Free Republic

I’m trying to pick-up the habit of using my Thursday blogging for humor, using pop-psych as the theme. Unfortunately, I’m new enough to this great-big-bloggity-world that the habit hasn’t quite stuck yet. So, when I read an Essence editorial by Jill Scott today, courtesy of that #1 news aggregator, Drudge, my humorous idea for good dose of post- racial therapy ran smack into the wall of a pretty ugly reality. Ms. Scott is an accomplished artist but at this point that is about the highest mention I can give her. Although, I should probably congratulate her on accomplishing something that...

The hubbub over the Tiger Mom model presented in a recent best-seller left some recalling the stereotype of the Jewish mother. But what happens when couples are Asian and Jewish? Asian-Jewish couples share remarkably similar values — but they’re not rearing their children like Tiger Mother Amy Chua, a new study reports. Noah Leavitt and Helen Kim — a married couple and both sociologists at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. — interviewed 37 Asian-Jewish couples over two years. The families lived in Northern and Southern California, Philadelphia and New York City. They included Asian-American men married to Jewish women...

Americans nationwide are evenly divided over the issue of same sex marriage. But Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage. In a PPP poll [pdf] released Thursday, a 46% plurality of registered Republican voters said they thought interracial marriage was not just wrong, but that it should be illegal. 40% said interracial marriage should be legal. Gov. Haley Barbour, with a home state advantage in Mississippi, also topped PPP's survey of the GOP primary field at 37%, followed by Mike Huckabee at 19%, and Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich at 10%.

How the mass incarceration of black men hurts black women IMAGINE that the world consists of 20 men and 20 women, all of them heterosexual and in search of a mate. Since the numbers are even, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man? You might not think this would make much difference. You would be wrong, argues Tim Harford, a British economist, in a book called “The Logic of Life”. With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively....

I am now very afraid of David Vitter. I am also very ashamed. I have publically wondered why the Democrats, the GOP, David Vitter and US Senate hopeful—Congressman Charlie Melancon had not given a statement concerning the very controversial and embarrassing Justice Bardwell incident. The Democrats and Melancon have since made comments denouncing the actions of the Louisiana Justice of the Peace. Today, for really the first time ever, I am serious beginning to question whether David Vitter is not a completely racially insensitive and not playing to the most ugly element of our state’s population for the purpose of...

A Louisiana judge, Keith Bardwell, from the Tangipahoa parish is yet another symptom that racism is still a problem in America in 2009, despite the election of the first African-American President. Justice of the peace Bardwell is now in the middle of a growing controversy, likely to end his career, after refusing to give a marriage license to an interracial couple. Barwell said he denied the license “out of concern for the couple’s future children.” Bardwell insists that he is not a racist, and that he has a lot of Black friends that he “welcome to his house, and even...

A white Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else." Bardwell...

Hammond, Louisiana--A justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple last week because of concern for the children who might be born of that relationship. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward, also said it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. “I’m not a racist,” Bardwell said. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.” Beth Humphrey, 30, said she and her boyfriend, Terence McKay, 32, both of Hammond, intend to consult the...

An 18-year-old man was severely beaten with a piece of concrete late Tuesday night, in an assault that’s being investigated by Buffalo police as a possible hate crime. <...snip a few paragraphs...> Witnesses told police that the young man, who is white, was beaten by a group of about 10 to 12 black males ...

Is Obama black? It depends on who - and when - you ask. For some of us, the heralding of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States seems a rather uncontroversial claim. ... The bulk of the people protesting against references to Obama as a black man, however, grant that he is "part" black (by way of his father), but assert that because he also has a white mother it is not "accurate" to call him black. ... For us, being black and mixed-race are not mutually exclusive. We have learned to live with the contradictions....

According to a 46-count indictment, suspects Darnell Cobbins, Lemaricus Davidson, George Thomas and Vanessa Coleman, all blacks, are charged with committing rape, including sodomy against Christian and Newsom, both of whom are white. After being raped, Newsom was shot several times and his body was found burned along nearby railroad tracks. Christian was forced to witness her boyfriend's rape, torture and subsequent murder before she was ultimately raped, tortured and murdered. The police discovered her body inside a large trash can in the kitchen of the home where the murders took place. Before disposing of her body, the murderers poured...

eHarmony allows clients to discriminate on the race of potential mates. Even though it's only acting on the wishes of its clients, matching services that discriminate by race may violate a statute dating back to the Civil War that prohibits race discrimination in contracting. Think about it. eHarmony is a for-profit company that takes $50 from black clients and refuses to treat them the same (match them with the same people) as some white clients. A restauraunt would be in a lot of trouble if it refused to seat Hispanic customers in a section where customers stated a preference to...

Mom's pride 25 years after his bleak beginning, adopted crack baby earns law degree Parents' love proves ultimate cure Dennis McCarthy, Columnist LA Daily News The kid came into this world with two strikes against him. Then he hit a home run. Ila Pawley became his mom. "I got lucky. So lucky," D.D. Pawley said Friday as he slipped on his cap and gown. "If it wasn't for her love and all the sacrifices she made for me, I wouldn't be standing here today." A young man with a bright future, getting his law degree from the Sandra Day O'Connor...

NEW YORK - The charisma king of the 2008 presidential field. The world’s best golfer. The captain of the New York Yankees. Besides superstardom, Barack Obama, Tiger Woods and Derek Jeter have another common bond: Each is the child of an interracial marriage. For most of U.S. history, in most communities, such unions were taboo. It was only 40 years ago — on June 12, 1967 — that the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a Virginia statute barring whites from marrying nonwhites. The decision also overturned similar bans in 15 other states.

Your wife, who unlike you is white, and who is expecting your first child, has been receiving the oddest reactions to the news of her pregnancy. Upon finding out, friends can't resist informing her that "interracial children are beautiful." It's said in a tone that suggests deep gratitude and admiration, although the reasons are a little unclear. The comment may be kindly meant, as a sort of reflexive compliment, but it inevitably suggests that she is being congratulated for her willingness to place the aesthetic enhancement of the populace above the imperatives of racial purity. She's heard the remark, or...

<p>Kanye West has stirred up another controversy about race. The rapper, who made headlines when he declared that George W. Bush doesn’t care about black people, has startled some with his comments about the offspring of racially mixed couples. “If it wasn’t for race mixing there’d be no video girls,” West is quoted as saying in the January issue of Essence magazine. “Me and most of our friends like mutts a lot. Yeah, in the hood they call ’em mutts.” ...</p>

<p>NEW YORK (AP) -- Yankees star Derek Jeter is the latest athlete to receive a threatening letter warning him to stop dating white women.</p> <p>The letter was mailed to Jeter at Yankee Stadium and called him a ``traitor to his race,'' according to a story in Monday's editions of the Daily News. It warned him to ``stop or he'll be shot or set on fire,'' said a law enforcement source who the newspaper did not identify. It was not clear whether the source was speaking on condition of anonymity.</p>

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Former University of Kentucky basketball star Rex Chapman says school officials tried to stop him from dating black women, and asked him to at least hide the relationships to keep from inflaming fans. "There were certain aspects of my time there that were really ugly," Chapman, who is white, said in a story published by The Courier-Journal on Monday. "I don't know how it is today, but that's how it was 20 years ago." Chapman said scrutiny of his private life by athletic department officials, boosters and others hastened his departure from Kentucky. He left after...

I never lived on a college campus. So I wasn't sure what bothered me about the way administrators at Trinity College handled three mail threats targeting African-American and Latino students on campus. Was it the forced evacuation of students who did nothing wrong? Was it the fact that this was happening at a religious school? Was it simply that this level of racial intolerance was happening at all? Last Thursday, about 43 students of color were moved from their dorms to an undisclosed location after the third letter threatened violence with a weapon. Packing up 43 students and putting them...

DEERFIELD, Ill. -- About 100 minority students at Trinity International University in Deerfield were evacuated from the campus Thursday over concerns about hate mail threatening physical violence. School spokesman Gary Cantwell said some students received a total of three letters over the past two weeks at the suburban Chicago university. He said the university chose to move the students off campus to a secure, undisclosed location Thursday after the third letter was shown to administrators. Officials at the nearby Bannockburn Police Department, which is investigating the matter, said the third letter -- received through the campus mail system -- threatened...