Racism

Myriam Gurba Publishes Another Book

September 11, 2023

Myriam Gurba has just published another book – Creep, a collection of essays – so it’s a good time to reprint my creative feature “Who’s Myriam Gurba?” which originally appeared in October 2020.  Gurba is a feisty, talented, and photogenic writer and social activist. Whether or not readers agree with her opinions, she entertains with…

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Young Rush Limbaugh

February 18, 2021

Back in 1987 Sacramento I had my own indoor half-court basketball gym and after shooting and exercising for about an hour in late afternoons I’d often relax in the living room, drinking cold water and watching the news. I preferred national reports but sometimes turned to local news and noted this mid-thirties guy with a…

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The Ali Legacy

June 7, 2016

He told you in the sixties he wasn’t going to Vietnam to help the white man continue to oppress people of color around the world. You saw where that led. The United States killed a million people in Southeast Asia and maimed more than that and lost fifty-seven thousand American lives. For what? Martin Luther…

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Eldridge Cleaver has Changed

December 9, 2014

There were confrontational people in the crowd and they hurled invectives at a speaker created for confrontation. A young curly-haired fellow, smirking, waved a sign that projected insulting remarks about the man on the platform, and he shouted, “You’re in the FBI.” “First of all, you can take that sign and shove it,” said the…

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Emotions and Statistics from Ferguson

November 29, 2014

The usual suspects right and left are respectively railing that police are always justified in using force in ghettoes or they’re never justified in so doing especially if the alleged criminal descended from slaves. There’s no need to refute Al Sharpton, race baiter and riotous agitator extraordinaire, or columnist Leonard Pitts, a self-proclaimed introvert who’s…

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North Korean Explains Race

May 11, 2014

We the happy and well-fed people of North Korea must maintain our racial purity lest we become like the suffering, ill-shaped barbarians who surround this paradise created by divine Kim Jong-Un and his father and grandfather. Ignore those who’re starving in our country. Don’t worry about those who’ve disappeared. Their blood was tainted by inferior…

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Dolphin Brother Supports Incognito

November 9, 2013

This story is in the collection “Basketball and Football”

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French Antisemitism

May 6, 2013

Husky librarian lectured members of historical society about vast news and photo archives and then discussed college background, emphasizing in grad school had researched paper about nineteenth century French anti-Semitism. As author of “Hitler Here” I approached and said, that’s obscure subject. Yes, but fascinating, he replied. I focused on Edouard Drumont, Adolf Hitler of…

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John Wilkes Booth Today

October 15, 2012

We mustn’t permit deed of John Wilkes Booth to stand and therefore shall remove from time and place and raise today in theatrical family thriving in Manhattan and nod when Hollywood beckons splendid Booth who becomes movie star in early twenties making millions while he drinks and snorts and occasionally crashes cars but fires only…

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Update Martin Luther King Speech

October 13, 2012

a million die by 1966 day i deliver “beyond vietnam a time to break silence” declaring poverty inevitable in “society gone mad on war” and still i see america attacks to feed “giant triplets of racism materialism and militarism” Editorial Note: This is revised and reduced from the original post in January 2012.

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High School Grades of Earl Warren

February 29, 2012

enter archives at bakersfield high school look left at long glass case displaying handwritten grade book note highlighted name earl warren read four years reports revealing history his best subject and three times earned his top grade in final quarter many students before and since doubtless had similar trajectories only didn’t become three term governor…

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John Wilkes Booth Today

January 30, 2012

mustn’t permit deed of john wilkes booth to stand instead remove from that time and place and raise today in theatrical family thriving in manhattan and nod when hollywood beckons splendid booth becomes movie star in his early twenties making millions while drinks snorts and occasionally crashes cars but fires only slurred words To see…

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Interned American Recalls World War II

November 3, 2011

doing pretty well for old man twenty years ago i retired as gardener at seventy-five i was in twenties when pearl harbor hit and things got bad in california for people like me i was born here you know that didn’t matter they sent my wife three kids and me to internment camp and made…

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Limbaugh Loves Kony

October 21, 2011

As child like thousands in Uganda I was kidnapped by Lord’s Resistance Army of Joseph Kony and tortured and raped and brainwashed for years as thousands died and am confused why free American radio talker Rush Limbaugh calls Joseph Kony Christian and attacks Barack Obama for trying to help us and through mangled lips I…

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Nat Turner Now

October 13, 2011

you’re no longer nat turner but a different color cracker

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The NCAA Confesses

September 21, 2011

What’s in that syringe? Untie me. You’ll go to jail. This won’t work. I’m not talking. I hope I won’t. I know I shouldn’t say as a kid I was a white wimp and still am and therefore perfect to work for the NCAA. I loathe my athletic superiors and all the media and fan…

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Historian Offers to Write Screenplay about Hitler Here

July 13, 2009

How pleased I recently was to receive an email with the subject “Screenplay” and addressed to “Illustrious Sir”.  The correspondent introduced himself with news he’d been reading my biographical novel Hitler Here and thought it was “great” and “what an ordeal (I) must have gone through to produce it.”  Since the book took twenty years…

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Five Youths Attack Old Man

June 23, 2008

On Father’s Day at a church in Chicago, Barack Obama preached that “of all the rocks upon which we build our lives…family is the most important.”  And we must “recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation…They are mentors and role models.  They are examples of success…But if we are honest…we’ll admit…

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Rev. Al Sharpton in the Pulpit

July 3, 2007

Later on we’ll talk about Al Sharpton the bold political activist and brazen race baiter, the man who strives to build communities and the one who’s addicted to public controversy.  Right now it’s Sunday morning and none of that matters.  Reverend Al has come to Bakersfield and is somewhere in the church.  The pews are…

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African American Activist Denounces Hate Crimes Trial

February 9, 2007

I hope you’ve been reading about the typical white racist attempt to just about lynch those ten black juveniles, including nine girls, falsely accused of stomping three young white women outside a haunted house last Halloween night in Long Beach, California.  When they were surrounded by a group of taunting, crotch-grabbing African Americans, the white…

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