Afro-Netizen

Troy Davis: A Death Row Inmate’s Chance to Prove his Innocence

By Benjamin Todd Jealous

Courtesy of NAACP.org

On Wednesday the saga of death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis will begin its last chapter. In an extremely rare ruling last summer, the United States Supreme Court ordered a federal judge in Georgia to grant Troy an evidentiary hearing to prove his innocence.

The ruling is unusual in that the Supreme Court has not granted this writ of habeas corpus in more than 50 years. Their decision is a strong indication that they are concerned about the constitutionality of executing the innocent — as am I.

Although much work still must be done in our justice system to ensure the innocent do not pay the price of the guilty, the granting of this evidentiary hearing is a major step for Troy Davis and for many other likely innocent prisoners sitting on death row; Troy Davis will have an opportunity to tell his side of the story and new evidence will be considered in this nearly 20-year-old case.

The hearing will allow the testimony of witnesses who have recanted or contradicted their original eyewitness testimonies to be heard and examined in a court of law. At long last, the courts will hear critical testimony that they were prevented from hearing in the original trial.

Troy’s journey to death row began in the summer of 1989, when he was arrested in connection with the killing of an off-duty police officer outside a Burger King restaurant in Savannah, Georgia. Two years later he was convicted and sentenced to death for a crime many believe he did not commit.

I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Davis almost a year ago, and I was convinced of his innocence. My sense of his innocence is impressionistic, but a close examination of the case indicates there was no physical evidence that tied him to the crime, no weapon was ever recovered and seven of the nine eyewitnesses have recanted or changed their original testimony in sworn affidavits, citing alleged police coercion.

One of the witnesses, a teenager, said the police threatened to hold him as an accessory to murder, warning that he would “go to jail for a long time” and would be lucky to ever get out because a police officer had been killed.

Since that trial, several members of the jury have delivered sworn statements to the court, indicating that their decision was based on incomplete and unreliable evidence. Given the murky timeline of the events in the dead of night, eyewitnesses who changed their stories, the pressure placed on the Savannah police department to promptly arrest and convict a “cop killer,” and the alleged coercion of witnesses, it is easy to understand why some jurors have admitted their uncertainty.

For nearly twenty years, Mr. Davis’s life has hung in the balance. Despite the prevalence of evidence and thousands of people rallying to save him from execution, including the NAACP, Amnesty International, former President Jimmy Carter, actor/activist Danny Glover, former FBI director William Sessions and conservative Congressman Bob Barr, the courts stubbornly refused to hear Davis’s claims of innocence…until now.

It is the unjust reality of the death penalty that in our nation that there are more than 3,300 people withering on our nation’s death rows, men and women who are almost universally poor, disproportionately African-American and in some cases innocent. Since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, 138 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. Executing an innocent person is a mistake that cannot be rectified.

We still have a long way to go before Troy has a chance at life off death row. The standard of proof in the evidentiary hearing turns our criminal justice system on its head. Mr. Davis will be expected to prove his innocence rather than for the state to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This is especially challenging given that the crime happened more than 20 years ago and there is no physical evidence, such as DNA.

The Troy Davis case is the most compelling case of innocence in decades and on June 23, 2010, I will join leaders from NAACP, Amnesty International and other faith and community organizations in Savannah, Georgia, lending our support to Troy and his family and offering prayers for a favorable outcome at the hearing. We continue to work tirelessly on behalf of Troy and the MacPhail family to bring the real killer of Officer Mark Allen MacPhail to justice and to bring closure to both families.

Whatever the outcome of the hearing, we will be in the trenches, knocking on doors and holding prayer vigils in the churches of Georgia and across the country until justice prevails for Troy Davis and for all Americans who have been caught in the painful web of injustice.

University of California Swindle: California’s Apartheid Schoolhouse

By Sikivu Hutchinson
Guest Contributor

On March 4th, as the University of California San Diego continues to roil with the fallout from the so-called Compton Cookout, thousands of students and faculty will participate in statewide protests against a draconian budget that has cut a bloody swath into California’s public universities. UC and Cal State student activists across the state are calling for an end to the “privatization” of public higher education.

Activists charge that university officials are increasingly siphoning funding for instruction to research and development through byzantine private investment schemes. In addition, there is a growing trend to give preference to out-of-state students who pay higher admission fees. The majority of these students are not from historically underrepresented African American and Latino communities.

This strategy essentially reduces spots for working class students of color who are far more likely to rely on financial aid. While UC chancellor Mark Yudoff recently boasted of an $800,000 salary and perks to star faculty, “grunt” faculty and staff were laid off or forced to take furlough days, classes were canceled, program funding was curtailed and a draconian 32% tuition hike was proposed. Yudoff’s king’s ransom was garnered on the backs of California students of color who will be denied access to a system that is nationally regarded as the “Rolls Royce” of public higher education.

For those experienced with the business of white supremacist higher education politics, the UCSD administration’s pro forma soul searching, public denunciations and earnest pledges to discipline the “Cookout” offenders are all tiresomely familiar. In 2005, a Black female student at the private California Institute of the Arts found vulgar anti-Black epithets scrawled in her dorm room and degrading anti-Black graffiti had been written on an artwork in the Institute’s gallery.

In response to the incidents, the campuses’ Black Student Union organized protests and meetings with the administration which yielded few commitments to long term change. The school’s miniscule Black and Latino population was imperiled by scant financial aid, invisibility in the Eurocentric curriculum and the paucity of faculty mentors of color.

White faculty fiercely defended their liberal/progressive credentials with showy claims of multiculti “down-ness.” The college president publicly invoked his appreciation for Martin Luther King and deplored the hate crime as an isolated incident. When I was hired in 2006 to teach Cal Arts’ first Women of Color in the U.S. course, the campus was still festering with resentment and racial unrest. Pushing for campus climate change in a group of faculty and student advocates, I presented at endless meetings in which the administration stonewalled on redressing institutional bias through professional development training. The perpetrators had been given a slap on the wrist and it was business as usual in the “liberal” “inclusive” world of arts education that privileged the canon of the white avant garde.

During an interview on CNN, UCSD Ethnic Studies professor Sara Clark Kaplan outlined the crux of the problem with scapegoating individuals in the midst of a systemic crisis. It’s simply not acceptable to blame the university’s egregious disregard for the needs of students of color on the bigoted acts of ignorant white or “minority” students. UCSD’s gross under-representation of Black students reflects the UC system’s institutional neglect of recruitment and outreach to African American high schools. The devastating impact of Proposition 209 (which prohibited California public universities from using affirmative action admissions criteria) has been a convenient smokescreen for maintaining segregation in the UC system.

When I taught at UCLA in 2001 at the Graduate School of Education I had only one African American student in my course on culturally relevant pedagogy. Black students had gone from having a vibrantly visible presence during my stint as a student there during the late 80s and early 90s to barely registering. In some instances it was more difficult for accomplished African American seniors from highly regarded predominantly Black Los Angeles high schools like King-Drew Medical Magnet to get into UCLA than Ivy League colleges.

At slightly more than 1%, UCSD’s Black student enrollment is yet another indictment of the UC’s disgraceful wholesale complicity with the spirit of 209. As part of its demands to administration, UCSD’s Black Student Union has called on the university to step up its recruitment and retention efforts for underrepresented students. They have also pressed for more recruitment of diverse faculty and granting of tenure to faculty of color.

Recruitment, retention and tenure are important goals. Yet the deeper question of the lack of cultural responsiveness of the faculty and administration is a thornier issue. The ghettoization of ethnic studies and other so-called “minority-oriented” interdisciplinary departments contributes to a segregation of cultural knowledge in which the historical foundations of racial apartheid are obscured. Racism is viewed as a series of misguided individual acts rather than as an integral part of American national identity, power and authority. At core, the UCSD events are merely another manifestation of the post-racial fallacy that plays out every day in California’s first world apartheid classrooms.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and the author of the forthcoming Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Secular America.

Colorlines: State of Whose Union?: Obama and Race at One Year (VIDEO)

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Haitian Ambassador to the U.S. Raymond Joseph responds to senile televangelist Pat Robertson's racist ramblings

Responding to Pat Robertson's racist assertion that Haiti won its freedom as the modern world's first independent Black nation as the result of making a "pact with the devil", Haiti's Ambassador to the U.S. Raymond Joseph stated on The Rachel Maddow Show that if Haiti's liberation was "a curse", it was a curse that greatly benefited the United States.

Paraphrasing Ambassador Joseph (with the help of Wikipedia's entry on the Louisiana Purchase), the ambassador deftly pointed out that the successful liberation of Haiti by its largely enslaved African-descended people caused Napoleon to lose its significant sugar exports rendering the former colony and the Louisiana territory strategically and monetarily inconsequential to him.

So, as a direct result of the successful uprising in (then) Saint-Domingue and the sale of the Louisiana Territory to the young United States, our country double in size for $15 million (or ~$.03/acre) in 1803. This massive acquisition of land from France just over 200 years ago gave us the modern-day states of . . .

"Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River, most of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans."

So, thank you, Ayiti!

May you rise from the ashes yet again with liberty, justice, and democracy for all.

Again, to donate to the earthquake relief aid in Haiti, please text 501501 and $5 will go to the Yéle Relief Fund, or go here to support Yele.org.

Afro-Netizen's supports Yéle.org for Haiti earthquake relief

Please text 501501 to donate $5 for Haitian relief efforts or donate more here.

Afro-Netizen recommends making an ongoing commitment at a level you can afford. Mainstream media will move on to the next thing in a matter of days. So, before this crisis gets overshadowed by the Tea Party or Tiger Woods, Part II, Afro-Netizen strongly urges you to set up an automated, recurring donation throughout the year (or longer) so that even if you no longer actively follow this tragic story, your money will.

By the way, tele-racist Pat Robertson believes God has cursed Haitians for being the first Black nation to throw off the yoke of colonization. Let's defy his bigotry with our generosity in this time of crisis.

[H/T to MediaMattersForAmerica]

Tiger Woods' choice of paramours: "Catch a tiger by the . . ."

By Imani Perry

Guest Contributor

It's the elephant in the room.

Almost all of Tiger Wood’s rumored infidelities are with white women. No one is saying it, but everyone is showing it, by repeatedly displaying the multiple images of the multiple women. “Tiger likes white women”  can be “said” without being “said.” Journalists don’t want to say it because we aren’t supposed to care what color a person’s partners are anymore. But of course we sill care and the journalists know that!

Tiger Woods is an interesting personality when it comes to race. He was lauded by some and treated with skepticism by others for his insistent refusal to identify as “just black.” He vigorously claimed his multiracial heritage. He famously told Oprah the name he had given himself “Cablinasian” a designation so individual so as to make it not a reference to a group, but just to himself. Tiger was "post-racial" before post-racial was cool.

So, what are we to make of this racial performance? It is a show so old that even thinking about it is exhausting.  Americans fear of and fascination with the idea of Black men having sexual desire for white women has a long and miserable history in the United States. It is tied to lynching. It is tied to sexism and racism at the same time. It is tied to stereotypes of black hyper-sexuality and  animalistic lust. It is tied to the fall from grace of more than one public figure.

One way of interpreting this media spectacle is to consider how Tiger’s infidelities might be seen in certain quarters as evidence that no matter how assimilated and clean cut a black man might seem, there is always the danger that underneath it all he is little more than a walking stereotype. That is what the always incendiary Rush Limbaugh has said about the Tiger Woods affair(s). This is a particularly dramatic moment for such an image to come to the fore of American culture, right as the  country’s collective love affair with President Obama is increasingly strained over the war, the recession, and health reform.

Given how frequently Americans have fallen out of love with a black hero, and how often it has been through the association of said heroes with stereotypes, we have to wonder if Barack Obama, a politician who was called “The Tiger Woods” of politics by some, is suffering from some questions about whether his “true colors” are going to show. After all, gossip rags have been running stories claiming that Obama has a secret white female or male lover. It Is hard to imagine such stories having truth, given the eager mudslinging in Washington, it would have been quite a feat to prevent evidence of such affairs from leaking. I think the rumors say more about our latent fears than any reality.

But with respect to the Tiger Woods fiasco on the other hand, there is very good evidence supporting the claim that he was not only a cheater, but a sloppy one. His indiscretion reveals either naivete, stupidity or a delusional sense of his power over the women with whom he was involved. And  I think, without getting into the mind and heart of Tiger Woods, the parade of women, the parade of white women, if nothing else says, we are far from post racial.

A man who identifies as a member of three non-white racial groups, but appears to have little to no sexual desire (and who appears to act on his every sexual desire) for women of any of those non-white racial groups is a product of history whether he likes it or not. From the 18th through mid 20th century, standards of idealized white beauty were promulgated around the world, and those standards of beauty reflected the ideology of white supremacy that was used to justify the domination and exploitation of non-white people.

We live with the residue of that history in our ongoing beauty cultures and ideals, not just in the United States but in many places around the world.  Even though individual women of color have become beauty icons, the normative ideal remains white and blonde and blue-eyed. I am sure some readers will respond, “Tiger just has a type, it isn’t racial.” Well, with the exception of two who look like his wife, all of the women actually look very different. What unifies them is their race. That’s his type: white.

(There is the one counter example of Jaimee Grubbs, a  half Native American woman who claims to have had an affair with Woods. Grubbs grew up on a Colville Indian Reservation, and reportedly has given interviews in which she has shared her racist stereotypes about, and disaffection for Native Americans. But I digress.)

That said, I would never suggest that Tiger Woods has any obligation to display any racial loyalty to any of the racial groups to which he belongs.  I think those politics are not useful. Performing loyalty when it isn’t felt, is both sad and lacks meaning. Nor do I think loyalty is necessarily displayed through sexual partnerships. There are many people who have been of service to their communities while partnering interracially and many who have partnered with people of their group and been a destructive force within that group.

Tiger Woods has and should continue to be with women he finds attractive (although ideally without the lying and cheating). But our collective fascination with that collective of women, and his own fascination with them, is yet another sign that our racial past continues to impact our racial present.

Imani Perry, PhD, JD is an author and professor at Princeton University's Center for African American Studies (CAAS).

BREAKING: Obama wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

NobelPeacePrize.org:

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Read more

Another Black life extinguished in a hail of police bullets amidst a "post-racial" America

Five days ago in economically distressed Rockford, Illinois, a 23-year old Black man named Mark Anthony Barmore was shot to death in a church-run daycare filled with children, as reported by the Associated Press.

Witness claim Barmore who tried to evade police, emerged to surrender from a closet in the church, but police officers shot him anyway.

Though this case is unfolding, and all the facts are not known at this time, the refrain in Black America and beyond is, "Would this have likely happened to a white person?"

Increasingly, Afro-Netizen has noticed clear acknowledgment of racism from white people about other white people's motivations -- even within mainstream media. This new, seemingly unprecedented phenomenon is a good and important trend that is not nearly as comprehensive or rigorous as it should be. However, the extent to which race and racism can be brought up appropriately at the urging of white allies may influence America's tolerance for having such meaningful public discussions that have rarely occurred heretofore.

Meanwhile, the national NAACP is calling for federal legislation to address and curtail future acts of police brutality.

Finally, at the intersection of media, politics and policy, there was the ever eloquent and ubiquitous Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. at the young Barmore's funeral, a tragic fatality amidst an era that many optimists and delusional voters had quizzically embraced as post-racial with the ascent of Barack Obama to the Oval Office.

Post-racial in this context suggests that "getting beyond race" is the task and ultimate goal. For progressive-minded Americans, however, the goal is in acknowledging that race and racism are all too real social constructions that will endure until we embrace racial justice as a core component of the fight for universal human rights.

Rockford activists and concerned residents understand this in a blighted city north of Chicago with rampant unemployment, crime and urban blight.

They know these ills are all related, and that these socio-economic disparities highly correlate to race in ways that America's first Black president will not (and perhaps cannot politically) affirm, unlike his elderly, white Southern predecessor, former president Jimmy Carter, leveraging the white privilege he has towards shedding light on the truth too powerful for a sitting president in this day and age to co-sign -- irrespective of his race or political party.

Whatever level of culpability the two white Rockford police officers and the deceased Barmore had for what quickly escalated to a man's death -- as witnessed in a church by young children -- this much is true: a crime took place on that fateful day that is as political and resonant as the election of a Black president.

The questions remain in the aftermath of such symptomatic violence: Do we know what's on the referendum? When and where we must vote, and how to cast our ballots?

Ain't I a woman?

By Rema Reynolds

Guest Contributor

Obviously the message that we are living in a post-racial society is still in its rhetorical stages and has not yet been internalized enough to influence public behavior. Fledgling claims that the election of President Obama, the nation’s first President of color, has obliterated racism as we know it, and has wiped clean the stain of past injustices (such as slavery) that once blighted these more than ever United States, must be premature as they are not being taken seriously by the badly behaved grownups—especially this week.

From Rep. Joe Wilson to Kanye West to Serena Williams, tantrums abound. On the surface, one may surmise that the outbursts of these two men were evidence of their impulsiveness and immaturity. That may be true. In fact, I’m pretty sure it is. However, upon closer inspection, it is apparent, to me anyway, that race is inextricably enmeshed in the fabrics of these incidents and once again, America is choosing to overlook the gendered and racial implications of men behaving badly.

Let us consider the Congressman first. There’s not much more to say beyond what President Carter elucidated earlier this week. What hasn’t been said is that the Senator is representative of many White Americans who cannot contain themselves, want to crawl out of their very skins, and shout from the highest mountain a string of racial slurs toward the White House.

How can this mere Negro have the audacity to give the government orders? These citizens can hardly stomach the fact that a Black man is in charge. Resorting to behavior that would have warranted a timeout had he been in a preschool class, Senator Wilson, who is not a racist according to his son, just had to say something to disrespect and discredit the President. He really couldn’t hold it in any longer. Hate from racial prejudice overwhelmed him. I guess he hasn’t gotten the memo announcing that we live in a post-racial society in which these open acts of racism covertly guised as disagreement are passé.

Then there’s Mr. West. Okay, so we all have to concede the fact that Kanye was out of pocket when he decided to make a spectacle of himself at the VMA’s. Typical West behavior though was met with an unanticipated backlash this time. We all know Mr. West is a loose canon libel to say anything at any time.  No filter. What we didn’t expect was for him to victimize a White girl. Yes. I said it. If Kanye had, hypothetically speaking, instead taken the mic from Jay-Z and insisted that Lil Wayne should have won some award, we would have been shocked for many reasons. We would not, however, deem Jay-Z a victim. West would have been allowed to remain until the show’s and his cognac’s end without incident. It would have made the news.

But we would not have called for Kanye’s immediate apology. We all would have laughed at his crazy antics and gone on to talk about Patrick Swayze’s passing as we should have. But no, Kanye chose the wrong one to pull his publicity stunt on this time.  White women are to remain untarnished, unharmed by Black men. History has shown us this over and over. The extreme hatred of OJ Simpson for example. Emmett Till’s murder. There are countless examples of the lengths White America will go in protecting the honor of White women. Kanye should have known better. Even in this "post-racial" society, some acts will always be infractions when White women are involved.

So, does the same hold true for Black women? What would have happened had Mr. West upstaged Beyoncé? Would the media dedicate as much time and attention to the reporting of that story? Do Black women have equal value and protection in this society?

The answer is a resounding, “Not so much.”

We know that there exists a dangerous double standard for Black women.

My proof? Well, in the news this week was also a horrific, barbaric beating of a Black woman, Tashawnea Hill, in Morrow, Georgia by Troy Dale West, Jr., a White man. Ms. Hill, a mother and an army reservist, was barraged with racial slurs while being kicked and punched in the head as her daughter watched helplessly traumatized. The man doling out this unprovoked savage attack was released on bail while the FBI flounder about wondering if this is a hate crime. This act of brutality, however, was not discussed on every morning show. We did not hear a demand for an apology from Troy to Ms. Hill. With the exception of a few headlines, the media and all of its consumers were almost silent.

The silence is deafening. Because we now live in a post-racial society, it is difficult for us to explain these events. Essence, a magazine for women, has decided to consult astronomers to discuss Mercury retrograde as a viable reason for these acts instead of examining the racial implications glaringly present in each of these incidents. Since the election of President Obama, we no longer have racism to blame.

What else, dear reader, would prompt a burly man to soundly beat a woman? Why else, dear reader, would all the networks come to the aid of Taylor Swift so swiftly? How else, dear reader, can you explain the influx of contributions Mr. Wilson received after disrespecting the President, the leader of the free world?

Well do not look to overt or covert racism as a means by which to explain or understand the differential treatment, reactions, and coverage these unruly men have received. We’ll have to look to some other ism since racism no longer exists.

These incidents leave us to ponder explanations that could possibly extend beyond the complexities of race and racial implications in this country. To some, particularly those who have firsthand experience with marginalization in this country, the notion that racism is no longer a credible culprit, the idea that we cannot look to a past wrought with systemic discrimination, prejudice, hatred, and exploitation to understand the present plagued by the same conditions seems ludicrous.

I wonder if we know that now more than ever, race is a centralized social construct people consistently use to guide their decisions, yet we, society as a whole, both Black and White folks alike, would rather not acknowledge the validity of its effects on the normal day-to-day interactions between people.  However, without that acknowledgment, without racism as explanative in understanding why events like these or that in Philadelphia with the children banned from the pool, or that at Harvard with Professor Gates, it becomes difficult to understand the impetus of such treatment. This is a dangerous endeavor indeed, this denial of the importance race and racism in this country.

For without an answer, without racism and hatred as root causes for the effects of damaging behavior, those victimized are then compelled to internalize the blame. Because racism no longer is present in our society, then the mistreatment must be either a figment of my imagination or the result of something I, the victim, have done wrong. Racism is then internalized and the victim becomes responsible for the perpetrator’s behavior.

Come on folks. Racism is alive and well. We cannot deny its power. We cannot deny its effects any longer if we wish to move forward in peace and solidarity in this country within the next century. Calling it what it is, identifying the reason for maltreatment, naming racism causes discomfort for all involved. It is through the discomfort, by treating infection, suffering through the symptoms while healing occurs do we cure the disease. Until we recognize that we are sick with racism, the virus will continue to spread.

Alas, it takes great courage to even go to the doctor sometimes. Most don’t go until the pain becomes unbearable. While I fear that it will come to that, conditions like the one in Morrow, GA will worsen to a point that is intolerable for the average person before we validate racism and all of its ugly cousins, the other isms, perhaps repeating these words ad nauseum will make them true: We live in a post-racial society. We live in a post-racial society. We live in a post-racial society.

I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

Rema Reynolds is a former teacher, counselor, administrator, and currently organizes parents for the improvement of Black student achievement in various schools. She is an Assistant Professor at Azusa Pacific University teaching aspiring school counselors and school psychologists and offers support and instruction to pre-service Secondary teachers at UCLA’s teacher education program, Center X.