Very Religious White Americans More Than Twice as Likely to Identify With GOP

But religion has no effect on blacks, who identify with the Democratic Party regardless of religion orientation.

At Gallup, "Religion and Party ID Strongly Linked Among Whites, Not Blacks."

Personal religiousness makes little difference among blacks ... as the powerful partisan pull of Democratic identification among black Americans trumps any influence of religion. Only 9 to 10% of blacks in each of the three groups of varying religiousness identify as Republicans, while more than three-quarters in each group identify themselves as Democrats.

Reminds me: "The Democrat Party Has Always Been the Party of Racism."

New York Minority Parents Protest National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT)

Hopefully we'll be seeing more protests like this.

At Big Government, "Inner City Parents Protest Teachers’ Union, NAACP Over Charter School Lawsuit" (via News Alert):

Michele Bachmann: Obama 'Has Failed the African American Community'

Another reason why I just love Michele Bachmann.

This has been one of my biggest criticism of the administration, one I've been making for a long time. Obama's failed minority communities all around.

At Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Michele Bachmann: President Obama Has Failed African-Americans":

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Obama has failed blacks, says Bachmann as African-American unemployment hits 16%."

High-Tech Lynching: Progressives Attack Clarence Thomas Alleged Ethics Breach Because He's a Black Conservative

It's one of the greatest apostasies from progressivism. To be black and conservative is to reject everything about the politics of racial grievance and victimology. And for 20 years we've seen Clarence Thomas bear the brunt of the left's attack on black conservatism at the Supreme Court. I mentioned it today, the story at New York Times, "Friendship of Justice and Magnate Puts Focus on Ethics." And I linked Althouse, but folks need to go over there again, because she hammers the progressive hypocrisy: "The NYT goes after Clarence Thomas over 'an unusual, and ethically sensitive, friendship'."

And here comes the Soros-funded Think Progresss, "Justices Have Been Forced To Resign For Doing What Clarence Thomas Has Done":

Justice Clarence Thomas is an ethics problem in a black robe.

And he's being subjected to a high-tech attack in a white robe.

Despicable, but it's the progressive left we're talking about, so there you go. Just terrible people.

Via Memeorandum.

Pew Research Center: Fathers and the Modern American Family

See: "A Tale of Two Fathers: More Are Active, but More Are Absent."

If readers can remember back to 2008, one of things I'd hoped about Barack Obama, if he were elected, is that he'd help restore stable family values to the black community. He has not. While President Obama is a model family man, he's rarely spoken out in any direct, sustained way that would bring his moral authority to bear on the cultural pathologies of the race. He needs to be out speaking like this, often, and sincerely, like Father's Day comes more than once a year.

According to Pew, "... more than one-in-four fathers with children 18 or younger now live apart from their children ..."

And especially:

Fathers’ living arrangements are strongly correlated with race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status as measured by educational attainment. Black fathers are more than twice as likely as white fathers to live apart from their children (44% vs. 21%), while Hispanic fathers fall in the middle (35%). Among fathers who never completed high school, 40% live apart from their children. This compares with only 7% of fathers who graduated from college.

This is not to dismiss other ethnic groupings, for example, the Hispanic population, but I once taught Black Politics, and I continue to see the poorest academic and social performance of young black men than any other other demographic. I used to be sympathetic, if not a little sad about it. Now I just get mad, and if I can, I'll get in your face if you're not performing up to standards. Of course, I'm only a professor, so my role is limited, but if I can model some achievement or direction, that will count for a bit. It's not just a problem on television or in the movies. I see it up close. I personally grieve. Perhaps I can do more later, when I have some changes in my own family. Time. Time to give back.

Now, closer to home, I'm not teaching this summer, and so I'll have the next two months to spend with my family, for some quality time and recreation. No big trips are planned. My youngest son will be the challenge while school's out, though. He needs to be active and needs a lot of direction. Just last week I was taking him skateboarding two times a day, but we'll need to read and study as well. My older son is going on 10th grade and he's very independent. He's got a young lady friend (kinda girlfriend) who he spends most of his time with, and he doesn't like me tagging along too much. But I need to get on him to do more chores around the house, and hopefully I can get him to do some reading instead of downloading music all the time.

At the Pew study it notes that 63 percent of dad's today say that being a father is harder now than it was a generation ago. And, "Only about one-in-four adults say fathers today are doing a better job as parents than their own fathers did." Yeah. Okay. But what's the measurement? If it's economically, things have been pretty spotty these last few years, and we'd have to go back two or three generations to find a time when there was less economic dynamism (and dislocation). But culturally, the dads of today are way more hands-on than when I was a kid, and that's good. My dad was perhaps more involved than some other fathers in my neighborhood growing up, but he was just as emotionally distant as any I can think of. I never wanted to be a father like that, and thank goodness. Sure, there's more we can do, as men and fathers, and no one measures up perfectly to their own expectations and those of their children. But keeping it all together is the primary responsibility, and giving equal support to the spouse so everyone can grow and be happy. In that way men have a greater responsibility as parents than in earlier generations. I think when we have a booming economy again, some of the load will ease, and successful fatherhood might increase (increased togetherness, less family breakdown).

Anyway, at top, I'm taking a break from cleaning house yesterday morning. We have a realtor. He showed the house at 10:00am and my wife and I were both up detailing everything. My youngest boy slept until about 9:00am, and my oldest is out of town until later today. I might shave. I've just been chillin' since school got out at the end of May.

More later.

Have a good Father's Day everyone.

Rihanna 'Man Down' Controversy

A couple of months back, my oldest son was playing Rihanna's "Man Down" 24/7, and I asked him if she had a video. She didn't. But she does now, and it's quite a sensation. See Los Angeles Times, "Rihanna, BET defend 'Man Down' video":

Rihanna had a simple response Thursday for advocacy groups condemning her latest video: She's not anyone's parent.

The singer found herself in the center of controversy this week after the premiere of her latest video, "Man Down," on BET's "106 & Park" — a video she promised in a Twitter message would have a "very strong underlying message 4 girls like me."

It's that message — which shows her killing a man who has assaulted her — that has drawn the ire of three advocacy groups that work, in part, to combat violent imagery in media.

The Parents Television Council, Industry Ears and the Enough Is Enough Campaign joined to condemn the video and urge Viacom, BET's parent company, to pull it.

BET said Thursday that it had no intention of doing so.

In a statement, Paul Porter, co-founder of Industry Ears and a former music programmer for BET, described "Man Down" as "an inexcusable, shock-only, shoot-and-kill theme song. In my 30 years of viewing BET, I have never witnessed such a cold, calculated execution of murder in prime time. Viacom's standards and practices department has reached another new low."

"If Chris Brown shot a woman in his new video and BET premiered it, the world would stop," Porter said, referring to the singer who pleaded guilty to assault in the 2009 beating of Rihanna, his then girlfriend. "Rihanna should not get a pass, and BET should know better."

The "Man Down" video, which has also been shown on Vevo, the YouTube music site, begins with the singer shooting a man as a crowd of bystanders flee. He is shown dead in a pool of blood. It then flashes back to the previous day, as the singer hangs out with friends, goes clubbing and on the way home is accosted in a dark alley by the same guy. It is implied that he sexually assaults her.

Representatives for Rihanna could not be reached for comment Thursday, but the singer took to Twitter to address the fallout.

Also at Baltimore Sun, "Rihanna's 'Man Down' Controversy Heats Up."

And check Rihanna on Twitter.

Added: At ABC News, "Rihanna Defends 'Man Down'; BET Stands by Video."

Linked at Zilla of the Resistance, "Parents: It's YOUR Job, Not Rihanna's To Be A Role Model For Your Kids!"

Plus, more at Pop Crush, "RIHANNA SPEAKS OUT ON ‘MAN DOWN’ CONTROVERSY."

Obama 'Black Mascot' of Wall Street

I saw this earlier, but William Jacobson's covered it for the Saturday night race card, "Progressives Devouring Their Own Tail":

More at West's interview with Truthdig:

“We have got to attempt to tell the truth, and that truth is painful” ... “It is a truth that is against the thick lies of the mainstream. In telling that truth we become so maladjusted to the prevailing injustice that the Democratic Party, more and more, is not just milquetoast and spineless, as it was before, but thoroughly complicitous with some of the worst things in the American empire. I don’t think in good conscience I could tell anybody to vote for Obama. If it turns out in the end that we have a crypto-fascist movement and the only thing standing between us and fascism is Barack Obama, then we have to put our foot on the brake. But we’ve got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties.”

I'm just laughing at how Obama suckered these idiots. I don't care about the empire bull, but I've long hoped that Obama would genuinely work to help the disadvantaged, and he's done jack as far as I'm concerned, especially on the school choice issue. What a waste of opportunity.

RELATED: At Saberpoint, "My Impression of CORNEL WEST (Photoshop)."

Burlyce Sherrell Logan Returns to the University of North Texas

She's interviewed at New York Times, "A College Degree, 55 Years and an Era in the Making."

Burlyce Sherrell Logan, now 73, faced horrendous, racist attacks when she attended the university back in 1956:

“One day I was walking across campus, going to another building, and I saw a bunch of placards out,” she said. “I thought someone was going for office.” She recalled that she started reading the signs and they said, “ ‘Jungle bunnies go home,’ ‘Africans go home,’ ‘Burrheads go home.’ And I was totally shocked, but I had noticed there were a bunch of kids ganging up behind me. And I don’t know what made me do this, but I just started knee-slapping laughing, and I couldn’t stop. I think they think I went crazy, and they all ran away.”

She quit as bad grades piled up; moved west; married, divorced and remarried; raised three children; worked as a banker and a secretary. Then, in 2006, Ms. Logan returned to a changed university, now with 36,000 students — about a third of them black, Hispanic or Asian. It took 55 years, but she has earned a bachelor’s degree, her only worry whether her cranky 73-year-old knees can carry her up the steps and across the stage to collect a diploma that is as much about a life journey as any academic achievement.

Read the whole thing.

Ms. Logan is not bitter. Times have changed, and she's appreciative of the second chance and wise to the social transformations since 1956. That's apparently not enough for the racial grievance masters at The Root:

I wonder if some are in too much of a hurry to close the door on past injustice without exploring the history first. At a time when there is a disturbing rumble about race under the surface of so many of our discussions, we need to hear the survivors' tales. America has changed since 1956, or even 1976. It wouldn't hurt to remind America of the enormous psychic and emotional price that African Americans paid to simply exercise their rights.

Oh no. Wouldn't want to close the door on the last deep wellspring of radical left-wing power. Americans want to move forward and provide citizens with equal opportunity, and, unfortunately, more often than not, what's holding folks back is the Democrat stranglehold on inner-city political and educational institutions, not to mention the culture of anti-intellectualism that's gripped those trapped in the black underclass. But The Root says don't "close the door on past injustice ..." It's all we've got left!

Unions Hijack MLK Legacy in Assassination Day Exploitation

I suggested this morning that Barack Obama, in launching his 2012 reelection effort on April 4th, the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., "might have used this day to remind Americans of his commitment" to family values and to the restoration of the black family in American life. Absent that, the president's launch frankly seems a bit disrespectful. But that's nothing compared to the big labor unions, who're shamelessly exploiting King's death to make strained comparison's between the assassination and today's controversies over unions and state budget crises, etc. See the Soros-funded Think Progress, "43 Years Ago Today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Died Fighting For The Rights Of Public Workers" (via Memeorandum). And at the AFL-CIO, "We Are One Honors MLK, ‘A Champion for All’."

They're calling April 4th a "national day of solidarity." It's certainly true that Dr. King's vision placed him on the left on occasion, but his overall program of individual liberty was an affirmation of this nation's founding --- and inherently conservative. It's thus horribly shameful for progressives to hijack the King legacy as if they own it. "Solidarity"? Civil rights protesters marched against Democrats throughout the South who for decades had disenfranchised blacks and had denied them of equal protection of the laws. Dr. King carried out the vision of Abraham Lincoln, and President Lyndon Johnson warned that he was consigning the Democrats to minority status by signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's just sickening to see progressives not just cheapen the legacy, but to conflate this nation's historic legacy of victory over discrimination with the union entitlement culture that's bankrupting the states.

Obama Launches Reelection Campaign on Fourth Day of Fourth Month, Same Day as MLK Assassination

At Politico, "President Obama launches reelection campaign with video" (via Memeorandum).

Seems to me the Obama camp might have taken advantage of the historical symbolism, if you're going launch on the fourth day of the fourth month, which happens to be the day Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. Obama could have returned to the rhetoric of his 2004 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention:

Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.

Obama might have used this day to remind Americans of his commitment to these values. He might have spoken on the crisis of education in the black community, and the need to strengthen the family and commit ourselves to a politics of life. For more on this, see Ken Blackwell and Robert Morrison, "Crisis in the Black Community."

'To hint that those who grew up in a household with a mother and father are somehow less black than those who did not is beyond ridiculous'

An incredible essay (in that it had to be written at all), and powerfully uplifting. At New York Times, "Grant Hill’s Response to Jalen Rose."

Twenty Years After Rodney King Beating: Video Ushered Police Into YouTube World

At Los Angeles Times, "LAPD's Change in Focus":

In the wake of the videotaped police attack on motorist Rodney King, the department has learned to embrace video scrutiny.

It was shortly after midnight, 20 years ago Thursday, when George Holliday awoke to the sounds of police sirens outside his Lake View Terrace apartment. Grabbing his clunky Sony Handycam, he stepped out on his balcony and changed the Los Angeles Police Department forever.

The nine minutes of grainy video footage he captured of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King helped to spur dramatic reforms in a department that many felt operated with impunity. The video played a central role in the criminal trial of four officers, whose not-guilty verdicts in 1992 triggered days of rioting in Los Angeles in which more than 50 people died.

The simple existence of the video was something unusual in itself. Relatively few people then had video cameras, Holliday did — and had the wherewithal to turn it on.

"It was just coincidence," Holliday reflected in an interview a decade ago. "Or luck."

Today, things are far different and the tape that so tainted the LAPD has a clear legacy in how officers think about their jobs. Police now work in a YouTube world in which cellphones double as cameras, news helicopters transmit close-up footage of unfolding police pursuits, and surveillance cameras capture arrests or shootings. Police officials are increasingly recording their officers. Compared to the cops who beat King, officers these days hit the streets with a new reality ingrained in their minds: Someone is always watching.

"Early on in their training, I always tell them, 'I don't care if you're in a bathroom taking care of your personal business…. Whatever you do, assume it will be caught on video,' " said Sgt. Heather Fungaroli, who supervises recruits at the LAPD's academy. "We tell them if they're doing the right thing then they have no reason to worry."

More at the link.

Folks will tell different stories about this, but Rodney King resisted arrest. Was the police reaction excessive? Perhaps, although a federal court trial found otherwise, and the rest is history. I was more shocked by the Los Angeles riots than by the alleged police brutality in the beating. Of course, maybe I'm not in a good position to truly understand it, not being an oppressed minority, and all that, or a conflicted middle-class white feminist struggling to overcome her racial privilege, like Melissa McEwan:

Twenty years later, it's still the same victim-blaming I was hearing about Rodney King, even as he sat in a wheelchair convalescing from his physical injuries. (He has nightmares to this day, and, while currently sober, has struggled with alcoholism.) Twenty years later, same old shit.

But, twenty years on, I am a different person than I was then. Working through my privilege is an ongoing process—it always will be—but what happened to Rodney King was so much more difficult for me to understand and culturally contextualize then, and it's not just because I was a teenager; it's because I was a privileged white teenager who hadn't yet begun in any meaningful way to examine her privilege.

Somehow that sounds inauthentic to me, but that's progressives for you --- they're all FUBAR all the time.

RELATED: At CNN, "Rodney King, 20 Years Later." (At Memeorandum.)