A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew.

Sabbar Kashur, 30, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday after the court ruled that he was guilty of rape by deception. According to the complaint filed by the woman with the Jerusalem district court, the two met in downtown Jerusalem in September 2008 where Kashur, an Arab from East Jerusalem, introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship. The two then had consensual sex in a nearby building before Kashur left.

When she later found out that he was not Jewish but an Arab, she filed a criminal complaint for rape and indecent assault.

beyond the frames it has been (mostly, that I know of) discussed within so far and places it in historical context, pulling together strands from U.S. history, apartheid, and more.

Very much worth reading. More than once.

I was going to write about something else this morning but then I made the mistake of reading the comments on a post by Tasha Fierce, on feministe. I am not actually going to link to the comment because the comment itself has little or no relation to Tasha’s post – about the “coming race war” rhetoric, which I want to write about later, and will link then – and I don’t want to derail the conversation because of an automatic trackback. Also, I am just using him as an example – this sort of language is all over the primarily White “progressive” blogosphere.

Anyway, the commenter says:

Obama hasn’t been a great president; he’s been disappointing in a lot of ways and indistinguishable from Bush on some very important issues. We still detain people without trial, we still torture, we’re still neck deep in two expensive wars with fuzzy mission parameters and increasing irrelevance, the economy is still weak, his handling of the BP situation was laughable, he’s broken every major campaign promise he made with regards to transparency and accountability, he promised health care reform and instead delivered watered down regulation and a huge corporate welfare system.

These are mostly legitimate, though arguable, points. Many people have  been disappointed with various actions (or inactions) of the Obama administration and that is only natural. I am possibly less disappointed than some because I was not so expectant – it was obvious from the beginning that, for all his soaring rhetoric, Obama was not, and likely will never be, some sort of radical leftist firebrand. I decided that I could live with a moderately left pragmatist as president because it was highly unlikely that we could elect anything but, at the moment, and that was that.

But anyway, more of the comment - he says something about how a reasoned challenge could be politically disastrous for Obama (I guess he means a challenge from reasonable Republicans? Not sure they exist, but that’s neither here nor there), and then writes:

Unfortunately, people like Beck, Brietbart, the Tea Party, and Palin manage to make even as poor a president as Obama look…well…really desirable. On the left you have a subpar president on the right you have a conversation that sounds like its moderated by David Duke and Charles Manson.

A subpar president. I wanted to make sure I understood that term so I looked it up – “Not measuring up to traditional standards of performance, value, or production.” So.

Of  course my mind winged its way back over the presidents we’ve had in just my lifetime (I was born in 1958) and I did a very quick comparison with Obama. The first president I was aware of was Kennedy, only because he was assassinated I think (I was four,) but then there was Johnson (“Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”); Nixon – who, you see, was not a crook; Ford… well, you know the list. Land wars, covert wars, CIA scandals, funding anti-Communist groups, supporting vile governments, etc., etc.

Even given that all the commenters complaints were true in and of themselves, with no nuance, would that not make Obama at least on par with the “traditional standards of performance, value, or production” of past presidents? Why is his malfeasance, if that is what one believes it is, below the standard? Or why are his accomplishments, some historic by many measures if not by the measure of their adherence to an all-or-nothing political view, thought to not measure up to the standards of production or value or performance of past presidents who also may have compromised to get what they wanted – or were unable to get even a half of a loaf at all?

I came across another feminist site a couple of weeks ago, following a link from feministe. The blogger wrote a post about Obama and government, her disappointment with Obama and all that… but the first few paragraphs of the post are about South Africa, the disappointment that the ANC turned out to be, so on and so forth, and she uses this as a segue into her issues with Obama. I left a comment something to the effect that there was little difference between the set up of the blog post and the people carrying signs with Obama as a witch doctor. My comment remained unpublished, but the point still stands.

Words matter. Dog whistles matter. And make no mistake, these ARE dog whistles. Conscious and deliberate? I don’t know. Attacking minorities, including women, on what are their perceived (by mainstream or White society) weaknesses or stereotypes is so embedded in our culture that we often just do it instinctively. When you want to attack a Black person you imply (or state right out) that they are below the standard, not capable of governing or leading, easily led, weak (primarily targeted toward Black men), and all the rest. Just like you attack a woman by implying she is hysterical or weak (except that non-white woman are attacked as being strong, but in the wrong way) and all the other nonsense. It doesn’t really matter if it is deliberate, because if an unintentionally sent dog whistle reaches an even unintentionally receptive ear, the result is the same regardless of intent.

Should it be let go because it is happening on the left instead  of - or in addition to - the right? I don’t think so. I am a pessimistic optimist, so I fully believe that not too long from now (as the arc of history goes, that is) we’ll have a woman president. A gay or lesbian president. Any one of the other non-white, non-male, non-gender normative, non-Christian categories of U.S. Americans will be striding in to “Hail to the Chief” one day. Perhaps we should use this time of the “first” to practice how to react to someone “different” even when we disagree or dislike them intensely, in a ways that do not perpetuate stereotypes, do not replicate right-wing tropes, or the inequities of the past.

Well, it seems I was not the only one thinking along those lines. Rachel Slajda (TPM) does some reporting today: The Real Anti-Sherrod Agenda: Stopping The USDA Race Case

It’s also important to understand that Andrew Breitbart’s timing of the release of the grossly distorted video of Sherrod, which he admits having had for weeks, may not be entirely random. Congress will soon vote on whether to fund part of a settlement between the USDA and African-American farmers who faced acknowledged discrimination — farmers like Sherrod and her husband used to be. It’s a tiny piece of the upcoming war supplemental bill.

The USDA settlements with African-American farmers are a longtime bête noire of the right, which they deem a giveaway to a core Democratic constituency. It’s not clear whether Brietbart’s release of the video was specifically intended to hurt the chances of other African-America farmers to receive recompense from decades of discrimination that caused them to lose their farms, but conservatives immediately used the video to attack the settlement. The discrimination claims, known globally as the Pigford settlement, is the elephant in the room, so here’s the background.

[...]

According to multiple sources that TPMmuckraker has not independently confirmed, Sherrod and her husband, Charles, were two of only 170 plaintiffs that chose Track B. Vilsack acknowledged in his press conference that Sherrod was a claimant in the Pigford settlement.

Earlier this year, Sherrod’s story was featured as part of the Fort Valley State University’s Middle Georgia Oral History Project. Her story describes her view of the incidents leading up to the end of her case before the Pigford v. Vilsack arbitrator.

[...]

Harry Reid’s spokesman, Jim Manley, said it “remains unclear” whether the bill could pass with the settlement attached. The money was also included in the unemployment insurance extension; but the Pigford settlement, and other funds, had to be stripped in order to break a filibuster.

Conservatives immediately jumped on the Sherrod video — issued by Breitbart in the wake of Reid’s promise to bring the war supplemental (including the Pigford settlement money) to a vote — to condemn the Pigford case.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), for example, tweeted immediately on Tuesday morning, after the Sherrod case hit the news, that many Pigford claims amount to fraud:

Shirley Sharrod fired by Vilsack 4 racism in her USDA position. America needs to know that, not all, but billion$ of Pigford Farms is fraud.

Sherrod gave the speech in March, Breitbart reportedly got the edited video in April, so whatever it was meant for, it was not recorded in retaliation to the NAACP press release of July 13, asking the Tea Party to repudiate the racists in their midst.

As far as I can tell she doesn’t speak a word of English, though she understands some, and her Spanish is way too fast for me to follow, but somehow we communicate. In fact, the language barrier didn’t stop her from talking me into buying a bag of cactus one time. I’m sure cactus is lovely in meals, but as I haven’t a clue how to cook it my one foray into adventurous cooking was not all that successful. Still, I’ll probably buy another bag if she brings it again, but my favorites are the fruits and, of course, the tamales.

She’s probably in her 50s or 60s and, come to think of it, she may not actually be Mexican. I say this because, for one thing I really don’t know, and for another … well, when she first started bringing around the tamales they were pretty awful – bland and the masa falling apart and all kinds of stuff. Not, of course, that all Mexicans or all Latin@s are born knowing how to make tamales, or anything – she may have been an office worker or a doctor or something in her home country and is just selling tamales here as a way to make a little extra income - but if one is going to sell them, I think they should at least taste good, no?

Anyway, she kept bringing them and I kept buying them and over time they got better and better, until now they are very tasty, the masa is firm and they are well-wrapped. Yum. I look forward to her ringing the doorbell even if she does keep her finger on the button so that it goes ding!ding!ding!ding! – I can live with that.

Except when she showed up at my door yesterday, I wasn’t so happy to see her because I didn’t have any money for tamales or anything else. Feeding six people is a lot different from feeding two, and we tend to run out of money and food long before we run out of month, as they say. So when she rang – ding!ding!ding!ding! -and said somethingsomething tamales! I opened the door and said, “No, sorry. I don’t have any money!”

She didn’t quite understand at first and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the word “dinero”, so I rubbed my fingers together (I think that is the international sign language for money?) and shook my head, saying I don’t have any money, no cash. She nods as if she understands and then reaches into her basket and starts picking up tamales and putting them in the foil wrapper anyway!

So here I am out there saying, no no, and here she is saying who knows what (she really is the fastest talker I have met in any language) and calmly counting out a bunch of tamales and putting them into the foil – and then all of a sudden I catch the word “Sabado”.

Sabado? I say. I can pay you on Saturday? She smiles, nods decisively, puts the package of tamales in my hands, says a bunch of stuff and repeats Sabado and starts to walk off again with her basket almost before I can thank her.

Tamales are a treat anyway but that night they tasted especially good – not only because they made a change from the simple, spare meals we’d been having, but because they were flavored with… what? The milk of human kindness? The graciousness of one woman who saw more than just a customer, and more than what her customer told her?

I don’t know, but sometimes someone shows up at just the perfect time to remind me that although all may not be right with the world, some people make the world worth living in.

[tamale photo is from here]

Anyway, though…

Apparently when others were piling on Shirley Sherrod yesterday, or running away from her, Lizardoids and Johnson consistently stood up for her, without even knowing what the rest of the story was. They just knew Breitbart and his tactics and what a liar he is (my addition) and figured there WAS a rest of the story.

Cole seems to think they were just about the only ones, but I am not sure about that – I didn’t hear about any of this until this morning, so most of the (non-right wing) reactions I’ve found are to the proven Breitbart lies.

One thing I didn’t know, brought out by one of LGF’s commenters, teh mantis, last night:

The whole story is BS. Brietbart has conveniently edited out the context of this story, but he forgot one crucial detail. Notice where she says that the story took place just after Chapter 12 bankruptcy was established for family farms? Andrew really should have edited that out. You know why? Chapter 12 was so established in 1986. What was Shirley Sherrod doing in 1986? She was running the New Communities black farm coop in Georgia. She was not employed by the government in any way. Some white farmer called a black coop looking for help. She helped him, but not as much as she “could” if, you know, he were a black farmer and thus would have some interest in the coop. They also gave farmers help restructuring their loans and whatnot, so she referred him to a lawyer who could help him, despite his condescending attitude.

I should also note that the her coop and the associate RDLN recently won a $1 billion+ settlement for black farmers after they were systematically denied loans provided to white farmers in the early eighties, complements of Ronnie Reagan (Pigford v. Glickman). But we all know it was those black farmers banding together in their cooperative farming blackness that are the real racists.

I don’t know why this story hit me so badly. I guess because this woman could be any one of the older Black women I know, have known - the ones who have toiled for years, taken all the spit, all the insults, all the sexism, all the racism, all the people refusing to stand by them, all the comments about being “welfare queens”, or “lazy” or having 10 kids, and all the suspicious glances when *anything* at all goes wrong, and working daily with the knowledge that should something major go wrong, it’s likely you’ll be the first gone, last rehired  – and to get through all of that to a place where you are looked up to, where you are doing good, where are where you deserve to be because you paid your dues - only to have some lying cretin with a history of targeting relatively powerless Black folks swoop down and blithely pull everything you’ve worked for away from you in the effort to get that guy, over there…

Shame. Shame on Breitbart, his supporters, the dissiminators of this nonsense, limp pickle Vilsack and the Obama admin, too, if they don’t restore this woman’s life.

The full video and transcript, at TPM

what am i?

 via

I’ve never had a proper one all the years (and in any of the places) that I’ve had a blog – and just today I went to click on a person’s name that I was positive was on the little bit of a blogroll that I do have. And it wasn’t there. Anywhere.

Pretty embarrassing considering that I am planning to use one of his posts as a starting point for a series of posts once things quiet down here, as a way to sort of ease back into non hit-and-run writing (I have added the link now, though, lol.)

It seems that in between that I need to tackle this whole linking business… I have loads of room in the sidebars there, no reason not to. Except natural inability, that is. Sigh

Nap Time

When I was very young I wrote stories all the time, and sometimes even illustrated them. The older I grew, though, the less I wrote and the less confidence I had in writing at all, to the point where I just haven’t written anything resembling fiction in years.

Well, until last week. And, strangely, what broke the logjam was my cultural diversity class, where I had to write a journal as if I was a member of a minority group (not much fiction there, lol). The journal needed to cover where the group originated, was the area colonized and all sorts of things like that. As a Black woman who is researching her family history and slavery and African origins and all that, the assignment could almost have been made for me.

So, I wrote as if I was a Chinese woman immigrant. Or, rather, a series of them, four generations I think, and included stuff like the Chinese Exclusion act (of course) and such. Difficult to put it all in 1000 words, but that too was good practice and certainly more challenging and requiring more research than if I had just written what I know. There is not, however, a lot of readily accessible information on early Chinese female immigrants. I thought of asking Kai, but it was for such a short piece (and in such a short amount of time) that I just looked for myself. I am curious now, of course, so will probably do more research on my own as well.

Anyway,  the point is the entire thing ( all 1000 words lol) was fiction, and since I had to do it, I did it. And it was fun! And easy and I think that that tiny, quickly and not very well written piece has helped me overcome my fear of writing fiction a bit.

Might as well start creating some worlds, no?

[image at top is a fantasy spider mom and baby that I made years ago]

Every time someone points to a vapid, nonsensical article that Robin Givhan has written I Google her name and image, all the while thinking “Oh, please, don’t let this woman be Black!”

And, every single time, she is.

Sigh. (via)

Gah!