Racism Matters

Feds sue racist Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio

The U.S. Justice Department has sued Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio after the lawman refused for over a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations about discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and jail policies that discriminate against people with limited English skills.

Exploring the psychological motives of racism

Psychology Today goes over a list of psychological motives that appear to contribute to racism, among them: boosting their own self-esteem, giving their own group self-importance, anxieties about a changing world, survival motives, and seeking status hierarchy. 

Seattle man attacked shopkeeper, called him a terrorist

35-year-old Seattle resident Brock Stainbrook is facing assault and hate crime charges following allegations that he accosted a clerk at a convenience store. A detective testified in court that Stainbrook threw change on the floor near the victim’s feet, punched him in the side of the head with his fist then said “You’re not even American, you’re Al-Qaeda. Go back to your country.” After the police confronted Stainbrook, he allegedly admitted that he “struck a person on his turban” because he disliked him.

Outcries of racism as Texas considers subsidising the movie "Machete"

Some texan critics of the latest Robert Rodriguez’s feature “Machete” are calling for the cancelation of a state subsidy, suggesting it would be state-sponsored racism. Prison Planet’s Alex Jones slammed the film as ‘pro-immigration, anti-Texas’, while Fox News attached the movie for ‘blaming everything that’s gone wrong in Mexico on the Anglos’.

In an article, Jones called for the cancellation of the subsidy claiming the producers lied about the story. He adds  “Does Texas want to subsidize the films of Robert Rodriguez and continue to give him a platform to spew divisive racially-tinted trash oriented at Hispanics and attempting to radicalize their views?” The law rules out incentives for movies that cast Texas in a negative light.

Other film critics have described the movie as an ‘over-the-top pastiche of Westerns, revenge thrillers, cultural stereotypes, and soft-core porn’.

Op Ed: Georgia University dormitory name a tribute to racism

RedAndBlack.com, an independent student newspaper for the University of Georgia, calls for the renaming of a building that honors former senator Richard Russell Jr., a self-proclaimed white supremacist who frequently filibustered the civil rights act.

New Jersey judge rules against parents who gave children Nazi-inspired names

Heath and Deborah Campbell, the New Jersey couple who came under public scrutiny for naming their three children after Nazis, has been denied custody of their kids. 

The family first attracted the public’s attention when a local Shop-Rite supermarket refused to decorate a birthday cake for “Adolf Hitler Campbell”. NJ’s division of Youth and Family Services removed Adolf and his sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlyn Hinler Jeannie, from the home back in January of 2009. The parents later accused the state of removing the children because of their names and relied on unproven accusations of abuse made by a neighbor and Campbell’s ex-wife, who charged him with abusing her years ago.

Earlier this month, a panel of judges cited the parents’ own disabilities and risk of serious injury to the children and found the evidence of his violence against his ex-wife and her children of a prior marriage was admissible in this case.

More:
Gothamist - Judges: Baby Hitler, Siblings Do Not Belong With Parents
Huffington Post - Adolf Hitler Campbell’s Parents Denied Custody Of Nazi-Named Children

Staten Island's Racial Tensions

[via Gothamist | Staten Island Advance Chronicles]

With racially charged attacks on the rise in the Port Richmond section of Staten Island, both the Staten Island Advance Chronicles and Gothamist look at some of the increasing anti-immigrant sentiments of some of the residents in the area.

Love Thy Neighbor? Not If He’s Different.

New research reveals that people connected to organized religion are more likely to harbor racial prejudice.

[via Miller-McCune | Cobourg Atheist ]

A study by researchers in the University of Southern California found that, although racism is officially against their teachings, religious people are in fact more racist than agnostics. This “religion-racism paradox,” as social psychologist Wendy Wood explains it, is deeply embedded in organized religion which, by its very nature, encourages people to accept one fundamental belief system as superior to all others. Because religion in America is practiced largely along segregated lines, that derogation, and the sense of superiority that drives such diminishment of others, can extend beyond religious differences to race, class and ethnicity.

The study used nearly half a century of data.

Read entire study: “Why Don’t We Practice What We Preach? A Meta-Analytic Review of Religious Racism”

Ghetto Racism

Writer Ying Ma shares an opinion article about violent attacks directed towards Asians by African-Americans all over the US and examines the media response.