When former Charlotte NC mayor Harvey Gantt ran (twice) against Jesse Helms, he sought the endorsment of former UNC star Michael Jordan. Jordan’s reply at the time: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

An endorsement from Jordan could have helped the popular black mayor unseat one of the senate’s most bigoted members, but Mike sat on the sidelines. Apparantly, Helms’ death prompted Jordan to expound on meeting the racist codger, and to finally endorse Gantt:

“A number of years back, I was in Raleigh at some function and I was introduced to the Senator. ‘Hello Senator Helms, nice to meet you,’ I say, offering my hand. He looks up at me, sizes up my hand, and smiles like he’s addressing the help back at the plantation: ‘Nice to meet you too, Fred.’ I’m like, Fred, huh? No, it’s Michael, Michael Jordan, the basketball player. He just goes, ‘Nice to meet you Fred.’ That’s one crazy mother (muffled).”

Someone later told Jordan that Helms had a “humorous habit” of calling all black people “Fred.”

“Yeah, humorous. Hilarious. It was then that I realized I made a mistake, I should have come out to support the brother. Let him know, if he runs again, give my office a call, we’ll hit the campaign up with all the Air Jordans and Jordan brand apparel they need. On the house. It would be my honor to be the official sponsor - along with Gatorade and Hanes — of Harvey Gantt’s next campaign.”

Let’s first note that calling Michael Jordan - one of the most universally respected people on the planet - “Fred” is just plain disgusting. Let’s also note that Gantt declined the endorsement, citing Jordan’s poor management of the Charlotte Bobcats.

From Rinku Sen, RaceWire:

On last night’s broadcast, a repeat from June 16, Colbert did the kind of thing that I almost never rely on white media figures to do. He was interviewing Kenneth Miller, who wrote a book about how the proponents of “intelligent design” are trying to teach creationism at schools. At one point, Miller compared creationists to women who fraudulently collect welfare checks, saying they’re asking for a government handout, “I would compare them to welfare queens,” he said.

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Or so read the headline yesterday on one of my favorite blogs, History Is a Weapon. And when you look at the late Senator’s resume, he’s left us little reason to mourn. Here are a few of his most remarkable achievements:

• Fighting integration;
• Opposing Martin Luther King day;
• the Helms-Burton act, the centerpiece of the embargo against Cuba;
• Disputing ALL Affirmative Action programs;
• Voting to bail out the savings and loan industry AND to slash school lunches for impoverished children, medical care for disabled veterans, prescription drugs for the elderly, and wages for working families;
• Hating all gay people;
• Supporting apartheid in South Africa;
• Routinely fighting against AIDS research from the beginning, blaming people suffering from the disease for it;
• Leading the fight to discontinue Pell Grants for inmates;
• And, in 1993, singing Dixie to the first African American senator, Carol Mosely-Braun, and promising to make her “cry.”

I think HIAW sums it up well, when they proclaim: “Hell burns hotter tonight.” Want some more inspiring food for thought? Check out “ The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” a speech given by Frederick Douglass in Rochester on July 5, 1852.

…if the world knew just how often this tune ran through its brain:

While the progressive gamers over at Breakthrough are producing socially conscious video games like “ICED” (I Can End Deportation), others have more…problematic ideas on what constitutes an exciting and appropriate video game. I was appalled to come across “ Prison Tycoon,” produced by the folks over at ValuSoft. For all those kids who dream big and say, “When I grow up, I’m going to have my own private prison,” this game is for you. The game’s tagline:

YOU are the WARDEN… THEIR future is in YOUR hands… Rehabilitate them… or BREAK them…

The game allows users to build and design the layout of their prison, cultivate their managerial skills by maintaining discipline over their inmates, raise funds to improve the quality of their prisons, and determine the extent to which they will punish or rehabilitate their offenders. As you advance in the game, you gain privileges like increasing the security of your prison from minimum to maximum, building a death row, and sending in guards to enforce your rules by any means necessary. The game incorporates key elements such as location, race, religion, gang affiliation, and aggression.

Anyone else extremely troubled by this? Joe B., I know you’ve got something to say about this one…

Obama’s speech yesterday addressing race and the manufactured Jeremiah Wright controversy was brilliant and moving. Whether you agree with that assessment or see him as a crafty politician giving another pretty speech, it is notable for the fact that he actually dared to speak to the voters about a difficult issue as if they were mature adults capable of nuanced understanding and rational discussion.

It is unfortunate that we have to praise him for what should be the standard in American political discourse, but the fact remains that such forthright maturity is decidedly not the standard. All that remains to be seen is whether the voters (and pundits, and media, and his political opponents) actually are mature adults capable of nuanced understanding and rational discussion.

On my way to work this morning I noticed many campaign banners hanging on highway overpasses, but none was more striking than the one proudly displayed over 95S in the the North End of Providence. “Vote Black Power–It’s Time,” read the message on what, ironically, appeared to be a white sheet. At first I thought, well, there’s a strong statement. On momentary reflection, however, I began to think that in this primary season’s atmosphere of skewed racial politics, it was probably some shady Hillary operative, or at least some Hillary supporter gone way off the reservation, who put this up in order to scare white voters. I grew up in North Providence–not known as a bastion of racial enlightenment–and in my head I could hear many an NP voter seeing that and saying, “See, now why does he have to make it a black thing? That’s why I’m nervous about voting for him.” Brash display of black solidarity, or more passive-aggressive Clintonian chicanery? Sadly, we may never know for sure.

I got to field the final question of yesterday’s press conference in support of the Campaign for Fairness, Respect and Civil Rights.

It was, “Does your gut tell you that all the people on the other side of this issue are racists?”

And my answer was something along the lines of, “No movement is a monolith, and so people on the other side are driven by a variety of different feelings and ideas. Sadly, racism still plays a large role in our society, so I’m sure that it motivates some people. But I don’t think my colleagues or most of their supporters are racist, and I can’t speak the the dispositions of every last person involved.”

Well, anyway. I stand by that answer — some people are racist, and some are not. And now I’ve got a whole inbox full of emails like this as evidence:

Rep. Segal;

I’m amazed that you are in support of this Campaign for Fairness. Unless I am missing something in your biography, you should be part of the group of angry white men.

I want to voice my frustration and disgust with people like yourself who cannot see that this country is going down the drain. We are being bled dry.

I got a scary loop-de-loop of Kansas RI connectivity this morning when I opened a Roz Chast greeting card sent by my mother only to find two promotional postcards for Kansas-RI-Kansas transplant and recent RISD grad John Sebelius. Sebelius, in addition to being our silver-haired governor’s son, is also a clothing and game designer. He sells his prison-themed, Monopoly-style board game and retooled vintage dress shirts with dreaded Black men screened across their lapels from his website and at my former stomping grounds, Hobbs Inc.

It is really boring to make the same old comments on this type of weirdo Mark Ecko shit, so I won’t. But I’m curious to know if any dose readers know Sebelius’ work from RISD days and what might have contributed to his fascination with incarcerated people of color. To fuel the hype more, check this article from my hometown’s better-than-the-Projo local rag.

On Michelle Obama’s supposed anti-Americanism, O’Reilly said:

“I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.”

But if Michelle does feel that way, let’s grab our sheets and head for the hills?!?!?!

Apparently the Democratic primary has transformed the New York Times’ usually civilized readership into a bunch of name-calling barbarians. So much so that Kate Phillips wrote this letter to the readers and commentators on the Caucus blog:

Dear Caucus Readers:

Passions are hot; tensions are high. We’re facing yet another series of extremely competitive contests in the Democratic presidential primary race, and many of you have chosen your candidate and ardently defend your choice on this site. But if you choose to offer your comments here, please refrain (we ask again) from name-calling. None of you deserve to be called an idiot, a moron, a juvenile, racist or sexist.

Secondly, a few readers keep trying to post the same comments over and over, for weeks on end, on every item. They add nothing to the development of a conversation, and will not be published.

Third, we will continue to ask that you use a name as close to your own as possible. We discourage people from trying to post under several names or aliases or nicknames. It’s dishonest and unfair to others who assume they’re reading a thread with many voices, as opposed to repetitive chatter.

As always, thanks for reading.

Are you planning a children’s party or some other event in which you need a magician? Consider hiring President Bush’s newly appointed Attorney General, Michael Mukasey. He is a master of sleight-of-hand tricks. Under fire because of his agency’s support of torture, Mukasey has launched a national campaign to change the subject.

Maybe you’ve seen his handiwork in your local newspaper: “The U.S. Sentencing Commission is letting violent criminals out of prison!” “20,000 crack dealers about to be released into your neighborhood!!” “And they’re all black!!!” “Crack!” “Black Men!!” “Scared yet, America?”

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• Kentucky: House committee approves bill that would amend the Kentucky Constitution to restore voting rights to offenders who have completed their sentences. Kentucky and Virginia are now the only two states that permanently disenfranchise offenders unless the Governor grants individual restorations. This marks the fourth time that the Democratic-controlled House has supported such a measure, but the bill has yet to gain enough support in the Republican-controlled Senate. If the bill were to pass both chambers, the voters of Kentucky would have the chance to ratify the measure, thus restoring voting rights to approximately 128,000 Kentuckians.
• Arizona Daily Star: Amy Goodman on the impact of felony disenfranchisement.
• Claremont Port Side Magazine: history of felony disenfranchisement in the United States since the Civil War.
• Alabama: Rev. Kenneth Glasgow on registering jail inmates to vote in the Birmingham News. When I met Glasgow in April 2006, he told me that he was Al Sharpton’s brother-in-law.
• California: Jail inmates eligible to vote; Prisoners and parolees are not.

From Kohei Ishihara, Executive Director of the Providence Youth Student Movement:

Dear Friends,

Over the past year, PrYSM has worked hard to organize the Southeast Asian youth in Providence to fight major cutbacks effecting our schools and our community at large. Rhode Island’s governor, Donald Carcieri has cut back services for our community, and now his wife has launched insults against our community.

Last week, Sue Carcieri took the time to rant on tape to the political columnist of the Providence Journal about local youth activists who spoke up about the impact of state layoffs of translators on the Southeast Asian community.

Rather than, say, applauding these Cambodian and Vietnamese teenagers for civic participation, she chose to compare them to the assassins of Benazir Bhutto:

“First of all, I think they have mentors who are much older than them who are training them up. You know — how those terrorists have kids blow up, you know, Benazir Bhutto and so forth? You think the kids thought of it? I don’t think so.”

(Click here for a view of these awful terrorists-in-the-making)

Info on how to donate after the jump…

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OH. MY. GAWD. Speaking of awesome February events at Brown, my ultimate hero, Angela Y. Davis, will deliver the Martin Luther King Jr. lecture on February 7 at 4PM in Brown’s Salomon Center for Teaching. Her talk, titled “Recognizing Racism in the Era of Neo-Liberalism,” will be free and open to the public. Just so you know: it took a lot of love for you to get me to post this, because if you all turn out and I don’t get a seat, shit’s gonna hit the fan.

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Over the past few weeks, our political debate has centered on the intersection of race and gender in American politics. Clinton claims to be “ proud” of Obama’s transcendence of racial discrimination, and Obama claims to be proud of Clinton’s success in shattering the glass ceiling. And both campaigns have instrumentally used race and gender, both publicly and deceitfully, to smear their opponents.

Journalists, commentators, and public figures have contributed to this debate, at times stirring feminist or African-American solidarity and, at other times, commending a nation that seems, perhaps, finally colorblind and egalitarian. “ Women Are Never Front-Runners,” wrote Gloria Steinem, in an attempt to explain the importance of female support for Hillary Clinton. Chris Rock, opening for Obama at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, warned the audience not to waste their votes on “ that white lady.” Others still use this contest between a black man and a female front-runner as evidence of our progress as a nation.

Are we left with the realization that we are still racist? Still sexist? Or are we left with the warm feeling that we are somehow less sexist and less racist than ever before? Perhaps this is the most dangerous of all the assumptions. Noticeably absent from the Race/Gender debate over the past few weeks has been a discussion of the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment that has played a significant role in the formation of our voters’ choices.

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