Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Eton James White wrote at Balloon Juice from 2013-16.
Team Blackness talks about the internalized effects of white supremacy and how oppressive systems turn marginalized folks into tools of oppression for other marginalized groups. Plus, white terror continues in Oregon.
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Good to see that even though we’ve been off air, the horrible things keep coming. Bill Cosby has finally been charged with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2004. Camille Cosby is being forced to testify in the defamation suit:
U.S. Judge Magistrate David Hennessey in Springfield, Massachusetts, said Camille Cosby failed to prove that she and her husband were protected by the state’s marital disqualification law. He also rejected claims that the value of the testimony would be outweighed by the “undue burden” the deposition would cause.
So that’s one down, 5o-some more to go.
Team Blackness also discussed #OregonUnderAttack and the Tamir Rice verdict.
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So much for her body, her rules: Anna Yocca, a Tennessee woman, was arrested last week and charged with attempted first-degree murder after she was rushed to the hospital following a failed attempt with a coat hanger to abort her 24-week pregnancy. At the hospital she delivered a 1.5 pound baby boy:
Pro-choice advocates see Yocca’s situation as the end result of a rash of highly restrictive laws that have choked reproductive rights throughout Tennessee, largely since voters approved a November 2014 amendment to the state constitution that awarded lawmakers sweeping powers to chip away at access to reproductive health care. … “Tennessee’s homicide law explicitly doesn’t apply to [Yocca],” explained Farah Diaz-Tello, senior staff attorney at the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, “but this arrest tells women that if they try to seek emergency medical assistance, they may end up behind bars. That won’t stop women from having abortions, but it will stop them from getting help.”
Team Blackness also discussed video footage of a Baltimore police officer attacking a protestor for no reason, two high school students who were jailed over wearing baggy pants, and an update on the police officer who killed Amadou Diallo (spoiler alert: he’s just doing fine).
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The wait continues for justice for Freddie Gray. A mistrial was declared Wednesday in the case of Officer William G. Porter as jurors deliberated three days only to continue to be deadlocked:
At trial, prosecutors accused Porter not of brutality but indifference, saying he “callously” failed to take simple steps required by Police Department rules — securing Gray with a seat belt and getting him medical attention when he asked — that could have saved his life.
During closing arguments, Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Janice Bledsoe held up a seat belt and clicked it for jurors.
“That’s all it would have taken,” she said.
Porter is the first of six officers to be tried for Gray’s death while in police custody.
Team Blackness also discussed W. Kamau Bell’s call for white people to come and get your boy Trump, Rutgers University cancels a black feminism class, and a look at little diversity there is in tech.
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The Wait Continues For Justice For #FreddieGrayPost + Comments (5)
Last night’s GOP debate was a lot of fearmongering talk about ISIS. Let’s also not forget Ted Cruz’s love of the word “carpet bombing,” Ben Carson’s need for boots on the ground, and Trump making bold statements about not only representing the Republican party as opposed to running independently and his call to ban Muslims from entering the US.
Team Blackness had a lot of words–some fueled by whiskey–about the debate, the Planned Parenthood attacks, Daniel Holtzclaw’s conviction and other news that has happened in the last month while we’ve all been moving.
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We’re Back … And The World’s Still TerriblePost + Comments (13)
Have you heard people saying that the racist incidents at the University of Missouri are just isolated incidents and not indicative of culture of racism on college campuses? Well, you can tell those people to put it in their pipes and smoke it. Students at Harvard Law School found that all the portraits of tenured African-American law professors, which are displayed in the main building, had black slashes of tape across their faces. And this was the morning after students had rallied in support of national calls for racial justice on campuses:
Leland Shelton, the president of the Black Law Students Association, told ThinkProgress that he viewed the incident as a hostile action. It “wasn’t done by an ally. It wasn’t in support of black students and black professors,” Shelton said.
Team Blackness also discussed former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle questionable defense of his pedophilia, the House approves the Syrian refugees bill, and more outrage in Minneapolis in response to Jamar Clark’s death at the hands of police.
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Racist College Campus Incident #30,042: Harvard Law SchoolPost + Comments (7)
So you know that whole separation of church and state this nation was supposedly founded on? Well, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich feels differently. In fact, he’d like to form a government agency to push Judeo-Christian values to China, Russia, Iran and the Middle East. ‘Cuase that’s a good use of government time, energy, and funding:
“We need to beam messages around the world” about the freedoms Americans enjoy, Kasich said in an interview with NBC News Tuesday. “It means freedom, it means opportunity, it means respect for women, it means freedom to gather, it means so many things.” He defended creating a new government agency at a time when fellow Republican presidential candidates discuss eliminating government agencies to making the government smaller. “There’s nobody who’s spent more time shrinking government and cutting budgets than I have.”
Team Blackness also discussed Ben Carson’s questionable grasp of foreign policy and more Republicans being the worst when it comes to refugees.
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