YDG Minority Caucus(es) Questions

Politics, Uncategorized,

Here’s my feelings and questions about breaking up the YDG Minority Caucus. If this steps on toes, I apologize in advance.

First off, I think it’s not the best name. Like, who’s idea was it to name it the “Minority” Caucus? Should have rolled w/ POC Caucus or something like.

Second, breaking up this caucus into AA/Black, AAPI and Latinx caucuses would mean that we’ll have more narrowly-purposed caucuses with their own leadership. What will be the purpose of these caucuses relative to YDG? How will the YDG’s mission and target demographic – engaging progressive-minded youth into electoral politics – be better served with more narrow ethnic caucuses over a “Minority”/POC Caucus?

Will these caucuses, like the GALBC, be structured in a way that will address the range of issues which face Black, AAPI and Latinx people (i.e., committees)? Will these caucuses provide vital resources for not only the caucuses or YDG, but for the DPG as a whole?

Also, I’m assuming that Afro-Latinx would find a home in both Black and Latinx caucuses?

I can see narrow YDA caucuses existing since there is also a wider demographic distribution of each of these demographics in the U.S. population and among Democrats across the country. But Georgia?

So that’s it.

#YDG

Integration Under “jus soli” Citizenship

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Countries with jus soli citizenship and separation of religion and state are more capable of integrating and assimilating people of 1) similar religion and 2) similar skin color.

Such worked to the advantage of Lebanese Christians who moved from the Ottoman Empire to American countries such as Brazil. Brazil, which once emphasized a “Blanqueamento” policy of “whitening” the population through subsidized European migration, has the largest Arab population outside of the Arab World, with a Lebanese-descended population larger than that of modern-day Lebanon itself.

Due to the lack of Jim Crow-style apartheid, Brazilian whiteness was made more expansive to include those “white enough” (and Christian enough) to be integrated. Masses of Mediterranean Christian Arabs fit the bill for Portuguese-descended Catholic Brazilians in a way that masses of Mediterranean Muslim Arabs or even the long-resident descendants of African slaves could not.

It took longer for the historically-Protestant United States to fully welcome Catholics, let alone Catholics who were a darker shade of “White”, into the U.S. melting pot. The latter still face a great deal of hostility.

This has me wondering if, in a pluralistic society, it’s not enough to merely have 1) separation of religion and state + 2) jus soli citizenship. Those principles already allow for whiteness in countries like Brazil and the U.S. to be more expansive than they’ve been in the past, but not enough to reduce hostility against people from non-Christian or majority-darker-skinned societies.

More open policies for putting government above the privileges of skin color and religion would allow for better social integration of immigrants.

Closing Borders Until Nothing’s Left

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Wealthier countries close their borders against each other and rigidize themselves against lower-GDP nations, when it wasn’t that long ago that folks from the second smallest continent fled their poverty for the “Terra nullius” of the Americas, South Africa and Australasia (only to run over the aboriginal peoples of both landforms in the process).

Too bad that there aren’t many other places in the world where the “huddled masses” can go to “breathe free”. There is no Terra nullius to which the “wretched refuse” of color can find the sort of liberty which White European settlers once found in abundance, at least without stepping on the heads of those who are already resident.

Oh, and let’s not forget that our aggravation of climate change threatens to mess things up a bit for a while for everyone.

If nativist nationalists and their tightened borders/fences/walls are to prevail at some point, where can the migrant turn? Virtual worlds? Antarctica? Deserts? Mass suicide?

Good afternoon. This is a day to remember all those poor White Christian men who were lied and drafted into an unsuccessful war by rich White Christian men to keep enslaved Black people from being as free as themselves.

As per N Michel Ivey, this is also a day to remember the 12mil+ victims of White Christian people who bought so many lies about their own inverted superiority over Jews, Poles, LGBT, neurodiverse and other ethnic, religious minorities in their midst that they attempted to exterminate them from the face of the earth.

Two grandiose, bloody, traumatic experiments in human stupidity whose intended victims (and their descendants) suffer generational, cultural trauma to this day. No honor in any of this, just anger and injustice.

#YomHaShoah #ConfederateStupidity

After offensive comment, Miami state senator fends off calls for resignation, condemnation

Politics, Uncategorized, , ,

WTF

TALLAHASSEE — A Miami state senator is fending off calls for his resignation, a possible Florida Senate complaint and the condemnation of fellow Republicans after he oddly referred to six white colleagues as the N-word during a heated discussion with a black lawmaker, one of whom who he called a “bitch.”

As pressure mounts, state Sen. Frank Artiles plans to formally apologize to the entire Florida Senate on Wednesday and ask for forgiveness. He apologized Tuesday evening — after his alcohol-fueled racist language the night before was reported to Republican leadership, and the Miami Herald and Florida Times-Union began asking questions.

Artiles insists he is not a bigot and noted that he used the phrase to refer to white GOP senators, not blacks.

via After offensive comment, Miami state senator fends off calls for resignation, condemnation

It’s a trap.

Sullivan’s piece, rife with generalizations about a group as vastly diverse as Asian-Americans, rightfully raised hackles. Not only inaccurate, his piece spreads the idea that Asian-Americans as a group are monolithic, even though parsing data by ethnicity reveals a host of disparities; for example, Bhutanese-Americans have far higher rates of poverty than other Asian populations, like Japanese-Americans. And at the root of Sullivan’s pernicious argument is the idea that black failure and Asian success cannot be explained by inequities and racism, and that they are one and the same; this allows a segment of white America to avoid any responsibility for addressing racism or the damage it continues to inflict.

via ‘Model Minority’ Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks : Code Switch : NPR

Good article on the alphabet soup of Democratic Party organizations

Politics, Uncategorized,

It’s not unusual to see confusion about the roles that various Democratic Party campaign committees play, though it seems to have peaked recently following Democrat James Thompson’s unexpectedly close loss in the special House election in Kansas’ dark-red 4th Congressional District, based around Wichita. What I’m talking about, more than anything, is cries of “WHY DIDN’T THE DNC DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS RACE?!?”

That’s kind of like coming across the scene of a bus accident, and asking “WHY ISN’T THE COAST GUARD COMING TO THE RESCUE?!?” There are certainly valid reasons to critique the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the ways it does business, but the committee’s non-involvement in a House race isn’t one of them. It isn’t their jurisdiction—that’s simply something they don’t, by definition, do.

If you’re interested in having your comments about dysfunction by Democratic organizations taken seriously, it helps to at least have some knowledge of where to correctly point your finger. With that in mind, let’s take a few minutes to review the alphabet soup of organizations in Washington that raise money for, and spend money on, Democratic candidates.

via DNC, DCCC, DSCC: How to decipher the alphabet soup of Democratic Party organizations