Blacks don’t deserve a group just to help them the right believes. Notice a white support group wouldn’t have to change their name. But it is part of the push to keep and enshrine a dwindling white majority rule in the US. Seriously this has to be stopped, it is again a resurgence of the confederate south. As one student said. “Trying to erase things that we’ve been through that we had to deal with to get to where we are now is just trying to water down the things that we’ve done,” Wiggins said. “I think our history is very important.” Hugs
Patrick Sternad
WFSU Public Media
Exterior of Computer Technology and Workplace Development buildings at Tallahassee Community College. ———————————————————————————— The Black Male Achievers at Tallahassee Community College might have to change its name or risk losing state and federal funding under a new Florida law.
A student organization that serves African-American men who attend Tallahassee Community College might have to change its name or risk losing funding under a new Florida law.
Tyler Soto, a student at TCC, is a member of Black Male Achievers. He says they’re working out possible new names, such as “Male Achievers” or “Scholar Male Achievers.”
“We’re going to have to change the name of our organization or they’re going to defund it because it has ‘Black’ in front of it.”
A new law prohibits student-led organizations that “advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion” and other social and political causes from receiving state or federal funding. While those organizations aren’t banned outright, they may only receive funding from student-activity fees under the new law.
That has him and his classmates concerned as they get ready to return to campus this month, Soto said.
Soto, who’s also a member of TCC’s Student Government Association, says changes like these only encourage him to get more involved in the political process.
“It has made me want to step up and be the change.”
Soto’s classmate Denzel Wiggins is also a member of SGA and the Black Male Achievers.
“I don’t think we should have to change our name because obviously it’s for the Black community, so I’m not a fan.”
Wiggins says he’s also not happy about the Stop Woke Act, which restricts the way race is taught in college and university classrooms. That law is the driver behind the state’s controversial new African American history standards in K-12 schools.
“Trying to erase things that we’ve been through that we had to deal with to get to where we are now is just trying to water down the things that we’ve done,” Wiggins said. “I think our history is very important.”
Clarification: WFSU News reached out to TCC by phone and email before the story published on Friday.
TCC says that it had no conversations with members of the Black Male Achievers about having to change the organization’s name.
A spokesperson emailed WFSU News the following statement on Wednesday:
“BMA provides academic support and student services to help underrepresented populations, like minority males, persist and graduate. As with all TCC clubs, orgs and programs, membership into BMA is open to any and all currently-registered students.”
This part of the plan to wipe out the LGBTQIA from society, from public view. Because if you can not see us, we won’t exist. But they can put crosses and churches on every street. It seems strange to me that in Texas which is a state that is already minority majority with whites staying in political power by the dirty tricks of voter suppression and gerrymandering. Suppressing the brown people’s votes as much as possible. So here are a bunch of white cis men trying to remain the most powerful group by outlawing and banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at public higher education institutions. Hugs
Jamie Gonzales, a former program coordinator at the University of Houston’s LGBTQ Resource Center, hasn’t slept well ever since she heard that the center will be disbanded in accordance with Senate Bill 17, a law banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at public higher education institutions.
Although she knew the closure was coming after the bill passed in April in the Texas Senate, she still found herself emotionally ill-prepared to grapple with the reality: an end of an era for a place that served as a beacon of acceptance, safety and support for thousands of queer “Coogs,” as UH students often call themselves.
“There were a lot of special moments held in that space,” said Gonzales while crying during a phone interview this week. Before Thursday, the effect of the law at UH was unclear to many students, alumni and faculty. But all that changed last week when students noticed a flyer taped to the door of the center that read, “In Accordance with Texas Senate Bill 17, the LGBTQ Resource Center has been disbanded.”
The law’s author, Sen. Brandon Creighton [photo], is also behind his state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill for public schools. Creighton first appeared on JMG in 2019 for his bill seeking to overturn LGBTQ protections enacted by Texas cities. In March 2023, he appeared here for his bill that would deny the prospect of tenure to newly-hired university professors. Creighton has spearheaded the Texas campaign to protect Confederate monuments.
many years ago I was a student at Northern IL university and during this time I was confused and questioning my sexuality. I found out there was a small office for Gay and Lesbian folk so I went and had an interesting and worthwhile discussion with a wonderful lesbian who shared her story with me. i still remained in the closet for a few more years but I have never forgotten what she told me, in her own way she helped me come out some years later. I still wonder what if I had not gone to that office that day,.
It’s an amazing feeling when you first realize you aren’t the only one in the world. I’m not gay, just an ally but I went through a somewhat similar experience when I first found out I wasn’t the only atheist in the world. I didn’t even know there was a word for it. We need connections to survive and thrive.
In the mid 80’s, I was at a homophobic, major university in Indiana. The chancellor declared in a speech, there were no “homosexuals” there.
By accident, I found a gay, then gay/lesbian group across the street from the student union, but actually iff campus in the Wesley Foundation. It was jointly sponsored by the Methodist / Episcopalian outreach programs. No religion was pushed. We met in the church basement.
It was truly life saving, during the era of lethal, rampant AIDS, police stings, discrimination, and other abuses.
The University couldn’t touch them. They were off campus, and inna church.
By driving them out of elected office, a process that will likely take as long as it took *them* to seize power. Which is to say, it needs to be a sustained and unrelenting effort that over the course of many election cycles.
we have to start local (county and city, then state), then work our way up to federal, challenging and changing judges as we go. it is a multipronged effort that all too many don’t want to take time to do. that was how the “moral majority” did it, they started with school boards and city councils, then county level and state level. when they had a strong base in place, then they took federal offices quite easily. once in place there, they appointed judges from within their ranks and owned the country. we will have to fight tooth and nail to get this reversed.
Political mobilization is super important, but I would also gently encourage folks to also give space to what is necessary to protect their own health and wellbeing, and that of their friends and family. Don’t panic, prepare has been my mantra for a while now.
Guess what, knuckledraggers? You have one, maybe two presidential election cycles before the generation you keep fucking over is the majority. They will decide what nursing homes you end up in as well as a host of other issues that will affect your hateful lives.
That’s why they’re trying to destroy democracy – it’s to create minority rule. Remember that whites were always a minority in South Africa, and Apartheid lasted almost 50 years.
Hey everyone. I know I am late to the party as they say on a lot of posts, but as I work my way through the backlog of fellow posters whose content I love, Jill again made a post I want to share. Even if everyone already seen it, the cartoons are so spot on, Jill’s post deserves another viewing. Hugs
This is long, and maybe too long for most people. It took me three days to watch it all. But it is even handed, it is informative, it is well documented, and it is truly how I and so many feel. I loved TYT, but about the time Cenk decided to run for office and gave a lot of control over the company / show to Anna, I noticed a shift / change in both hosts and the company direction. Cenk became very bitter and anti-democratic party, while Anna became overly more assertive on every show. When Cenk came back so bitter from being what he felt was unfairly treated by the democrats but others felt was him trying to claim a position without doing the work others had done before him Anna started talking over him, interrupting him, not letting him finish his sentences. But at the same time if he tried to interrupt her she got very vocal about it and wouldn’t tolerate it. She was now in charge and she wanted the world to know it. It showed how she felt about her position, she had the authority and say, so don’t disagree with her. That was very off-putting for me a long time viewer and supporter of the show. But then Cenk’s constant vitriol against the Democratic Party started to interfere with his reporting on Biden. Right from the start he wanted Biden to do the impossible and when he did not Cenk couldn’t even give him credit for what he did get accomplish. Cenk being a bombastic fighter spent two years demanding Joe Biden attack and call out Joe Manchin and pushed for the most virulent attacks on him. Which would have lost the democrats the control of the Senate and stopped any left leaning judge appointments. Then Cenk got more bitter towards Biden and other progressive members of congress who did not throw the disruptive bombs he wanted to destroy the party, so he openly attacked the very groups he started along with attacking all progressives. What crossed the line for me what his attacks on Biden and openly trying to promote primary challengers to him talking up fringe candidates, knowing historically any time a sitting president was primaried they lost, giving the other party the win. He did not care, his bitter anger was more important to him. He kept up his now constant attempts to tear down Biden to the point he is doing the work of a republican challenger for president. I wrote that when I canceled my long time membership, that Cenk was doing the work of the Republican Party in tearing down and maligning Biden. This hard right turn of Anna’s and Cenk’s weirdly not even willing to listen to any criticism of her was the last straw for me. He is not even really addressing the issue that Anna made as the start of this problem, and keeps misrepresenting it. If Anna wants to be called woman that is great, if trans women demand to be called women that is great and everyone would do as they ask. But there are transmen with parts that medical people need to address and that are on medical forms / question forms. It was pointed out so often that no one in conversation referred to Anna as a “birthing person” but she still took offense to the term even existing. She was demanding a medical term to be inclusive not exist because she felt it diminished her as a female. Total right wing maga fundamentalist thinking. This is entirely a case of two people drinking their own Kool-Aid on their own importance and getting called out for it. Their egos have gotten in the way of the work they were doing. I can no longer support them as they are, and I hope people will watch this well researched and documented video. Hugs
Cenk Uyger, Ana Kasparian, and The Young Turks have had a history of scandals and controversies throughout the existence of the network. I want to talk about that history, as well as the events leading up to their recent meltdowns on the podcast circuit and Twitter.
I am not a religious person. I do not believe in the supernatural nor in any deity. I am a confirmed heathen. I enjoy being a heathen and do not hide it. But by My Dogs That Love Gravy, I do appreciate and respect this man, this person Rev. Ed Trevors! I respect him, I support a lot of what he says as is clear in that I repost his videos. I think I could sit in his congregation and hear a sermon of his with no anger or disgust. I could spend a happy pleasant afternoon in chat with him. I wouldn’t believe in his deity or in their holy book, but I do believe in his message of inclusion. It is one I not only support but want to amplify.
I want to make one thing very clear on this site, my Play Time (that some days doesn’t feel much like playing or fun), I am against hate, bigotry, discrimination, and abuse of others. Notice in that list I did not include religion, faith, personal codes of conduct, worship, or any particular deity / religion. When I joined the military I took an oath to support the constitution of the US and its principles, which I still believe in. One of those rights was for people to worship their own gods in ways that did not harm others and government wouldn’t / couldn’t form a preference for any religion over any other, including simply having none.
Notice in the above paragraph I did not include being able to force others to worship and live as you do. I am against that and the hate churches that preach that. I post a lot against them. Just as I don’t insist everyone have same-sex relations just as I do, I fight against heterosexuals who insist others must have the opposite sex relations they do. I support trans rights, but I don’t insist all cis people must be trans, must dress as the gender they don’t identify with. When you break it down into those terms you see clearly what the bigot haters are trying to do, what they want to force the world into, a mold of them, just like them and only them. And they misuse their religion and deity to do this.
Which leads me back to the Rev Ed Trevors. Here is someone that understand his faith is not justification to harm others. His faith is not a weapon to use to hurt those who are different from him. Instead he uses his faith as a guide on how to live his life and treat others. Just as I do with the Christians who come to my Play Time I respect and admire him. Those people are welcome and deserve our respect, and that goes for any faith that comes here with the same ideas of respect. Hugs
The article link is from Ali, thank you Ali. The court ruling was all about racism, returning the more affluent whites back to the preferential position while denying underprivileged people of color a higher education. The end result is classes of mostly or all white people going on to lead businesses or large law firms leading to political power and people of color being regulated to lower income labor servitude jobs. The 1950s all over again. It is an attempt by racists to make a white power nation continue. Hugs
The right-wing activist behind SCOTUS’ Affirmative Action decision is now attacking a venture capital fund that supports Black women-owned small businesses.
ATLANTA, GA – APRIL 07: (L-R) Tobey R. Sanders, actress Keisha Knight Pulliam, and Arian Simone attend the “Festival of Laughs” tour at Philips Arena on April 7, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia.
On Wednesday, the nonprofit American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a lawsuit against an Atlanta-based venture capital fund that supports Black women and other minority-owned small businesses. The nonprofit was founded by none other than right-wing crusader Edward Blum, who has made it his mission to destroy affirmative action.
The lawsuit filed against the Fearless Fund alleges that the fund is “operating a racially-discriminatory program” in violation of the Civil Rights Act. The Fearless Fund was founded by three Black women — executive Ayana Parsons, actress Keshia Knight Pulliam, and entrepreneur Arian Simone.
As their website notes, less than 2.2.% of all Venture Capital funding goes towards women-founded businesses, and less than 1% of total funding goes towards businesses founded by women of color. And yet, for some reason, folks like Blum are convinced this number should be even lower.
It’s worth noting that Blum and his team are clearly riding high from Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision. In fact, they cite it at the top of their lawsuit.
Even before this lawsuit, conservatives were looking for ways to weaponize the Supreme Court’s decision in the workplace. In July, 13 Republican attorneys general wrote a letter demanding that Fortune 100 companies stop their affirmative action programs.
Amalea Smirniotopoulos, NAACP Legal Defense Fund Senior Policy Counsel, says that these Republican attorneys general are trying to make the Supreme Court’s affirmative decision about something it’s not.
“This was another attempt to chill completely lawful efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion by corporations,” says Smirniotopoulos. “By really trying to stretch the meaning of the decision in the Harvard and UNC cases and frankly by also restating things that have always been true about discrimination law and employment.”
“This letter is a scare tactic,” says University of New Mexico Constitutional and Employment Law Professor Vinay Harpalani. “And unfortunately, it’s a pretty good one.”
Although the Supreme Court decision didn’t touch on hiring practices, Harpalani says that conservatives will certainly try to use it as a basis for challenging race in employment. “The law, as it is now, allows affirmative action in employment,” says Harpalani. “But if the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, I’m not at all confident that they would continue to allow it.”
The immediate threat is that companies begin to back-away from DEI programs, said Justin Hansford, Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University.
“Some of these companies weren’t really doing that much anyway… and what they were doing was done only under pressure,” says Hansford. “This could be an excuse for some companies that already didn’t want to push the envelope on diversity to start walking things back.”
As for the lawsuit against Fearless Fund, an obvious concern is that it could scare off investors who might otherwise want to similarly invest in women of color. However, it’s still too soon to say (especially in this climate) whether the case has legs.
Talked about Barbie bein woke this weekend at my shows. (I’m new to posting these vertical standup clips on YT so forgive me if it’s weird or not workin right.) See me live: http://www.traecrowder.com
Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during the Family Leadership Summit, July 14, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
PUBLISHED: July 26, 2023 at 1:25 p.m. | UPDATED: July 28, 2023 at 4:43 a.m.
Long before Moms for Liberty, there were the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Their passion and influence kept generations of Southern children ignorant of how slavery had caused the Civil War and how cruel it had been. The “war between the states” was rather over “states’ rights” and tariffs. Confederate soldiers were the heroes of a “Lost Cause.” Kindly masters had been considerate to contented slaves.
Reconstruction was bad. The Ku Klux Klan was a benevolent civic organization.
The Daughters didn’t have to pull the truth from shelves. Its influence with state boards kept offending books from ever being printed or bought. When a University of Florida professor wrote that the South had been more in the wrong in the Civil War, the Daughters of the Confederacy got him fired.
In Florida, more than a century later, Southern revisionism is at it again.
Here’s one of them: “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Another is worse: “Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to (the) 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C., Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre” (emphasis added).
Andby?
In each of those massacres, Black residents were not the instigators. It is a fraud on history and a libel on them to imply that they were. There were cases where residents of African American communities took up arms to defend their homes, their families and themselves. But they were guarding against armed mobs, seething with racism, bent on arson and murder.
Feeding a fiction
From Donald Trump on down, contemporary Americans playing on race for political advantage have been trying to denigrate the Black Lives Matter movement by accusing it of responsibility for violence. The “and by” phrase, unnecessary and gratuitous and now officially part of the Florida social studies curriculum, feeds that fiction.
Stephen Hudak/Orlando SentinelWilliam Maxwell, a Vietnam-era veteran and resident of Ocoee for two decades, kneels at the gravesite of July Perry in Greenwood Cemetery. Perry, who encouraged Blacks to register to vote, was lynched by a white mob after the Ocoee Massacre in 1920.
The mob that ravaged Ocoee in Orange County, where 25 homes burned and at least eight people died, was incited by two Black men attempting to vote. The massacre at Rosewood, which erased the settlement, was set off by a married white woman’s claim that a Black man had attacked her. The official state history cites Black survivors, who said the assailant was a white lover. (For a link to the Sentinel’s 100th-anniversary coverage of the Ocoee Massacre and images of our 1920s coverage, please visit our web site at orlandosentinel.com/opinion. We’re making that historic coverage, along with other fascinating local history, free for everyone this week.)
For Black history, Florida’s previous standards were extensive and objective, unlike Southern propaganda of the 1900s.
1 of 5
These images reflect the contemporary coverage of the Ocoee massacre by the Orlando Sentinel.
But one rotten apple can spoil a barrel, and this one has two. There was nothing beneficial about slavery, except to the masters. When slaves learned a trade, such as blacksmithing, carpentry, or caulking wooden ships, as Frederick Douglass did, it was not for their benefit but for the convenience and profit of their masters. And many of them arrived on these shores with those skills already mastered.
Vice President Kamala Harris accurately described slavery in her speech at Jacksonville, which was aimed at DeSantis without mentioning him.
“Adults know what slavery really involved,” Harris said. “It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity … It involved subjecting to people the requirement that they would think of themselves and be thought as less than human… How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities … that there was some benefit?”
A defense from DeSantis
After DeSantis first said he “wasn’t involved” in writing the standards, he is now defending them.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is arguing that some Black people benefited from being enslaved and defending his state’s new African American history standards that civil rights leaders and scholars say misrepresents centuries of U.S. reality. https://t.co/LQwYSaqhPw
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 23, 2023
This would be a good time for him to begin admitting he was wrong. His critics are feasting on this one.
DeSantis owns this horrific mistake, even if he didn’t personally write the standards. It is his education department, run by his appointees.
Cues are obvious in the dog whistles he’s sent. He banned critical race theory in schools (where it wasn’t even being taught.) He signed a law meant to banish all talk of the relevance of past or present racism from Florida schools and workplaces. He’s made it easier to purge school library shelves of innocuous books some people found to be objectionable because they reflected other cultures or talked about the history of civil rights.
The Department of Education’s attempt to document the “personal benefit” issue backfired. Of the 16 historic Black people it cited, as many as half had never been enslaved, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Others, notably the educator Booker T. Washington, acquired their skills after they were freed.
Douglass’ master kept most of the money he earned caulking ships in the Baltimore yards. Fearful of being sold South, Douglass made his escape to become an eloquent, world-famous advocate for the millions in chains.
His memoir recalled how the master, Hugh Auld, rebuked his wife for teaching him the alphabet when he was 11.
Literacy would “forever unfit him for the duties of slave,” Auld said. He should “know nothing but the will of his master and learn to obey it.” This harsh reality, which viewed high-quality education for African Americans as a threat to Caucasian control of society, echoed for decades as Black students were forced into segregated schools. Even now, some schools in high-poverty areas with large minority populations can lack access to options such as advance placement or International Baccalaureate programs.
This is the hideous legacy DeSantis is trying to revive. And no matter how much he squirms and dodges, he can’t erase the stain his actions are leaving on Florida’s reputation.
Coming later this week
DeSantis’ attempts to weaponize racism are turning Florida into a laughingstock and, at long last, turning fellow Republicans and donors against him. Why did it take so long?
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.
Wow, oh wow. This is so informative and full of information I had to go over some spots several times. The host talks rather quickly, more than I am used to and I did not check the CC as I was listening only as I was doing something else. But my dogs that love gravy she has this stuff down. Hugs
Patrick SternadWFSU Public Media
Scottie's Playtime 