Florida Legislature

Firing Stephen Foster, Promoting Uncle Ben

What follows is completely true and yet unreal.
Stephen Foster met Uncle Ben in my radio reverie this morning. For real, or so it seemed. (Y'all know I hear odd connections in that place between asleep and awake.)

Two southern stories that seem literally black and white, but turn out to be anything but.

Radio news reported that the Southland's good old-fashioned composer is on his way out; our conservative and affable new governor actually refuses to have our state song played in his presence! (yet in the same breath he says "whatever the people want satisfies me" and that sure sounds unreal to me.)

Nobody said anything unmannerly or politically correct about unpopular language, although that's likely the truth. One legislator did mention the word "darkies" but to hear them tell it, it's not that, just the times they are a'changin' . . .hey, now THAT would make a great state song!

Meanwhile good old-fashioned Uncle Ben got a promotion to Chairman of the Board. He isn't the kindly kitchen rice-cooker anymore, now he's the Donald Trump of Rice, with his own fancy penthouse office, jet-setting schedule and authoritative rice-education curriculum. (You can poke around his empty office, open his travel journal, it feels almost like corporate espionage, with him hanging on the wall watching your every move!)

» read more | JJ Ross's blog | 2 comments | email this blog | 823 reads

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While a considerable number of Muslims in the U.S. are African American, and most of the African Americans are engaged in limited income jobs, Muslim immigrants in the US have relatively higher household incomes -- partly, a consequence of liberalization of U.S. immigrant policies in the 60s that opened the doors to skilled and educated immigrants. Consequently, many in the immigrant Muslim population did not face the same level of economic, political, and institutional discrimination termed "structural racism", as faced by many in the African American and now predominantly in the Mexican immigrant communities in the U.S.

Here, then, lies a promise in the recent spate of racist attacks against Muslims in the US. There is a parallel in racism meted out to Muslims, African Americans, and Latino immigrants. It is hoped that many in the American Muslim immigrant community will use the present climate of Muslim xenophobia to challenge the trap inherent in their own class privilege and the status as a high achieving "model minority" that often creates a distance from those less privileged in the community.

— Manzoor Cheema, Activist and a journalist
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