american black

"first-ever Latina lesbian sheriff"

One-time migrant farm worker Lupe Valdez made history this week when she became the first woman and the first Latino elected

Dallas County sheriff, not to mention the first Democrat to win the post since the mid-1970s.

Oh, she also is openly gay. The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political-action committee that endorsed Valdez and trained her on answering questions related to her sexual orientation, hailed her as the "first-ever Latina lesbian sheriff."

The churches are already on it and the Sheriff's office "is in shock."

In other law news... Claims of racism tarnish a tight race for sheriff near Tallahassee.

African-American candidate Morris Young leads in the race for Gadsden County sheriff by 70 votes, but some of his white supporters still complain about harassment at the polls. They say people hassled them, and one said someone spray-painted racial slurs on his car.

update-After a six-hour machine recount, nonpartisan candidate Morris Young again won this year's race for Gadsden County sheriff, expanding his margin of victory to 115 votes.

Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan discuss the future

A rare political summit took place Friday on a Chicago radio station. Reverend Jesse Jackson and Minister Louis Farrakhan were on the air discussing what African Americans can expect the next four years.

Highlights:

Jackson sounded optimistic, noting that nearly 30% more blacks voted compared to the 2000 election, increasing their representation in congress and with Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate.

"We need not be in perpetual despair in the sense that there were some victories this past Tuesday," said Jackson.

During the program, Farrakhan announced another "Million Man March" next year, on the tenth anniversary of the first event in Washington. He also sounded defiant when asked if the U.S. had declared war on Islam.

" Real Islam and real Muslims will never bow to the control of western democracy," said Farrakhan.

Northeastern Illinois professor and writer Robert Starks said it's time for African Americans to form their own political party.

Fair and honest elections

There used to be a time when we had investagative journalists who researched this stuff. Now it's up to bloggers.  And so it goes:

Franklin County, OH has posted the vote totals by precinct here.

In the Gahanna 1-B precinct, Bush is credited with 4285 votes out of 638 votes cast. This pads his numbers here by almost 4000. There are also 87 write-in votes, which is way out of line with the typical precinct, and the absentee ballots appear to have been counted twice, or the wrong totals given for half of them (reported at the very end of the document).

But there's more:

just look at this page of incidents in Cuyahoga County - Cleveland's county with about 25% African American population. Ohio's not the only one.

All That You Can Be: Hate found in US military

Silver Rights drops some info on the military:

...The U.S. military has chronic problems with service members who are members of groups such as the Aryan Nations, Skinheads and Ku Klux Klan. Some are veteran members of hate groups before they join the service. Others are recruited by fellow service members.Some are veteran members of hate groups before they join the service. Others are recruited by fellow service members. The irony, of course, is that persons who are members of both the military and a hate group are living a contradiction. They claim to be dedicated to providing manpower for the protection of the American citizenry. But, they hate and would like to eliminate much of that same American citizenry...

Read the rest of this story here.

Safe to turn on the radio?

The end of an era. Britney has informed her fans that her music career is done. Does this mean I can turn on the radio again?

Dear Fans,

I am going to start writing this column now as often as possible. The reason being is so I can talk directly to you, my fans, who have stuck by me & who continue to support me. Also, I'm not going to be as busy as my Mom. She's running behind my sister like crazy! I am also going to take some time off to enjoy life. I've actually learned to say "NO!" With this newly found freedom, its like people don't know how to act around me. Should we talk to her like we did when she was 16 or like the Icon everyone says she is? My prerogative right now is to just chill & let all of the other overexposed blondes on the cover of Us Weekly be your entertainment... GOOD LUCK GIRLS!! I'm sorry that my life seemed like it was all over the place the past 2 years, it's probably because IT WAS! I understand now what they mean when they talk about child stars. Going & going & going is all I've ever known since I was 15 years old. It's amazing what advisors will push you to do, even if it means taking a naive, young, blonde girl & putting her on the cover of every magazine.

6 Black women dead, 4 missing and no clues

Leaders among the African-American community in Peoria, IL. are planning a second town hall-style meeting for Monday to discuss the deaths of six women and disappearances of four others.

Now this would probably be headline news around the country if the victims were maybe pregnant and white but here are the details:

Beefin to the Bank

According to EUR the R.Kelly Jay-Z beef is having no effect on sales:

Looks like Jay-Z and R. Kelly
are beefing all the way to the bank. Their
duet album "Unfinished Business" is doing
big retail business according to Nielsen
SoundScan - which has the set debuting
at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 chart with
215,000 units sold in its first week.
       The successful Jive/Def Jam/IDJMG
disc follows a $75 million breach-of-contract
suit R. Kelly brought against Jay-Z after the
singer was dismissed from their co-headlining
Best of Both Worlds tour.
      

Why Black Doctors Matter

A new UCLA study shows that African-American HIV patients treated by white doctors receive life-saving HIV medication less than those who have an African-American doctor.

In this study, the researchers found that African-American patients treated by white doctors receive their HIV medications nearly four months later than African-American patients being treated by African-American doctors. Furthermore, the study confirms these startling differences are not because of patient's income levels, years of education, or insurance coverage. On the doctor's part, the knowledge, specialty, degree of training and years of experience did not affect the results. The fact remained that African-American patients seen by African-American doctors, received better care than African-American patients seeing white doctors.

Purple Haze

Two interesting emails sent to me this morning:

The first is an article in which Greg Palast argues that Kerry actually won the election.

The second is a map. Instead of the misleading Red/Blue map which has been going around the internet here's a more honest one:

Using County-by-County election return data from USA Today together with County boundary data from the US Census' Tiger database we produced the following graphic depicting the results. Of course, blue is for the democrats, red is for the republicans, and green is for all other. Each county's color is a mix of these three color components in proportion to the results for that county.

Counties shown in black represent either missing election data or a mismatch between the US Census data and the USA Today data. For example, the New England states' election return data is given for each municipality and/or district rather than for each county. Hence, it couldn't be easily matched with the county boundaries.

The AB 4 (expanded edition)

National Politics get people riled but local politics is where the fun is. One of the more interesting places right now is Miami. A few months ago Miami City Commissioner Art Teele was arrested and charged with two felonies. That meant he had to be replaced and instead of holding an election the rest of the Commisioners and the Mayor, decided to appoint someone. The reason they didn't want an election is because the Teele case was dead in the water and in an election Teele would more than likely run and win. After an exhaustive search that lasted roughly five minutes, Miami's city fathers found just the man to replace Art Teele: Jeffery Allen. But now Allen's problems are coming out...

The funniest guy in the blog universe is having a fight with fans of 13 year old JoJo.

Eight of ten Burundi Tutsi political parties have relented and accepted the new constitution, which gave it enough support to bring the constitution into force today. The Tutsis felt that there were not enough safeguards for Tutsi rights. However, the Tutsis, like everyone else, is tired of years of civil war and wants to "give peace a chance." At this point, the only real opposition to a new government, and elections, are the Hutu FNL rebels, who still have several hundred armed men operating south of the capital.

Via Micheal King: CNN/Netscape calls Bush "asshole" in pic name on website

BlackPundit is inspired by GWB's election to become intolerant of what others do in private..

And Debwire finds that there appears to be a connection between intelligence and how people voted: