NEWSRACE IN AMERICA

Pop quiz: You walk up to a Mexian farmworker in California. You would speak to them in Spanish or English, right?

Wrong. Today, almost a third of Mexican workers laboring in California’s farm fields don’t speak Spanish.

Why? Did the United Farmworkers’ “Take Our Jobs” Campaign convince white folks to start picking their own food?

Nope. These workers are indigenous Mexicans, mostly hailing from the southernmost Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas.

Although the standard of living for the average Mexican is low by U.S. standards, indigenous Mexicans are even more poor, less educated and often with limited Spanish speaking abilities. As a result, indigenous Mexicans are both stigmatized by conservative politicians and targeted for abuse and discrimination by U.S. employers.

That's starting to change. United Farmworkers, a union representing migrant laborers, recently took aim at Giumarra, a multinational agricultural corporation whose workers filed suit after being subjected to abuse, insults and discrimination because of their indigenous ethnicity.

You’re walking down the street when a cop orders you to stop for no apparent reason. Before you know it, the officer is patting you down and searching you... This sort of thing doesn’t happen in the so-called 'free world', right?

Guess again. Thousands of Philadelphians have been subjected to a practice known in legal circles as “stop and frisk.” But not just anyone in the city is at risk for a random pat-down. A lawsuit filed in federal court by a group of civil rights attorneys last week accuses police of routinely stopping, and frisking, Philadelphians of color.

The suit was filed on behalf of eight black and Latino men, including a lawyer, an Ivy League graduate and a state representative who formerly served as a Temple University police officer. Philly Mayor Michael A. Nutter touts the stop-and-frisk policy as a crime deterrent and claims race doesn’t factor into who the police stop, but the police department's own stats suggest otherwise.

This week, Wisconsin state representative Don Pridemore promised to sponsor an Arizona-style bill that will require local law enforcement to confirm the immigration status of anyone arrested or charged with a crime in the state. Pridemore made a flimsy case that “law enforcement, crime, taxes and social benefits” were ostensible reasons for the bill.

More probable is that state Republicans, emboldened by huge wins in last week’s elections, hope to distract from Wisconsin’s lagging economy and high unemployment by creating a scary narrative and spurious debate about the immigrants that wash dishes, mow lawns and labor on Wisconsin’s farms.

Rather than converting an impressive electoral win into more effective representation for his constituents, Pridemore’s political posturing marks a new low in state dialogue on immigration. Wisconsin Assembly District 99, which he’s represented for six years, is 98 percent white and mostly affluent. The only immigrants that find themselves in the 99^th are probably working in the kitchens of gold-rail steakhouses, not engaging in the “illegal drug trade” that supposedly has Pridemore worried.

Anti-immigrant politicians have used questionable facts and falsehoods to demonize immigrants for too long. Sign the petition and tell Representative Don Pridemore that Wisconsin won’t be the next Arizona.

And let's set the record straight on ineffective, knee-jerk immigration bills. Below are ten reasons an Arizona-style immigration bills should never make it to the Wisconsin legislature:

Last week, a Los Angeles judge sentenced Johannes Mehserle to two years in prison for killing Oscar Grant on New Year’s Day, 2009.

Judge Robert Perry’s decision to give the shortest sentence possible to Mehserle, the white Bay Area Rapid Transit officer who shot Grant, a 22-year-old black man who lay prostrate and weaponless on an Oakland train platform, sparked violent protests in Northern California over the weekend.

To the African-American community, the sentence was just another example of the criminal justice system allowing a white cop to get off virtually scot-free for taking a black life. But Judge Perry says that he chose not to give Mehserle hard time because he believes the former officer is innocent.

In July, Mehserle was convicted by a Los Angeles jury of involuntary manslaughter for killing Grant. He escaped a murder or voluntary manslaughter conviction for a number of reasons. First, the case was moved to southern California to ensure that Mehserle received a fair trial. Second, he claimed that he killed Grant unintentionally, only shooting him after "mistaking" his gun for his Taser, an electro-shock weapon. In short, Mehserle claimed he only meant to shock Grant - whom Merserle characterized as resisting arrest - not kill him.

Witnesses corroborated Mehserle’s account, saying that after his gun fired, they overheard the officer say in shock “Oh s—t, oh s—t, I shot him.”

Capt (Dr) Tejdeep Singh Rattan (pictured) is a Sikh-American US army officer.

But according to a new policy of the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), when he or his family members board a flight in the United States, from now on they will be subjected to a mandatory turban search, culturally akin to stripping them naked.

While Sikhs already have to pat their own turbans and have their hands swabbed by a screener, the new policy now requires them to go through an additional hand wand of the turban 100 percent of the time. With a policy specifically targetting Sikh-Americans, the agency may as well change its name to Turban Search Authority.

Sikh-Americans are often mistakenly associated with the perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks, simply because Osama Bin Laden is pictured wearing a similar headdress. This has led to widespread acts of discrimination against Sikh Americans and a litany of problems at airports. Sikhs are required by their religion to wear a turban, the most visible marker of the faith. The turban symbolizes spirituality, gender equality and honor, and Sikhs consider its removal to be a grievous insult.

The TSA holds that a turban could hide non-metallic objects. Whether or not there is truth to that claim, airport officials do not demand that priests or nuns take off their clothing in case they are hiding non-metallic objects inside. Hypocrisy and a fear of difference makes up the crux of this new discriminatory policy.

Almost a week after election day, the California attorney general race is still too close to call.

At present, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican, leads San Francisco D.A. Kamala Harris, a Democrat, by less than one percent. With an estimated 1.3 million provisional and absentee ballots yet to be counted, the race is up for grabs.

If the biracial Harris wins, she would be the first female, first African-American and first South Asian attorney general in California. If Cooley wins, he can partly credit his campaign’s decision to stress that Harris is anti-death penalty, a stance which made her appear soft on crime to voters.

Cooley has arguably made a career out of recommending capital punishment for convicts. Although the majority of California counties pursue life in prison rather than the death penalty for violent criminals, a few counties in southern California were responsible for generating a whopping 83 percent of the state’s death sentences last year. Los Angeles County, which Cooley oversees as D.A., is a prime example. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, L.A. County handed down more death sentences in 2009 than the entire state of Texas.

So, what’s the problem here?

It's now up to vote count observers and monitors to ensure that the right winner emerges in the race for the coveted Attorney General office in California.

With over one million provisional, absentee and ineligible ballots to go, California may not know the winner of the race until early December. Republican Steve Cooley is leading the race by approximately 26,000 votes and declared victory on election night only to have Democrat Kamala Harris take the lead by Wednesday morning. Cooley retained the lead yesterday and people are starting to pay more attention to the nail-biting race. Already, we are getting warnings about Republicans playing dirty tricks and how there needs to be provisions for more vote count monitors to be sent to California.

No one other than a white male has served as the state's top prosecutor. And the differences between Harris and Cooley are quite stark. Big oil and Karl Rove partnered to spend over a million dollars in TV ads against Harris, who has a better environmental track record than Cooley. The next Attorney General of California may also decide the future of Proposition 8. Cooley supports the ban on same-sex marriage and has promised to fight it while Kamala Harris has staunchly stood up against the ban deemed unconstitutional.

The media has finally woken up to the specter of gay teenage suicide and bullying. In the past month, my inbox has been flooded with stories and faces of young gay men who killed themselves due to bullying and homophobia. The mainstream attention that this issue is getting is greatly welcomed. At the same time, I wonder if there's a certain type of inappropriate value judgment given to some stories over others.

My problem with the recent coverage of gay teen suicides is that it comes with an inherent condemnation that whatever led to these acts is abhorrent. It's the kind of condemnation missing from media coverage (and mostly ignorance) of black urban violence or the death of indigenous youth. I get it -- it is easier to sensationalize good-looking, mostly white teenage boys than start a conversation on how systemic racism is killing our young black people. I don't intend to play oppression Olympics or start a contest on who is dying fastest.

I am a survivor of teenage bullying. But like Bob Braun at the Star Ledger, I do wonder why the media ignored the story of Jessica Moore who threw herself in front of a friend to save her life, while hyping that of Tyler Clementi. Both incidents happened in New Jersey in the space of a few days. By sensationalizing one over another, mainstream media tells us that one tragedy is more tragic and that is unsettling. What's the difference here? Maybe it is race and class. Jessica Moore was an African-American woman and shot in a poor black neighborhood, while Tyler Clementi was white and raised in one of the wealthiest suburbs in the New Jersey.

This month, the NAACP released a 94-page report outlining the links between the Tea Party movement and hard-core white supremacists.

The report, stating the obvious, makes clear that not all Tea Partiers are racists. As much as 18 percent of the adult population sympathizes with the Tea Party's message, but only about 250,000 people form the movement's core. These core members are those who sign up on websites, buy Tea Party literature, and play active roles in Tea Party events.

They also are, in some cases, white supremacists, Anti-Semites, or good old-fashioned segregationists, say researchers.

Tea Party rallies are attractive to white nationalist groups "looking for potential recruits and hoping to push ... protestors toward a more self-conscious and ideological white supremacy" says the document, which also points to Tea Party leaders who have direct ties to white supremacist organizations.

Whatever the election results, Fox News is gonna win big on Tuesday. And that's bad news for all of us, especially people of color.

ColorLines' Rinku Sen penned an article this week called "The Most Racist Campaign in Decades" highlighting racially inflammatory tactics promoted by Fox and used against Muslims, South Asians and immigrants this campaign season.

And whether it's launching the fever dream that Glenn Beck calls a television show the day after Obama was inaugurated, demonizing immigrants and people of color, or uncritically endorsing the Tea Party and its ultra right-wing candidates, Fox has proven it's a political force that can spread lies and half-truths with little accountability — and all to benefit Republicans and the country's richest citizens.

Often, this support for the right-wing extends beyond the newsroom. News Corporation, Fox's parent company, donated $1.25 million to the Republican Governors' Association this year. Glenn Beck recently said that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying organization that represents the interests of the richest Americans, is "our grandparents, our parents — they are us." That may not make much sense, but Beck's followers got the message. That day, they donated $300,000 to the country's richest Americans ... enough to crash the organization's computer server.

This bizarre event is only the latest story in Fox's sordid, and successful, recent history. Press watchdog Media Matters released a short history of the channel's race-baiting, lies and fundraising for Republican candidates and causes.