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LIFE/V|e ClirURt 9iit
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Nagin: God mad at America and blacks
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS-Mayor
Ray Nagin suggested that
recent destruction from hurri
canes Katrina, Rita and other
natiiral disasters is a sign
that "'God is mad at America,"
and also mad at black com
munities for tearing them
selves apart with violence and
divisive peptics.
“Surely God is mad at
America He sent us hurri
cane after hurricane after
hurricane, and it’s destroyed
and put stress on this coun
try," Nagin said as he and
other dty leaders commemo
rated Martin Luther King
Day. “Surely he doesn’t
approve of us being in Iraq
under false pretenses. But
surely lie is upset at black
Aiuerica also. We’re not tak
ing care of ourselves."
Nagin
Joking that he may appear
- to have “post-
Katrina stress
^disorder,”
I Nagin, who is
I black, talked of
I an imaginary
I conversation
I with the late
civil rights
leader. They
“talked," he said, while he
was thinking Monday about
what to say at the ceremony
outside City Hall to kick off a
walking parade in King’s
honor
“I said, "What is it going to
take for us to move on and
live your dream and make it
a reality?* He said, *1 don’t
think that we need to pay
attention any more as much
about other folks and racists
on the other side.’ He said,
The thing we need to focus on
as a community —black folks
I’m talking about—is our
selves."’
Nagin told the crowd that
he also asked, "Why is black-
on-black crime such an issue?
Why do our young men hate
each other so much that they
look their brother in the face
and they will take a gun and
kill him in cold blood?”
Ihe reply, he said, was, “We
as a people need to fix our
selves first.”
A day earlier, gunfire had
erupted at a traditional sec
ond-line walking parade to
commemorate King’s birth
day. Three people were
wounded in the shooting in
broad da>fi^t amid a throng
of mostly black spectators,
but police at the scene said
there were no immediate sus
pects or even witnesses.
Nagin said King would not
have worried less about those
committing crimes than
about the good people who
knew what was right but
lacked the courage to do it.
Tt’s time for all of us good
folk to stand up and say we’re
tired of the violence. We’re
tired of black folks killing
each other,” Nagin said.
Nagin also recoimted his
disappointment with state
and federal officials in the
days after Katrina, wonder
ing what King would have
thought at the sight of so
many people stranded at the
Louisiana Superdome and
the city’s convention center
for days after the storm,
stuck in sweltering heat and
lacking adequate food, water
and bathrooms.
And, he said, King would
have been disappointed at
police in suburban and pre
dominantly white Gretna,
who turned back people who
tried to walk across the
Mississippi River bridge in
the days after Katrina Nagin
once again accused Gretna
officers of using attack dogs
and machine gun fire in the
air to turn people back,
although Gretna officials
have disputed that.
But Nagin also said King
would have been dismayed
with black leaders who are
“most of the time tearing
each other down publicly for
the delight of many”
“Dr. King, if he was here
today, he would be talking to
us about this problem. The
problem we have among our-
Woman dressed as Aunt Jemimah banned
im: ASS(H'IATKl) PRESS
JACKSONVILLE, Ha. -
An activist who was arrested
after disrupting a City
Council meeting in an Aunt
Jemima (X>8tume has been
banned by the council presi
dent from attending meetings
until the end of March.
Jackie Brown was escorted
out of a Nov 22 City Council
meeting after loudly criticiz
ing the council for the city’s
small business incentive law.
Brown, president of the
Jacksonville Coalition of
Black Contractors, said the
law treats blacks like “slaves”
because it does not provide
enough opportunities for
minority contractors.
She returned during a later
public comment period and
scuffled with a police officer
after refiising to leave when
ordered.
Brown was arrested and
chaiged with causing a dis
turbance at a lawful assem
bly and resisting a police offi
cer.
A letter this week fi'om
Council President Kevin
Hyde informing Brown she
cannot attend council meet
ings until March 31 dtes a
rule that allows the coimcil to
remove disruptive citizens
fiom meetings.
BUI Sheppard, Brown’s
attorney did not immediately
return a message early
Friday
Whiteness class prompts colorful debate
im: ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOULDER, Colo r-People
stare when University of
Colorado student Maren
pauldin wears her “Black is
Beautiful” T-shirt.
That’s because she’s white.
The shirt, Gauldin says, is
like a tag that forces her to
engage in conversations
about race, forces her to feel a
tiny bit like black and Latino
students on an overwhelm
ingly white campus.
“Every time I put it on, I
feel uncomfortable,” Gauldin
told students at a white-priv-
Uege symposiimi last month
that filled an auditorium and
spilled into a haUway. “It
helps me think about the
kind of activist I want to be.”
The symposium was one
part of an introspective look
by white CU scholars and
students at the privUeges
they say are automatically
afforded the white race.
Awareness of the relatively
new field, called whiteness
studies, is building at CU as
the university examines its
diversity and racial strife.
The field of study—by some
accounts bom 10 years ago at
a conference at the
University of California at
Berkeley emd now taught at
hundreds of imiversities —
has its critics, who call it
white-bashing rhetoric that
shows how far academia has
strayed from mainstream
society
“Whiteness studies is not
about white-bashing, and it’s
not about white supremacy,”
said Duncan Rinehart, who
will teach CUs fourth white
ness-studies course this
semester.
“As long as whiteness is
invisible, it’s contributing to
inequality and iiyustice.
There is a fair amoimt of just
flat-out denial, not malicious,
but denial nonetheless.”
Feminist scholar Peggy
McIntosh, whose essay on
white privilege often is
requiied reading for students
in whiteness studies, defines
it as an “invisible weightless
knapsack”
T have come to see white
privilege as an invisible pack
age of unearned assets that I
can count on cashing in each
day, but about which I was
"meant’ to remain oblivious,”
she says.
The growing discussion of
white privil^;e at CU has
attracted some negative
response, and the attacks
have spilled into the universi
ty's examination of its lack of
diversity
The European/American
Issues Forum _ an organiza
tion that says it is not white
supremacist but stands up for
white rights _ has e-mailed a
couple dozen student leaders
and filed three open-records
requests with CU interim
president Hank Brown ask
ing for university expenses on
ethnic clubs. One e-mail
included statistics of crimes
against whites by blacks.
Its president, Louis Calabro,
also has demanded a repre
sentative of European
American ri^ts on CUs 44-
member blue-ribbon diversity
panel.
Calabro, a 73-year-old
retired San Francisco police
lieutenant, found out about
the white-privilege sympo
sium on the Internet and was
incensed. He said CU has cre
ated a culture of white guilt by
teadiing that "everybody else
are the victims and we’re the
perps.”
"The I Jniversity of Colorado
has a campus that’s hostile to
European American white
people,” he said.
The Southern Poverty Law
Center’s Intelligence Project,
which tracks hate groups, has
had Calabro on its radar for
years, said deputy director
Heidi Beirich. But the
European/American Issues
Forum has not crossed the
line fiom representing the
rights of whites to hating
other races, Beirich said.
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Photo exhibit features midwives of South
S.\tmiSOSl.\S MAGAyjSE
The woman rests her hand
on the mother’s b^y, glancing
at the clock on the fireplace
mantel as she times the con
tractions.
In another photograph,
she’s clothed in a flowing
white gown and sooths a
mother in the throes of giving
birth, A photograph also
shows her the next day, gently
washing the newborn.
The caregiver is Mary
Francis Hill Coley, known as
Miss Mary, a black midwife in
Albany Ga.. who helped deliv
er more than 3,000 babies
fiDm the 1930s to the 1960s.
The photc^aphs, which
offer rare glimpses o( the nur
turing that black midwives
cjnce provided to their commu
nities, are part of
"Reclaiming Midwives.* an
exhibition at the
Smithsonian’s Anacostia
Museum and Center for
Afiican American History and
Culture,
Focusing on midwifery in
the South dating fiom the
17th century on, the exhila-
ticn runs imtil April 2006.
Robert Galbraith tock the
photographs in 1952, while
werking as an assistant cam
eraman on a docrumentary
about midwifery For 12
weeks, the filmmakers shad
owed Miss Mary' as she made
her rounds in the segregated
town of about 31,000 pec^e
She was wearing her birth
robe, “draped in heavenly
clothes* like an angel.
Galbraith recalls. “Sl^ had a
presence that was extracadi-
nary
He went on to become a
finance photographer, pub
lishing work in Life magazine
and elsewhere, but his por
trait series of Miss Mary sat
in a box for four decades in
the basement of his home in
Long Island, N.Y, Then, in
1995, Linda Janet Holmes, a
health researcher in New
Jersey and co-author of a
b(X)k on black midwives,
learned of the photographs
fixm George Stoney, the docu
mentary’s director.
Medical literature in the
past often reflected midwives
as ignorant and backwaid,
“but these photos defied
that,* Holmes, guest curator
of the Anacostia Museum
show, tells Smithsonian mag
azine.
AJ&Tican-American mid-
wives, sometimes called
“granny midwives,” flour
ished in the South fiom slav
ery times to the 1970s
because many black women
were denied access to health
care. As Holmes pckits out,
townspeople held midwives
in hi^ esteem foi* their skills
and wisdom.
For her part, Miss Mary
served many other roles in
her community including
spiritual advisor. “She was a
voice of hope and support,”
says her grandson, R.
Bernard Coley, 54, a consul
tant in Palo Alto, Calif
Miss Mary died in 1966 at
age 66, but her story lives on
in the photographs and the
documentary “All My
Babies," which the Library of
Congress added to its
National Film Registry in
2005.
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