Today's Stories

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

July 9, 2009

Ronnie Cummings
How Industry Giants are Undermining the Organic Foods Movement

Jonathan Cook
Two-State Solution, Israeli-Style

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Destablization, Inc.: Otto Reich and the International Republican Institute

James Bovard
McNamara's Other Body Count

Norman Solomon Afghanistan: the Escalation Scam

Allan Nairn
Indonesia Gets to Pick Its Killer

Andy Worthington
Revamping the Military Commissions

Tomas Borge
The Sadsack Soldiers of Honduras

Nadia Hijab
Palestinian Titanic

Paul Krassner
How Jeff Goldblum Didn't Die

Website of the Day
Dave Lindorff Wants Your Money--Will Give Good Reports

July 8, 2009

Saul Landau
In Amazonia

Dean Baker
The Green Shoots are Dead: Why the Economy Needs a Third Stimulus

Winslow T. Wheeler
Gates, Congress and the F-22

Eric Walberg
Obama in Russia

Ray McGovern
Is Texas Harboring a Torture Decider?

David Rosen
When Sadism Goes Systematic: Prison Rape as Policy

Dr. Mona El Farra
Gaza From a Distance

Ron Jacobs
McNamara and the Post: When Idiocy and Hubris Merge

Benjamin Dangl
High Stakes in Honduras

Alan Farago
How I Almost Pitched McNamara Into the Sea

Website of the Day
Ayatollah So

July 7, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
McNamara: From the Tokyo Firestorm to the World Bank

Uri Avnery
Israeli Court Rebukes Military

Brian M. Downing
Crossing the Helmand

Gary Leupp
Biden, Israel and Iran

Gregory A. Burris
My Brush With Homeland Security

David Macaray
When in Doubt, Blame a Labor Union

Laura Flanders
Obama Hushes Health Care Advocates

Alan Farago
Princple Over Principal

Greg Moses
Texas Patels Take Over Dallas Bank

Dan Bacher
Three Big Lies About the Peripheral Canal

Website of the Day
Tragedy at Toncontin

July 6, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Hussein's FBI Interviews

Diana Johnstone
Zionist Fanatics Practice Serial Vandalism in Paris

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Coup to Venezuelan Coup: Same Old Globalizers and Torture School Grads

Gary Leupp
Operation Khanjar Begins

Jonathan Cook
Israel Calls on Ultra-Orthodox Jews to Stop "Arab Takeover"

Tim Wise
Of Fireworks and False Memories

Franklin Lamb
Cynthia McKinney and the Kidnapping of the Spirit of Humanity

Charles R. Larson
Sarah Palin, Plain and Tall

Carlos Benemann
California's Bingo Bondage: Getting Paid in IOUs

Shepherd Bliss
The Soulless Machine: Caught in the Cellphone Snare

Jerry Kroth
Stuart Levey and World War III

Karyn Strickler
A Fell-Swoop Moment Missed

Website of the Day
The Rise in Military-Backed Public Schools

July 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Gob Smacked

Eamonn Fingleton
Detroit's Collapse: the Untold Story

Jeffrey St. Clair
Is the Bald Eagle Really Back?

Mike Whitney
Running on Empty

Pam Martens
The Parable of Michael Jackson's Debts

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Counter-Revolution Will Not be Tweeted

Paul Craig Roberts
The Big Whorehouse on the Potomac

Patrick Cockburn
The Haggling Over Iraqi Oil

Anthony DiMaggio
A Perilous Path: Iraq and the Language of De-Escalation

Roger Burbach
Honduran Coup: Target Left?

John Ross
Left's Grip on Mexico City Slips

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet Jim Demint: Coup Apologist

Gareth Porter
The Iran Canard

Andy Worthington
Finally, a Trial Date in the African Embassy Bombings Case

Saul Landau
Bad Times, Worse Habits

David Macaray
How We Spend Our Money

Adam Federman
The Recovery That Wasn't

Jane Slaughter Labor's Vague Rally for Health Care

Russell Mokhiber Black Caucus Muzzled on Israeli Kidnapping of McKinney

Robert Jensen
Beyond Independence

Robert Bryce
Hey, Paul Krugman, Here are 2.4 Billion More Climate Traitors

Belén Fernandez
The Situation in Honduras

Missy Comley Beattie
Would Jesus Pack Heat?

C. G. Estabrook
La Cina e Vicina

Stephen Martin
The Fog of Economic War

Charles R. Larson
Adichie on Her Own

Lorenzo Wolff
A Voice Like a Newsreel: the Soul of James Carr and the Civil Rights Movement

Kim Nicolini
The System That Hijacked New York

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Kazak and Stadler

Website of the Weekend
Paul Krassner v. Larry King

July 2, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Wall Street White House

Nikolas Kozloff
Spinning the Honduran Coup

Wendell Potter
Obama's False Friends of Health Care Reform

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California's Empty Wallet

Christian Christensen Iran: Networked Dissent?

Patrick Irelan
Lost in Patagonia

Binoy Kampmark Returning Iraq

Nicola Nasser
Ethnic Cleansing as State Policy

Brian Tokar
Climate Bill: Cap(italize) and Trade(Off)

Dan Bacher
Panama Canal North?

Website of the Day
Scheuer on Immigration: "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States."

July 1, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Iran and Us

Alberto Vallente Thorensen
Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal

Paul Craig Roberts
Pirates of the Mediterranean

Robert Weissman
150 Years

Manuel García, Jr.
The New Crisis in Aviation

Victor Figueroa-Clark / Pablo Navarrete
Honduras, a Coup With No Future

Norman Solomon
The NYT and Troop Deaths: Abstract Quality Journalism

Franklin Lamb
Remembering Amnon Kapeliouk

Martha Rosenberg
When Doctors Boo

Diane Rejman
Mothers and Military Lies

Website of the Day
The Color of the Race Problem is White

June 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Debt Deflation Arrives

Esam Al-Amin
Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand

Benjamin Dangl
Showdown in Honduras

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Doctors Collude in Torture

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah After the Elections

George Wuerthner
Beetle Hysteria ... Again: the Truth About Bugs, Fires and Ecosystems

Todd Gordon
Acceptable Versus Unacceptable Repression

Ron Jacobs
Mark Sanford, Sexual Liberation and LGBT Equality

Kenneth Libby
Conditions for Citizenship

Julian Vigo
Feeling Michael Jackson

Website of the Day
Inside the Mega-Churches

June 29, 2009

Ishmael Reed
The Persecution of Michael Jackson

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup in Honduras: Obama's Real Message to Latin America?

Clifton Ross
Coups and Constitutions: From Bolivia to Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Why Iraq is Now the Most Corrupt Country on the Planet

Uri Avnery
Between Tel Aviv and Tehran

Conn Hallinan
Dealing With North Korea: Why Threats and Sanctions Will Backfire

James G. Abourezk
Where the Money Isn't Going

Ralph Nader
The Holes in Obama's Financial Regulation Plan

Carol Miller
Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Love Medicare-for-All

Greg Moses
Jobs First

Website of the Day
Key Leaders of Honduran Coup Trained in the US

June 26-28, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Hate Crimes Bill: How Not to Remember Matthew Shepard

Jeffrey St. Clair
Meet the Retreads: Obama's Used Green Team

Doug Peacock
Elk River: History and the Yellowstone

Daniel Wolff
The Night Before: a Glimpse of the Lenape

Mike Whitney
What the Big Banks Have Won

John Ross
The New York Times and Stolen Elections

David Rosen
Cry, Hypocrite, Cry: the Tradition of Sex Scandals and American Politicians

Emily Ratner
Thoughts on Manhood From the Rafah Tunnel

Gareth Porter
Airstrike Report Belies "Blame Taliban" Line

Farid Marjai
Green, But Not Velvet

Nadia Hijab
The Rift in Iran: Memo to the "Do Something" Brigade

Paul Craig Roberts
Gun Control: What's the Agenda?

Fred Gardner
FDR's Real Defining Moment: Ending Prohibition

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Father's Day

Paul Watson
Fear and Loathing in Madeira

David Ker Thomson
Nothing

Farzana Versey
The Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson as Tramp

Geoff Berne
Obama and Charter Schools: The Showdown at Schottenstein

Todd Alan Price
Ohio: Birthplace of Charter Education ... and Opposition to It

Ramzy Baroud
People for Sale in a Hungry World

Jeff Sher
Health Care Showdown

Dr. Carol Paris Despite My Arrest by Max Baucus, I Will Continue to Advocate for Quality Health Care for All

Walter Brasch Adultery as Family Value?

Glen Johnson
The Village and the Wall

Charlotte Laws
Hold the MSG!

Charles R. Larson
Dickens in Morocco, Sort Of

Kim Nicolini
The Erasure of Art

David Yearsley
Yankee Prof Takes on Dallas

Lorenzo Wolff
When the Songs Remain the Same

Poets' Basement
Larson, Davies, McLellan and Gardner

Website of the Weekend
Kayakers vs. Shell Oil

June 25, 2009

Kathy Kelly
Now We See You, Now We Don't

Jack Bratich
You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War: the Media and the Iranian Protests

Wendell Potter
The Health Insurance Industry v. Health Care Reform: a Former Insurance Industry Insider Tells All

Charles R. Larson
Don't Cry for Him, Argentina! GOP Sex Scandal of the Week

Alan Farago
The Tears of Mark Sanford

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Firms Accused of Profiting Off Holocaust

Gareth Porter
Khobar Bombings: Telltale Signs of Saudi Fraud

Bitta Mostofi /
Bill Quigley
"You Will Not Get Past Us"

David Macaray
Six Ways to Reinvigorate Labor

Mark Schuller
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard"

Website of the Day
Worst Slide Story

June 24, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One

Dean Baker
Making Financial Regulation Work

Andy Worthington
The Story of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco

James Bovard
Obama and the Torturers

Diana Gibson /
Ray McGovern
Torture Eats the Soul

P. Sainath
The Age of the Everyday Billionaire

Gareth Porter
Investigating the Khobar Tower Bombing: Why Was Al Qaeda Excluded From the Suspects List?

Robert Alvarez
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross

Dave Lindorff
Medicare for All

Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi

Website of the Day
Protest as Terrorism

June 23, 2009

David Price
Obama's Classroom Spies

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reels Toward a New Era

James Ridgeway /
Jean Casella
Bi-Partisan Bull on Health Care: Three Ex-Senators Get It Up for the Health Care Industry

Dave Lindorff
Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Puerto Rico: Biotech Island

Gary Leupp
Dennis Ross Moves to the White House

Brian M. Downing
The Erosion of the Mullahs' Monolith

Robert Bryce
Are Theocracies Doomed?

Nicholas Dearden
The G8 is Dead

Yousef Munayyer
Seeing Through Israeli Delay Tactics

Website of the Day
The Great White Father of America

June 22, 2009

Michael Hudson
Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? A Hard Look at the Numbers

Chris Floyd
Dexter's Legions in Afghanistan

Jack Z. Bratich
The Fog Machine: Iran, Social Networks and Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

Atash Yaghmaian
We Children of the Revolution

Laura Carlsen
Victory in the Amazon

Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran

Vijay Prashad
Gun v. Butter: Now You are Only Poor

Fred Gardner
Charles Lynch Gets a Year and a Day (No Thanks to Eric Holder)

Andy Thayer
The Blank Check: How We Got the Obama-DOMA Debacle

David Macaray
Unions and the Newspaper Crisis

Website of the Day
The Most Spied Upon Town in America?

June 19 - 21, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
I Become an American

Jeffrey St. Clair
Firebrand: Rod Coronado's Flame War

Patrick Cockburn
Who Will Control Iraq's Oil?

Al Giordano
What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

Henry A. Giroux
The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media

Anthony DiMaggio
The Electoral Façade

Paul Craig Roberts
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"

John Ross
46 Dead Mexican Toddlers: Sacrificed on the Altar of Neoliberalism

Gareth Porter
Spinning Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Bix Fix: Placating the Bankers, Again

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
40 Years After Stonewall: From Smash the Church to Going to the Chapel

Joe Bageant
Workers' Rights: No Balls, No Gains

Serge Halimi
Protectionism: We've Been Here Before

P. Sainath
Price of Rice, Price of Power in India

Jim Goodman
The Claim Deniers: Why the Health Insurance Industry Doesn't Deserve Our Trust

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Health Care Waterloo

Rannie Amiri
Bush Jumps Over Maine, Carter Lands in Gaza

Robert Fantina
Iran, Obama and McCain

Harvey Wasserman
Big Nuke's Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Walter Brasch
They Got Away With Murder: 12 Angry White People

David Ker Thomson
This Moment's Bill of Rights

Charles R. Larson
No Voice: Telling Her Mother's Story

David Yearsley
Escape From the Torture Chamber

Kim Nicolini
When the Closet is the Culprit

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini and the Art of Ambiguity

Poets' Basement
Beatty and Kowitt

Website of the Weekend
Grown in Yellowstone, Slaughtered in Montana

July 13, 2009

Private Clubs, Public Prejudice and Racism 2.0

Off the Deep End

By TIM WISE

On the one hand, racism is so deeply embedded in the history and structure of the United States, that it shouldn't be particularly surprising when a story emerges, indicating that indeed, said racism has bubbled to the surface yet again.

But on the other hand, sometimes a story finds its way into the public realm, which is of such a profoundly disturbing nature, that you can't help but do a double-take: the kind of story that makes you go, huh? What the hell did I just read? Like for sure you must have seen that headline wrong. Like you must have been teleported back in time fifty years or more, to a period when folks didn't even feel the need to pretend they were racially enlightened. Like you must be hallucinating, or perhaps this is a satire you're reading, maybe something from The Onion? And then you realize, nope, it's for real.

And so it was yesterday, when a swim club on the outskirts of Philadelphia made the news after expelling from their pool a summer camp group of approximately sixty kids of color from the city. Not because they had done anything wrong--no bad behavior, no inappropriate conduct, nothing like that, as they had just arrived and most of the children hadn't even had a chance to enter the pool yet--and not because they had crashed the private environs uninvited (the camp had paid over $1900 for the right to swim there once a week), but because, as club president, John Duesler explained in a letter: the kids would "change the complexion and atmosphere" of the club. Got that? The complexion.

Of course, Duesler, about whom I'll have more to say in a minute, insists that the decision wasn't racial. Yet several of the youth denied access to the pool overheard a white club member openly complaining about the arrival of the "black kids," and all but a few of the white children swimming when they arrived were yanked from the pool by their parents, in a move reminiscent of the 1950s, suggesting that the club's racism is not some inanimate institutional force, but a lived reality for many of its white members as well. One woman at the club, for instance, fretted openly that the black kids might "do something" to her child. Of course, because that's what fifth graders from the 'hood do: they roll out to the 'burbs, pretending to be interested in swimming, when really, the plan is to find some white kids and cut 'em the hell up, in some kinda pee-wee gang initiation ritual. Of course.

That the expulsion was racial is beyond dispute, or at least should be. The club knew how many kids were going to be there when they accepted the membership fee, so they can't claim they were overwhelmed by the size of the group, although they seem to be offering that as their excuse now that the story has gone public. And this excuse is one they offer, despite the fact that a mere twelve days before they expelled the black kids, the same club, in the same pool, hosted nearly 80 children (78 of whom were white), from four 6th grade classes from a local school. Apparently white children, even when they are part of a group that is almost one-third larger, magically don't take up as much space.

Sadly, to read the comments left underneath the story at the Philly area NBC affiliate's webpage, which was first to break the news, leaves one with the distinct impression that for a lot of white folks, there is no need for the club to devise a cover story. Rather, a disturbing number of white posters seem positively exultant that these children--who had done nothing wrong except, apparently, to be born and to live in North Philadelphia--were booted from the club.

To wit, among these postings, one finds regular and repeated reference to the "animals" from the city, others who claim that blacks don't care for their own neighborhoods, and so, presumably, a group of black children shouldn't be let into a white one, and comments to the effect that if blacks want to be respected (and not discriminated against) they must first "clean up their act." In other words, whites are entitled to view all black people, even 8 year olds, through the lens of presumed group pathology, all because some in the black community engage in undesirable behavior. By which logic, of course, we should also presume that all whites are corporate criminals, because of the actions of Ken Lay, or Bernie Madoff, or the Savings and Loan bandits from the 80s.

Or perhaps that all white men should be presumed serial killers because of Manson, Bundy, Gacy, or dozens of others, or pederasts, like the sick-ass high ranking staffer at Duke University who was advertising for people to come and rape his 5-year old adopted black child, as he had already done repeatedly.

Perhaps it would be fair to think all whites to be semi-illiterate, because of, say, George W. Bush, or Sarah Palin, or to insinuate that white boys are all sociopathic animal mutilators because, as with a recent case in South Florida, most of the whack jobs who butcher kittens end up being, well, ya know, white boys. Or perhaps that whites are inherently predisposed to cannibalism or that white females should be banned from teaching because of the threat they pose to their students: after all, well over a hundred white female teachers have been busted for preying upon underage kids in recent years, and indeed the perps have been white in over 93 percent of all known cases.

But of course, none of those who would defend their racism in the swim club case--and who would assure us it is "rational" to fear black kids--would find any of the above examples nearly as logical. This, despite the statistical and anecdotal evidence that could be brought to bear in each case to make sense of crass generalizations in those instances too. No, they reserve their "rational discrimination" for the dark-skinned. Indeed, to read their messages is to see racism in the raw. The kind of thing so many pundits have assured us is no longer a problem in America, now that we've entered the "post-racial" era of Barack Obama.

Oh, and speaking of which, here's the kicker: remember the above-mentioned club President? The one concerned about how the black kids might change the complexion of the place? John Duesler? Yeah, well, turns out, Duesler is no knuckle-dragging right winger. He's no Klansman. Actually, he was a supporter of President Obama, and helped coordinate a blood drive in town to celebrate the Presidential inauguration. Even worse, he's the chairman of Peace-Action Philadelphia: a collection of presumably progressive and even leftist types. This is what I speak of as Racism 2.0 in my book, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama: the kind of racism that allows some whites to vote for Obama, and to carve out exceptions for those black and brown folks who make us comfortable, but to maintain fundamentally hostile views towards the larger communities of color from which these exceptions come. In other words, the kind of racism that says, black folks are fine, so long as they went to Harvard Law, speak a certain way, dress a certain way, and pander to our tastes. But for the rest of y'all, oh hell no.

In light of this latest incident, let me make the following points, and let me make them in the clearest terms possible:

1. I bet'not hear one more Northerner lecture me, ever about the South again. We know perfectly well our history down here. 'Bout time you get clear on yours. This wasn't Philadelphia, Mississippi partner, it was the city of brotherly-frickin'-love, so you and Rocky had best go figure it out, while the rest of us watch for a while. And for y'all in Boston, and Bensonhurst, and Greenwich-damn-Village, feel free to join in. Let us know what you learn about yourself. We got phones down here now, and even, occasionally, internet access, so give us a holler when you come up with something noteworthy.

2. I bet'not hear one more white liberal act like racism is the province of the right. Yes, racism itself is a decidedly reactionary philosophy, but it's one that has long been embedded in the white psyche, and white folks' worldview. As Joe Feagin explains in his newest book, the white racial frame has long influenced how white Americans, irrespective of broader political views, view black and brown folks, and this latest incident only demonstrates that with a vengeance. It is the white racial frame that frames, pun very much intended, blacks--even children--as pathological, socially dysfunctional, likely to misbehave, and unworthy of the opportunities enjoyed by whites. It is the white racial frame that serves to rationalize every injustice done to persons of color, no matter how blatant.

And is that white racial frame which must be thoroughly challenged, exploded, destroyed, eradicated, before this nation can ever hope to achieve racial equity, or even the most rudimentary levels of social justice. So for those nice white liberals who thought voting for Barack Obama was gonna be their get-out-of-jail-free card the next time somebody brought up the subject of racism--sorta like a modern day version of "some of my best friends are black"--think again.

Oh, and finally, for those who insist on changing the subject with regard to this pool story, and insisting that "well, ya know, it is a private club and so they can do whatever they want," you miss the point, and miss it quite badly. First, if a private club advertises memberships to the public, as the Valley Club did, there is an open question as to just how private it actually is. It may indeed be far less so than many claim, and may be bound by civil rights laws just as surely as a municipally owned facility would be. But more to the point, it doesn't matter. This is not an issue about the right of the club to be racist. It is a question about whether it is right for them to be such. One may have the right to do lots of things. I have the right to stand on a corner and shout racial slurs at passersby of color, I suppose. I have a right to publish hate literature. I have a right to join the Klan. In short, I have a "right" to be as racist as I wanna be. But if I decide to do any of those things, you have the right, and more--the obligation--to call me an asshole. And a racist asshole at that. And to make my life miserable.

So let us exercise our rights, and do just that to the folks at The Valley Club. You can reach them via e-mail at: info@thevalleyclub.com. Or you can call them at: 215-947-0700. Their voice mail was full last time I checked (for reasons I think I can imagine), but at some point they'll clear it out, at which point we should fill it up again. Or, if you're white and feeling really creative, perhaps you can pay for a temporary membership and then go swimming. Just make sure to drink a lot of water before you go, and all go together. And then get in the pool, and then, well, I think you know the rest. It would be the world's first piss-in,* and it would serve them right.

* I cannot take credit for the piss-in idea. This concept is borrowed, lovingly, from long-time social justice and antiracist activist/educator, Sharon Martinas, to whom all praise is due for her creativity and sense of humor in the face of injustice: a critical virtue in difficult times.

Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005) and "Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama." He can be reached at:timjwise@mac.com.

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