psychological Science" (Volume 17, Number 11). Sommers co-authored the paper with Evan P. Apfelbaum, a Ph.D. candidate at Tufts, as well as Michael I. Norton from Harvard Business School and additional researchers at Tufts and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Claiming color blindness

In the first study, 57 white participants completed either a "sorting task" or a "hypothetical task." With the sorting task, participants sorted 24 photos of black and white volunteers according to seven characteristics: race, gender, age, color of the background in the photo, hair color, facial expression, and facial hair. In the hypothetical task, participants were asked to estimate how quickly they would categorize using each of the seven characteristics if they were to perform the sorting task.

The results for the sorting task showed that participants were quickest to categorize the photos by background color, then gender, then race. However, in the hypothetical task, participants estimated that the two slowest characteristics to determine would be race followed by age. Further research showed that blacks' speed at categorizing photos by race was comparable to whites' but their estimates of their ability to do this were more accurate than the estimates of white participants.

"Whites sometimes deny the ease with which they can categorize others by race," Sommers said. "And they'll even avoid using race as a simple descriptor of someone else."

Political correctness has surprising results

The second study examined some of the possible consequences of whites' reluctance to use race to differentiate people. Thirty white participants were randomly paired with a white or black partner who was in fact a "confederate" in the research project. The pair played a game in which one person asked questions to identify a target face in a set of photos. Questioners were told that their objective was to identify the photo the answerer was looking at by asking as few yes/no questions as possible.

The white participants, who all played the role of questioner, were given 32 photos of faces that varied by the same categories as those in the first study, including gender, background color and race. The "confederates" acted as answerers and were given a copy of the target photo. They answered yes or no questions until the questioner determined which of the 32 photos the answerer held.

The results showed that the questioner was less likely to mention race when the answerer was black (64 percent of the time) than when the answerer was white (93 percent of the time). This led to less-efficient performance times when white questioners were paired with black answerers because they asked more questions to identify the target photo.

In addition to slower performance, reluctance to differentiate by race was associated with less friendly nonverbal behaviors.

"When we showed independent coders video clips of questioners in the study without audio, they noted that the white participants who avoided talking about race with a black partner made less eye contact with their partners and appeared to be less friendly," Sommers said. "By their nonverbal behavior alone, the whites who are trying to appear colorblind to impress their black partners ironically come across as distant and unfriendly."

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