Racism in the USA today


This video from the USA is called March on Palo Alto: A Rally to End Racial Profiling.

From British daily The Morning Star:

US needs to act to end discrimination

Wednesday 17 June 2009

The United Nations special rapporteur on racism has urged Washington to do more to address “ongoing issues of racism and ethnic discrimination” in the US.

Offering recommendations before the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Tuesday, special rapporteur Githu Muigai said that, “for the US to lead by example, it should do more to address ongoing issues of racism and ethnic discrimination.”

At the invitation of the US government, former special rapporteur Doudou Diene toured the US in May and June 2008 to conduct an analysis of ongoing racism and ethnic discrimination.

Mr Diene’s report highlighted racism in the criminal justice system, the disparity between sentencing for crack and powder cocaine, abuses facing immigrant and black workers in the Gulf coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the overall vulnerability of immigrant workers and the need to meaningfully address the “school-to-prison pipeline,” referring to an emphasis on punishment over rehabilitation in the school and prison systems.

The report also called on Congress to pass the End Racial Profiling Act and create a bipartisan commission to evaluate the fight against racism.

Lingering White Supremacy In South Africa Sounds Much Like United States: here.

Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrested: here.

USA: The ease with which we criminalize black youth in this country would be astounding if it weren’t so routine: here.

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2 thoughts on “Racism in the USA today

  1. Jun 21, 3:07 PM EDT

    Road cleaned by neo-Nazis may be named for rabbi

    By MARIA SUDEKUM FISHER
    Associated Press Writer

    KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Two Adopt-a-Highway signs on a Missouri road acknowledge a neo-Nazi group’s participation in the state’s litter prevention program.

    But if Gov. Jay Nixon signs a large transportation bill, that half-mile section of road will be renamed “Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Memorial Highway” in honor of a rabbi who narrowly escaped the Nazis in World War II and later marched with Martin Luther King Jr.

    The Springfield unit of the National Socialist Movement committed last year to clean up trash along the section of Highway 160 near the city limits in west Springfield. Two signs noting the group’s membership in the Adopt-A-Highway program went up last October.

    “For the National Socialist movement to be in the Adopt-a-Highway program is well within their rights,” said Rabbi Alan L. Cohen of the Jewish Community Relations Board of Kansas City, which worked on selecting Heschel’s name for the highway.

    “But obviously there were people raising the concern that this is the wrong message for people to see driving down a Missouri highway, that there are National Socialists out here,” Cohen said Sunday. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone who stands for justice.”

    The state says it had no way to reject the group’s application. A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling arising from a similar effort by the Ku Klux Klan says membership in the Adopt-A-Highway program can’t be denied because of a group’s political beliefs.

    In general, the state can deny an organization’s application only if it has members who have been convicted of violent criminal activity within the past 10 years.

    After the state dropped the Klan from cleaning up a section of Interstate 55 near St. Louis in 2001 for failing to pick up trash, that stretch of highway was renamed the “Rosa Parks Highway” in honor of the black woman arrested in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Ala.

    Representatives of the National Socialist movement in Missouri did not immediately return calls seeking comment about the legislation Sunday. But a statement on the movement’s Web site calls the renaming “a lame attempt to insult National Socialist pro-environment/green policies.”

    The Web site has images of the Confederate flag, swastikas and members in military garb, and says the group fights for the rights of “all White American citizens of European descent.”

    “We welcome this spineless legislation, as it will no doubt spur a backlash from the local people whom will wonder why anyone, especially outside Jewish agitators would attempt to disrespect local citizens that volunteer their time to clean local roads,” the statement said.

    The governor has until mid-July to sign or veto the transportation bill. Nixon spokesman Scott Holste said Sunday that while the governor is reviewing the entire bill, he is in favor of the amendment to rename the stretch of highway.

    Heschel, who died in 1972, seemed the right choice for the person to be honored in naming the highway, Cohen said.

    “Rabbi Heschel said the struggle against injustice is a Jewish imperative, and on that he dedicated his life,” Cohen said.

    Heschel was deported from Germany and then escaped from Poland weeks before the Germans invaded in World War II, said Michael Abrams, chairman of the Jewish Community Relations Board . He taught at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati during World War II and later at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York.

    He was revered for his piety and for his activism on civil rights and other issues

    “He’s a great example of the Nazi failure to annihilate the Jews and of Jewish participation in the civil rights movement,” Abrams said. He said a famous photograph shows Heschel and King walking side by side at Selma in 1965.

    Associated Press Writer Margaret Stafford contributed to this report.

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  2. US: The president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People has resigned after scrutiny of his decision to give racist Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling an award for promoting civil rights.

    According to the nation’s oldest civil rights organiation, Leon Jenkins resigned on Thursday.

    Mr Jenkins had planned to present Sterling with a “lifetime achievement award”

    http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-e6b5-World-in-Brief-020514

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