Give it a rest already.
I’ve written before about PRENDA (Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act) and the nonsense “abortion is black genocide” narrative (here). As you may recall, it’s the basis for Operation Spite Babies.
I don’t have much to add on the matter, but I do want to point out this quote about which I have been laughing all morning:
“It’s kind of hard to find evidence that a black woman is going to have an abortion because she’s surprised to find her baby is black. It just strains credulity to think that’s a problem,” [Loretta Ross, the national coordinator of SisterSong, a reproductive justice organization for women of color in Atlanta.] says with a hearty laugh. “I mean, she wakes up in the morning and says ‘Oh my god! My baby’s black?'”
I laugh to keep from crying.
[via Mother Jones]
[cross-posted at ABLC]
Cacti
Gnewt wants more black babies so they can scrub the toilets at public schools.
Xenos
I would not put it so much as spite babies as a quiver-full of red diaper babies. The old secular-humanist/ethical culture summer camps ought to be revived to give red diaper parents a break now and then.
Xenos
Also, too: species? WTF?
Zifnab
Remember, black people, the Republican party has your best interests at heart. No, really. Stop laughing.
Villago Delenda Est
Dang. That means that white stud who implanted his seed in me was passing! ZOMG!
CaptainFwiffo
My initial reaction to these billboards was to say “really, you’re going to describe blacks as a separate species? In a black neighborhood? And think you can win the hearts and minds of African Americans that way in the 21st century?” You might as well have a billboard that warns “Look out! They’re aborting the darkies!”
Tone In DC
To quote a guy from Sadly No!
… that is some weapons grade stupid right there.
Brachiator
I’m confused. Did Frederick Douglass and Susan B Anthony have a love child together?
And shouldn’t they rename this bill the Strom Thurmond Impregnating Black Maids Act?
Just sayin’
merrinc
Yep, ’cause if there’s one thing wingers really worry about, it’s not enough black folks in America.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The next billboard will say “Come work for me and I’ll help you increase your black species. They way it used to be.”
Dave
Of course Republicans think that. What, you expect them to understand how a Punnett square works?
daveNYC
@CaptainFwiffo: I suspect they were more interested in getting the ‘endangered species’ out there in the hopes that it’d be able to latch on to the same sympathy the phrase generates when used in the context of the WWF or Greenpeace.
It goes without saying that the actual scientific idea behind the word ‘species’ never entered into it.
Barbara
You know, African-American children are at as high a risk of being born early and dying within the first year of life as many babies born in developing nations. Likewise, African-American women face much higher risks of pregnancy and delivery related morbidity and mortality, even though they are LESS likely to smoke or do drugs than pregnant white women. They have much more tenuous access to prenatal care, which as we have seen in the last week, anti-choice activists don’t give a rat’s ass about (as in, Planned Parenthood is a reliable source of prenatal care in many communities). On so many measures, I am sure African-Americans would welcome serious efforts to promote the health of children and their mothers, but these folks don’t care about any of that.
It’s just hard to measure how offensive these billboards must be.
Linda Featheringill
The Republican position seems to be that people with melanin in their skin are too stupid to make serious decisions for themselves without help.
ETA:
Actually I meant “people with more melanin” since we all have some melanin.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linda Featheringill:
Well, that’s your explanation for teleprompters, right there!
Jay C
Leaving aside, for a minute, the awesome level of Idiot Fail billboards like this embody, one has to wonder if there are any, y’know, actual FACTS behind this inane crap? I.e., are black babies really an “endangered species”? I realize actually researching African-American birthrates and running numbers is just so much dullardry compared to parroting dumb borderline-racist canards and slapping them on a billboard, but really?
Zifnab
@Jay C:
I just appreciate that lily-white Republicans are finally willing to invest thousands of dollars a month in (advertising to) black people. Perhaps if we could get this sort of thing printed on the back of food stamp cards and unemployment checks, they wouldn’t be throwing such a hissy-fit over welfare.
DanF
I’m surprised the GOP establishment hasn’t tried to stop this meme given that African Americans vote overwhelmingly for people that don’t hate them.
Brachiator
@Linda Featheringill:
Wait a minute. Are you insulting albinos?
Kidding.
Emma
Endangered species. Jesus wept.
geg6
Slap the names of a famous feminist and African American leader and, presto, it’s obviously good for women, especially black women. Because nobody knows what’s good for women, especially black women, is whatever the middle aged Southern white guys say it is.
rikyrah
@Barbara:
thank you.
Mnemosyne
@Jay C:
As Barbara pointed out so eloquently, given the high rate of maternal death, stillbirths and infant deaths for African-Americans, it’s insulting for these people to insist that the real problem is abortion and not, say, access to health care that could save some of those Black babies that the billboards claim to be so desperately concerned about.
Harry Bellerophonte
The Republican position seems to be that people with melanin in their skin are too stupid to make serious decisions for themselves without help.
This nicely compliments the Republican position that people that people with vaginas are too stupid to make serious decisions for themselves without help. And when you cross the two like, say, on the subject of black women getting abortions…yikes.
It’s not pretty is what I’m getting at.
jonas
@Mnemosyne: As they say, pro-lifers care deeply about children’s welfare, from conception all the way to birth.
Mnemosyne
@jonas:
If you look at the fact that they’re dead set against government funding for prenatal care, I don’t think you can even say they care deeply about children before birth. They only care that some woman, somewhere, made a decision about her pregnancy that they don’t approve of and they want to stop that. Other than that, the pregnant woman and her fetus can both drop dead and the “pro-life” crowd doesn’t give a shit.
Viva BrisVegas
Maybe one day, conservatives will deign to address the problems of babies who have gone through the tedious process of actually being born.
In the U.S. black babies are 2.4 times more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies, yet I see very little outrage over that fact coming from the purveyors of “black genocide”.
It’s almost as though they actually don’t give a flying frak about black babies, but have some other, more political, agenda for which they see black babies as a useful tool.
Always remember, when a conservative says he cares about you or yours, what he actually cares about is your usefulness to him.
CarolDuhart2
From About.com:
Different cultural groups within a country can exhibit different total fertility rates. In the United States, for example, when the country’s total fertility rate was 2.1, the total fertility rate was 3.0 for Hispanics, 2.2 for African Americans, and the below replacement of 1.9 for Asian and Pacific Islanders.*
AFter 55 years of watching the tides go back and forth on this issue, one thing I’m sure of: they care only as long as caring doesn’t cost them any effort or money.
CarolDuhart2
BTW, billboards? Afraid to tell us face to face your opinion or ask us ours?
Ethan Hoddes
@Brachiator
You aren’t familiar with the thriving genre of nineteenth-century social activist slash fiction?
Delia
I swear, this line of propaganda is going to suck all the intelligence out of my brain cells if I try to follow it too closely. Maybe that’s the whole idea. Ga..aah. . . .
Silver
@Brachiator:
To quote David Cross channelling Strom Thurmond:
“I will fuck the help, but I will not pay them a decent wage.”
Mnemosyne
@Ethan Hoddes:
Well, I have heard quite a few leftish men go on and on about Emma Goldman …
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
mark crutcher, the person who made the propaganda movie maafa 21 about black genocide meant to give creedence to this bullshite, on obama.
Unfortunately, the voters also made another kind of history.
During the cold war, the communists always claimed that we were foolish to worry about them trying to conquer us militarily. They said there was no need for that because they had the intent and the patience to take us over through an internal revolution. The conquest of America was not to be accomplished with bullets but with ballots.
We should have listened. But we didn’t, and soon the most powerful political office in the world will be handed over to an avowed soci/alist. This morning, in some fetid corner of hell, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Joe Stalin are toasting each other.
[…]
Be assured that I am not trying to downplay the significance of what just happened. Besides being a Marxist, Barack Obama is the most rabidly pro-abortion, morally defective and completely unqualified person to ever be given the keys to the Oval Office. This man is thoroughly evil and I have little doubt that we are likely entering into the most dangerous period in the history of our country. On the 20th of January, 2009, the fox will not be guarding the henhouse – he will be inside the henhouse. [Mark’s Blog, 11/5/08, emphasis added]
Brachiator
@Ethan Hoddes:
Couldn’t get to the activist stuff. Got stuck on the Jane Austen/Emily Dickinson literary slash.
Swampgas_Man
@daveNYC: I believe the only WWF these dicks know about is the old World Wrestling Federation.
stevestory
If you can believe that the Confederate Party is really worried about too few black babies, you’re dumb enough to be a …well, a member of said party.
(not that dumbassery is limited to their side, of course–one look at the misuse of commas and apostrophes in the BJ comment sections proves otherwise.)
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i couldn’t get the block quotes to work on everything after the first sentence.
g
@Xenos: Nice catch. But it’s inedible, rotten, and full of nasty spines. (
seriously, it’s vile! but very discerning and smart of you to notice)
Nutella
@CarolDuhart2:
So black fertility is higher than white fertility even though the abortion rate per 1000 black women is more than double the rate for white women.
I conclude from these two data points that black children are not an endangered ‘species’ at all but that black women really need better access to contraception.
Betsy
What else is hilarious, is the Republican Party has been working hard to repeal protections for *actual* endangered species.
Trakker
@CarolDuhart2:
YES! Very!
Betsy
And of course by ‘hilarious’ I mean not hilarious at all.
Like hilarious the way that nutjobs who don’t believe in evolution still argue that gay can’t be normal because natural selection.
Betsy
You have to wonder why they don’t put up billboards in front of fertility clinics, where innocent little embryos are created by the thousands only to be discarded probably 19 times out of 20.
It’s almost like married couples with enough money to go through the fertility process are entitled to sexual autonomy and choice, but single and poor women should be saddled with the fruits of their sluttishness.
protected static
I still remember vividly the day a protestor at Hope Clinic in Granite City, IL, shouted at an interracial couple entering the clinic, “Don’t do it! It might be white!”
g
@Nutella: Exactly.
John M. Burt
@CarolDuhart2: You almost have it right: They are afraid to tell others their opinion face to face for fear that we might tell them ours.
Suezboo
I note that the Repubs have defrosted their old advisers.
Say nothing about the economy – Clint Eastwood proved that it’s all coming right under the Kenyan Overlord. Instead, haul out the same Good Ole Shit that worked before – abortion and, why not, contraception, and racism.Look out for immigration and Drugs to rear their distracting heads.But look for abortion to remain the most popular – always was the nicely uniting issue for the rightwingers.
harlana
@Betsy:
You have to wonder why they don’t put up billboards in front of fertility clinics, where innocent little embryos are created by the thousands only to be discarded probably 19 times out of 20.
It’s almost like married couples with enough money to go through the fertility process are entitled to sexual autonomy and choice, but single and poor women should be saddled with the fruits of their sluttishness.
LadyJ
@Zifnab:
Sorry I can’t stop that’s just too damn funny. I needed to laugh thank you!