Journalism blog dedicated to stories that either receive little attention in the media or don't get the attention they deserve. With the exception of outrageous conduct that screams for condemnation, all Bullwork of Democracy reporting strives to be unbiased. Tweeting @cccheney
Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry, a former Texas governor and a longtime conservative government standard-bearer, visits Trump Tower in New York during the president-elect's Cabinet hiring spree in December. /Getty Images photo by Drew Angerer
Conservative Americans found an unexpected haul of presents under the Christmas tree this year: a bigly box bursting open with a business-tycoon president-elect and a Cabinet stuffed with billionaires and plutocratic ideologues.
Several of the executive-department nominees are more akin to a wolf pack guarding the whole farm than a fox guarding the hen house.
Trump's nominee for Housing and Urban Development secretary, Ben Carson, is a retired neurosurgeon and former Republican primary-season rival of the president-elect. He has no public housing experience and a self-help ideology that seems ill-suited to providing an essential safety-net service. /Getty Images photo by Andrew Burton
Trump's nominee for Education secretary, Michigan Republican Party bigwig billionaire Betsy DeVos,
has no experience in public education, including with her own children. She favors private-school vouchers and charter schools as solutions--and likely poison pills--for struggling public schools.
Trump's nominee for Energy secretary, two-time GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry, has advocated dismantling the department. While calling for the agency's demise in an epic 2011 debate gaffe, he forgot the department's name.
Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, favors a free-market approach to medicine that includes slashing HHS regulations and privatizing Medicare.
Trump's nominee for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, E. Scott Pruitt, has been a fierce critic of the EPA in his current role as Oklahoma attorney general. Pruitt is among the named petitioners in a 25-state lawsuit against the EPA over greenhouse gas regulations.
As the country embarks on Republican government in the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority of statehouses, a host of hurdles that require united effort confronts the apparently partisan Trump administration: healthcare reform; national governments that threaten global security such as North Korea; external economic threats from powerful competitors and volatile global markets; internal economic challenges including a dilapidated infrastructure, an aging population, a skewed concentration of wealth, and disruptive waves of automation that upend the workforce; roiled race relations; immigration reform; and climate change.
Tackling these hurdles from the right, or any single-minded approach, is doomed to failure measured in blood and national treasure.
Editor's Note:There has been little in-depth coverage of the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation in North Dakota. Recent images from Cannon Ball, N.D., where "water protector" demonstrators are camped near the pipeline's path, shine light on the struggle over completion of the 1,172-mile oil artery.
On Nov. 20, law enforcement officers fire a water cannon to douse Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) demonstrators at a state highway bridge in Cannon Ball. The temperature was about 26 degrees F and several protesters were injured, Youth Radio correspondent Avery White reported. /Avery White photo
In late November, musician, author and photographer D. Randall Blythe visited one of the "water protector" encampments in Cannon Ball. He wrote about what he witnessed for Rolling Stone. /David Rollingcloud photo
Blythe volunteered to participate in "direct action" demonstrations involving face-offs with law enforcement. The Lamb of God frontman witnessed a police line stand-off at Turtle Island near the Dakota Access Pipeline's proposed crossing of the Missouri River. The Sioux tribe relies on the river as a water resource. /D. Randall Blythe photo
"The ridge line at the top of the hill became crowded with heavily armed police officers and men in tactical gear staring down at us. I saw rifles, grenade launchers, safety-orange shotguns, large pepper-spray canisters resembling fire extinguishers and a few water hoses that were rolled out. Hooded men with binoculars and video cameras walked the hilltop, filming and scanning our faces constantly." --Randy Blythe for Rolling Stone
During the clash with protesters on Nov. 20, law enforcement fired water cannons and non-lethal projectiles at protesters. A Native American security guard told Blythe that he collected these non-lethal rounds, which include a buckshot beanbag, from the scene of the confrontation. /D. Randall Blythe photo
Medics have treated several demonstrators for head wounds that are likely the result of law enforcement officers firing non-lethal rounds at protesters. /August White image
Military veterans observe the police-barricaded bridge near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation that has become a demonstration flash point. More than 2,000 veterans are vowing to serve as human shields to help block eviction of the demonstrators from their camps. /Associated Press photo via voaanews.com
Veteran Trek Kelly of Venice Beach, Calif., is among the veterans supporting DAPL demonstrators facing eviction. /Reuters photo
With a Dec. 5 eviction deadline from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers looming, DAPL demonstrators also are facing brutal weather conditions as winter bears down on their camps in Cannon Ball. /Reuters image
CNN reported today that there are thousands of Dakota Access Pipeline protesters hunkered down in frigid winter conditions at the Sacred Stone Camp in Cannon Ball, N.D. /CNN image
This weekend, more than 2,000 military veterans, including U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, are vowing to serve as human shields for Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protesters at the Sacred Stone Camp, Reuters reported today.
The protest camp is within a couple miles of the energy project's last unfinished segment. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has set a Dec. 5 deadline for protesters to leave Sacred Stone Camp or face arrest.
The Corps decided last month to delay the final unfinished leg of the pipeline project, which features tunneling under Lake Oahe, a drinking water reservoir for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. The Corps said the project pause is necessary because "additional discussion and analysis are warranted" on several grounds, including "the history of the Great Sioux Nation's dispossessions of lands" and the resource value of Lake Oahe to the Standing Rock Sioux.
Despite the delay, the Dec. 5 eviction deadline has set the stage for another confrontation over the 1,172 mile long pipeline, The project price tag is pegged at $3.7 billion.
In August, hundreds of DAPL protesters were based at the Sacred Stone Camp. /KFYR-TV image
In spring 2016, a Google Maps image shows the barren and sparsely populated landscape at Sacred Stone Camp.
During a cold late-fall night in Standing Rock, N.D., police target a water cannon at protesters who have been trying to block completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Nov. 20, 2016, clash also included police firing tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, Youth Radio correspondent Avery White reported. /Avery White photo
In the 21st century, there should be no more Native American treaty violations or disruption of natural resources on Reservation land. The Dakota Access Pipeline is an affront to both of these fundamental deal-breakers.
The pipeline cuts through land promised to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in an 1851 treaty. The petroleum project also poses an environmental threat to the tribe's primary water source--the Missouri River--which runs along one side of the tribe's Reservation.
The drumbeat of human rights abuses against Native Americans--muted for a generation since conflict rekindled during the 1970s at Wounded Knee in South Dakota--is back with a vengeance with the Dakota Access Pipeline.
In October 2016, armed soldiers and law enforcement officers move in formation during the eviction of protesters who had camped on private land in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Associated Press reported at least 117 protesters were arrested and at least one was injured. /AP photo by Mike McCleary
American indigenous people have been on the receiving end of violence on a societal scale since the arrival of the first European colonists in the early 1600s. Accounts and accusations of germ warfare against Native Americans begin in the Colonial period, with war crimes including mass executions and concentration camps accelerating through the 1800s, then closing with The Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.
The U.S. government has been signing treaties with American indigenous people since the founding of the country, reaching a pact with the Delaware Nation in 1778. Many thousands of Native Americans were segregated into Reservations under hundreds of these treaties, which grant the right of self government to indigenous people, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.
Ever since the first treaties were negotiated, Native Americans have variously staved off or succumbed to incursions targeting treaty-protected territory. Greed is always the motive: land grabbing and resource robbing have driven the exploitation for centuries.
The Dakota Access Pipeline traverses more than 1,100 miles of environmentally sensitive terrain, including two dozen river crossings: full illustration. /New York Timesgraphic, above; Washington Post graphic, below
In September 2016, thousands of protesters march to a burial ground site that bulldozers disturbed during construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Cannon Ball, N.D. /Robyn Beck photo via Getty Images
During the Nov. 20 clash, police fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets on protesters near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota. With the temperature around 26 degrees, hundreds of protesters were treated for hypothermia, tear-gas inhalation, and rubber-bullet injuries including head wounds, according to sacredstonecamp.org. One tribal elder went into cardiac arrest; but medics performed CPR and resusitated him, the website reported. /ABC News image
Editor's Note: Bullwork of Democracy was founded on the firm belief that an informed citizenry is a bulwark of democracy. As much as morally and professionally possible, this one-man-show blog strives to provide information, not advice. Although this post amounts to an endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president, the focus is mainly on why I am voting for the New York Democrat, not advice to other voters.
From the beginning of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the most redeeming quality of the real estate magnate's candidacy has been his candor.
For millions of voters who are frustrated over a host of unmet challenges such as decades-long economic stagnation for all but the wealthiest Americans, Trump openly sharing his mind has been refreshing.
I am grateful Trump revealed his thoughts during the GOP primary season, rather than reading carefully vetted remarks off a teleprompter. If Trump had been under the influence of Paul Manafort, Stephen Bannon, and Kellyanne Conway from the beginning of his presidential campaign, the public likely would be unaware that the New York Republican is an uninformed and bigoted narcissist with strongman tendencies more fitting for dictatorship than democracy.
(A special thank-you to fellow Granite Stater Corey "Let Trump Be Trump" Lewandowski, who led the Manhattan-based businessman's GOP presidential primary run until he was fired on June 20.)
Elections are about choices.
In November, I will not choose to vote for the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson or the Green Party's Jill Stein. The stakes are high in this election, with policy challenges galore, including racial tensions, crumbling infrastructure, foreign and domestic terrorism, healthcare reform, and North Korea's growing nuclear weapons arsenal. For me, Johnson and Stein represent pointless protest votes compared to the risks associated with a Trump presidency.
Clinton is clearly my best pick.
For a centrist who is admittedly left-of-center, there are many reasons for me to vote for the Democrat. To name a few, I favor finishing the healthcare-reform job President Obama started with the Affordable Care Act, I favor Democratic president's appointees to the Supreme Court, and I favor the Democratic Party's commitment to environmental protection.
There are even more reasons for me to vote against Trump.
A lot of folks are frustrated and angry. I get it. Getting ahead, one of the essential ingredients of The American Dream, has become a struggle for 99 percent of the people in most parts of the country.
But I cannot have a hand in the risky bet of handing the White House keys to Trump.
While it is admittedly hard to peer into the heart and soul of any politician polished enough to seek the presidency, I believe Trump revealed himself during the hotly contested Republican primary:
Trump taints Mexicans
Regardless of whether Trump is racist, he is a race-baiter
Trump maligns Muslims
Trump mocked disabled New York Times reporter
Draft-dodger Trump belittles sacrifice of U.S. prisoners of war
Trump loves himself
Trump's loose nukes policy in Asia
Trump treats women like caveman
Trump banking on ignorance
Trump's view of black people is jaded and faded
Trump is clueless about important topics
Trump tells Big Lies
STOCK UP ON POPCORN: The presidential debates should be revealing, but PBS Frontline's "The Choice 2016" documentary on Clinton and Trump set to broadcast on Sept. 27 at 9 p.m. EST should lay the candidates' shit bare.
The bodies of Confederate soldiers are strewn along Hagerstown Turnpike after the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. /Photo by Alexander Gardner
I am uniquely positioned to gaze into the maw of the gaping divide between the law enforcement community and the African American community.
My father, who I love very much, is a retired Marine and arch conservative. He is an unwavering supporter of law enforcement who views the Black Lives Matter movement with disdain and suspicion.
My wife, who I love very much, is is an African American and champion of racial equality. She has experienced racial injustice perpetrated by public officials including law enforcement officers. My wife views the police with disdain and suspicion.
The events of the past week--including the fatal police shootings of two black men and the equally barbaric fatal shootings of police officers in Dallas--reflect divisions in American society that are as deep and wide as they were in the years leading up to The Civil War.
If America fails to address the legacies of racial injustice such as police brutality directed at people of color, the nation is at grave risk of unleashing a downward spiral into a level of countryman vs. countryman violence at a scale not seen since the Civil War. If America fails to address the country's gun violence problem, law enforcement officers fearing for their lives will continue to kill civilians in unjustified shootings. If Americans do not stand in unity with all of their countrymen regardless of race, gender, sexuality, political partisanship, religious beliefs and a host of other relatively petty sources of divisiveness compared to our essential role as citizens of a great democratic nation, we will have no one but ourselves to blame for the crumbling of our society.
The events of the past week are so sad.
The problems facing our country are so apparent.
But like so many Southerners and Northerners in the prelude to The Civil War, most Americans are blind to the bloody carnage that is threatening to explode in their faces as the country careens into the current perilous corner of the nation's history.
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." -President Abraham Lincoln
Actor and writer LeLand Gantt recounts a life colored by racism in his one-man play, Rhapsody in Black. /Image via dutchesstourism.com
The capital of New Hampshire is a perfect place to awaken white people to the reality of growing up black in America.
In a stunning and revealing sharing of his life's story this weekend at the Capitol Center for the Arts, New York-based actor and playwright LeLand Gantt performed his theatrical masterpiece on race in America, Rhapsody in Black. From grammar school in Pennsylvania to his adulthood in New York, Gantt relives seemingly endless episodes of racially fueled alienation, injustice and self doubt.
For me, the most gut-wrenching moments of the night came after Gantt's performance, when the artist sat down with his legs dangling over the edge of the stage and fielded more than a dozen questions from the audience about the play and the legacy of racism in the United States.
One question cut into my heart like butcher knife.
A white woman in the front row of the predominantly white audience from the overwhelmingly white state of New Hampshire asked Gantt for guidance in helping one of her elementary school students. The woman teaches at a school in the N.H. North Country, where community demographics are as white as the driven snow on Mount Washington. One of the teacher's students is The Only Black Girl in the school.
Classmates accepted the black girl when they were all little children, the teacher said. But that changed in fifth-grade, when the ignorant brand of racism that is prevalent across The Granite State had infected many minds of the elementary school's fifth-graders. At age 10, The Only Black Girl was learning harsh lessons about being black in America, including how the color of your skin can tattoo a bull's-eye in the center of your back, making you a target for cruelty and abuse.
I was in the black section of the audience, with my wife, who is half African-American, and members of a black family who were seated in front of us.
My wife was raised on Barn Door Gap Road in a little New Hampshire town. When she was growing up, Jen was The Only Black Girl in most of her elementary and high school classes.
As I watched Gantt offering the teacher some consolation and advice for helping her Only Black Girl, I could not bear to look at my Only Black Girl. I knew what I would see in Jen's face because the pain and anger associated with her childhood experiences were oozing out of every pore of her light brown skin.
I knew the emotions I would see in my wife's face because I could feel them piercing deep into my heart.
During her school-age years, Jen Cheney was The Only Black Girl in most of her classes, which is where she learned many emotionally brutal lessons about racism in America. /Family photo
On April 4, 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy delivered one of the greatest speeches in U.S. history.
Kennedy was in Indianapolis for a campaign event in his run for the presidency. At the rally, the New York senator and brother of a slain president delivered timeless remarks about civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., who had been assassinated earlier that evening.
This speech overflows with wisdom, but I do have a favorite gem of sage advice:
"Dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."
Police in riot gear confront protesters in Ferguson, Mo. The fatal police shooting of an unarmed African American teenager on Aug. 9 inflamed racial tensions in the St. Louis suburb. /Image via npr.org
Many Americans want racially charged issues to go away.
But the final steps in the country's 400-year-long journey through the pitfall-strewn landscape of racial injustice have yet to be taken.
Whether it fits into your view of the United States or not, the racially charged violence sparked by the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., is an ugly reminder about the country's struggle to overcome centuries of bias against African Americans.
As long as African American teenagers walking down the street are at high-risk of being shot to death, America has more steps to take.
As long as white men think it is acceptable to drive around in their pickups with battlefield Confederate flags flying from the truck bed, America has more steps to take.
The state of New Hampshire has meted out a slap on the wrist for a supervisory-level employee who walked around her office referring to Chocolate Babies as "Nigger Babies." After the supervisor was "investigated," she was promoted to a position of higher authority over more workers.
All three of the New England states where I have lived have a problem with race.
The economic disparity of American racism is on full display in Connecticut, my birthplace. The Constitution State has historically been the top per-capita income state in the country, with four of the nation's poorest cities, where the people of color live.
Boston has been dragged kicking and screaming into racial harmony, from Elijah "Pumpsie" Green to public school busing, to the ongoing slow pace of economic development in blighted minority neighborhoods.
There are some hardcore, KKK-like racists in New Hampshire. If you have lived here long enough, you have probably seen them. The classic sighting is two white guys in a pickup truck, with two big stars and bars flags flying from either side of the truck bed.
But most New Hampshire racists have prejudice based in ignorance. Just a sampling of quotes from working folk and professionals in my 3-plus years in the state prove the point:
"Yeah, some of the worst niggers I know are white." -white male, construction worker, commenting on lack of racial diversity in New Hampshire
"I don't know what you are, but you sure are beautiful." -white male, doctor, trying to put move on woman of color
"When we were little, do you know what we called these? Nigger babies." -white woman, state of New Hampshire supervisory-level employee, commenting in the workplace to several colleagues about Chocolate Baby candies
Earl Wilson, left, the first black Red Sox pitcher, and Elijah "Pumpsie" Green, the first black Red Sox fielder, hang out in the dugout on Aug. 30, 1959. A decade earlier, the Red Sox held tryouts for Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays, declining to sign both Hall of Famers. /Leslie Jones photo via Boston Public Library
Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot to death while walking to a convenience store in his Florida neighborhood to buy candy. /Family photo
Speaking out about race in America is dangerous: perilous for political careers, fracturing for friendships, inviting violence from extremists.
I have felt barely safe writing about racism in America. While being a white man married to an African-American comes with its own dangers, it's safe for people to assume I am not racist. While raised in a predominantly white, middle class town, I've experienced racism against African-Americans through the eyes of my wife and daughters. I've seen it when my loved ones react to racist incidents with a toxic brew of anger, isolation, disgust and despair.
The Trayvon Martin killing in Florida is the latest national reminder that racism is an enduring legacy of the American experience. Sadly, the widespread collective distress over George Zimmerman's acquittal in Trayvon's killing shows more time will have to pass before Americans reach the Promised Land that Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned 45 years ago.
Eliciting howls of protest from his political adversaries, President Obama recently said African-Americans look at Trayvon's killing and the Zimmerman verdict "through a set of experiences and history that doesn't go away." That's polite.
In my unique position as a journalist and spouse of an African-American, I can afford to be less polite.
Trayvon Martin was racially profiled and his killing was a crime. If the roles were reversed, if Trayvon was a black adult who was stalking a Hispanic teenager while armed with a gun after the police had told him to stop, the vast majority of Americans know the Florida verdict would have been far different.
Paula Dean is a racist. There's a reason why "nigger" is considered so vile that it gets "X-word" treatment in most public discourse, and its use can rarely be justified. Since the founding of the United States, this word has symbolized and reinforced the attempt to inflict subhuman status on African-Americans and to cast them as unworthy of equal citizenship. My wife has been called a nigger several times; in every instance, the speaker was attempting to dehumanize, denigrate, and strike the hideous historical chords of enslavement and discrimination. Imagine your race of Americans enduring 400 years of injustice, racially motivated slaughter, and political and economic disenfranchisement. Now imagine if there was one word that could make those centuries of torment pass before your eyes in an instant.
Slavery and the ethnic animosity that sustains it have enduring influences on any society. The United States is one of the great beauties in the history of human civilization, but Americans are finding out how long it takes for a nation to heal the ugly wounds created when an entire race of people are enslaved.
Like most gangs, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas embraces several symbols, tattoos and slogans as part of its effort to forge a group identity that elevates loyalty to the organization over loyalty to any particular ABT member. A shield with an upright sword is one of the most common ABT symbols, according to the Anti-Defamation League. /Image via hlntv.com
One of the defense attorneys in the case who knows Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hileman personally said the federal prosecutor probably dropped out of the case because he feared for his life following the murders of two other prosecutors who had worked on the ABT investigation and indictments. The group has threatened to inflict "mass casualties" on law enforcement officials who have worked on the case, according to ABC News.
An Anti-Defamation League report calls the ABT "one of the largest and most violent white supremacist prison gangs in the United States." The report's findings include the following:
The ABT formed in the 1980s after the desegregation of the Texas prison system, which had the unintended consequence of spawning white, black and hispanic gangs throughout Lone Star State corrections facilities. ABT members were linked to 13 murders at Texas prisons in 1984 and 1985.
The ABT's constitution states the group was "founded upon the sublime principles of White Supremacy" but organized crime activity is the primary focus of ABT members once they get out of prison.
The total number of active ABT members is estimated at about 2,000 men and hundreds of female associates, which is a relatively high number for U.S. extremist groups. The ABT is concentrated in Texas but also has a presence in all neighboring states.
ABT membership is considered "for life," and "prospects" who wish to join the group must be sponsored by a member and complete an apprenticeship that can last for more than a year.
The group is organized with a paramilitary structure that includes sergeants, lieutenants, captain and generals. Several alleged generals are among the 34 defendants facing charges in the federal case being prosecuted in Texas.
ABT criminal activity in prison and on the streets falls into three categories: organized crime, gang crime and hate crime. Methamphetamine trafficking is a mainstay for the group, which also engages in an range of other criminal activity from extortion rackets, to home invasions, to murder.
ABT members have been convicted of 30 murders outside of prison since 2000. In nearly half of those killings, the victims were ABT members who had violated the group's rules.
In the most deadly hate crimes committed by an ABT member, Mark Stroman was sentenced to death for a series of shootings in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. Stroman targeted convenience store clerks in the Dallas area who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. He was convicted of killing two of store clerks and gravely injuring a third.
Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were shot to death March 30 at their home in Forney, Texas. The Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is a prime target of the investigation into the killings. /Image via theblaze.com
Law enforcement authorities are investigating whether the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a prison-based gang modeled after the Aryan Brotherhood, is responsible for the killings of two Lone Star State prosecutors this year. /Image via hlntv.com
It's unclear whether the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is responsible for the recent murders of two Lone Star State prosecutors, but the prison-based gang is clearly among the most dangerous racist organizations in the country.
Law enforcement authorities suspect the ABT is behind the Jan. 31 assassination of Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse and last week's murder of his boss, Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland. Two masked gunmen reportedly shot and killed Hasse as he got out of his car outside of the county courthouse, then grabbed their shell casings before leaving the scene. McLelland and his wife were killed over the weekend. CNN reported that McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were shot multiple times in their home and investigators recovered several shell casings from a .223-caliber rifle.
McLelland's office was involved in an investigation that resulted in the indictment last year of 34 suspected ABT members. The group has been linked to multiple cases of extortion, assault and murder.
When I blogged a week ago about a nurse's racial discrimination lawsuit against Hurley Medical Center in Michigan, my focus was on the outrageous behavior of a racist man and the hospital's enabling of that behavior.
This story is much bigger than one case. Patients, and family members of patients, picking and choosing caregivers based on race is a systemic problem in America.
Two of my closest family members have worked as caregivers in nursing homes. Both have been pressured to stay away from a patient because the patient or family members objected to having a person of color involved in caregiving.
As part of its coverage of the Hurley Medical Center discrimination lawsuit, The Associated Press reported Friday that racial discrimination against caregivers is one of U.S. medicine's "open secrets." The AP reported the following:
- The American Medical Association's ethics code bars doctors from refusing to treat people based on race, gender and other criteria, but there are no specific policies for handling race-based requests from patients.
- In 2010, a 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision held that the federal Civil Rights Act prohibits nursing homes from making staffing decisions for nursing assistants based on residents' racial preferences. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by a black nursing assistant who sued her employer for racial discrimination.
- In a federal lawsuit filed in 2005, three black employees of a hospital near Philadelphia claimed they were prevented from treating a pregnant white woman by her male partner, who was a member of a white supremacist group. The man used a racial slur when forbidding any care by any African-Americans. The complaint alleged supervisors honored the man's request. The case was settled confidentially before going to trial.
- A 2007 study examined how physicians respond to patients' requests to be assigned caregivers of the same gender, race or religion. The survey of emergency physicians found patients often make such requests, and they are routinely accommodated.
This form of discrimination shows how far America remains from anything approaching racial harmony.
Nurses and other medical caregivers not only help our loved ones at their greatest times of need but also provide difficult and unpleasant services even family members are reluctant to do. They literally wipe our loved ones' asses.
Racism remains so ingrained in American society that caregivers are turned away from suffering patients based on skin color. It's undeniable proof that racism is a persistent problem in U.S. culture.
Lord Christopher Monckton upped his radical fringe credentials this week with his full-throated endorsement of the Rise Up Australia party. /Image via abc.net.au
What do global warming deniers, Obama birthers and Australian racists all have in common? Lord Christopher Monckton, third viscount of Brenchley.
This week, Monckton became the most prominent supporter of Rise Up Australia, a new national political party Down Under devoted to opposing Muslim immigration in Australia and rolling back the country's multicultural policies. At an event launching Rise Up Australia, Monckton said, "It is not for me as a Brit to endorse any Australian political party, ... but I'm going to anyway."
In December 2012, the ex-journalist and adviser to former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was thrown out of the United Nations-sponsored climate change conference in Doha, Qatar, after he impersonated a member of the Burmese delegation. Drawing heckling from the other delegates, Monckton told the assembly: "In the 16 years we have been coming to these conferences, there has been no global warming at all. If we were to take action, the cost of that would be many times greater than the cost of taking adaptation measures later. So my recommendation is that we should initiate a review of the science to make sure we are all on the right track."
The viscount of Brenchley was not only expelled from the Doha conference but also banned for life from attending future U.N. climate change talks.
And here's what Monckton had to say in March 2012 about the authenticity of Barack Obama's birth certificate posted on the White House website: "It appears in layers on the screen in such a way you can remove quite separately each of the individual dates. You use Adobe Illustrator and each of the individual dates is in its own separate layer. This thing has been fabricated. Sheriff (Joe) Arpaio of Arizona has had a team on this for six months. And he has now gone public and said there’s something very desperately wrong with this and of course nobody is saying anything because the entire electorate has been fooled."
Here are some historical facts to consider: racism is a scourge on humanity that has fueled the slaughter of millions, the vast majority of the world's scientists have concluded not only that the Earth's atmosphere is warming but also that carbon dioxide from human activity is to blame, and Donald Trump is the only other prominent person on the planet who believes Obama was born in Kenya.
Here's some quotes from Rise Up Australia's leader, Danny Nalliah, a supposed man of God:
"Tolerance has gone too much and the Rise Up Australia party is committed to keeping Australia Australian.”
Rise Up Australia ''cannot be tarnished with the racist brush because I'm a black fellow.''
“I think God created Chinese fried rice, and I love pizza … but please do not come and tell me that Sharia law should be introduced in Australia. You go back to where you came from.”
“One of the greatest pushes for multiculturalism comes from Muslim people. David Cameron is the perfect example of someone who has said ‘multiculturalism has failed.’ There are Sharia courts starting all over the U.K. If multiculturalism has been ineffective in Europe, why implement a failure in Australia?”
“I remember I read a speech by John F. Kennedy where he said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ I asked myself how and what I can do for my adopted country of Australia. The whole country is losing rights at the cost of tolerance. There is only so much you can tolerate.”
As a devoted student of history, I'm familiar with many of JFK's speeches. Here's a couple excerpts from one of my favorites, a nationally televised speech Kennedy delivered in 1963:
"I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.
"Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops.
"It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accomodations, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.
"It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case.
"The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the Nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing a high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day, one-third as much chance of completing college, one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man, twice as much chance of becoming unemployed. ...
"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.
"The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
"One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free."
A nurse at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., has sued the hospital, alleging she was reassigned because of the color of her skin. /Image via rad.msufame.msu.edu
Newsflash: When a white supremacist tells you to do something that's blatantly racist, you shouldn't need a lawyer to tell you it's wrong.
As CNN reported today, a lawsuit against Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., bears two of the hallmarks of racism in America: ingrained hatred and ignorance.
First the ingrained hatred: A man whose premature baby was being treated at Hurley Medical Center saw a black nurse attending to his child. He asked to see the nurse's supervisor and requested that no black nurses work with his baby. While making this request to the supervisor, the man flashed a tatoo with a "swastika of some kind."
Now the ignorance: The father's request went up the Hurley Medical Center chain of command and was granted. The black nurse's supervisor called her at home and told the woman she was being reassigned because the preemie's father didn't want black care givers working with his child. A note was placed prominently on the child's medical chart: "Please, no African-American nurses to care for ... baby per dad's request."
Hurley Medical Center's lawyer found out about the case, objected and the decision of hospital officials was reversed.
You would think this kind of event would be impossible more than 40 years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the last speech before his assassination. In that address, the civil rights legend said, "I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And
I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised
land!"
King led America to the mountaintop, but for far too many of us the promised land is still miles away.
Bullwork journalist Chris Cheney and his lovely wife, Jen, pose for photographers on Oct. 31, 2012.
Racism is one of the key threads in the fabric of American history. It's been present since long before the founding of the Republic, and it continues to color U.S. politics and economics to this day.
Based on my personal experience and reading of the historical record, American racism comes in two flavors: one rooted in deeply ingrained animosity and the other fueled by ignorance. While the open hatred that formed the basis of racism in the Deep South until the Civil Rights Movement is largely a relic of the past, racism continues to be sown in soil fertilized with ignorance.
I have repeatedly been exposed to the ignorant variety of racism in the state of New Hampshire. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
The Granite State's population is 94.6 percent white and 1.6 percent black, according to the U.S. Census. Nationally, 78.1 percent of the population is white and 13.1 percent is black.
My first residency in New Hampshire began in the fall of 1998. I was hired to serve as the night editor at the Concord Monitor and made a bee line to the nearest pool hall to get a sense of the capital city's rank-and-file citizenry. While sipping a beer at the bar, I struck up a conversation with a "roofer," who was friendly and just as curious about me as I was about him.
"So, how do you like Concord?" he said.
"It seems like a really nice place," I said. "It's wierd though. I've been here for two weeks and I haven't seen a brown person yet."
"Yeah," he said. "Some of the worst niggers I know are white."
About four months later, I started dating a black girl. She told me stories that could have been set in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1950s.
One of Jen's more incredible recollections was the day her car was struck by another vehicle on Main Street about 50 yards from her apartment. The other driver was at fault.
The crowd formed quickly. The local police officer who responded to the scene didn't bother to talk with Jen, even though she had called for assistance. At least one onlooker called her a "stupid nigger" within earshot of the officer.
After more than a half hour waiting to give her statement, Jen approached the officer.
"Excuse me," she said, "do you want to ask me any questions? I was the one who called you."
"Shut up!" the officer responded, launching into a threatening tirade.
Jen had to call the state police to intervene.
I moved to Boston a year later, but love drew me back to Jen and New Hampshire in 2010. Soon after we started dating again, Jen and I went to a harvest festival at a local apple farm.
It was a beautiful fall day. The parking lot was packed. Other than Jen, the only other person of color we saw at the farm was guiding cars to parking spaces.
We walked into the huge barn that had been converted into retail space, looked around, then headed toward the orchard, where a large crowd was listening to live folk music. As we exited the barn into the bright field filled with patrons seated on lawn chairs and pumpkins, some lounging under an open-sided tent with broad red and white stripes, it was like a dark cloud had formed over their heads. Everyone but the band fell silent, and hundreds of disapproving eyes fixed on me and my future bride.
We got the message loud and clear. The black man in the parking lot appeared glad to see us leave. And he didn't look the least bit surprised that we were beating a hasty retreat.
Birmingham Police attack a civil rights activist in 1963. /Image via pbs.org
A state official repeatedly referred to Chocolate Babies as "Nigger Babies" to several employees in the workplace./Courtesy photo
Rus Lodi, one of my best mentors in journalism, had a unique perspective on the hiring of top managers drawn from his view of the coaching profession in the National Football League: It's surprisingly easy to screw up at one team and have another team hand you the keys to the organization.
Based on the recent experience of a family member, I have a similar theory. When a longtime manager commits gross misconduct in the workplace, it's suprisingly easy for organizations to decide it's easier to promote that manager to a new office than to terminate employment.
Here's the scenario.
My family member works in state government. On more than one occasion and in discussion with more than one other employee, her manager used the term "nigger" in the workplace. In at least one instance, the manager referred to the president of the United States as a "nigger." My family member is a person of color and, along with the workers who were subjected to this foul racial slur, she filed formal complaints with her state agency.
After a months-long internal investigation, state officials determined the following: my family member's manager did use the term "nigger" in the workplace on several occasions, there is no law barring state employees from using racial slurs in the workplace, and the creation of a hostile work environment only applies in sexual harassment cases.
This week, the obviously racist manager was promoted to lead an office in another part of the state.
I have drawn the following conclusions:
- The state in question, which has an overwhelmingly Caucasian population and is not located in the Deep South, has a problem when it comes to addressing racism.
- It's amazing how blatantly wrongful conduct in the workplace can be tolerated, even enabled, if an employer decides there's no solid legal grounds to do the right thing. (This conclusion is based on accepting the state's account of its decision-making at face value. In 2013, it's hard to believe an employer could not find legal grounds to discipline or terminate an employee for repeatedly using the term "nigger" in the workplace.)
- When it comes to investigating allegations of racism in the workplace, the state in question does not take the cases seriously. In this particular investigation, not only was the accused racist manager allowed to continue working in the office where her alleged misconduct had occurred, but also my family member had to fight to report to a new manager during the investigation.
- My family member needs to find a new job, preferably in a state that does not tolerate racism in the workplace.
Like a true United States of Europe, the European Union repeatedly faces flashes of racism. One of those flashes came Jan. 3 in Italy, where bi-racial AC Milan star Kevin-Prince Boateng and his teammates walked off the field en masse after he was taunted with monkey calls.
I often listen to the BBC while driving home after midnight. Racially fueled incidents at European football matches have been reported for years but appear to be accelerating.
Thursday's incident in Busto Arsizio was an exhibition game at Pro Patria, which plays in the fourth tier of Italian football. It will be interesting to see whether other teams will support their teammates as strongly when the stakes are higher in league or international games. But as a former player, I can say there is no stronger message than a whole team walking off the field with justice on their side.
