Vision Circle

Professional Perception Management

or how you hoodwink and bamboozle the stupid, bellicose, and bored to support unprincipled and unsupportable political agendas like the phenomenally wasteful and unsuccessful occupation of Iraq. After you've tricked the rubes, you can depend upon the inertia of their hubris to prevent these victims of the grand hornswaggle from recanting their earlier blunders...., matter of fact, they'll prolifically concoct post hoc rationalizations to account for their earlier hysterical suggestibility.

It is a belief John Rendon encapsulated in a speech to cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1996. "I am not a national-security strategist or a military tactician," he declared. "I am a politician, a person who uses communication to meet public-policy or corporate-policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager." To explain his philosophy, Rendon paraphrased a journalist he knew from his days as a staffer on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter: "This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote, 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"

"Acting White", One More Time

P6 is throwing down on the false hype of "acting white".

He quotes someone else:

Whites aren't quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they're leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.

The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.

Ya'll go visit now. Ya here?

My Take On Bill Bennett

I don't like doing this, but:

in·fer·ence

1 a the act of passing from one proposition, statement, or judgment
considered as true to another whose truth is believed to follow from
that of the former

im·ply

2 : to involve or indicate by inference, association, or necessary
consequence rather than by direct statement

When I heard Bill Bennet's comments, I heard them in full context.

My take on the matter was to think that if all Black babies were
aborted, some fraction of those Black babies would turn to crime. I
never assumed the statement meant ALL Black babies would become
criminals. And, statistically speaking, I'm right. In fact, most won't be criminals. But for those that would turn to crime, since they wouldn't be around, the crime rate would have to go down.

The same applies if Bennett used whites instead of Blacks or if he said male babies only or if he said if we somehow removed all males between the age of 15-30.

In looking at the responses to Bennett's remarks, there seems to be a
strong thought that states Bennett meant all Black babies aborted
would have been criminals. No where do I see that in Bennett's remarks.

However, going further, it seems to me that Bennett's comments are not what's making the racists feel comfort, it's the replies that confirm the idea that most Blacks are criminals.

Maybe I've missed it, but the fact that most Blacks are NOT criminals, is being lost, to me, with the knee jerk reactions.

That's what is giving comfort to the racists.

Race-ing the Down Low Phenomenon

I'm working on an experimental project involving black attitudes towards HIV/AIDS. OF course a significant part of the project deals with black attitudes towards "down-low" behavior. While putting the finishing touches on the proposal I come across this article. I am not familiar with NYC suburbs at all...but I assume that if the interviewees were black, the journalist would've said so.

So we're talking about suburban men, often married, cruising playground parking lots for quick sex.

With men.

I'm still in the process of reading, but I see no catchy label (no "down-low") to describe the process. Once the entire "down-low" meme caught fire, folks in the know argued that it was never just a 'black' thing. But I'm thinking a google search will report very differently.

Donna Brazile

While waiting for the rest of the family to start the day's tasks, I was reading the opinion pages of the Washington Post when I saw this article by Donna Brazile.

In it, she states that she stands with President Bush ready to rebuild New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf area hit by Katrina.

On Thursday night President Bush spoke to the nation from my city. I am not a Republican. I did not vote for George W. Bush -- in fact, I worked pretty hard against him in 2000 and 2004. But on Thursday night, after watching him speak from the heart, I could not have been prouder of the president and the plan he outlined to empower those who lost everything and to rebuild the Gulf Coast.

...

Bush talked about how we bury our family and friends. We grieve and mourn. We march to a solemn song and then we rejoice and step out and form the second line. That line is now open to every American to join us in rebuilding a great region of this country. New Orleans will rise again. My hometown is down but not out, and with the help of every American, it will be back on its feet, bigger and brighter than ever.

Mr. President, I am ready for duty. I am ready to stir those old pots again. Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work.

I wrote earlier that I thought it would be hard for Black Democrats to not back what was being said.

Yeah.

I told you so.

This Says It All

I think the opinion expressed in this piece, says it all.

It ought to be OK for conservatives to say that. But the conservative movement's principles have given way to partisanship. The words "conservative" and "Republican" are now interchangeable, and it's more important to protect the party than to hew to core values.

Or course, when Clinton was in office, the same could be said of liberal groups. For a great example, look at the response of NOW to Clinton's Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Watts, Another VIew

The Watts Riots, Burned Into Memory

By Roger Wilkins
Tuesday, August 23, 2005; A15

John McWhorter is right to say that we ought to pause and remember the Watts riots of 40 years ago and ponder their implication for America's present and future ["Burned, Baby, Burned: Watts and the Tragedy of Black America," Outlook, Aug. 14]. I take strong issue, however, with the conclusions he draws from his review of the events in Watts and South Central Los Angeles in 1965.

I think the difference between McWhorter and me arises in large measure from our profoundly different perspectives on the event. He writes that he was born two months after the riots occurred and that his conclusions are based on his research on the subject. Mine are based largely on what I learned when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent me to Watts 40 years ago this month as a part of two federal teams -- one headed by former Florida governor LeRoy Collins and the next by then-deputy attorney general Ramsey Clark -- both charged with helping to end the violence and figuring out what had caused it.

McWhorter dismisses the conventional wisdom that the riots occurred because of the miserable conditions in the bleakest ghettos of what was then America's most glamorous city, and he notes that "the National Urban League had rated Los Angeles the best city in the nation for blacks to live in." That might have been true of Crenshaw or other upscale black neighborhoods, but not of South Central and Watts. In one community meeting I arranged for Collins and two others I set up for Clark, the bitterness and anguish laced through the testimony of poor neighborhood residents were heart-rending and, when they spoke of the city's neglect, just cause for indignation.

----

More at the link provided.

Muslim Converts, Meet the FBI

Colbert King in the Washington Post gets around to talking about what conservative talk show hosts were pushing for as long as three years ago..., designation of a black enemy within

Once upon a time the nation felt threatened. Fear of civil disturbances and unlawfulness by domestic groups reached the White House and Justice Department. In the name of protecting the nation, the FBI was mandated to "expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize" groups that posed a danger to national security. They called it COINTELPRO.

To make the program work within the African American community, the FBI created a "ghetto informant program" and recruited thousands of people to watch suspected militants in the black community. The FBI monitored bank accounts and trips, examined income tax returns and launched dirty operations to besmirch and "neutralize" so-called "Key Black Extremists." And it didn't take much to get labeled and investigated by the government.

The Myth of Race; America's Original Science Fiction

Just saw Dr. Joseph Graves, Jr., PhD, Professor Evolutionary Biology/Life Sciences, Arizona State University West, Phoenix, AZ on Tony Brown's Journal. I'm simultaneously saddened and gladdened by the Work of this distinguished researcher and scholar. On the one hand, it's heartening to see someone cooly and authoritatively demolish racist psychopathology across multiple sectors of its expression. On the other, it's just plain sad that a brother even has to bother wasting so many of his valuable and irreplaceable cycles on the uniquely American mental illness and moral plague.

Racism is not a necessary feature of human society though but coalitional allegiances might be ingrained. They have been and are a feature of present American society. People ask, 'Professor Graves, you say biological races are not real?' I say, 'Yes. Biological races are not real, but socialized races are real as a heart attack, and do not confuse those two.' There are no genetic barriers to dismantling racist ideology; it is a question of whether we want to.

A comprehensive discussion and presentation by Dr. Graves on the Myth of Race.

Study counters beliefs about illegal immigrants

Drive by: First read this on Booker Rising.

Went to this blog to read his take on it.

Then went to the article, for which you must register.

Study counters beliefs about illegal immigrants

By Jessie Mangaliman

Mercury News

One quarter of the country's 10.3 million illegal immigrants have some college education and live with families, shattering a stereotype that this sector of the population is made up of poorly educated single men who work menial jobs, according to a national report released Tuesday.

...

Passel's report dismantled another widely held assumption: Only 3 percent of the undocumented immigrants work in agriculture. The greatest numbers, 33 percent, work in the service industry.

So much for the "Blacks won't work" bull.

Hat tip: Booker Rising