Emmett Till's father.

Dear Race / Answer Man,

Who was Emmett Till's father and what happened to him and why don't we ever hear anything about him in all the hooray about Emmett's murder and his mother's recent death?

Herbert / Wanna' know


Dear Wanna,

If you'd have asked me this question a few years ago, I would have been hard pressed to come up with an answer.

Even though the heinous murder and mutilation of fellow my Chicagoan Emmett was a pivotal event in my 7 year old mind, Emmett's father never entered it. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, was well-known here because of her heroic fight to keep her son's memory alive. She even co-wrote a book " "The Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America" with lawyer/writer Christopher Benson. It was published the year she died (2003).

I just read the first few chapters and Mrs. Till-Mobley seems to be pretty honest about Louis Till.
But another book, "The Interpreter" by Duke University professor Alice Kaplan, was published in 2005. Although I haven't actually read the book, after seeing it reviewed, my Googling came up with a few interesting facts:

1. Emmett Till's father, Louis Till, was Court Marshalled in World War ll and executed for raping and killing at least 2 Italian women.

2. A much greater percentage of Afrimerican soldiers than Euromerican ones met the same fate in that war. The factoid I've heard is that although only 8.5% of American soldiers in World War ll were Black, almost 80% of those executed for war crimes like rape or murder were of that melanous hue.

Interestingly, lots of the info I've found on the web about Louis Till is on extreme right-wing or racist websites. I guess they think the fact Emmett Till's father was executed for raping "White" Italian women in Italy, justifies brutally lynching his 14 year-old son in Mississippi. That kind of "logic" and "morality" seems to be rampant on such sites.

I don't have the time, energy, space or patience to debate them here. Besides, somehow I don't think they're amenable to my insights. But if you'd like to see how alive and well racism is in this 6th year of the third millennium, check out:
www.americanrenaissance.com. It will probably lead you to a whole world that our so-called news media will happily ignore until the next Emmett Till moment reminds us that the legacy of 400 years of racist propaganda (first spewed and sanctioned by our sainted "forefathers" like Jefferson) wasn't ended with a handful of still largely unenforced "civil rights" laws. Please, don't get ol' RaceMan started. I'll never complete this post.



For more Information on these subjects:

White Supremacist site: www.americanrenaissance.com

Emmett Till: The Death of Innocence by Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson (I'm reading it now. So far, so good).

Black soldier executions in World War ll: The Interpreter by Alice Kaplan

Wikipedia has a good compilation of info on Emmett Till. Below is a list of references from their page on Emmett Till:

* The Emmett Till Murder, definitive site on the case by Devery S. Anderson
* The Murder of Emmett Till. American Experience - Transcript and additional materials for PBS film. Accessed May 10, 2004.
* Maria Newman (May 10, 2004). U.S. to Reopen Investigation of Emmett Till's Murder in 1955. The New York Times. Accessed May 10, 2004.
* Gary Younge, The Guardian, 6 June 2005, "Justice at last?"
* Stephen Whitfield, A Death in the Delta (1988 book)
* Keith Beauchamp, "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till" (2004 documentary)
* M. Susan Orr-Klopfer, The Emmett Till Book (2005) ISBN 1-4116-3843-3
* M. Susan Orr-Klopfer, Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited (2005) ISBN 1-4116-4102-7
* Body identified as Emmett Till, science .// AAA111111daily.com press release, August 26, 2005.
* David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, *Why It's Unlikely the Emmett Till Murder Will Ever Be Solved, History News Network
* David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, *Why the '60 Minutes' Story on Emmett Till Was a Disappointment, History News Network
* Christopher Metress, The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (2002 book)
* Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, The Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (2003 book)

SCARED TO LOVE

Dear Raceman,

Enjoyed reading your blog insights. I'd be interested in your perspective on the "downlow" phenomenon, and its alleged impact on the increasing spread of HIV among black women. Aren't there enough challenges to our relationships without having worry about literally being screwed to death?

Peace,
Scared, Single, Celibate Sista

Dear Scared,

Sorry it took so long to get back to you on this, but if you read the fine print in my introduction, this is a Slog (Slow Blog) not a Blog.

That said, here goes.

"When in doubt, keep it zipped" just about sums up the result of my admittedly limited research on your query.

I talked with a few of my more sexually active acquaintances (at least they say they are. Short of jumping into bed with them and their partners, I have to take their word for it).

One, who is actually older and presumably more experienced than I - at least in matters of the heart - says the whole issue is a dodge. He says many women use rumors of a downlow epidemic as a way to mis-direct attention away from the real action - lesbianism. He cited a few cases of women he suspected were "muffsters" themselves who complained of Black men downlowers. I guess you could say he thought that if men are downlow, women are "downlower".

Anyhow, I have to say that I really have no real clue about this popular subject, Judging from the number of books, articles and Oprah shows, this is a lot more important than extending the Voting Rights Act. But something tells me it's no more an epidemic than syphillis, gonorhea and all the varied forms of STDs have been since men and women first found out why Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden.
Besides, I don't even see this as a "race" issue. "Whites", "Browns", "Yellows", "Reds" and every tint and hue that humans come in have been mixing it up for eons. Somebody once crooned "Birds do it, bees do it......".

I think it may be just another way to keep "Black" folks eyes off the real prize - true equality in the not-so-good-ol' U.S. A.

It seems you should use the same rule for any type of "intimate" activity, whether it's male-female, male-male, female-female, or any other myriad non-human possibilities . "Look before you leap". My buddy Dan (the name has been changed to protect the guilty), says, he sees getting frisky with anyone as group sex because, as the old saying goes, you're sleeping with all the folks they've slept with, without the benefit of multiple orgasms.

If you're still in the mood for love after all this, good luck.

WHITE & WORRIED

NOTE: The following column originally ran in Chicago's Third Coast Press in 2004.

Hey RaceMan,
Why do blacks receive preferential treatment when it comes to securing jobs?

Worried White Worker

Dear Worried,

The easy answer is another question. “Who says Blacks receive preferential treatment? Where are your facts?

The idea that Black Americans receive preferential treatment in getting jobs is not just wrong. It is exponentially, “The earth is flat” - “There’s no such thing as evolution”- wrong. It’s a kissing cousin to Hitler-Goebbels’ Big Lie (but even more pernicious in its pose as a clueless querie).

In fact my first reaction was to blow the question off as just a racial red herring to sidetrack ol’ RaceMan from solving the world’s problems.

But then I realized that, because of the terrible job our schools and media do in telling us basic facts about race in America, there’s a good chance Worried is sincere.

The PopHistory of America goes something like this:

There were a few mean old Southerners who had slaves (but treated them well), then St. Abe Lincoln (who loved slaves) asked nice White Northerners (who also loved slaves) to fight and die in the Civil War to free them all. Then Martin Luther King marched to Washington and said his "I Have A Dream" Speech and the President, St. John F. Kennedy was so moved that he gave Negros all the good jobs and 40 acres and a mule.

No wonder Worried’s baffled.

So, as a public service, I’ll do a little RaceMan’s Remedial Ed.
Like most “suburban” myths, the one about Blacks getting preferential treatment is based more on a mishmash of feelings, misplaced resentment and misinformation than on facts.

Just one statistic should give you a clue. White unemployment is around 5%. Last time I looked, Black unemployment was about 10.7%. Of course these figures vary slightly day-to-day and expert-to-expert. And with the growing number of "unwhite" folks too miseducated and discouraged to even look for work, the disparity is probably much greater.

The huge wealth gap between "Black" and "White" Americans is even more telling. Experts estimate per capita White American wealth to be seven to ten times that of African-America .
And the only career paths I’ve noticed where "Black" folks are preferred for are as security guards, parking lot attendants, retail stock boys, burger flippers, prison inmates and similar “career opportunities”. I shudder to think what the unemployment rate in Black America would be without Securitas, Walmart and McDonald’s.

Besides, something tells me Worried’s question may be a thinly veiled attempt to express opposition to the idea of affirmative action. Many "Whites" seem to feel that it’s unfair. Even some "Blacks" are opposed to it.

I say the "idea" of affirmative action for a reason. Affirmative action for "Black" America was first proposed as an idea by John F. Kennedy in 1961. It was meant to be an antidote to over three centuries of actual affirmative action for "White" Americans. But like another idea of the era, racial integration, affirmative action has done better in theory than in practice. Even at the height of its popularity it was sporadically practiced - and then mostly in federal government jobs, agencies and programs. The anemic enforcement in the private sector was left to the EEOC (Where anti-affirmative-action baby Clarence Thomas was too busy pursuing Anita Hill to be bothered doing his job). A miniscule number of minorities actually navigated the convoluted litigation system to win judgements against companies dumb enough to get caught being blatantly racist.

But even half-assed affirmative action is better than none. It has made the life chances of African-Americans (and women and other minorities) markedly better than they were before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It’s hard to imagine now, but even the likes of Michael Jordan and Barry Bonds were not allowed to compete with their "White" counterparts only a generation before - when team owners and media moguls decided the color of money was more important than the color of skin. For a nation that was unapologetically a “white man’s country” for most of its history, we’ve come a long way. But for one that holds itself up as a model for the rest of the world to follow, we still have quite a way to go.

For those of us whose talents and skills don’t translate directly into millions of paying customers, AA’s effect has been much less dramatic, Tellingly, the only field (outside of sports and entertainment) where affirmative action seems to come close to living up its billing is in our military, where non-"Whites" get a more or less an equal opportunity to be maimed or killed.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t criticize America because I hate it. I criticize because, in spite of its faults, I believe it there's still a chance we can live up to its over 230 year old promise. But it’s the promise that gives me hope, not the reality. Unless and until this nation comes much closer to living up to our ideals, our future is toast.

I’ve got a suggestion.

Instead of worrying about the folks on the bottom taking your job, get hot and bothered about those at the top who have stolen your country. The minority that has always gotten “preferential treatment” in America are the 1% who own and control most of our wealth and all our politicians.

In fact, a recent book that agrees with me was co-written by the father of the richest man in America, Bill Gates. He and Warren Buffet (the 2nd richest man in America), were so embarrassed by the inequality built into our system that they lobbied against the Bush administration’s efforts to kill the estate tax.

And, please don’t send me letters branding me a communist or a socialist. I know a lot more about Groucho, Zeppo and Harpo Marx than I do about Karl. If I had to give myself a label, I’d call myself a social-capitalist. I’ll tell you exactly what that means as soon as I figure it out.

RaceMan Recommends:

•Wealth and Our Commonwealth by William H. Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins
•State of Black America, 2004 by The National Urban League

A modest attempt at solving America's oldest, biggest problem.

Hi, it's me again. Lowell Thompson, aka RaceMan.

I know it's been a while since you've heard from me, but rest assured that I haven't been sitting on my as....er, uh, I mean laurels. Not that I had many to sit on.

Those of you who know me from the old days - on Salon's Table Talk when it was just getting started in the mid-to-late 90s, or my column in the short-lived paper version of Third Coast Press - welcome back. Those of you who haven't had the pleasure/pain of my pithy, penchant but fair analysis of America's perennial problem, glad to meetcha.

Since I'm old to the web, but new to the blogosphere, please bear with me as I gather my thoughts. It may take a few weeks before I get the hang of this. Meanwhile I'll look for some of my past missives and start posting them.

But be warned. I don't plan to spend my life writing this damn blog. In fact, it may help to think of this more as a slog (Slow Log). I plan to post at my leisure, when I start to receive questions that strike my fancy, have something to say that might help you think about the issue or read or hear something in the media that I can't let stand.

But remember, solving the race problem is just my hobby. I have to spend some time on my day job: saving the world.