Saturday, November 21, 2015

More evidence

Fifty-three percent of American adults tell Bloomberg they don’t want to absorb any of the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the devastation of ISIS in Syria. The nation mourns when 130 Parisians are killed by Islamic militants, but there is a virtual news blackout when other murderous Islamists, Boko Haram, murder at least 42 in separate attacks in Nigeria and Cameroon. ALL lives matter, though, right?

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The expressions of sympathy, generosity, and courage being demonstrated by friends on Facebook for the Syrian refugees is heartwarming. In the middle of the political silly season, you sometimes begin to believe that this entire country is mean-spirited and stupid.

It does seem to all manifest at Trump rallies. Our new Father Coughlin has his plan for a wall, then his Muslim database, and now his own Brownshirts. Oddly, no arrests were made today in the gang beating of a Black Lives Matter protester by six white people in Birmingham, Alabama. The Trump campaign is disavowing the violence, but this is exactly what Donald Trump said should happen at his rallies if he was confronted by BLM protesters the way Bernie Sanders was in the early fall.

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In 1906, W.E.B. DuBois declared that the problem of the Twentieth Century was the problem of the color line. That problem now threatens to claim the Twenty-first Century as well. On the topic of refugees, racism and ignorance needs to be contended with even after re-settlement and citizenship. Here in Des Moines, two of these women, Achan Agit and Aicheria Bell, are challenging an Iowa state law that requires 2,100 hours of training at a state-approved cosmetology school in order to perform African-style hair braiding-- even though the style is often not even taught in cosmetology schools.You first gotta pay for and learn how to style white people's hair if you want permission to style black people's hair.

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