Race – Page 12 – Prog Gold

Because You’re Not Worth It

Published on July 7, 2007

You’re worth it – if white. L’Oréal guilty of racism

· Cosmetic giant fined for recruitment campaign
· First big French firm to be convicted of racial bias
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Saturday July 7, 2007
The Guardian

Part of the cosmetics giant L’Oréal was yesterday found guilty of racial discrimination after it sought to exclude non-white women from promoting its shampoo.

In a landmark case, the Garnier division of the beauty empire, along with a recruitment agency it employed, were fined €30,000 (£20,300) each after they recruited women on the basis of race. The historic ruling – the first time a major company has been found guilty of systematic race discrimination in France – saw a senior figure at the agency given a three-month suspended prison sentence.

[…]

In July 2000, a fax detailing the profile of hostesses sought by L’Oréal stipulated women should be 18 to 22, size 38-42 (UK size 10-14) and “BBR”, the initials for bleu, blanc, rouge, the colours of the French flag. Prosecutors argued that BBR, a shorthand used by the far right, was also a well-known code among employers to mean “white” French people and not those of north African, African and Asian backgrounds.

Christine Cassan, a former employee at Districom, a communications firm acting for Garnier, told the court her clients demanded white hostesses. She said that when she had gone ahead and presented candidates “of colour” a superior in her own company had said she had “had enough of Christine and her Arabs”.

L’Oreal has not been immune to charges of racism in the past:

n the 90s L’Oréal was hit by claims over past links to fascism, anti-semitism and the giving of jobs to Nazi collaborators after the second world war. It went some way to satisfy its critics with a boardroom change and other measures. Liliane Bettencourt, L’Oréal’s major shareholder, is the wealthiest woman in France. Two years ago L’Oréal’s slogan was softened from “Because I’m worth it” to “Because you’re worth it” after concerns in France that the original appeared too money-oriented.

More….

I wonder what Beyonce and the other women of colour who promote L’Oreal in the US have to say about this? She doesn’t seem to mind being changed with a weave and airbrushing and contact lenses into a perfect, albeit darker skinned, simulacrum of the stereotypical US blonde advertising bimbo.

L’Oreal recently bought the Body Shop, which then suddenly popped up with a ‘skin-whitening’ range. I myself have a L’Oreal compact I bought in a ‘grey market’ cosmetic shop – ‘Deep- Whitening’ foundation, labeled as such. It wasn’t meant to be sold in Europe but in Indonesia – because everuone knows or at least the major cosmetic companies would like to make people think that any woman with anything other than perfect alabaster-white skin must want to bleach it.

L’Oreal’s implict and explicit racism is a can of worms Liliane Bettancourt doesn’t want opened, but it’s going to be opened anyway, whether she likes it or not – and the connections with the Nazi collaborationist past: will be brought up again:

A Paris stage designer is suing French cosmetics giant L’Oreal for UKpound 20 million over her Jewish family’s home stolen in Nazi Germany in the Thirties. Most of Monica Waitzfelder’s family were killed by the Nazis in the Second World War. France’s Supreme Court will rule next week on whether L’Oreal, headed by British chief executive Lindsay Owen-Jones, is guilty of acquiring stolen goods by refusing to compensate Waitzfelder, 50, and her mother, Edith Rosenfelder, 81. The case is embarrassing for L’Oreal, maker of Garnier shampoo and Lancome cosmetics, and its biggest shareholder, Liliane Bettencourt. With an UKpound 8 billion stake in the cosmetics giant, she is the wealthiest woman in France. Her husband, Andre, had to step down as head of L’Oreal in 1994 when his pro-Nazi past in France was revealed.

[…]

L’Oreal was founded by Liliane Bettencourt’s father, Eugene Schuller, a French chemist who invented modern hair dye in 1907. Before the Second World War, he financed a fascist movement called La Cagoule (the Hood), which carried out a wave of terrorist attacks on Jews and synagogues in Paris.

Men may think cosmetics aren’t political, just trivial, silly women’s stuff they don’t have to bother with – but cosmetic companies ar giant multinatinals too, and they have an enormous amount of effect on womens’ lives.

Choice of cosmetic company isn’t just about what eyeshadow to use, it’s a political decision too.

Shorter Dutch Liberals: Starve ’em Out Of The Burqa!

Published on July 3, 20072 Comments

More liberal, tolerant Dutch news – don’t you just love the VVD?

“Cut benefits to burqa wearers”
27 June 2007

THE HAGUE – A majority in Parliament wants the government to allow municipalities to cut benefits if the recipients are unable to find a job because they wear a burqa.

A motion to this effect from Liberal VVD MP Atzo Nicolaï and Labour PvdA MP Hans Spekman was passed on Tuesday.

Coalition party PvdA and opposition party VVD are concerned about a verdict from the court in Amsterdam earlier this month. The court found in preliminary proceedings that the municipality Diemen had unlawfully docked the benefits of a Muslim woman who wears a burqa because she had been unable to find a job after four job applications.

If this verdict becomes a precedent, Spekman and Nicolaï want to know what state secretary for social affairs Ahmed Aboutaleb plans to do to ensure that municipalities will be able dock benefits in cases like this.

The state secretary first wants to wait for the final outcome of the court case before drawing conclusions. But he will “of course” inform Parliament of any steps he plans to take.

Aboutaleb has said in earlier debates with Parliament that the case in Diemen should be put in perspective. He says it is just “one case,” while there have also been court verdicts that have found in favour of municipalities in cases where the behaviour of the job seeker prevented him or her from finding a job. One of these cases also concerned the wearing of a burqa.

[My emphasis]

I expect a Moslem woman could wear a bloody bikini and they still wouldn’t give her the job. Discrinmination is inherent in Dutch society, as we see from these following two reports:

AMSTERDAM, 03/07/07 – Primary schools in Amsterdam will no longer accept enrolments of children under two years of age. The measure is intended to prevent ethnic segregation in education.

White parents often enrol their child for a school without immigrant pupils straight after birth. In doing so, they ensure that the child does not end up on a waiting list. Immigrants, who are often unaware of the waiting lists, usually enrol their child once it has reached school-going age and can then only find a place at ‘black’ schools.

The current situation contributes to schools increasingly becoming one-sidedly black or white, considers the Amsterdam local council. Most of Amsterdam’s primary schools have now signed a covenant with the municipality in which they pledge to reject enrolments of children under two years of age.

Universities draw few minorities
28 June 2007

AMSTERDAM – Universities are still not managing to attract more students of ethnic background. This has emerged from a study commissioned by the Association of Universities in the Netherlands

More...

Discrimination against non-whites and non-Christians is built in to the fabric, the normen and waarden of Dutch society, but the Dutch themselves can’t bear to be accused of prejudice or direct discrimination – it might hurt their smug self-images.

Rather than ban the burqa outright, which is what much of the white majority want, the VVD and their supporters prefer to use nasty, underhand tactics like docking the already meagre unemployment benefit, directly affecting women and children.

The men who are imposing (in some cases) the burqa on women? Not so much.

I’ve been living in Amsterdam for several years – I’m here by necessity rather than choice, so perhaps this affects my objectivity, but I feel can say with some confidence that, from my own observations, despite its much-vaunted liberal and feminist image, that the Netherlands is deeply mysogynistic, racist and paternal.

The concepts of normen en waarden’ or cultural norms and values by which all must abide, are embeddded in all public discourse. To overstep the bounds, especially as a woman, is to attract negative attention and open criticism. To be a woman here, and a foreign woman at that, is to be invisible in political terms and subject to whatever the white male majority decide.

Most schools are religious, many political parties are religiously based, as are tv stations and broadcasting companies, and all are overwhelmingly, horribly white. Without the embedded white patriarchy the country would collapse.

So it’s women bearing the brunt, both of Dutch Islamophobia and of the religious and cultural misogyny within their own cultural and ethnic communities.

Lidewijde Ongering, Deputy National Coordinator for Counterterrorism has been in Congress this past month briefing Joe Leiberman and his committee about the ‘unique’ way the Netherlands deals with radicalisation and potential terrorism.

Yup, that’s the way to do it alright, starve those pesky Moslem women out. That’ll really work.

About Obama

Published on May 17, 20071 Comment

Margaret Kimberly at The Smirking Chimp:

Should Black America Want a Black President?

by Margaret Kimberley | May 16 2007 – 12:58pm | permalink

From Black Agenda Report

When Colin Powell considered running for president, the question on everyone’s mind was whether or not he could win. In other words, would white people who said they liked him really vote for him? Powell eventually decided to shoot for a high profile gig with the next Republican administration, and the question remained unanswered.

Unlike Powell, Senator Barack Obama has entered a presidential race. He is the candidate with all the buzz, and he has raised a ton of money. Hillary Clinton thought that being the boss’s wife would be enough to waltz into the nomination. All she had to do was bask in the Clintonian after-glow and presto, instant oval office residency.

Sadly for her, she shares her husband’s politics of meaninglessness but none of his personal charisma. She can’t get away with fence straddling, triangulating, or insulting the party base. Along comes Obama, a living reincarnation of Clintonian political charm straight from the glory days. Now that Hillary has been out Clintoned, she looks less like a sure thing.

Obama has mastered the art of political bullshitology, and proven campaign fund-raising prowess. He does look like a contender. The likelihood of white people voting for him is still open to question, but that may not be the most important question. Black Americans will again support the Democratic nominee, but is Obama more worthy of that loyalty than any other Democrat?

If he is a winner, it will be in large part because he is willing to throw black people under the bus. He proved as much in his overrated speech at the 2004 Democratic national convention. “There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.” Of course there is a black America, and most of us don’t want to pretend otherwise.

Obama’s 2004 speech does not mention racism, not even to say something bland such as, racism is bad. Obama sells color blindness in a country that is all about the color spectrum. It makes no sense for black America to embrace this obvious canard. Will we purchase a lemon if the seller looks like us?

Read whole thing…

Kimberly goes on to make a convincing case for Obama’s lemonosity.

It’s a dilemma many citizens around the world face: now that we’re able to see and hear, read and minutely dissect for ourselves what those who aspire to lead us do and say, the more they appear lacking. So, faced with such lacklustre aspirant leaders, do we make the best of a bad job and try to mould less-than-ideal candidates to our will once in office, a la Polly Toynbee’s injunction to hold your nose and vote Labour?

The Labour party in the UK and the Republicans in the US both tried that already, and look where it got us. No, let’s hold them to account before the election, let’s have it all upfront. No more pigs in a poke.

Barack Obama has always appeared to me to be right out of central casting for any given West-Wing type drama. He’s the pacific, calm president who goes on tv and reassures the nation. He’s Morgan Freeman.

I’ve yet to see that he gives a real shit about injustice or poverty or anything much except sucking up to the DLC and getting the nomination. On the other hand that’s the realpolitik game all candidates have to play in the current system. At this point we just don’t know. But then I don’t get to choose – it’s not my opinion that’s relevant here. It’s thinkers, commenters and voters, people like Margaret Kimberly. It’s a black thing.

Or is it? Whoever wins the presidency is in control of an economic and political behemoth that distorts the world’s political gravity. So indirectly we in the rest of the world of whatever race or nationality, do have a stake.

For the US to elect a black president would send a clear and deeply symbolic message to the world that America is prepared to change its ways on any number of levels.

But if that black president appears to support or supinely accepts US political corruption, media manipulation, and world economic and military bullying as usual, then his colour will become entirely irrelevant, except as an epithet to throw at him.

The Vanguard of the Online Revolution – Parlour Pinks and MCWAs

Published on May 13, 20079 Comments

Ooh, an online democracy conference! This looks new and shiny and exciting and empowering, doesn’t it? Boing Boing announces:

Personal Democracy Forum, NYC, May 18
This year’s Personal Democracy Forum in NYC on May 18 looks like an incredible show, with speakers like Esther Dyson, Craig “craigslist” Newmark, Eric Schmidt, Larry Lessig, Arianna Huffington and many others, discussing the theme, “The Flattening of Politics.”

Technology and the Internet are changing democracy in America. Personal Democracy Forum is a hub for the exciting conversation underway between political professionals, technologists, and anyone else invigorated by the remarkable potential of technology to engage citizens in the democratic process.

New and exciting for the same old leech-like white faces making money off it, you mean. and by ‘exciting conversation’ they mean over cocktails between those already heavy with money, influence and power.

Arianna, Esther, Craig – same old boomer faces, same old boomer politics, Democrats for ever rah rah rah, sis boom bah, must protect our nice comfortable way of life from scary fundies and scarier anticapitalists. This conference is just another Middlle Class White American (I’d’ve said Middle Class White Assholes, personally, but then I’m uncivil) share-the-profits-circle-jerk.

For ‘democratisation’ of the internets and blogging read: circle the wagons, the natives’re getting uppity.

Here’s an alternative view on the topic from Donna at The Silence of Our Friends. :

What is imperative for everyone to know, is that the majority of middle class white American people are untrustworthy and unreliable. (A handful of these people have discovered this, and those are the ones who tend to be trustworthy and reliable.) The reason for this is that they are completely self-centered. So you ask, “But Donna, isn’t everyone self-centered?” Yes, but it is the extent I am talking about. MCWAs’ are oblivious to everyone else around them and throughout the world. Only their problems, their issues, their concerns matter. Everyone else is just a “special interest”. In the blogging world, the major liberal/progressive/Democratic blogs are close to useless for informing or being informed by anyone but MCWAs. The only time people of color; poor people, including whites; those with disabilities; foreigners; labor, especially blue collar; just about anyone who isn’t a MCWA is mentioned with any concern on their blogs is when that person can be used for their agenda, not because the concern is real. Sometimes appearances is the only agenda, because when they can make themselves appear like they care, they all get to sit around and feel all warm and fuzzy and enlightened.

I gave up on the male-centered liberal mainstream blogs long ago. I thought that maybe since the women had to deal with the oppression of sexism and misogyny that I’d have more in common with them and have a place to work through our issues together. Wrong. Because they are privileged, but blind to it, they only see their issues. Since they are middle class white Americans, usually able bodied, usually heterosexual, usually white collar workers, etc they pay lip service to issues related to poverty, people of color in the US, anything about another country, anything about disability, most GLBT issues (but since some middle class white women are lesbians, this gets a little more interest), or anything having to do with blue collar workers, low level white collar, or part time/temp workers.

No, the big issues on their blogs revolve around preserving only what they already have and getting more for themselves, they really could care less if you are out in the cold looking in. Oh sure, sometimes they talk about poverty, or women in India, or immigrants in America; but look at the framing. Almost every topic leads back to how it affects them, it’s not really about the people they are using. If they don’t center it on the middle class white woman, someone (usually several) will do it in the comments. Even on our blogs, we have white people show up wanting us to reassure them that they are good people. That is tiring for those with little to keep propping up those with much. Figure out another way to work on your self esteem, like maybe doing something to make a difference, instead of whining that you don’t mean to be racist. I much prefer the ones I usually get, if they ask anything, instead of asking me to tell them that they are good people, they ask, Am I doing something wrong? What should I be doing? But I have seen this on other POC blogs and expect it as I continue blogging.

They are untrustworthy and unreliable and we should stop looking to them for any sort of help. It won’t be there. But you know something, in this country they are a minority, just like they are in the rest of the world. So whose issues are “special interests”? We the POC, the poor of all colors, the labor movement, the disabled, people from all over the world, all of us who are oppressed and truly care for each other need to come together and help each other. We don’t need them, they will soon be needing us. We will remember the ones who were by our sides and we will remember the ones who turned their backs or used us. So you middle class white feminists might want to jump on the bandwagon right about now, show some real concern for women who aren’t just like you. I’ll be happy to help you with your problems, but not at the expense of my problems, we will work TOGETHER. It’s not good enough to work on you keeping your privileges at my expense.

Well quite: that’s exactly what this conference is about, the haves keeping their privileges by forming cartels to take control of the technology so that only their voices, and voices of which they approve, are heard.

The attendees as this conference may call themselves the Democratic opposition or the netroots, or whatever they like – but at heart they don’t want to challenge the political status quo at all. They want to use technology to their own political and personal benefit, notto extend democracy to the unwashed toiling masses, who, after all, are too stupid to know what it is they want and who need an Arianna or an Esther Dyson or a John Aravosis to tell them.

No doubt the delegates (though they’re not delegates as such – no-one delegated them, they chose themselves) will feel all smug and ‘vanguard of the revolution’-ish as they network away and contemplate their new exciting roles in the sexy, exciting world of online democracy, but this is not an event for the average blogger or grassroots political activist. Look at how much it costs to go, for a start:

Registration for the Main PdF Conference includes:

Full access to the Main PDF Conference, May 18, 2007
Continental breakfast
Lunch
Networking post conference cocktail hour

Order
at $295.00 each
Price: $295.00 Processing: $0.00 Total: $295.00

Ooh, cocktails, the high life we’re living! Add on to the conference fee however much it costs to travel and rent a room in NYC and there’s not going to be much change from a thousand dollars, at a minimum. And isn’t it cute how they have the Unconference too, for the smelly poor people to maybe lap up some crumbs from the rich attendees tables while being kept away from the real powerbrokers. Isn’t that kind? Noblesse oblige.

God these people make me angry. Democratisation my ass – the MCWAs are doing what they always do, co-opting a movement built by others to their own benefit, while the real voices of the grassroots are effectively silenced. It’s not just the usual suspects either but those who were thought to be sympatico: I’ve noticed recently that the group of blogs that cluster around Atrios and Kos, all the names on the infamous email list, are pulling up ladders, erasing links, purging blogrolls and closing the drawbridges. The reformists are forming cartels and they don’t include us.

And they wonder why we hold them in contempt.

Church News: Black Teenager Hanged At White Ohio Evangelical Youth Retreat. Suicide or Lynching?

Published on May 6, 20072 Comments

The Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Murder or suicide: Black youth’s death newly probed
Racially motivated foul play alleged in mother’s suit
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Julie Carr Smyth
Associated Press

Bellefontaine, Ohio — Investigators explored whether a black teenager found hanging at a church youth retreat might have been murdered rather than have committed suicide, according to investigative reports from the days following James McCoy III’s death.

Yet the boy’s mother, who has filed a lawsuit alleging racially motivated foul play, said Friday she still does not believe authorities did enough to determine what happened the day McCoy died.

“I don’t feel that if this was a reverse situation, if a Caucasian boy had died at an all-black church event, that it would have been handled in the same way,” Tonya Amoako-Okyere said.
McCoy was found hanging from a tree on April 22, 2006, his 18th birthday, in a remote area of Camp Cotubic, a Christian camp east of Bellefontaine, about 60 miles northwest of Columbus.

Amoako-Okyere filed a wrongful death suit against Church of the Messiah in Westerville near Columbus, which sponsored the camp; four unnamed youths who attended the event; and four unnamed Logan County authorities. The suit was moved last week to U.S. District Court.

Bishop Bruce Ough, who leads the Methodist region to which McCoy’s church belongs, issued a statement saying his administration “is supportive of the staff and leadership of Messiah as they seek truth and justice in this matter.” His office said he was traveling Friday and unable to discuss specifics of the suit.

McCoy’s mother said in a telephone interview that she had heard friends chastising her son for having a white girlfriend. He told his mother just before the retreat that he planned to buy her an engagement ring, she said.

Yet Amoako-Okyere said she was barely questioned by authorities about what she knew, which included the fact that some of her son’s friends had previously experimented with a “choking game” and that her son rarely wore belts like the one wrapped around his neck when he died. She said she was never asked to identify the belt.

Still, Logan County sheriff’s records reveal that deputies did not ignore race as an issue in the incident. At least one key witness was asked whether she thought McCoy’s death might have been intentional and race-related. Another was asked whether anyone wanted to hurt McCoy for any reason. The answer to both questions was no.

Deputies also accumulated a number of documents, including statements McCoy made in a prayer journal from the camp and on a personal Web page on Xanga.com, a social networking site similar to MySpace.

“I am in a world of trouble . . .,” he wrote on the site. “No matter what I do, something will happen . . . it is times like these that i wish i wasnt alive . . .”

McCoy’s prayer journal read: “I’m going to hell. I [expletive] hate myself. But I don’t care. I will keep doing it until I get the nerve to end it.”

Amoako-Okyere said the journal writings didn’t appear to her to be in her son’s handwriting, use his vocabulary, or reflect his thoughts.

I don’t know what’s going on here, but it looks like an awful lot more than meets the eye. The Columbus Dispatch has more detail:

The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the family’s complaint that this was a hate crime and closed the case.

Amoako-Okyere is represented by Clifford Arnebeck Jr. and Robert Fitrakis of Columbus. Arnebeck said yesterday that McCoy died because the other teens choked or hanged him as part of a birthday prank. Then, the kids wrote papers full of despondent and suicidal thoughts, attributed the writings to McCoy and gave them to authorities, Arnebeck said.

McCoy, who had been a popular, well-liked senior at Westerville South High School, had a bull’s-eye on his back at the conservative church because he was dating a white girl, Arnebeck said.

A woman who answered the phone at the Church of the Messiah yesterday afternoon said the church had no comment.

The Logan County sheriff’s office investigated McCoy’s death, and Sheriff Michael Henry had no comment yesterday. But in the days after the incident, he said he was confident that his deputies acted appropriately and that race played no role in their conclusion that the young man had killed himself.

The sheriff’s case files include a written statement from a friend who wrote that McCoy had been having trouble at home and was upset about illnesses and a recent death in the family. The friend wrote that McCoy previously had tried to kill himself.

Also in the file are writings that the church’s assistant youth pastor said he found two days after McCoy’s death and turned over to authorities. They include a prayer journal said to be McCoy’s that says: “I hate myself. I want to do die.”

Arnebeck said the notes are not in McCoy’s handwriting and are evidence of a cover-up.

I have no idea what the truth of this tragedy is, but even a casual perusal of US history (and particularly that of Ohio) tells me that a black male teenager + white girlfriend + a fatal hanging does not generally turn out to be the result of suicide.

That the US Justice Department investigated and dismissed this case as a potential hate crime isn’t reassuring, given that Justice’s civil rights division has been deliberately subverted by the Bush administration’s installation by the back door of unqualified, pro ‘white-rights’, fundamentalist ‘lawyers’ from bible schools and fundy diploma mills into posts that are supposed to be filled by the nation’s brightest and best legal talents. The Justice department, which should oversee everyone’s civil rights, is now a tool of the GOP used to push a racist, far right agenda.

Do we really think these people could find a white evangelical church had committed a hate crime? Oh, please.