AddieStan

Cross-posted from AlterNet Every disaster that befalls a nation -- hurricanes, floods, terrorism, earthquakes -- constitutes God's punishment of a people gone astray, according to Pat Robertson, who famously blamed feminists for 9/11 and gays for Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew. In the case of Haiti's devastating earthquake, he blames an ostensible deal that black Haitians made with the Devil in order to win their emancipation and independence from the French colonials who enslaved them. So, in Haiti's case it might not be God who did the nation in, but rather the Devil calling in his chit. "True story," according to Robertson: [S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True Story. And so the Devil said "Okay,...

Cross-posted from AlterNet The week that began with a minor controversy about a dated racial term used to describe African-Americans, and ended with a major one that involved the use of the word by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The word is "Negro". First, the census. After finding that more than 50,000 census respondents wrote in "Negro" as their racial identification on the 2000 census, the U.S. Census Bureau decided to include it as a check-off option in the section of the survey where respondents are asked to identify their race. Many cried foul, seeing it as a derogatory adjective that hearkened back to the segregationist era. Others argue that elderly blacks may not view it the same way, and that the terms "African-American" and "black" may not be embraced by those descended from cultures other than the African-descended one whose people were brought to the land of the free in chains. When I was a little girl, "Negro" was the ...