Will Today’s Hispanics Be Tomorrow’s Whites?

Hispanics White

The Article: Will Today’s Hispanics Be Tomorrow’s Whites? by Jamelle Bouie in Slate.

The Text: The Trayvon Martin shooting was hardly in the national consciousness before fault lines emerged around the case. Was Martin as innocent as he seemed? Did Zimmerman fear for his life? Did Martin provoke the incident? Was Zimmerman a racist?

Perhaps most controversial among all of these was the question of identity. Yes, Trayvon Martin was black, but is Zimmerman white? For Martin’s sympathizers, the answer was yes. For Zimmerman’s, the answers ranged from “it doesn’t matter” to he “is actually a Hispanic nonracist person who acted in self-defense.”

In their early reports on the case, both CNN and the New York Times labeled him “white Hispanic,” sparking thunderous condemnation from right-wing critics. At Fox News, contributor Bernard Goldberg accused the Times of race-baiting. “I guarantee you that if George Zimmerman did something good—if he finished first in his high school graduating class when he was younger—they wouldn’t refer to him as a white Hispanic, he’d just be a Hispanic,” he wrote. Likewise, National Review’s Jonah Goldberg blasted several news outlets for “playing the race card” with the term. And in typical paranoid style, Breitbart’s Ben Shapiro accused CNN of “labeling Zimmerman a ‘white Hispanic’ in order to maintain the false narrative that the killing was race-based.”

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Noam Chomsky On Activism And Solidarity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzgpqyLlQBw

Before such monied interests, many think that activist and solidarity movements are limited in their potential. Here are Chomsky’s thoughts on the matter.

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Congratulations, Joe Biden!

Biden

Don’t get too cocky; Cheney might offer to take you quail hunting.

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To Mike Huckabee, Parts Of North Korea Are “More Free” Than The US

Mike Huckabee

The Article: Mike Huckabee: North Korea Sometimes Has ‘More Freedom’ Than The US by Paul Zsoldra in Yahoo! Finance.

The Text: Speaking at the conservative “Freedom Summit” in New Hampshire on Saturday, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he’s beginning to believe that there’s “more freedom in North Korea sometimes than there is in the United States.”

The quote — which the audience did not laugh at and didn’t appear to be a joke — was in reference to TSA patdowns and security procedures at the airport.

“When I go to the airport, I have to get in the surrender position,” Huckabee said while holding up his hands. “People put hands all over me. And I have to provide photo ID in a couple of different forms and prove that I really am not going to terrorize the airplane.”

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Five Myths About Africa…Debunked

Watch and learn, folks. Our ideas–founded or not–about the continent can be self-fulfilling.

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