Rand Paul 'Drops In' at Howard University...*

Props to him for doing the necessary outreach to extend his message of freedom to the masses.

Toni Morrison said, “If there is a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” I can recite books that have been written, or I can plunge into the arena and stumble and maybe fall but at least I will have striven. What I am about is a philosophy that leaves YOU to fill in the blanks. I am not black. I am not Latino. I am not Asian American. I am like many Americans, not definably of any one origin.
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“No Republican questions or disputes civil rights. I have never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act. The dispute, if there is one, has always been about how much of the remedy should come under federal or state or private purview.”
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Our federal mandatory minimum sentences are simply heavy-handed and arbitrary. They can affect anyone at any time, though they disproportionately affect those without the means to fight them. We should stand and loudly proclaim enough is enough. We should not have laws that ruin the lives of young men and women who have committed no violence. That’s why I have introduced a bill to repeal federal mandatory minimum sentences. We should not have drug laws or a court system that disproportionately punishes the black community.

Let's see if the hostility towards the white messenger blunts the impact of his message...

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*... beats dropping out.

Tennessee Coates today:

One of the problems with the idea that America needs a "Conversation On Race" is that it presumes that "America" has something intelligent to say about race. All you need do is look at how American history is taught in this country to realize that that is basically impossible.
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So we retreat to mushy, moist talk about who "feelings," "intentions," "good people" and "loving fathers." The great Jay Smooth once said that we need to move from a "what you are" conversation ("you are a racist") to a "what you are doing" conversation. Unfortunately this presumes a groundwork of honesty and good faith. No such good faith exists because we are ignorant, and deep down inside, we know it and are ashamed of it.

Even within those confines, it did not have to be this way. Paisley could have reached out and had a conversation with an artist who might actually challenge his worldview. He could have engaged Mos Def and walked through Brooklyn. He might have engaged Common, walked the South Side and read about the forces that made it so. He might have talked to Kendrick Lamar and walked through Compton. He could have visited the jails and thought about why they are heaving with black men, and wondered what connections that heaving has with the past.

So, American history as seen through the eyes of 'rappers'...

No thanks.
Signed,
American Bitch/Ho.