Recently in Racial and Social Issues Category

Really? In 2009?

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Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

Yeah, like later when they grow up, and want to marry a person, of well, any race because if a mixed person marries anyone, it's automatically "interracial", and they meet this guy for a marriage license-yep, that'll be annoying.

I Tried to Come Up With Some Thoughts

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on this article, but I am drawing a blank. The only thought that comes to mind is how backwards we are as a culture. Just throw the concept of race out already. Done. Finish. As long as you have race, race is going to be an issue.

The importance of marriage

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Cate Flanagan in TIME Magazine:

There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers' financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation's underclass.

Two lovely links within that article:

Married 50 Years: TIME Photogallery

Snapshots from a Very Special Wedding

It's all about the photo op; the President got what he wanted. And as for "dialogue", what has Notre Dame as an institution done to clearly speak up for life, particularly in the actions-that-speak-louder-than-words line?

William McGurn:

In a letter to Notre Dame's Class of 2009, the university's president, the Rev. John Jenkins, stated that the honors for Mr. Obama do not indicate any "ambiguity" about Notre Dame's commitment to Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life. The reality is that it was this ambiguity that the White House was counting on; this ambiguity that was furthered by the adoring reaction to Mr. Obama's visit; and this ambiguity that disheartens those working for an America that respects the dignity of life inside the womb....

With its billions in endowment and its prestigious name, Notre Dame ought to be in the lead here. But when asked for examples illuminating the university's unambiguous support for unborn life, [University spokesman] Mr. Brown could provide only four: help for pregnant students who want to carry their babies to term, student volunteer work for pregnant women at local shelters, prayer mentions at campus Masses, and lectures such as a seminar on life issues.

These are all well and good, but they also highlight the poverty of Notre Dame's institutional witness. At Notre Dame today, there is no pro-life organization -- in size, in funding, in prestige -- that compares with the many centers, institutes and so forth dedicated to other important issues ranging from peace and justice to protecting the environment. Perhaps this explains why a number of pro-life professors tell me they must not be quoted by name, lest they face career retaliation.

The one institute that does put the culture of life at the heart of its work, moreover -- the Center for Ethics and Culture -- doesn't even merit a link under the "Faith and Service" section on the university's Web site. The point is this: When Notre Dame doesn't dress for the game, the field is left to those like Randall Terry who create a spectacle and declare their contempt for civil and respectful witness.


RTWT; HT Feddie.

Jack Kemp, RIP

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The Importance of Jack Kemp:

blockquote>...his lost presidential run in 1988 did land him in the unlikely spot of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. It was there that Reaganites huddled in what was generally viewed as one of the least important backwaters of the federal government, a place touched by scandal at that. Ignored by the powers of the Bush 41 administration, Kemp blew into this concrete box with the force of a category five hurricane. If you worked for him you were quickly a part of an ongoing tutorial -- done under the guise of a "brown bag lunch" -- that featured everything from Heritage Foundation policy wonks to Sir Martin Gilbert, the biographer of Winston Churchill, to Alex Kotlowitz, the author of There Are No Children Here. The last was a gripping tale of two boys growing up amid the abysmal failure of liberal urban policy, in this case Chicago's Henry Horner Homes. Also up for discussion was Assets and the Poor, a book about the failures of the welfare system.

It wasn't always tutorials, either. Kemp himself was not only out there in America's inner cities inspecting the failures of urban liberalism, he made damn sure his staff got out there too. I remember one particular tour of the Ellen Wilson project in Washington -- a serious disgrace surrounded in broad daylight by drug dealers that is, I believe, now gone. The entire department rocked, at times shell shocked, to Kemp's preaching of the gospel of capitalism and tax cuts.

People much smarter than me have word it better than I ever could.

In is letter regarding Barak Obama at Notre Dame (posted on American Papist), Charles F. Lennon Jr. Executive Director, Notre Dame Alumni Association writes:

Rather, the University has invited the President to campus for what he’s done for racial equality, and for his stands on poverty, health care, immigration, education, infectious disease, and seeking peace. These are causes dear to the heart of Notre Dame, and he has elevated these causes and made them his own.

Sigh. As stated on Jill Stanek:

African-Americans comprise 12% of the US population but disproportionately 32% of all abortions, according to Guttmacher. PP's founder, Margaret Sanger, was an anti-black eugenicist. Most abortion mills are located where the majority of blacks live, in metropolitan areas (87.5% - see Cenus Figure 2). According to Guttmacher, 95% of all mills are located in metropolitan areas.

Oddly, pro-life black Catholics don't seem to agree with Mr. Lennon. On Twitter, Alan Keyes tweets:

Obama's moral stature comes from exploiting race, yet his pro-abortion stance repudiates the black American heritage.

Yesterday, Matt C. Abbott of RenewAmerica has a letter from Fr. John J. Raphael, SSJ:

'I have spent eighteen years working with blacks and whites, Protestants and Catholics, to bring more African Americans into the pro-life movement. During the last two months the Obama administration has already begun to aggressively roll back the gains made in defense of life over the course of the last fifteen years.

'I have written two articles which attempt to show how the historical significance of the first African American president is emptied of its meaning if this same president refuses to embrace the rights of the unborn. I share them with you if you are interested in considering the devastating impact of these pro-abortion policies on the African American community in light of this historic election:

http://www.nbccongress.org/features/bridge-01.asp

http://clarionherald.org/pdfs/2009/02_07_09/page15.pdf.

'As an African American and a priest, as a principal of a Catholic high school and a member of the Admissions Advisory Board of the university, I cannot adequately express in words how deeply this action offends those who are committed to carrying out the task of Catholic education and witnessing to the Gospel of Life in the context of a Catholic school. Even if the university chooses to cooperate with certain policies of the president that are not contrary to the teaching of the faith, the conferral of this type of public honor is wholly gratuitous and incongruous with the mission of any Catholic institution...

more...

If we really want to address the race issue, let's address it in it's fullness. If not, then you are just using the fact that Obama's blackness as an excuse to pat yourself on the back for appearing so hip-which is pretty racist.

HT:Jill Stanek

...Commenting on society’s attitude towards Catholic beliefs, Archbishop Chaput said, “we have to make ourselves stupid to believe some of the things American Catholics are now expected to accept.”....

Much talk in the Catholic blogosphere about the announcement of an apostolic visitation to religious communities, and of one snippy Sister's response. For some crazy reason, I can't help thinking that Sister Snippy's community hasn't welcomed any novices in a while.

Then there are all the other stories about Sisters of a Certain Age who abandoned their habits and their community life. Some of them left teaching or nursing behind; they felt called to Be Prophetic, which meant talking about how Prophetic they were, and maybe beating on railroad tracks with ball-peen hammers. Others might have stayed and are now school principals or hospital administrators, but their sisters are either also in administration or are retired. None of their sisters are still in the classroom or at the bedside. Some of these Sisters of a Certain Age have been reflecting on how Their Mission is Complete or Our Order is Moving Into a New Phase, which to the cynical might sound like happy-talk for We Have Had No Vocations Since The Ford Administration and We Need To Sell Our Land to Pay For Our Retirement.

Yet, strangely, there are still sick people that need nursing care, and children that need schoolteachers. There are still poor people. And, for whatever reason, the orders of Sisters that used to serve them have withered away.

President Obama, in one of those huge soggy blobs of legislation, killed a scholarship program that enabled some Washington D.C. students to attend private schools. So now those students are forced back into the D.C. public systems (motto: "Not good enough for Chelsea, Malia, and Sasha... but good enough for you!") Even if their parents could afford Catholic schools, where would they go? The Archdiocese had to close seven schools recently for lack of funds.

What would our country look like if the teaching and nursing orders hadn't collapsed? What if children in poor school districts had a choice, because the sisters were there to offer an alternative that families of modest means could afford? What if hospitals were well staffed with nurses who treated every patient as he were Christ Himself, sisters who were supported in their difficult work by their community life and their lives of prayer?
Imagine the good work that nursing orders could do by opening small, walk-in clinics -- especially ones open after hours, for hourly workers who can't afford to take time off work. Would our health care system be in such a mess?

I'm sure the sisters who ditched their habits and decided that they'd rather Be Prophetic than get their hands dirty are as convinced as ever that they are doing the right thing. But I can't help thinking that a better way to be prophetic would have been to keep doing the "woman's work" scorned by society -- teaching the children and caring for the weak and ill.

Good-bye, I'm Leaving

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I have read from many people that we, all of us, democrats, republicans, pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike should rejoice because at least now we have a black president. Yet, all I want to do, as I described to friends, is take my bed to some foreign country, move it there and hide under it.

I have been trying to formulate a blog post about race in this election, but decided against it as it is a tricky subject. People who do not think that often about race might not get what I am trying to convey, especially in the midst of my jumbled pregnancy-brained writings. So I decided against it on a few occasions for fear I might word something wrong, not get my point across and end insulting everyone. But now that I have back-up, here's the gist of it: I found myself personally hurt beyond a level I thought was possible as the presidential should not be so personal because many black people boldly stated that they were voting for a black president simply because he is black. Wow. this is not a racial victory, all it is is a litmus test to bring to the forefront how racially ill and divided we are.

Before I say something truly stupid (again, words escape my pregnancy mind), LaShawn Barber stated everything I have been feeling much better than I could:

I read quite a few music and book author blogs, and most of the bloggers are Obama-supporting liberals. I can almost see them patting themselves on the back as they try to convince themselves race means nothing to them and that Obama’s presidency signals the beginning a new era of diversity, tolerance, blah, blah, blah. But they’ve got it twisted. Voting for Obama because he represents some post-racial ideal is to inject race into the equation...

...It the end, it doesn’t matter why white people voted for Obama. He’s the leader of the free world now (shudder). Who I am to interfere with their “I voted for a black man because I don’t care about race” back-patting?

Steele asks what Obama’s election means to blacks. Well, I doubt it will do anything to decrease illegitimacy among blacks (70 percent; as high as 80 percent in some urban areas), or decrease child killing, or strengthen families and communities, or much of anything. It’s a proud moment for many blacks, to be sure, but having a black man in the White House will not motivate black Americans to wait until marriage to have babies, to stop killing their babies (and at three times the rate of white women), or to stop uttering the word racism whenever they don’t get their way...

...As long as families (the foundation of society) are in shambles, conditions won’t improve much. But with Obama in office, white liberals can feel good about themselves and blacks can feel proud, fatherless children and dead babies be damned.

Because A Mind Is A Terrible Thing

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Harlem Voters

HT:Catholic and Enjoying It

Preach It!

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Denver Archbishop: Planned Parenthood Offends Minorities

A new Planned Parenthood clinic in a minority neighborhood of Denver should be taken as an offense, affirmed the archbishop of the city.

Archbishop Charles Chaput said this at a prayer vigil and march at the site of Planned Parenthood's new clinic in a primarily Latino and African-American suburb of Denver...

"Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of abortion and family suppression services in the United States," he explained. "This facility in this minority neighborhood should offend every African-American and Latino family, and all of us, because every child lost to abortion here subtracts one more life, one more universe of possibilities and talent, from the future of this community. […] The business of Planned Parenthood is the prevention of the future -- and business is good, and very profitable, at the expense of this community."

HT:The Curt Jester

Yesterday my husband was working. He was doing a demolition job on an apartment building that had a fire in Saratoga. He was brining debris back and forth to a big industrial dumpster they had downstairs. During one of his trips, he said there was a little old Italian lady who asked "Do you mind if a throw a few things away in your dumpster? I have 40 years worth of junk in my apartment I am trying to get rid of."

"Sure no problem" and he went back upstairs to continue work.

His partner went to bring down garbage and came back up. He asked my husband "did you see the little old lady?"

"Yeah, I told she can throw a couple of things away."

"Yeah she told me. She said 'That Darkie said I could throw a few things away in your dumpster.' "

So Let's add Our 2 Cents

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As a woman "of color", I have to agree with Elisabeth Hasselback 100%. If a word is insulting, it is insulting across the board. However, I have never been a fan of black people using the "n" word simply because we "can". It is low class. Many people, both black and white have fought hard to come to this point where we are that if you are white and you use the 'n' word, you reveal yourself to be a complete ass, as opposed to someone with simply a different perspective.

Whoopi makes the point that Elisabeth just doesn't "get it" because she has never been black and doesn't get I guess "the Black experience" (hello 1969). I am actually sure this is true, However, I doubt Whoopi knows what it is like to be on Survivor, or to grow up Italian American, or whatever. Not understanding what people go through is not a ticket to allowing bad behavior. In some cases it can lead to an understanding of bad behavior, but that is very different than excusing it. Anyhow, I have hard time hearing about "what we go through" from Whoopi Goldberg, I doubt with her fame and money she struggles much because she's black. But then again, I have never walked in her shoes either.

Lastly, racial issues aside, I don't get fighting to become ghetto. I hate this trend in our country to raise people to be foul-mouthed and have no manners. I mean this is a show of women for women. Why is being ladylike such a crime these days? We should be fighting harder to get a Thesaurus into their hands so they can express themselves without four-letter words.

For My Father

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In June, the doctors told my father that he was in remission and took him off of his chemo drugs. He was relieved because the side-effects made him feel not so hot.

The Myeloma came back and attacked the bone in his leg and he cannot walk, at least not without crutches. The doctor told him if he puts pressure on his leg, the bone will shatter.

Today he will speak with an orthopedic surgeon about hip-replacement surgery, and afterwards he will probably receive chemo therapy again.


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