Do you remember Tawana Brawley? If not, you must go and watch the video co-produced by RetroReport and the New York Times.  The Times starts by giving us a wrap-up of the case:

The news reports at the time, in the late 1980s, were horrific. Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old African-American girl from New York State, was said to have been abducted and repeatedly raped by six white men. She was found with “KKK” written across her chest, a racial epithet on her stomach and her hair smeared with feces. She was so traumatized, according to reports, that at the hospital she answered yes-or-no questions by blinking her eyes. Making the crime even more vile, if that were possible, she and her lawyers later claimed that two of the rapists were law enforcement officials.

Enter a relatively unknown (at the time) African-American activist named Reverend Al Sharpton. Rushing to get in touch with young Tawana, Reverend Al became her mentor, spokesman, and leader of the mass protests demanding justice for Brawley, the victim of an apparent white racist attack. In the process, Sharpton accused the police officer — who Sharpton said had actually attacked  her — along with the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, Steven Pagones. “The evidence,” Sharpton said, proved that “an assistant district attorney and a state trooper did this.” Sharpton led mass picket lines at New York state offices, which I recall at times included the always gullible folk singer Pete Seeger.

We all know the outcome, although with this new short documentary, a new generation may be hearing about it for the first time. The Times notes: “After seven months, 6,000 pages of testimony and 180 witnesses, a grand jury found Ms. Brawley’s story to be a lie. Neither the police officer nor the district attorney accused by Ms. Brawley and Mr. Sharpton had been involved in any way, the report concluded.”  It was too late for Officer Harry Crist Jr., who committed suicide because of the false accusations made against him, or for Assistant DA Pagones, whose career was ruined and whose reputation was smeared.

Writing today at The Daily Beast, Stuart Stevens calls it  a “shocking reminder of the toxic mix racial exploitation and personal ambition can produce.” It should be, he writes, “required viewing for the NBC News executives who are heavily invested in rehabilitating a key culprit of this loathsome episode: the Rev. Al Sharpton.” Stevens is correct, and let me put it more boldly: It is time for MSNBC and its parent, NBC News, to fire Rev. Al Sharpton.

Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson appearing on MSNBC to equate the significance of the Boston bombers’ religion with their musical tastes:

While some black studies professors are busy indoctrinating students in strident anticapitalism and racial supremacism, and other inhabitants of the Ebony Tower are preaching only some­what less extreme versions of the same ideology, a very different message about race has been resonating with ordinary, hard­ working black Americans. In recent years, the comedian and ac­tor Bill Cosby has been speaking to audiences in black churches and other community centers, lamenting the prevalence among black Americans of unwed teenage mothers and absentee fathers, violent and misogynistic gangsta rap, and black ­on ­black crime. He has been calling on young black people to reject these self­ destructive social pathologies and to embrace traditional Ameri­can values of self ­respect and personal responsibility.

In an Atlantic article about Cosby’s crusade, Ta­Nehisi Coates maintains that Cosby’s call for “hard work and moral reform” rather than “protests and government intervention” res­onates with “conservative black Americans who are convinced that integration, and to some extent the entire liberal dream, robbed them of their natural defenses.” Coates points out that in 2004, the New York Times found that black parents in Lou­isville, Kentucky, the site of a historic battle over school deseg­regation in 1975–76, were now “more interested in educational progress than in racial parity.” Coates also cites a survey showing that 71 percent of American blacks consider rap “a bad influ­ence.” Coates quotes lines from one of Cosby’s speeches in which the comedian assails some black Americans’ uninformed image of themselves as Africans: “We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans. They don’t know a damn thing about Africa— with names like Shaniqua, Shaliqua, Mohammed, and all that crap, and all of them are in jail.”

So, you want to pitch a TV show — a sitcom no less! Or maybe you’re just an armchair TV enthusiast, a mental writer playing out episodes of the ideal sitcom in your head. Whether your concept is ideal or idyllic, if you want to get it off the ground, you need to get your head out of the clouds and start viewing your human reality in terms of numbers — good numbers. Take a tip from Seth MacFarlane: Be sure to include an African American, a disabled character, and an Asian reporter if you want to stand a chance in TV land.

In other words, start counting your minorities.

It’s all in the spirit of being fair that we view people based on their color, class, gender, or physical ability. Not only is it fair, it is super easy to follow the 4-step program for crafting your perfectly pitch-able TV sitcom.

So, get out your calculators and get ready for a math lesson in how to write a situation comedy for television!

My conservatism caught me by surprise.

While raised in the peculiar isolation of Jehovah’s Witnesses by a white mother and a black father, politics was as elusive as birthday celebrations and gifts on Christmas morning (prohibited by JW theology). In elementary school, as other children would cover their hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, I stood silent with my hands at my side. Participation in the political system of men was a betrayal of the kingdom of God, or so I had been taught. I therefore had little frame of reference for, or interest in, the political discourse.

I thus came into middle school ripe for indoctrination. My first impression of the major political parties was imprinted by a social studies teacher who explained as a matter of fact that Republicans were the party of the rich and powerful while Democrats were the party of the little guy. That settled it. Lacking in wealth and power as I was, if I was ever to be political, I was clearly to be a Democrat. Thus guided, I dutifully cast my ballot in the mock election of 1992 for the well-coifed champion of we little people – Bill Clinton.

In the years that followed, something happened which my teachers did not intend. I enrolled in my state’s postsecondary enrollment options program, and came to spend half the day at a local community college. My schedule was such that I drove between my high school and the college right when a certain talk radio personality took to the air. In a way, listening to Rush Limbaugh proved a form of youthful rebellion. My curiosity was aroused by leftist characterizations of the man as a bigoted hate-monger. Surely, listening to the rantings of a modern-day Klansman would prove entertaining.

You can fill in the rest of the story. What Limbaugh had to say on those daily drives to college proved more enlightening than what I was offered in class. I was not converted so much as matched with the ideology I implicitly held.

As I came of age politically, the reality of being a black conservative was no more isolating than being a Jehovah’s Witness. I had grown used to being a minority within a minority, the odd guy out, and having to routinely explain myself to others. While I eventually dropped the religion, I maintained its contentment with abnormality. As a result, I did not endure quite the same trials which many other black conservatives do when they reveal their values to a community enthralled by liberation theology.

Nevertheless, life as a black conservative has granted me insight into the plight facing those who stand up for what they believe in. Here are 5 tips for coming out as a black conservative.

This month in The New Criterion, I have a short note about “Original Sin: Why the GOP Is and Will Continue to Be the Party of White People,” Sam Tanenhaus’s tendentious and interminable article in a recent New Republic about how awful and racist the GOP is and why they will never, ever be able to redeem themselves until they give up on being nasty conservatives and start thinking just like — well, just like Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review and therefore a man who has the right (i.e., the approved left-wing) opinions about everything.

As I observe in my note, what makes “Original Sin” so odd is what I call its “historical legerdemain.”

When it comes to racism, the elephant in the room for Democrats is the unhappy historical fact that the Democratic Party was the party of slavery in the nineteenth century, the party of segregation for much of the twentieth century, and the party of multicultural neo-segregation today. Tanenhaus does not put it quite like that, but his essay slyly acknowledges the first two items. When it comes to contemporary realities, however, he argues that conservatives, by opposing identity politics and supporting the ideal of limited government, have slid under the wheels of history. The changing demographic complexion of America, he says, has consigned the GOP to bitter irrelevance. Searching for an intellectual paterfamilias for this drama, he settles on Lincoln’s great antagonist John C. Calhoun. The reasoning goes something like this: Calhoun supported states’ rights and limited government. He worried about the tyranny of the majority. He also supported slavery. Conservatives support states’ rights and limited government, they worry about the tyranny of the majority, ergo they are racists.

Not much of an argument, is it? In many ways, Tanenhaus’s piece is reminiscent of  his earlier exercise in ill-informed polemical logorrhea, The Death of Conservatism, which, like “Original Sin,” started life as a bloated article in The New Republic before darkening a few acres of wood pulp in its appearance between covers and on remainder shelves across the country. James Piereson treated that opuscule to at least some of the withering criticism it deserved in The New Criterion. That book disappeared without trace since the 2010 mid-term election did for his thesis what Cato’s denunciation helped do for Carthage.

Many young people nowadays are indoctrinated to believe that American culture has always been dominated by conservative, racist, and other nasty influences. Understanding this complex history has not been balanced by this new indoctrination and distortion. It’s merely been made biased in the opposite direction far more systematically than it ever was before. Racism against African-Americans and many other things in American history are undeniable — and shouldn’t be.

Consequently there was plenty of room for improvement. But that same history also shows there is no need for endless self-flagellation. I’ve often noticed this but it came to my attention again in rewatching the film that brought a certain man to stardom. So what better way to learn about the true and dominant themes than that classical Western directed by John Ford, Stagecoach (1939) [For full script see here.]

Let’s examine the politics of the film. As a traditional Western, it shows the Americans — not whites, Americans — as good guys in a battle with the Apaches. Aside from this, though, are the following plot points:

— The stagecoach driver is married to a Mexican-American woman. No negative aspersions are cast at all. This is totally accepted. Incidentally, all three of John Wayne’s wives were “Hispanics.”

— The heroes of the film are an outlaw, whose motives for killing a man are portrayed sympathetically, and a prostitute.

— One theme that runs through the film is how the “respectable” people are mean to the prostitute and that’s a terrible thing.

— Although the women are treated by the male characters as delicate, etc., their behavior shows them to be courageous, clear-headed, and as tough as circumstances require.

— The main villains are a banker and an ex-Confederate officer who has turned gambler, shot men in the back, and is a social snob.

— The banker, who is absconding with his bank’s embezzled funds, is a super-patriotic hypocrite. He actually says the following things and I am NOT making this up:

“And remember this — what’s good business for the banks is good for the country.”

“It always gives me great pride in my country when I see such fine young men in the U.S. Army.”

“America for Americans! Don’t let the government meddle with business! Reduce taxes! Our national debt is shocking, over a billion dollars! What the country needs is a businessman for president!”

That’s not in 2012 but 1939. And remember that he is the bad guy so when he says these things the audience could be expected to groan and think that such a person is horrible and disgusting. When the mass media in 2013 portray a group like the Tea Party as racist or in 2012 portray Mitt Romney unfavorably — a businessman for president? — the ground has been well-prepared. In what film was a community organizer a villain?

— The moralistic and deliberately uglified respectable women of the town are presented as narrow-minded prigs.

— One of the stations the stage coach visits is run by a Mexican-American team, including the manager, who are portrayed sympathetically.

— When one of the passengers makes a racist remark about the Apache wife of the Mexican-American manager, he’s made fun of. And note that the man’s statements are made in the context of fear that she might somehow be a spy for the Apache forces whose imminent attack they fear. And on top of that he’s not from the West and unused to seeing Native Americans. The other man who distrusts her is, of course, the evil banker. While she might actually be helping the Apaches, the banker is wrong when he accuses her of being a thief of his stolen loot, which he soon finds.

— In an early scene, the cavalry scout has reported that the Apaches have gone to war. Asked how do they know he’s telling the truth, an officer replies, “He’s a Cheyenne. They hate Apaches worse than we do.” So all Native Americans aren’t alike; some are allies. Today, the fact that some tribes were aggressive and “imperialistic,” engaging in massacres and tortures of others — motivating the latter to side with the U.S. army — is hidden, since that would distract from the narrative that only whites are racist and aggressive.

Today I am inaugurating a new tradition. From now on whenever there is a Malcolm X-related anniversary I am going to do a blog post dedicated to telling the truth about who he really was and what cruel values he actually dedicated his life to promoting. Malcolm X was not a “black pride advocate” or a “civil rights leader” as the postmodern Marxist grad student teaching your undergraduate will claim. He was a career criminal, pathological liar, racist, black nationalist, and antisemite. He’s not just a hip Martin Luther King Jr but with guns the way Spike Lee’s films try and mythologize him. He was an evil man who lived a life of racial hatred, the polar opposite of the Christian love and color blind unity preached and lived by King.

Here’s an excerpt from an article I published here at PJ Lifestyle in November, The 15 Best Books for Understanding Barack Obama’s Mysterious Political Theology, regarding books to read to discover the reality of Malcolm Little, the  man behind the Myth of Malcolm X:

    

      

5. The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley

6. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable

7. Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

8. Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss

Why do so many Democrats insist on giving Islam the benefit of the doubt? Even amongst many Republicans, the establishment narrative, set by George W. Bush, endures: Islam is “a religion of peace,” Al Qaeda is a fringe group of misinterpreters, Allah is the same god worshiped by Jews and Christians, and the Koran is just the Bible in Arabic, teaching universal love and compassion.

I bought this Big Lie about Islam for years. And looking back I wonder how much of it had to do with how my progressivism led to an unquestioning embrace of the mythology of Malcolm. In high school I loved The Autobiography of Malcolm X and watched Spike Lee’s film adaptation multiple times. Recall the ending: Malcolm doesn’t fully reject racism and become complete as a human being until he escapes the Nation of Islam, takes his hajj to Mecca, and renames himself El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Once outside of the evil, racist America Malcolm can see that within Islam whites could gain their humanity and become his brothers. Islam really could bring peace. Just look at Malcolm.

But multiple authors have debunked The Autobiography as fictional. (See my friend David Forsmark’s review of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention and Bruce Perry’s Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America.)

Once one learns the truth about who Malcolm X really was, what the Nation of Islam preached then (and still does today), and the contents of the orthodox Islam Malcolm believed at death, then the only moral response is shame. And that’s what I feel today as I reflect back on the fact that for years a poster of an antisemitic conspiracy theorist hung tacked to my walls like a religious icon.

But Barack Obama never felt that embarrassing epiphany of realizing he’d based his life on a lie. According to Dreams from my Father, Obama discovered The Autobiography as a teenager. He then used the myth of Malcolm during his community organizer days as a symbol:

“Power! X Register to Vote Here”

“It’s a POWER thing! X Vote Tues Nov. 3″

That’s what the symbol of Malcolm X means and Obama knew how to use it: the misunderstood, oppressed proletariat can take power away from the corrupt conspiracy at the top that’s enslaved everyone. It’s a message that appeals to both the impoverished in the ghettos, and the spoiled, angsty, idealistic, upper-middle class high schooler growing up in white suburbia. And it too was a Big Lie. Power doesn’t come through voting in politicians who will give you healthcare and other free stuff.

Note: This article from Walter Hudson was first published last year on July 17 here.

It shouldn’t matter that I, an author with the audacity to select such a title, am black. The arguments presented should stand or fall on their objective merit. Nevertheless, I declare my racial identity at the outset to defuse any prejudice readers may bring regarding the motivation behind this piece. Indeed, it is in part because I am black that the following must be said.

All things considered, blacks and the civil rights culture surrounding them are the most open and prolific purveyors of racism in America. This is an ironic travesty which spits upon the graves of history’s abolitionists and offends all who are committed to a dream of equality under the law and goodwill among men.

Surely, such a claim is provocative. Unfortunately, it is also demonstrable.

In a recent interview with National Public Radio host Michel Martin, the Oscar-winning black actor Morgan Freeman made the odd declaration that President Barack Obama is not America’s first black president. NPR reports:

“First thing that always pops into my head regarding our president is that all of the people who are setting up this barrier for him … they just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white — very white American, Kansas, middle of America,” Freeman said. “There was no argument about who he is or what he is. America’s first black president hasn’t arisen yet. He’s not America’s first black president — he’s America’s first mixed-race president.”

This is a new take on Obama’s racial identity from Freeman, who has previously cited Obama’s blackness as the chief motivation behind political opposition from both Republicans in Congress and the Tea Party movement. From an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan:

… Morgan asked the actor, “Has Obama helped the process of eradicating racism or has it, in a strange way, made it worse?”

“Made it worse. Made it worse,” Freeman replied. “The tea partiers who are controlling the Republican party … their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term. What underlines that? Screw the country. We’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man out of here.”

Apparently, Obama is black enough to trigger baseless charges of racism, but not black enough to qualify as the first black president. If that makes your brain hurt, you might be rational.

Freeman’s comments are not anomalies. He channels long-held, broadly accepted ideas regarding what it means to be black, the relevance of race, and the claim of blacks upon the rest of society. These ideas are horrifically racist, yet uniquely tolerated.

The tolerance of racist ideas openly expressed by blacks and the larger civil rights establishment is informed by sloppy thinking regarding both race and the role of government in society. True reconciliation requires confronting these ideas with reason. Here are eight ways in which blacks are perpetuating racism, and the one true way to effectively thwart it.

via GQ Publishes Offensive “Hottest Women” List | Love + Sex – Yahoo! Shine.

GQ just released their “The 100 Sexiest Women of the Millennium” issue featuring Beyonce on the cover as “Miss Millennium.” Flip through it and you’ll find the obvious nods to Jessica Simpson, Kim Kardashian, and Katie Holmes. But this year, the lad mag has included some ethnic specific categories that have some people raising their eyebrows. Examples:
•    “Hottest Indian Chick”: Freida Pinto

•    “Hottest Pregnant Sri Lankan”: M.I.A

•    “Hottest Italian Chick”: Monica Belluci

•    “Hottest Chinese Chick”: Zhang Ziyi (sometimes credited as Ziyi Zhang)

More on Yahoo! Anthropology Sells Racially Offensive Candlestick For $398

While there may not be anything inherently wrong with saying someone is a “Hot Chinese woman” the seemingly arbitrary racial call-outs have people squirming. For example, why did the magazine deem Beyonce “Miss Millennium” but not “Miss African-American Millennium?” Mila Kunis was included in the top three hottie picks but the magazine didn’t mention her Ukranian roots. And why was Kim Kardashian lauded for her performance in her 2007 sex tape but not labeled “Hottest Armenian Porn Star”?

Continue reading at Yahoo! Shine

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Image courtesy: Jaguar PS / Shutterstock.com

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Hat tip: Mediaite

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An Open Letter to Jamie Foxx Explaining Why Black Pride Is Just As Evil As White Pride

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8 Reasons Why Jackie Brown Beats Pulp Fiction

The number of young black men who cast a vote for the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 tripled that of 2008. Hearing this statistic, one commenter quipped, “Is this one of those situations where three times nothing is still nothing?”

No. “Nearly 20 percent of black males under 30 voted for Romney, more than three times what McCain got.” That according to Ann Coulter, who gets her information from Pew Research.

How? Why? Is there a growing number of young black conservatives?

Those stand as worthy questions. Answering them properly would require follow-up polling. Any number of factors could have informed these votes, which deviate markedly from the wider black community. At large, blacks voted 93% for Barack Obama, making it all the more fascinating to ponder why young black men trended toward the Republican candidate.

While we must wait and see if more comprehensive polling provides answers, likely influences upon the black vote hang ripe for analysis. Generally, it makes sense that the proverbial honeymoon is over. President Obama’s second inauguration cannot be as historic as his first. The novelty of beholding the nation’s first black president has faded over time.

Of course, there must be more to our cited trend than that. If fading novelty were the only factor, we would see the trend across the entire black electorate, and not merely among young black males. What do they see that their elders don’t?

For one thing, blacks fared worse under the Obama administration than in previous years. The Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley confirms:

When the president assumed office, unemployment was 12.7% for blacks and 7.1% for whites. Today it is 14.3% for blacks and 7% for whites, which means that the black-white employment gap has not merely persisted under Mr. Obama but widened.

American Thinker’s Chad Stafko adds:

[A report from the liberal Center for American Progress], released in April, shows more dismal economic conditions in the African-American community.  It found that from 2009 through 2011, black minimum wage workers swelled 16.6%, while whites had only 5.2% more minimum wage workers.  Not only, then, has there been a disproportionate increase in the number of African-Americans who are in the unemployment line, but there is also a greater number of blacks working for minimum wage.  This surely wasn’t the change African-Americans were looking for in Obama.

These results shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, the kind of “change” which the president and his ideological ilk continue to propose ignores the source of value, and thus the source of wealth and prosperity.

Stereotyping of Asian-Americans happens. But the first step to finding out whether there’s real truth behind these claims is identifying them. It may not even be possible to consider the diverse group of people who lived on a large continent and moved to the United States as a coherent unit of “Asian-Americans” that can be stereotyped as a homogeneous group. But stereotyping still happens. Here’s seven of these stereotypes.  We’ll start with pretty bad stereotypes, and it’s gonna get worse as you read on.

7. Asian-Americans Can’t Drive.

A bad joke about Asians goes like this: “How do you blind an Asian? Put a steering wheel in front of him.” Here’s another: “What did the Asian get pulled over for? DWA (Driving While Asian).”

In reality, Asians are the ones taking you where you need to go. Also, rides from Asians do not result in fatal car crashes in as high of percentages as rides from other racial groups. Thirty-eight percent of taxi and limo drivers are immigrants, most often from South Asia (2.9% from Pakistan and 2.3% from India). You should give them a break next time you call a cab, considering that they now drive on the other side of the road. Besides, South Asia is one big chaotic traffic jam. In India, you might have to slam the brakes to avoid hitting a common street traveler: a cow.

So here’s the last one with two stereotypes for the price of one: “How do you know if an Asian has robbed your house? Your homework is done, your computer is upgraded, but two hours later, the thief is still trying to back out of your driveway.”

It is understandable that those of us who voted against Barack Obama, the Community Disorganizer, should be upset over his triumph. Like Joe Biden reading an Umberto Eco novel, we cannot help but feel rather listless and disoriented these days. Feelings of vulnerability can very easily transmogrify into anger, so one must never lose one’s sense of humor; apropos, I draw your attention to the New York Times of November 10, in which Maureen Dowd reflects on Mitt Romney’s loss:

Team Romney has every reason to be shellshocked. Its candidate, after all, resoundingly won the election of the country he was wooing.

Mitt Romney is the president of white male America.

Maybe the group can retreat to a man cave in a Whiter House, with mahogany paneling, brown leather Chesterfields, a moose head over the fireplace, an elevator for the presidential limo, and one of those men’s club signs on the phone that reads: “Telephone Tips: ‘Just Left,’ 25 cents; ‘On His Way,’ 50 cents; ‘Not here,’ $1; ‘Who?’ $5.”

In its delusional death spiral, the white male patriarchy was so hard core, so redolent of country clubs and Cadillacs, it made little effort not to alienate women. The election had the largest gender gap in the history of the Gallup poll, with Obama winning the vote of single women by 36 percentage points.

Forgive the lengthy quote; writing like that is harder to swallow than grape Dimetapp. Note, for instance, the cliches attempting to pass for edgy turns of phrase: white guys in mahogany rooms with moose heads over the fireplaces. (Aren’t Bentleys more suitable to these images than Cadillacs?) Dowd really knows how to squat over the page and deliver nuggets of wisdom. And isn’t that just like an intellectual: her only knowledge of millions of Americans (whom she slanders but whose tax money she craves and craves) comes from Edith Wharton stereotypes and episodes of Mad Men.

As a writer, an effective way to tell whether you’re full of crap is to imagine yourself face-to-face with the person or group you’re criticizing and to ask yourself whether you would then have the guts to say out loud what you’ve written for your fawning readers. Oh, I can picture it: Ms. Dowd in front of the unemployed white blue-collar workers in Michigan and New Jersey. “You’re just white patriarchs,” she might say. “Your days in power are over.”

Here’s Ms. Dowd in front of a crowd of white middle-class men in Long Beach, New York, fishing what’s left of their belongings out of modest houses flooded by Hurricane Sandy: “It’s about time men like you put away your cigars and brandy and stepped outside your mahogany country clubs!” And here’s Ms. Dowd in front of the white Marines in the 2nd Battalion in Afghanistan: “All you who voted for Romney represent the dead-enders of white male domination.” (Note: “dead enders of white male domination” actually appears in Dowd’s column.)

Via Amy Odell at Buzzfeed, “Rihanna’s Nude Perfume Meant To Recall ‘Glistening’ Skin”:

After Rihanna tweeted the first photo from the new campaign for her latest fragrance Nude, it raised the question that comes up every so often about what “nude” means, exactly, in terms of a shade of commercial fashion and beauty items. Why does nude, by definition, match a white person’s skin? In this Nude fragrance ad and packaging, the nude color is more akin to a white person’s skin than person of color’s.

She’s right. Here’s Merriam Webster with a definition in need of a revision:

a : devoid of a natural or conventional covering; especially :not covered by clothing or a drape

b (1) : of the color of a white person’s flesh (2) : giving the appearance of nudity <a nude dress>

Laura Beck at Jezebel seems to recognize something wrong but fails to adequately articulate the real cultural conflict in play:

I will say, I’m sure there are many people who don’t know that “nude” refers to the color of a white person’s flesh, maybe they think it just means “naked.” But even with that explanation — what’s with the light-colored lingerie? And why isn’t the color of the packaging darker? If they were referring to Rihanna naked, which, WILD GUESS, I think they might be, then why are all the components so damn white?

Am I nuts for expecting a leeetle better from Rihanna? I know the answer is yes, but I thought maybe she was a little more thoughtful about shit based on what she tweeted back to that idiot who asked why her hair was nappy: “cuz I’m black bitch!!!!” That was rad.

Why the reference to Rihanna’s hair in a story complaining about her new perfume’s name and packaging?

Because there’s a cultural civil war happening right now over hair, beauty, and race. The question: should black and multi-racial women continue investing tens of thousands of dollars each year on artificial hair “weaves” and damaging chemical straighteners so they can imitate the style of Caucasian women? Should they adopt unnatural looks like the blonde Rihanna in the ad above?

Or would they appear more beautiful embracing the styles the rising “natural hair movement” advocates?

I’m a partisan in this war. Natural hair must return, liberating women of color from painful chemicals, hours wasted at the salon, and the exorbitant prices of fake hair. Natural hair looks much sexier than the fake Barbie doll look.

I don’t understand the thinking of any man who would assert that black and biracial women need to make themselves look more Caucasian in order to become attractive. Should any dare to defend themselves for the demands they place on the women they claim to love, then I welcome their justifications in the comments below. Would any man do so with his real name?

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More on race at PJ Lifestyle:

Actress Stacey Dash Hammered With Racist Hate After Endorsing Mitt Romney on Twitter

8 Ways Blacks Perpetuate Racism and the Only Way to Thwart It

Ann Coulter’s Mugged: A (Mostly) Frank Monologue About Race — Part 1

Last week, I talked about Ann Coulter’s new book Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama.

Like all her books, this one is difficult to write about in a thousand words or less.

They’re always packed with quotable quotes, shocking discoveries from MSM archives, little-known historical nuggets — and infuriating stylistic tics (like speed-bumping serious arguments with sarcastic, and sometimes obtuse, jokes).

So I’m back with more about Mugged, along with an investigation into what I call Coulter Derangement Syndrome, or CDS.

You know what I mean:

Ann Coulter’s very existence sets millions of folks off.

(Some of those people even call themselves conservative.)

What’s that about?

And how does CDS impact the reception for, and potential impact of, Mugged?

via Twitter Responds to Actress Stacey Dash’s Endorsement of Republican Mitt Romney | TheBlaze.com.

Actress Stacey Dash, who has starred in everything from the 90′s hit Clueless to CSI, prompted a firestorm on Twitter after publicly endorsing Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and then standing by her opinion.

“Vote for Romney. The only choice for your future. @mittromney @teamromney #mittromney #VOTE #voteromney,” Dash wrote on her official Twitter page, accompanied by a photo of herself with an American flag.

Not long after, presumed Obama supporters began insulting Dash for her opinion, saying she isn’t “black” enough, several even asking if the actress would just “kill herself.”

More at Twitchy too: Vile: Racist Obama supporters call Stacey Dash ‘house negro,’ ‘Uncle Tom,’ ‘Oreo’

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Related at PJ Lifestyle:

8 Ways Blacks Perpetuate Racism and the Only Way to Thwart It

Ann Coulter’s Mugged: A (Mostly) Frank Monologue About Race — Part 1

Related at PJ Tatler:

The Hatred of Derrick Bell’s Afrolantica Legacies

I know you’ve had star wars posts…

The recent kerfuffle on school lunch: nobody but me knew that Frances Perkins persuaded Roosevelt to pursue school lunches for American children in order to provide soldiers for the next war: World War 2. That scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi tours the cloning facility – the factory fetus bottles, the kids in tech classrooms – not debating or synthesizing- (implying they’ll learn modern tech-stuff, but not debate old values) the beefy young men dining on recognizable school lunch trays — that’s a pretty distilled fascist vision of perfection.

The meals were aimed at young children of immigrants in cities- they were to be the mixed-light-brown race of foot soldiers, not officers. Notice how the emperor has blue eyes and a British accent- he’s running the show. The nameless soldier hordes are darker, nameless, and “engineered for less higher-thinking and more obedience.”

It was a racist position even then- the scholarly journals of nutrition- the field-workers would tour America and document what people ate. The comments for black tenant farmer families in the deep South- the photos were of near emaciated families- was that these people needed to eat less calories.

It showed up in the comments, even now. People were more upset about fat minority kids eating meals in Chicago, than any other thing. Well, besides my kid.

We have an all-volunteer army, now. But every war, it’s a Democrat asking when we can go back to the draft. They’ve never backed down from that vision. Frances Perkins sounds inocuous, but she might be worth some edumacational posts. She lived in college housing when she was an old woman. Robert Reich was one of her housemates, for instance. Republicans live with their families, so there’s less continuity of activist vision.

with regards,

ari

Speaking as a foreigner, can I just say on behalf of the rest of the world that America should either have that “frank discussion about race” pronto – or shut the hell up about it.

Yeah, yeah, slavery, blah. We know.

But it is SO weird watching you guys from a distance, obsessing over a horrible thing that happened 150 years ago.

When the topic turns to race, the same nation that invented Hollywood, jazz, and manned space flight transforms, Hyde-style, into a shriveled hypochondriac with Tourette syndrome, nervously taking its “tolerance” temperature (rectally) every half hour and announcing the embarrassing results to all within earshot, between yelling “Selma! Juneteenth!! Tuskgeegee!!!” over and over again.

We kinda wanna slap you.

Also: Check out Ann Coulter’s new book, and drop by PJ Lifestyle next week for Kathy Shaidle’s review…

*****
Related at PJ Lifestyle:

8 Ways Blacks Perpetuate Racism and the Only Way to Thwart It