Chappelle IS The GOAT - AND - The GOAT Is Unapologetically Black! Accept No Substitutes...,

slate |  Dave Chappelle is getting plenty of heat for his latest Netflix special, The Closer. Chappelle’s 72-minute bit is squarely aimed at setting the record straight after being widely criticized for his previous specials in which he belittles trans people, gay people, and survivors of sexual violence. He says this is his intention right at the start. We should take him at his word. His routine—controversial as it is—accomplished exactly what he set out to do.

What that accomplishment reveals is not that he isn’t funny (he is). It’s not just that he is punching down (he is) or that his jokes haven’t aged well (they haven’t). His latest special confirms once and for all Chappelle was never the progressive darling many thought him to be. In 2019, when Chappelle won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Jon Stewart called him the “Black Bourdain,” a nod to the widely loved chef and documentarian whose work explored the intricacies of the human condition.

That characterization is somewhat understandable. The beauty, and ultimate demise, of Chappelle’s Show was that he deftly and publicly explored the trials and tribulations of Black life. At the time, his comedy was provocative, novel, even revelatory. It makes sense we expected the same nuance with respect to other oppressed groups. But ultimately we were just projecting onto him something that wasn’t actually reflected in his work. We expected an intersectional analysis where none existed.

The line that runs through all of Chappelle’s comedy is that anti-Blackness is the Final Boss of all oppressions. Everyone else’s pain and suffering isn’t as bad by comparison, and therefore doesn’t deserve the level of outrage and attention it currently gets in progressive circles. Consider one of his opening jokes in The Closer. “I’d like to start by addressing the LGBTQ community directly,” he says with a smirk. “I want every member in that community to know that I come in peace, and I hope to negotiate the release of DaBaby.” Chappelle acknowledges that DaBaby made “a very egregious mistake” when he made disparaging comments about people living with HIV/AIDS while onstage at a concert in Miami in July. But then the joke takes a turn.

 

Negroes Strongly Disapprove Of Cornpop's Mr.NA NeoVaccinoid Mandate They Ain't Black!!!

yahoo |  President Biden’s net approval rating among unvaccinated black voters has dropped a stunning 17 points since he announced plans to implement a federal vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 people, according to a new Morning Consult poll.

Biden’s favor among black voters dropped substantially between an initial poll conducted between September 6 and 8 — just before Biden’s mandate announcement on September 9 — and a second poll taken between September 18 to 20 of more than 1,000 black voters.

The second poll revealed that 71 percent of black voters approve of Biden’s performance, down 5 points since the mandate. The share who disapprove rose 7 points to 24 percent. Thirty-seven percent said they strongly approve of his performance, while 14 percent said they strongly disapprove.

The president’s net approval rating — a measure of the share who approve his job performance minus the share who disapprove — has dropped 12 percent among black voters.

Biden announced earlier this month that his administration would develop rules to compel large companies to mandate coronavirus vaccines for employees and to require weekly negative test results for any unvaccinated workers. He said the rules would be developed by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and apply to companies with 100 or more workers.

The plan was part of a larger initiative by the Biden administration that includes requiring vaccinations for all federal employees and workers for federal contractors, as well as for health care workers in most institutions that receive Medicare or Medicaid. The administration also called on all states to mandate vaccinations for teachers and other school employees.

Thirty-eight percent of black voters who say they have not received a COVID-19 vaccine disapprove of the president’s job performance — an 11 point increase since he announced the mandate.

Black Americans are the least likely of all racial and ethnic demographics to have received a COVID-19 vaccine. According to Morning Consult, 53 percent of black adults have received the shots — a lower share than that of any other race or ethnicity.

Gingerly Blacksplaining Why Black And Brown Americans Are "Neo-Vaccinoid Deliberate"

abcnews  |  Much has been made about people of color being hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Numbers have shown that Black and Latino vaccination rates are lagging behind those of white people in America.

About 40% of Black people and 45% of Latinos have been at least partially vaccinated as of Aug. 16, compared to 50% of white people, according to the latest data by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And as of Aug. 16, 72% of people eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine were at least partially vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, researchers only have race or ethnicity data of 58% of the vaccinated population, of which 58% is white, 10% Black and 17% Hispanic.

There have been myriad efforts to explain the racial and ethnic vaccine rate disparity. Misinformation online has been blamed. Throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, many were exposed to a slew of misleading health information, including hoaxes about the COVID-19 vaccines, some specifically targeted at Blacks and Latinos. Other experts identify structural barriers to vaccines, including health literacy, vaccine safety concerns, and physical access as contributing factors. Distrust of the medical system and government was also cited as an underlying source of vaccine disparity.

Misinformation plays a small role in vaccine deliberation in people of color, study finds

Recent research by First Draft, a nonprofit focused on combating misinformation, found misinformation to only play a small role in vaccine deliberation among Black and Latino communities, but it also concluded that the role of misinformation should not be understated as it may be effective on people who exhibit higher levels of mistrust in institutions.

 

Dalits Hating Gandhi Related to the Necessity of BlackDOS Standing

Counterpunch |  Dalits call themselves Dalits because they reject what they have been historically called, “untouchables”, though most other oppressed peoples in India are included in the title. The word comes from the “dal”, crushed lentils, that is India’s staple food, as in a crushed and broken people.

Most of the leadership of India’s Dalit community see Gandhi as the main force in preserving the practice of Varna in post independence India for his opposition to reserved voting rights for India’s Dalits in India’s post independence constitution. This means all castes can vote for the elected Dalit leaders, for those seats in the Indian Parliament reserved for “minorities”.

Dalits believe that if only Dalits could vote for Dalit leaders than a more truly representative selection would take place. This is where Gandhi drew the line, that allowing Dalits to chose their own leaders directly was not to be allowed, and he went on his famous hunger strike to the death to prevent this from happening.

The Dalits leader, Dr. Ambedkar, finally gave in, accepted Gandhi’s demand and Dalits lost the  right to directly chose their own leaders. This loss of choice is what Dalit leaders say is what is most responsible for preserving Varna in India after independence. Without Dalit leaders chosen directly by Dalits there has been no one to fight for Dalit rights by the effective outlawing of varna through the enforcement of the Indian Constitution authored by the Dalit leader Dr. Ambedkar, or so most Dalit leaders will tell you. After over a half century of independence India’s Constitution is still not being enforced with only a fraction of positions reserved for Dalits in employment and education being filled.

One thing is for sure and that is caste/varna is king in India’s almost half a million villages where caste infested Hindus dominate society and Dalits are forced into the most menial and degrading professions. Even drinking water from the wells reserved for caste infested Hindus is forbidden.

Most Dalit’s lives in post-Gandhi India remain one of misery and hardship with basic education for their children still just a dream. Being unable to even chose their own leaders directly through reserved voting and with Gandhi playing such a pivotal role in this happening is the reason India’s Dalits hate Mohandas Gandhi.

The Theory of Property Supremacy

ineteconomics |  Buchanan, a 1940 graduate of Middle Tennessee State University who later attended the University of Chicago for graduate study, started out as a conventional public finance economist. But he grew frustrated by the way in which economic theorists ignored the political process.

Buchanan began working on a description of power that started out as a critique of how institutions functioned in the relatively liberal 1950s and ‘60s, a time when economist John Maynard Keynes’s ideas about the need for government intervention in markets to protect people from flaws so clearly demonstrated in the Great Depression held sway. Buchanan, MacLean notes, was incensed at what he saw as a move toward socialism and deeply suspicious of any form of state action that channels resources to the public. Why should the increasingly powerful federal government be able to force the wealthy to pay for goods and programs that served ordinary citizens and the poor? 

In thinking about how people make political decisions and choices, Buchanan concluded that you could only understand them as individuals seeking personal advantage. In an interview cited by MacLean, the economist observed that in the 1950s Americans commonly assumed that elected officials wanted to act in the public interest. Buchanan vehemently disagreed — that was a belief he wanted, as he put it, to “tear down.” His ideas developed into a theory that came to be known as “public choice.” 

Buchanan’s view of human nature was distinctly dismal. Adam Smith saw human beings as self-interested and hungry for personal power and material comfort, but he also acknowledged social instincts like compassion and fairness. Buchanan, in contrast, insisted that people were primarily driven by venal self-interest. Crediting people with altruism or a desire to serve others was “romantic” fantasy: politicians and government workers were out for themselves, and so, for that matter, were teachers, doctors, and civil rights activists.  They wanted to control others and wrest away their resources: “Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves,” he wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty. 

Does that sound like your kindergarten teacher? It did to Buchanan.

The people who needed protection were property owners, and their rights could only be secured though constitutional limits to prevent the majority of voters from encroaching on them, an idea Buchanan lays out in works like Property as a Guarantor of Liberty (1993). MacLean observes that Buchanan saw society as a cutthroat realm of makers (entrepreneurs) constantly under siege by takers (everybody else) His own language was often more stark, warning the alleged “prey” of “parasites” and “predators” out to fleece them. 

In 1965 the economist launched a center dedicated to his theories at the University of Virginia, which later relocated to George Mason University. MacLean describes how he trained thinkers to push back against the Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate America’s public schools and to challenge the constitutional perspectives and federal policy that enabled it. She notes that he took care to use economic and political precepts, rather than overtly racial arguments, to make his case, which nonetheless gave cover to racists who knew that spelling out their prejudices would alienate the country. 

All the while, a ghost hovered in the background — that of John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, senator and seventh vice president of the United States. 

Calhoun was an intellectual and political powerhouse in the South from the 1820s until his death in 1850, expending his formidable energy to defend slavery. Calhoun, called the “Marx of the Master Class” by historian Richard Hofstadter, saw himself and his fellow southern oligarchs as victims of the majority. Therefore, as MacLean explains, he sought to create “constitutional gadgets” to constrict the operations of government. 

Economists Tyler Cowen and Alexander Tabarrok, both of George Mason University, have noted the two men’s affinities, heralding Calhoun “a precursor of modern public choice theory” who “anticipates” Buchanan’s thinking. MacLean observes that both focused on how democracy constrains property owners and aimed for ways to restrict the latitude of voters. She argues that unlike even the most property-friendly founders Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Buchanan wanted a private governing elite of corporate power that was wholly released from public accountability. 

Suppressing voting, changing legislative processes so that a normal majority could no longer prevail, sowing public distrust of government institutions— all these were tactics toward the goal. But the Holy Grail was the Constitution: alter it and you could increase and secure the power of the wealthy in a way that no politician could ever challenge. 

Gravy Train to Oligarchy

MacLean explains that Virginia’s white elite and the pro-corporate president of the University of Virginia, Colgate Darden, who had married into the DuPont family, found Buchanan’s ideas to be spot on. In nurturing a new intelligentsia to commit to his values, Buchanan stated that he needed a “gravy train,” and with backers like Charles Koch and conservative foundations like the Scaife Family Charitable Trusts, others hopped aboard. Money, Buchanan knew, can be a persuasive tool in academia. His circle of influence began to widen. 

MacLean observes that the Virginia school, as Buchanan’s brand of economic and political thinking is known, is a kind of cousin to the better-known, market-oriented Chicago and Austrian schools — proponents of all three were members of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international neoliberal organization which included Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. But the Virginia school’s focus and career missions were distinct. In an interview with the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), MacLean described Friedman and Buchanan as yin and yang: 

“Friedman was this genial, personable character who loved to be in the limelight and made a sunny case for the free market and the freedom to choose and so forth. Buchanan was the dark side of this: he thought, ok, fine, they can make a case for the free market, but everybody knows that free markets have externalities and other problems. So he wanted to keep people from believing that government could be the alternative to those problems.”

Black American Political Strategy MUST Focus On Black DOS Interests, PERIOD

theintercept |  Dr. Touré Reed, professor of 20th Century U.S. and African American History at Illinois State University, observed that the presumption that black Americans aren’t equally or more invested in economic interventions as white Americans is “pregnant, of course, with class presumptions” which work well for the black and Latinx professional middle class — many of whom play a significant role in defining public narratives via their work in politics or media. Since “the principal beneficiaries of universal policies would be poor and working class people who would disproportionately be black and brown,” he told me, “dismissing such policies on the grounds that they aren’t addressing systemic racism is a sleight of hand of sorts.”

Intersectionality, the “buzzword” taken up so faithfully by mainstream Democrats in 2016, requires an acknowledgment that like race and sexual identity, class is a dimension that mediates one’s perspective. That means the hashtag #trustblackwomen shouldn’t collapse the interests of Oprah, a billionaire, with, well, anyone else’s. Similarly, not all blacks or latinos should be presumed to speak equally to the interests of poor and working class people of color. This is a truth easily internalized when Democrats consider figures like Ben Carson or Ted Cruz. It’s a more difficult reality to swallow when considering one of our own.

None of this is to say that in every scenario, race, gender, sexuality, and class are equal inputs. Affluent black athletes are still tackled by cops despite their wealth, and black Harvard professors are arrested trying to unlock their own front doors. But the fact that racism hurts even those with economic privilege is not “proof” that class doesn’t matter, as some race reductionists have claimed. It’s simply affirmation that racism matters too. 

Consider, for instance, my colleague Zaid Jilani’s review of comprehensive police shooting data in 2015, in which he found that 95 percent of police shootings had occurred in neighborhoods where the household income averaged below $100,000 a year. Remember that Philando Castile was pulled over, in part, because he was flagged for dozens of driving offenses described as “crimes of poverty” by local public defender Erik Sandvick. Failure to show proof of insurance, driving with a broken taillight — these are hardly patrician slip ups. If anything is privileged, it’s the fiction that there’s no difference between the abuses suffered by wealthy black athletes and working class blacks like Philando Castile. Race can increase your odds of being targeted and abused. Money can help you survive abuse and secure justice — something which sadly eluded Castile.

“There is a tendency to reduce issues that have quite a bit to do with the economic opportunities available to all Americans, African Americans among them, and in some instances overrepresented among them, to matters of race,” explained Dr. Reed, who is currently writing a book on the conservative implications of race reductionism. He pointed to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as well as the mass incarceration crisis, as examples. “In both those instances, Flint and the criminal justice system, whites are 40 percent, or near 40 percent, of the victims,” he said. And that’s an awfully high number for collateral damage.” He went on: “There’s something systemic at play. But it can’t be reduced, be reducible, to race.”