By Ofari Hutchinson, Guest Columnist

Glenn Beck is either a liar or was simply mistaken as he claims that he got the date confused. The date is August 28, the same date as the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington. This is the date that Beck picked for his “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington D.C. Beck says he had no idea the date is a sacred day for civil rights leaders, and that it was pure coincidence he’ll rally that day.

Civil rights leaders don’t buy it, and neither do I. The provocative, over the top, incendiary talk show host doesn’t do anything by accident. He always has a keen eye on anything that he does. One eye is on what will shock, grab, and infuriate the largest number of people. That always ties in to his eternal hunt for ratings, ratings, and more ratings. Ratings are the mother’s milk of cable talk shows. Beck has delivered them better than most.

His other eye is just as firmly on President Obama — or rather, on dredging up anything that can belittle, ridicule and mock an African-American president. There’s no better way to do that than mock the day that for a half century has been nearly universally recognized as the moment when the nation and the world became riveted on King and the civil rights battle in America. Beck knew what he was doing when he picked the date, and the day won’t pass without Beck and speaker after conservative speaker invoking the name of King and the civil rights movement to tout a hands-off government, unchecked free markets, non-interference in the affairs of private business, and their phony “color-blind” notion of civil rights. The day also won’t pass without Beck and other speakers making the preposterous claim that if King were alive today, he’d be quite comfortable attending their rally. There’s nothing new about this shameful distortion of King by conservatives.

Starting with Reagan, Republican presidents realized that they could wring some political mileage out of King’s legacy. They tried to recast him in their image on civil rights, and bent and twisted his oft times public religious Puritanism on morals issues to justify GOP positions in the values wars that they wage with blacks, Democrats and liberals.

With King safely gone for nearly two decades, Republicans in the mid-1980s eagerly grabbed at the famous line in his “I Have A Dream” speech at the March on Washington in August 1963, in which he called on Americans to judge individuals by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Those sentiments prove, Republicans claimed, that King would be on their side against affirmative action. During the fierce wars over affirmative action in the 1990s, King’s words were even more shamelessly used to justify opposition to affirmative action.

Even conservative black evangelists jumped into the act, staging a march to King’s gravesite to protest gay marriage, the implication being as a good Baptist minister, King would have been on their side. Coretta Scott King dispelled that notion by repeatedly issuing statements saying that she was a staunch backer of gay rights, and so would her husband have been.

The Republicans’ distortion wouldn’t have been possible if some of King’s pronouncements on religion and the black family did not superficially parallel GOP positions on crime, marriage, the family and personal responsibility. Republicans carefully cobbled together bits and pieces from King’s speeches and writings during the 1950s and early 1960s to paint him as anti–big government, anti-welfare, and tough on black crime, as well as an advocate of thrift, hard work and temperance.

The snippets of conservative thinking in King’s early musings blended easily with the social conservatism of many blacks. And this was more than enough for Republicans to say that Kind would have been a big player on the GOP team. Beck and company merely picked up this manufactured view of King to justify their embrace of him.

Beck’s best efforts to stir his legion of Tea Party into a frenzy would come to nothing if millions didn’t genuinely loathe Obama and his policies, and firmly believe that he has turned government into a monster that will turn their taxes into endless social programs that benefit minorities at the expense of hard-working whites. This is how hate-mongers on the right stoke the anger and alienation that many whites feel toward health care and, by extension, Obama. This translates to even more fear, rage and distrust of big government.

Glenn Beck’s rally is an outrageous and cynical ploy to hammer Obama. Beck can have it both ways. He can knock everyone else for playing the race card with Obama, while playing it hard himself with the timing of his rally. Leave it to Beck to find the perfect way to dishonor King.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

To cut to the chase, no election in Haiti, and no candidate in those elections, will be considered legitimate by the majority of Haiti’s population, unless it includes the full and fair participation of the Fanmi Lavalas Party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Fanmi Lavalas is unquestionably the most popular party in the country, yet the “international community,” led by the United States, France and Canada, has done everything possible to undermine Aristide and Lavalas, overthrowing him twice by military coups in 1991 and 2004 and banishing Aristide, who now lives in South Africa with his family, from the Americas.

A United Nations army, led by Brazil, still occupies Haiti six years after the coup. Their unstated mission, under the name of “peacekeeping,” is to suppress the popular movement and prevent the return to power of Aristide’s Lavalas Party. One must understand a Wyclef Jean candidacy, first of all, in this context.

Every election since a 67 percent majority first brought Aristide to power in 1990 has demonstrated the enormous popularity of the Lavalas movement. When Lavalas could run, they won overwhelmingly. In 2006, when security conditions did not permit them to run candidates, they voted and demonstrated to make sure Rene Preval, a former Lavalas president, was re-elected.

Preval, however, turned against those who voted for him. He scheduled elections for 12 Senate seats in 2009 and supported the Electoral Council’s rejection of all Lavalas candidates. Lavalas called for a boycott, and as few as 3 percent of Haitians voted, with fewer than 1 percent voting in the runoff, once again demonstrating the people’s love and respect for President Aristide.

Fanmi Lavalas has already been banned from the next round of elections, so enter Wyclef Jean. Jean comes from a prominent Haitian family that has virulently opposed Lavalas since the 1990 elections. His uncle is Raymond Joseph – also a rumored presidential candidate – who became Haitian ambassador to the United States under the coup government and remains so today. Kevin Pina writes in “It’s not all about that! Wyclef Jean is fronting in Haiti,” Joseph is “the co-publisher of Haiti Observateur, a right-wing rag that has been an apologist for the killers in the Haitian military going back as far as the brutal coup against Aristide in 1991.
“On Oct. 26 [2004] Haitian police entered the pro-Aristide slum of Fort Nationale and summarily executed 13 young men. Wyclef Jean said nothing. On Oct. 28 the Haitian police executed five young men, babies really, in the pro-Aristide slum of Bel Air. Wyclef said nothing. If Wyclef really wants to be part of Haiti’s political dialogue, he would acknowledge these facts. Unfortunately, Wyclef is fronting.”

As if to prove it, the Miami Herald reported on Feb. 28, 2010, “Secret polling by foreign powers in search of a new face to lead Haiti’s reconstruction …” might favor Jean’s candidacy, as someone with sufficient name recognition who could draw enough votes to overcome another Lavalas electoral boycott.

Wyclef Jean supported the 2004 coup. When gun-running former army and death squad members trained by the CIA were overrunning Haiti’s north on Feb. 25, 2004, MTV’s Gideon Yago wrote, “Wyclef Jean voiced his support for Haitian rebels on Wednesday, calling on embattled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down and telling his fans in Haiti to ‘keep their head up’ as the country braces itself for possible civil war.”

During the Obama inaugural celebration, Jean famously and perversely serenaded Colin Powell, the Bush administration secretary of state during the U.S. destabilization campaign and eventual coup against Aristide, with Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”

Jean also produced the movie, “The Ghosts of Cite Soleil,” an anti-Aristide and Lavalas hit piece, which tells us that President Aristide left voluntarily, without mention of his kidnapping by the U.S. military, and presents the main coup leaders in a favorable light. It features interviews with sweatshop owners Andy Apaid and Charles Henry Baker without telling us they hate Aristide because he raised the minimum wage and sought to give all Haitians a seat at the table by democratizing Haiti’s economy, a program opposed by the rich in Haiti.

It uncritically interviews coup leader Louis Jodel Chamblain, without telling us he worked with the Duvalier dictatorship’s brutal militia, the Tonton Macoutes, in the 1980s; that following the coup against Aristide in 1991, he was the “operations guy” for the FRAPH paramilitary death squad, accused of murdering uncounted numbers of Aristide supporters and introducing gang rape into Haiti as a military weapon.

It uncritically interviews coup leader Guy Phillipe, without telling us he’s a former Haitian police chief who was trained by U.S. Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s or that the U.S. embassy admitted that Phillipe was involved in the transhipment of narcotics, one of the key sources of funds for paramilitary attacks on the poor in Haiti.

Wyclef runs the Yele Haiti Foundation, which the Washington Post reported on Jan. 16, 2010, is under fiscal scrutiny because “(i)t seems clear that a significant amount of the monies that this charity raises go for costs other than providing benefits to Haitians in need … In 2006, Yele Haiti had about $1 million in revenue, according to tax documents. More than a third of the money went to payments to related parties, said lawyer James Joseph … (T)he charity recorded a payment of $250,000 to Telemax, a TV station and production company in Haiti in which Jean and Jerry Duplessis, both members of Yele Haiti’s board of directors, had a controlling interest. The charity paid about $31,000 in rent to Platinum Sound, a Manhattan recording studio owned by Jean and Duplessis. And it spent an additional $100,000 for Jean’s performance at a benefit concert in Monaco.” A foundation spokesperson “said the group hopes to spend a higher percentage of its budget on services as it gains experience.”

PLEASE SPREAD THE NEWS: “WYCLEF JEAN IS NOT A FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT OF HAITI.” The floating of his candidacy is just one more effort by the international forces, desperate to put a smiley face on a murderous military occupation, to undermine the will of the Haitian majority by making Wyclef Jean the Ronald Reagan of Haiti.

Let us be clear. Jean and his uncle, the Haitian ambassador to the U.S., are both cozy with the self-appointed czar of Haiti, Bill Clinton, whose plans for the Caribbean nation are to make it a neo-colony for a reconstructed tourist industry and a pool of cheap labor for U.S. factories. Wyclef Jean is the perfect front man. The Haitian elite and its U.S./U.N. sponsors are counting on his appeal to the youth to derail the people’s movement for democracy and their call for the return of President Aristide. Most Haitians will not be hoodwinked by the likes of Wyclef Jean.

Charlie Hinton is a member of the Haiti Action Committee and works at Inkworks Press, a worker owned and managed printing company in Berkeley. He may be reached at ch_lifewish@yahoo.com.

Published opinions are not the view of the staff, volunteers or supporters of The Hartford Guardian.

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By Ofari Hutchinson Guest Columnist

No president has ever had more pejorative labels slapped on him than Barack Obama. He’s been branded a Bolshevik, socialist, Nazi (go figure), an anarchist, leftist, an alien, and of course, un-American.

So it’s no surprise that so many Americans think Obama is a Muslim. This week, a new Pew Research Center poll found a big increase in the number of Republicans who believe this lie. Even a growing number of Democrats and independents think that the president is a Muslim, or at least, not a Christian.

But the Obama-is-a-Muslim tag carries a special taint. No religious group in America is more distorted, reviled, and demonized than Muslims since 9/11. Simply utter the word, and many Americans conjure dark images of bombings, terrorist attacks, war, chaos, destruction, and fanaticism.

The hysteria of Fox News commentators, conservative radio talk show hosts, bloggers and right-wing politicians over events like the Ft. Hood shootings and the attempted bombing of a flight to Detroit last Christmas Day are a mere dress rehearsal for the Muslim scare that has dogged President Obama.

His speeches in Cairo last year to a Muslim and international audience, his repeated preaching of tolerance and outreach to the Muslim world, and his occasional tough talk against Israeli settlement expansion all occasioned new rounds of conservative hysteria. Now Obama’s White House Ramadan dinner, at which he supported the right to build a mosque at Ground Zero, has been cited as proof that the president is not a closet Muslim, but an avowed one.

Though some Republican strategists have urged caution about making Obama’s mosque remarks a campaign issue, the GOP will do it anyway. Already, Fox and the rest have done everything possible to fan the fire of anti-Muslim sentiment.

They have even dumped on the table an outrageously distorted discussion of Sharia law and declared that any Muslim who believes in it and practices it does not believe in the U.S. Constitution and, by extension, can’t be a loyal American. The implication being that since Obama is a Muslim, then he must also believe in the strict tenets of Sharia law. The dots have never been more wrongly and badly connected.

Since his initial statements on the Ground Zero mosque, Obama has kept silent on the issue. There’s absolutely no need for him to say anything more about it. The issue will be fiercely debated by politicians and the public in coming weeks.

Expect the Obama foes—and that’s nearly any GOP candidate and incumbent—to try to figure out a way to sneak a line or two about 9/11 and the mosque controversy into their campaign speeches.

But plenty of Democrats have distanced themselves from Obama’s remarks as well, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is facing a tough reelection battle, and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean.

When even Obama’s own Democratic allies react this way, is it any surprise that Americans are so confused?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles. Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Pakistan Link, Commentary, Ibrahim Hooper

Editor’s Note: Ramadan, the holy Muslim month began Wednesday. Here, the writer reflects on being Muslim in the U.S. and a recent visit to his village, where his closest friend was from the only Christian family there.

BelAhdan, Commentary, Ahmed Tharwat

Standing at Garden of Eden Islamic Cemetery, located in a remote corner of a Christian cemetery in Burnsville, Minnesota mourning the death of one our friends, I couldn’t help reflecting how Muslims in the United States, unlike European Muslims who usually live in isolated “ghettos”, are free to choose where they want to live, and actually do, however, when a Muslim dies in the U.S. there is only one choice: the Muslim “ghetto” cemetery located inside a remote section of an existing Christian cemetery.

I never understood the religious proximity taboo between the Muslim and Christian dead, and no amount of interfaith dialogue could bring the dead ones together; it is hard to argue that much when you are dead.

I remembered to more than 40 years back the one Coptic-Christian family grave in the heart of my primarily Muslim village cemetery in Meet Swaid, Egypt. We never questioned it, and we never thought of as something peculiar or unusual.

So what is the story of this Coptic family? How did they live as a minority in my small village?

As a hyphenated Muslim American living in the US, I wondered how it would be as a Christian living in a majority Muslim village. After all the years since I left my village, I decided to go back to find out more about the history of this Christian family and why my village was immune from the rift between Coptic and Muslims that periodically surfaced on the Egyptian scene, especially in upper Egypt. I took my camera and decided to find out the story of the Coptic grave in my village cemetery.

Driving along the freeway through the heart of the Nile delta, the road was surrounded by massive orange orchards with fruit peddlers lining the road. They dotted the neglected freeway side with a burst of color displaying their oranges and tangerines in shapes of pyramids ambivalent to the ominous piles of trash everywhere you looked

When I arrived to my village, it was evident that much has changed since I left it 40 years ago—people seemed to have moved on and it was becoming more of a crowded town. As I remember it, my village was a small, unassuming place in the Egyptian Nile delta. Many people’s lifestyles hadn’t changed that much since the time of the pharaohs, and local demographers couldn’t find any dramatic census changes for a long time.

Before CNN and Al Jazeera, villagers lived the simple life of a farming community, and their interest in the outside world went only as far as the edge of their fields. The men left with their animals for work at dawn and came back at dusk, while their wives stayed home, busy preparing hearty meals and raising kids to work in the farm as soon as they mastered their first step.

People consulted the same tailor or seamstress, prayed at the same mosque, celebrated the same holidays, eat the same food, and for generations, villagers kept the gene pool very much confined to the area’s families. But I was interested to know more about that Coptic family among us and how they lived within the village dynamic.

I found the Christian family’s lifestyle peculiar and intriguing—in fact, it was a breath of fresh air to invigorate the monotonous village life. Unlike other villagers who worked on the farm, the Christian family was still “in the hunting-and-gathering age, making their living chasing wild wolves lurking on the village outskirts,” explained, Hajj Abdullah, a village elder .

“The Coptic family would drag the dead wolf around in the streets for show-and-tell, describing the grave danger they had just faced and the heroic adventure they had encountered, and earned them considerable admiration from villagers,” Abdullah added.

“I never thought of them as Christian or Coptic, just my neighbor,” my brother Abdel Rafaa said.

Growing up in my village, I liked to spend time with Sameer Kariaquos, one of the Coptic brothers, known simply as ‘the Coptic.’ Although I had the privilege and perks that came with being of the majority religion, my alliance with him was personal, and possibly resulting from our both being somewhat social outcasts by most other villagers.

Both of our families had chosen a career other than farming. My family members were the educators who ran the only village elementary school for years, and his were hunters. Sameer was in my class, and I always envied him for being a Coptic during our religion class; he was free to choose, stay or leave to the playground. I wished I could, too, sparing myself the abuse of our religion teacher. Besides his great personality, Sameer had a unique skill: he was a sharp shooter, exceptionally good at using the BB gun and I was good at using the slingshot. In the summer, hunting small birds was our pastime. We both left the village early in the morning and spent the whole day roaming the field hunting for these “asafeer”, or sparrows. The solitude of the field greenery and the empty roads gave us the emotional space to be close and good buddies; we talked about anything, kissing girls and other dreams.

But one day, Sameer’s father suddenly died and neither his family nor the rest of the village was prepared for planning his burial.

Although the cultural tradition of the Muslim villagers accommodated the Coptic family, the religious burial traditions were not flexible enough to accommodate the mixing of their dead in the same cemetery.

My Uncle Abd Elhafeez had told me that the Kariaquos family wanted to bury their father at the Coptic Cemetery, much farther from the city, though customary among Copts. However before he died, the father asked my uncle to be buried in the Muslim cemetery, and while there was initial hesitation from the villagers, my uncle honored the request.

My family was not known for religious zealotry, but for kindness and generosity.

“If the Coptic family had lived in peace with the rest of us all these years without any trouble, there shouldn’t be much trouble while they were dead,” my uncle said. My brother Nasser mentioned that our family didn’t consult anyone in the village on this, and the burial ceremony was completed quietly in my family cemetery grave.

Now, after all these years, like every Muslim grave, his does not bear any religious symbol, just his family name, date of birth and death: “Kariaquos, Born 1911, Died 1962.”

What is so amazing today is that with all the rifts between Christians and Muslims, and Islam and the West, and also periodic flair ups between Egyptian Copts and Muslims, this has never translated into any hostility toward the Coptic family grave; no act of defacing or graffiti on the unfenced Coptic grave can be found, which is remarkable in the age of the internet and global village and religious fundamentalism.

All those years ago, in my village, Muslims and Copts had lived together and died together in peace and harmony.

As my brother Abdel Rafaa put it, “No diversity programs were required, no axis of evil was declared, and no crusade or jihad was launched.”

Ahmed Tharwat is host of the Arab-American show “Belahdan,” which airs Saturdays at 10:30 p.m. on Twin Cities Public Television (Ch 202). Please visit: http://www.belahdan.com/, to view Tharwat’s video coverage on this story from Egypt. He also blogs at www.ahmediatv.com

News Report, Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Those who call Steele a liar rattle off the litany of racist gaffes, slurs, and acts by GOP officials, politicians, and assorted GOP-connected Tea Party leaders and activists to prove their point. Now they have one more example they can add to the list.

That’s the GOP’s invite to Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing smear-machine engine man, to appear at the RNC’s three-day confab in Los Angeles next month. It’s billed as an “Election Countdown,” a way to raise some money and rev up the GOP troops.

Unlike Michelle Obama’s appearance at the NAACP convention, Breitbart’s name is not buried among the assorted GOP luminaries scheduled to participate at the event. Not only is he billed as one of the headliners, he and Steele will host the opening-night reception. His name even appears ahead of Steele’s on the announcement.

So why is that? Is it Breitbart’s name and fame, the controversy and curiosity he invariably arouses, the media attention he draws, his staunch GOP troublemaking credentials—and the fact that might be good for a few more bucks in the till—that compel Steele and the RNC to make him the star of their show? The answer, of course, is all of the above. And this makes Breitbart an even more disgusting choice to headline a major event by a major party that claims it is poised to make major gains in the midterm elections and possibly take back the House.

Despite the nonstop chorus of “nos” to the Obama administration’s initiatives and legislation, the GOP has managed to maintain some degree of respectability among a wide body of conservative and moderate Republican voters. It has even grabbed support from centrist independents who oppose Obama’s and the Democrats’ health care, stimulus, and tax proposals.

Pushing Breitbart to the top of a major GOP event blows the party’s façade of respectability to smithereens.

Even before his vile hatchet job on Shirley Sherrod, Breitbart had managed to turn his online mini-empire, biggovernment.com, into the Bible of old-fashioned, dirty-tricks cheerleading and agitation against Democrats, progressive activists and minorities. Despite full exposure of the Sherrod tape as a fraud and fabrication, Breitbart still kept the lying, doctored tape on his website.

This is much more than the garden-variety GOP ranting at Obama and Democrats on legitimate policy issues. Breitbart is a direct throwback to the Nixonian operatives and escapades of the early 1970s that brought disgrace on the White House and the GOP.

The party spent the next decade trying to rid itself of the stigma of those years. Yet it’s a history that Steele and the RNC will embrace if Breitbart headlines their show. Steele can prove that he rejects that history by rescinding the invitation. Will he?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles. Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Fox News, and the gaggle of rightside bloggers, and assorted tea party activists were delirous when they dug up an old tape of Shirley Sherrod. The Agriculture Department’s director of rural development in Georgia was supposedly getting caught with her racism hanging down.

The tape was of a speech Sherrod made at a local NAACP banquet on March 27. Her alleged racist sin was that she admitted that she did less to help a needy white farmer than she could—it happened 20 years earlier.

The cause of the right wing’s delirium was two-fold. They could now joyously shout “gotcha” at the NAACP, black Democrats and civil rights leaders that have relentlessly pounded the Tea Party and conservatives for saying and doing nothing about the racists in their midst. They got even greater joy and satisfaction from Sherrod’s plight since this gave them a chance to rant that this is proof that there’s a double standard among blacks when it comes to dealing with race. Put simply, blacks are quick on the trigger to rail at whites for any perceived racial transgression, but are stone silent, or secretly or openly condone, even revel in racial bigotry, against whites.

Any way you look at the race issue, this is baloney. Start with Sherrod and what she actually said and did. She didn’t resort to the stock code words, misdirection, feints, or dodges that GOP and Tea Party has honed to a fine art for decades to stoke white fears and bigotry. She spoke at a public forum, and in what sounded more self-confessional, than boast, took herself to task for her own racial favoritism. “I learned about myself and how far we still have to go.”

Sherrod said much more in her talk than what was quoted, and that was to make clear that her’s was a personal teaching moment, an epiphany. For her it was a humbling lesson on how bigotry can corrupt and damn anyone, even someone who herself has been the target of bigotry. Sherrod has certainly dealt with that bigotry first hand in the blatant and shameless treatment of black farmers. The issue was partially resolved this past February when the Obama administration announced it agreed to a $1.25 billion settlement to resolve charges by thousands of black farmers that the Agriculture Department discriminated against them in loan programs for decades. The racist treatment of black farmers was not the act of one local official in one state.

This was the systematic, and deliberate racial targeting of black farmers by the official government agency charged with administering loans and programs for farmers. Thousands of black farmers lost their farms and land as a result of the officially sanctioned discriminatory lending practices.

The settlement didn’t end the outrage. Congress had to approve the settlement by the end of March, 2010. It cavalierly left for Spring break before approving the settlement at the time.

Sherrod’s full speech which might have provided more insight into why she did what she did and how she learned from her act was nowhere to be heard in the self-serving, edited version that Fox News broadcasted. A humiliated and embarrassed Sherrod promptly offered her resignation. It was accepted by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

NAACP president Ben Jealous quickly issued a statement applauding Sherrod’s resignation. But just as quickly the NAACP realized it was “snookered” by Fox News  and the right-wing echo chamber on Sherrod’s alleged racial sin and wisely reversed its initial position applauding her resignation. Now Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack should do the same and immediately reinstate Sherrod.

Sherrod had a double misfortune. Not only was she targeted by conservatives for ouster. She was used by them as a pawn to hit back at the NAACP and civil rights organizations that have rightly put much heat to the GOP and Tea Party activists for their very real racism and perpetual race card play.

The Sherrod debacle should be more than a teachable moment for a government official and a wronged employee. It is yet another object lesson of how organized, agenda driven, right-wing ideologues can bully, badger, intimidate and ultimately frighten government officials into violating all precepts of fairness, due process, and just good common sense, and rush to racial judgment about a black official.

Sherrod‘s action against the white farmer, of course, was indefensible, and she was the first to admit it. But it was the regrettable act of one person, one place, one time. This hardly rises to the level of an institutional racial high crime and misdemeanor. The same can’t be said about the GOP and the Tea Party, who have yet to pay the same price for their bigotry.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally-broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.

Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

India West, News Report, Sunita Sohrabji

Time magazine issued an apology last week for a July 2 op-ed piece by writer Joel Stein, which lampooned Indian culture in Edison, New Jersey.

“We sincerely regret that any of our readers were upset by this humor column of Joel Stein’s. It was in no way intended to cause offense,” said the magazine in a statement in the July 9 issue.

Lamenting the changing color of his hometown in a piece entitled, “My Own Private India,” Stein wrote: “For a while, we assumed that all Indians were geniuses. Then in the 1980s, the doctors and engineers brought over their merchant cousins and we were no longer so sure about the genius thing. In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so poor.”

Stein parodied the “Dot Buster” attacks of the late 1980s in which Indians were attacked by youth gangs. Bank manager Navroze Mody died in such an attack in 1987.

“In retrospect, I question just how good our schools were if ‘dot heads’ was the best racist insult we could come up with for a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose.”

Stein ended the piece by terming the new breed of young Indians in Edison “Guindians,” noting that they resembled “Italian Guidos” with their gold chains, gelled hair and unbuttoned shirts.

“Their assimilation is so wonderfully American that if the Statue of Liberty could shed a tear, she would. Because of the amount of cologne they wear,” ended Stein.

Several Indian American organizations immediately issued statements condemning Stein’s piece. Deepa Iyer, executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together, wrote to Stein directly, saying: “While the intention of the piece may have been satire, the actual content and its impact perpetuate the xenophobic sentiments that community members in the state have long endured.”

“The column’s reliance on rhetoric that is used all too often to isolate or scapegoat immigrants demeans the invaluable contributions that South Asians have made to the cultural, social and economic landscape of Edison, New Jersey,” she said.

Iyer noted last month’s fatal attack on New Jersey resident Divyendu Sinha, who was brutally beaten near his home by a group of juveniles.

SAALT requested a meeting with Time magazine’s editors and noted that more than 1,300 people had signed an online petition condemning Stein’s article.

Actor Kal Penn, who served for a year with the Obama administration, took aim at Stein’s piece in the Huffington Post.

“Growing up a few miles from Edison, I always thought it was hilarious when I’d get the crap kicked out of me by kids like Stein who would yell ‘go back to India, dothead,’” wrote Penn.

“Critics might call Mr. Stein’s humor super-tired or as played out as the jokes about that cheap Jewish car that stopped on a dime to pick it up, or that African American kid who got marked absent at night school. Unlike Stein’s piece, in 2010 those other jokes don’t show up in mainstream media like Time magazine,” wrote Penn.

Stein also apologized in the July 9 issue. “I feel truly stomach-sick that I hurt so many people,” he said. “I was trying to explain how, as someone who believes that immigration has enriched American life and my hometown in particular, I was shocked that I could feel a bit uncomfortable with my changing town.”

“If we could understand that reaction, we’d be better equipped to debate people on the other side of the immigration issue,” said Stein.

LOS ANGELES — An editorial in La Opinión argues that the same shortsightedness that was applied to the immigration issue with bill SB 1070 is now moving into the classroom and curriculum.

This week Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill, HB 2281, banning ethnic studies from schools, considering them divisive and promoting resentment. Editors write that it is “unfortunate that Arizona authorities confuse self-esteem of minority youth with resentment.” Ethnic studies in the Tucson Unified School District, the editorial argues, teach history and literature. According to specialists, students perform better when they see people like themselves in their academic materials.

“It is unacceptable to remain silent in the face of measures that harm Latinos and minorities in Arizona,” editors write. “Arizona conservatives want to recreate the present and the past in idealistic terms that never existed, except in their own minds.”

New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez,

TUCSON HIGH SCHOOL: As I prepare to speak to an innovative class here about indigenous philosophies, the students begin their class in the following manner:

In Lak Ech – Tu eres mi otro yo – You are my other self. I am you and you are me. If I hurt you, I hurt myself. If I hate you, I hate myself. If I love and respect you, I love and respect myself.

Students here, part of the Tucson Unified School District’s highly successful Mexican American Studies (MAS) K-12 program, the largest in the nation, are taught this and other indigenous concepts, including how to measure time by the Aztec and Mayan calendars. Not coincidentally, academically, MAS students -– many of whom were doing poorly prior to entering this program -– consistently outperform their peers. It is virtually a college-bound factory.

But in the state capital, Phoenix: Arizona’s state superintendent of schools Tom Horne has just engineered the passage of a new draconian state law, HB 2281, that would eliminate all funding for ethnic studies programs.

Five hundred and eighteen years after Columbus initiated the theft of a continent, Horne, the state’s would-be governor, is using the passage of HB 2281, to perpetuate the notion that indigenous peoples and indigenous knowledge remain outside of western civilization.

This is the same state that recently passed the racial profiling SB 1070 law; the primary targets would be Mexicans and Central Americans with indigenous features, suspected of being “illegal aliens.”


Despite the success of the MAS program, Horne has long expressed the view that the only things that should be taught in Arizona schools are lessons that originate in western or Greco-Roman civilization. While his bill affects the whole state, his primary target has long been Tucson’s program.

Through the bill, Horne mischaracterizes the program by claiming that its teachers preach hate, segregation, anti-Americanism and the violent overthrow of the government. The bill sets up an inquisitorial mechanism that will monitor books and curricula. Horne has been especially critical of Rudy Acuña’s “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos” and Paolo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”

This is not the only effort to punish indigenous peoples in Arizona’s educational system. Separately, the Arizona Department of Education has banned teachers with heavy accents from teaching English classes.

Welcome to Apartheid Arizona.

Tucson federal courthouse: Like clockwork, at 1:30 p.m., 70 short, brown men (and sometimes a few women) occupy the left side of the courtroom, shackled at the ankles, the waist, and the wrists. Within one hour, they are charged, tried and convicted en masse of being illegally present in the United States. After being dehumanized, they are then paraded out of the courtroom. Most have either served or are sentenced to the private detention facility, operated by the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA). This drama unfolds every day here except Saturday and Sunday, every week of the year.

Welcome to Operation Streamline. Its goal is to criminalize every migrant that steps into this kangaroo court, while enriching CCA to the tune of $15 million per month.

Southside Tucson: Several days before the state legislature passes SB 1070, a massive raid involving 800 military-clad U.S. federal agents swoops into this primarily Mexican-indigenous community, occupying and terrorizing its residents, all for the purpose of arresting 48 suspects in a human smuggling operation.

Maricopa County: While Sheriff Joe Arpaio denies a racial motivation, over the weekend, he showcases his 15th major “crime sweep” since early 2008 in Phoenix. The sweeps -– which target Mexican-indigenous communities -– may have actually backfired. They provide a glimpse to the world of how the entire state and nation could look like if SB 1070 is affirmed. To conduct these sweeps, Arpaio utilizes the state’s anti-human smuggling law, accusing migrants of being accomplices in their own smuggling. Such a use of the law smacks of official kidnapping and terror.

While there were undoubtedly many Arpaios in South Africa during the apartheid era, there were no Operation Streamlines there. Kangaroo courts yes, but not daily one-hour mass-show trials.

The Arizona-Mexico border: In the realm of violence, Arizona is no South Africa, but we do have our own killing fields. For the past dozen years, some 5,000 migrants have been found dead in the inhospitable desert; medical reports confirm that many have died due to violence, including blunt trauma to the head. That many thousands of migrants are funneled through the desert annually has long been official policy of U.S. immigration officials. Under international law, at best, this could be construed as negligent homicide.

Washington, D.C.: Ironically, in response to these draconian laws and measures, even Democrats have been cowed into pushing for more apartheid measures –walls, more agents and the further militarization of the border — as a solution.

Just solutions for the problems listed here require calling for international agreements that place human beings at the center, without losing their citizenship, culture, rights or their humanity.

Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com

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