Allowing native-born children of immigrants as small-n native Americans would be too loose to create an effective tribalism, but going more than two or three generations back would normally sacrifice too many potential nativist allies.


Utsukushikereba sore de ii

just admit that everything you know about black politics in America amounts to a Frontline campaign biopic whose setting is ...

a city some call the "capital of black America," to work as a community organizer and try to sort out his dual identities. Colleagues say that after a few years he had found peace with who he was, but had become frustrated by his inability to change the larger structural problems behind the poverty he saw in Chicago's South Side.

...thanks to 70 years of DNC electioneering itself epitomized by a mayoral mafia --I mean, going back to FDR, Farley, and yella dog Ed Kelly-- and slum lords Rezko and Jarrett. The bright spots of egalitarian justice being H. Washington and Mosely-Braun.

Of course Frontline implies "center of black politics" in the Shakespearean sense of "black," right? Dismal by comparison to black politics in any other state since Reconstruction.

See, I hafta follow Barry's PIRG line from NYC through a classified ad to the windy city. It's more believable.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

I might be able to compile a bibliography of less than 3,500 words. Over the next few weeks. Let me give that a whirl. hmmm, random selection from the stacks ...

Jan Carew, Fulcrums of Change (1988)

Peter Martyr, the first major historian of the Americas, and a reasonably reliable source considering that he never set foot in the Indies or the mainland territories, mentions in passing that the Pinzón brothers of whom Martin Alonso was Columbus' chief pilot and one of his principal partners in his "Enterprise of the Indies," were everywhere known as "Negro Pinzóns." These brothers, as both their Spanish names and their reputations as renowned seamen indicates, were Afro-Spanish and middle-class. They were also much better off financially than Columbus since they could afford to make a substantial monetary investment in his first voyage. ...

After the first voyage, the chronicle of the Black presence takes on new dimensions: In 1513, thirty Negroes helped Balboa hack his way throught the tropical undergrowth to reach the Pacific Ocean. There were Black soldiers with Ponce de Leon, when he set out to find the Fountain of Youth, and inadvertantly landed on the Florida coast. Langston Hughes in his Famous Negro Heroes of America [1958], wrote:

'When Hernando Cortez invaded Mexico in 1519, one of the Negroes in his army of 700 found in his ration of rice one day some grains of wheat. These he planted, and is so credited with introducing the first wheat onto the mainland of the New World. And by 1523 there were so many Negroes in Mexico that it was decided to limit their entrance since it was thought they might try to seize the ruling powers from the Spaniards --as indeed some in 1537 were accused of plotting to do.' ...

Herrera [y Tordesillas, Antonio] had actually lived and travelled extensively in the New World. Here is his chronicle of events that took place between 1531 and 1548.

1531. Negroes born in America were found to be better laborers than those brought from Guinea.

1532. The king (of Spain) had sent the force of two ships to make war on the Caribs ...It was the general opinion that the troubles on this land [Puerto Rico] were caused by negro slaves, Wolofs and Berberici, and so the king was asked to send more.

'1533. The Wolofs of San Juan were declared to be haughty, disobedient, rebellious, and incorrigible, and could not be taken to any part of the Indies without express permission.

1540. In Quivira, Mexico, there was a Negro who had taken holy ecclesiastic Orders.

1542. There was established at Guamanga, three Brotherhoods of the True Cross of Spaniards, one for the Indians, and one for Negroes.

1548. An uprising of Negroes took place in Sand Pedro of Honduras.'*

------
* L. Weiner, Africa and the Discovery of America, vol I (1920)

See also

Zora Neale Hurston, WPA ethnography

Adam Clayton Powells, Sr, Jr

Barbara Walters, Audition

::

Not whatcha call "our better history," eh?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

redstar: ... it isn't having anything to do with color in my opinion ... There are no statistics ...

From an earlier diary:

European Tribune - Racism in French employment

L'âge et l'origine, principales discriminations à l'embauche (2006 November 21)

<...> the "first national barometer" carried out by the temporary work agency Adia with Jean-François Amadieu, professor at Paris I University and director of the Observatory of Discriminations. Made public on Tuesday November 21, the study shows that most kinds of employment discrimination, with the exception of that against the handicapped, have gotten worse in comparison to a study from 2004.

6461 CVs were sent over the course of a year in response to 1340 job offers. The results (invitations to a job interview) obtained by a "control" candidate (male, 28-30 years old, having a "stock French" last name and first name, without photo) and by candidates more likely to be discriminated against were compared.

The big loser is the "48-50" year old who is selected the least often, regardless of socio-professional group, labor pool, company size, or work sector: among 100 invitations for job interviews that the control candidate received, this category received three times less (32), especially if he is a white-collar professional (14 invitations, while older blue-collar workers get 50). The white-collar professional of North African origin gets 17 positive responses, his blue-collar counterpart 47. Generally, as a consequence of his ethnicity, he only has 36 chances for a job interview, while the "stock French" candidate has 100.