Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspapers

By Zenitha Prince

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A new superPAC has launched an ad campaign that accuses President Obama of purporting racism against White people.

FightBigotry, which was registered with the Federal Election Commission recently, alleges that Obama has been given a free pass on “his disturbing, yet crystal-clear pattern of tacitly defending black racism against white folks before and since being elected president.” The political action committee (PAC) makes the claims in an ad on its website.

The ad cites, in making its claim, the Justice Department’s decision to drop a case of voter intimidation against the New Black Panthers in 2009. It also splices in samples of then-candidate Obama’s famous speech on race that he gave during the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy. In that speech, the president said that his grandmother, despite her love for him, would often make unthinkingly racist comments.

But, the ad edits the video to make it appear as if Obama was writing off his grandmother as a “typical White person” and that he supported Wright’s bigoted rants though Obama firmly denounced those views.

"Mr. President, you ran as the candidate of change," the ad's narrator says. "But one thing has not changed—your tacit defense of racism against white folks, despite receiving nearly half the White vote to win the presidency."

In another example of reverse racism, the ad asserts, Attorney General Eric Holder publicly stated that the administration’s critics are motivated by race. “Implying Whites are too stupid to have honest disagreements with the presidents is in and of itself racist against Whites,” the narrator says.

The assertion is based on a December 2011 interview with The New York Times in which Holder accused “a few” of the president’s critics—the “more extreme segment”—of unfair smear campaigns against Holder that were motivated by “animus” against President Obama.

“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” Holder was quoted as saying, “both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

According to ThinkProgress, FightBigotry is the brainchild of Stephen Marks, an infamous Republican opposition researcher and media consultant, who authored the 2008 book Confessions of a Political Hitman. The organization said Marks ran similar attack-style ads against Al Gore and John Kerry.

Political analyst Lester Spence said he is not surprised by the injection of race in a negative ad aimed at the president.

“There’s always been this racial undertone in the attacks against the president,” said the associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. “But now with this ad this undertone has become more of an overtone.”

Jason Johnson, a political analyst who teaches at Hiram College in Ohio, agreed.

“[This ad] is reflective of where the Republican Party really is in terms of their view of the president. They still believe Barack Obama is this man of consummate evil who wants to destroy the world,” he said.

Spence and Johnson expressed skepticism in the superPAC’s ability to raise money and to garner support for Republican nominee Mitt Romney, however.

“It doesn’t strike me as something that would magically transform the voting public,” Johnson said. “It’s not going to make anybody like Romney over Obama, or make them decide to vote for Romney instead of Obama. Anyone who believes this ad was not going to vote for Obama anyway.”

By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A drone is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent without a human pilot on board. Its flight is either controlled autonomously by computers in the vehicle, or under or with guidance, typically by remote control.  Drones can be dangerous weapons.  Because their pilots are remote they cannot always identify and recognize their intended targets.  Also, the collateral damage from a drone attack can be extensive.  Drone attacks can result in the death of many innocent victims.

Mitt Romney’s European tour was intended to bolster his political bona fides but his gaffs are proving him to be a dangerous political drone. Romney’s first target was London.  During his attempt to demonstrate his ability to represent the United States on the world stage he insulted the British by questioning whether they were prepared to host the Olympics.  In an interview with NBC Romney said, "disconcerting” events surrounding Britain’s preparations makes it, “hard to know just how well it (the Olympics) will turn out."  It is one thing for Romney to make these statements as the former head of the 2002 Winter Games in Utah but another to make them as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.  London Mayor Boris Johnson derided Romney by saying to a crowd, “There’s a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we’re ready.  Are we ready…?  Others have compared him to Sarah Palin. Hey Mitt, here’s a newsflash, that’s no compliment.

Romney continued to politically misfire while in London.  He held a London fundraiser that included employees of Barclay’s Bank, the first bank to admit that its employees were involved in the LIBOR rate setting scandal.  According to MSNBCRomney also managed to insult American reporters traveling with him in London by taking questions from British reporters and ignoring the American press corps; proving that he does not understand protocol.

After insulting the people of London Romney flew to Israel.  During a fund rising breakfast in Jerusalem Romney opined about the "the dramatic, stark difference in economic vitality" between the Palestinian and Israeli economies.  Romney’s research and discussions with his chief donor (or pilot), Sheldon Adelson, have proven to him that Israeli accomplishments were down to "at least culture and a few other things" – oh, and also, "the hand of providence".  Rachel Shabi of The GuardianUK has labeled this trip as “Romney's insult-the-world tour.”  Shabi also reported that some Israeli’s were insulted by Romney’s remarks. "You can understand this remark in several ways," political scientist Abraham Diskin told the Associated Press. "You can say it's anti-Semitic. 'Jews and money.'"

Apparently the years of occupation, stealing prime real-estate to build settlements, ignoring numerous UN resolutions, unprovoked attacks on Palestinian farmers, and limiting exports of Palestinian produce have had no impact on Palestinian economic development.  One can only wonder what Romney’s research has taught him about the impact that the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow have had on African American progress.  It must be “culture” and “the hand of providence.”  Romney obviously subscribes to 19^th Century columnist John O. Sullivan’s idea that America’s (Anglo-Saxon) success through expansion and exploitation is a result manifest destiny.  He must also subscribe to terms like “American exceptionalism” and former President George W. Bush’s term, “American internationalism”.

The collateral damage from Romney’s attacks could be devastating and long-lasting. While in Israel, through his spokesman, Romney also gave tacit encouragement for an Israeli strike on Iran.  His foreign policy advisor, Dan Senor said that Romney would back unilateral Israeli action to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. "If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing that capability the governor would respect that decision," Senor told reporters.

Romney also mistakenly recognized Jerusalem as the country’s capital, “It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel," he said, while opening a speech in the Holy City. The reality is that this is in direct conflict with the fact that Muslim’s, Christians, and Jews all have ties to the Holy City, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as such, and this conflicts with a careful US policy of maintaining its major presence in Tel Aviv.  Once again, the political drone struck the wrong target.

When drones fall into the wrong hands they can be very dangerous weapons. On the domestic front, Governor Mitt Romney was “pro-choice” and led the way at the state level to reform healthcare in Massachusetts. Presidential candidate Romney is now controlled by the Christian Right and has flown off course and become “Pro-Life” and has vowed to do away with Planned Parenthood.  Now, ultra-conservative ideological pilots have changed Romney’s course and today he is targeting “Obama-Care”.

As outlined above, Romney’s initial foray into international politics has proven to be his “insult the world tour.” In order to curry favor with the political extreme elements of his party Romney has become misguided, flown way off course, and is striking the wrong targets. Someone needs to tell Mitt Romney that the President is the Commander-in-Chief not the Panderer-in Chief.

He’s become a political drone and drones are dangerous.  America does not need them hovering over its skies and does not need them hovering over its political landscape.

^{Dr. Wilmer Leon is a political scientist at Howard University and host of the nationally broadcast call in talk radio program “Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon” on Sirius/XM channel 128.’s Prescription @ Facebook.com or www.twitter.com/drwleon}

By Allison R. Brown

News Analysis

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire America’s Wire Writers Group

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - My husband and I fuss and fret over our Black boy.

Like other parents, we worry about a lot. We want him to use his smarts for good. Do we coddle him too much? We want him to be tough and kind, but assertive and gentle, and not mean. His boundaries of independent exploration are radiating outward, concentric circles growing farther and farther from us.

We wring our hands and pretend to look away in acknowledgment that he’s ready to claim his freedom, even as we cast furtive glances his way. We’re beginners in the worry department. He’s only 9 years old.

Our angst certainly isn’t unique among parents of Black boys. What’s unique for us and for other such parents is that when we peek inside the matrix, we panic. Agents out there are bearing down on our son — bloodthirsty for his dignity, his humanity — as if he were the one. We feel outnumbered, but we hunker down for battle.

This is not a paranoid conspiracy rant. Recent data from the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education reveals that black boys are the most likely group of students to be suspended or expelled from school. Black men and boys are more likely than any demographic group to be targeted — hunted, really — and arrested by police.

Meanwhile, the number of Black males taking advanced courses in elementary, middle and high schools and entering college remains disproportionately low. Suicide among black boys is increasing. Media imagery and indifference have locked Black boys in their sights. Prisons have become corporate behemoths with insatiable appetites for Black and brown boys and men.

My husband and I rightfully agonize about our boy. We agonize alongside many who are working to help, including the federal government. I know firsthand the work that the federal government has done and is doing to improve circumstances for Black boys. This includes internal memos and meetings, interagency planning sessions, public conferences, community meetings and listening sessions, and now a White House initiative.

I also know that the federal government is accountable to numerous constituencies that sometimes have conflicting needs. Federal government workers must walk a fine line among varying public interests, which occasionally has meant unintended consequences for black boys.

For instance, in 1994, the federal priority of “zero tolerance” for anyone bringing a weapon to school was signed into law as the Gun-Free Schools Act. That priority reached fever pitch after the Columbine school massacre in 1999 and subsequent copycat slayings and attempts to kill. Federal requirements were overshadowed by local authorities and school administrators who stretched the parameters of “zero tolerance” in schools beyond logical measure to include, for instance, spoons as weapons and Tylenol as an illegal drug, and to suspend and expel students as a result.

“Zero tolerance” has entered the realm of the ridiculous. Many schools have removed teacher and administrator discretion and meted out harsh punishment for school uniform violations, schoolyard fights without injury and various undefined and indefinable categories of offense such as “defiance” and “disrespect.”

Students are suspended, expelled and even arrested for such conduct without investigation or inquiry. There is no evidence to support use of exclusionary discipline practices as tools for prevention, and they have no educational benefit. The brunt of this insanity has fallen on Black boys.

Recent federal priorities have targeted harassment and bullying in school to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students from peer-on-peer discrimination dismissed by, and in many cases encouraged by, school administration. Again, understandable.

The goal is praiseworthy — to protect, finally, a population of students and segment of society that has long been a whipping post for every political party, ignored in political discussions except to condemn. While my husband and I have ardently supported federal protections for LGBT students, practically speaking, we continue to lose sleep over our Black boy.

Another peek inside the matrix tells me that the fever pitch around this latest federal agenda item will mean a significant cost to Black boys when new categories of offense are created, new ways to characterize them as criminals unworthy of participating in mainstream education or society.

It’s one thing for educators to guide student conduct and educate students about how to care for and respect one another, which is a primary focus of the federal move against harassment and bullying. It’s quite another to change mindsets of adults who run the system, too many of whom believe and speak negatively about Black boys and what they cannot accomplish or should not do.

To speak and think affirmatively, to affirm behavior and black boys as people, is to relish the silly jokes they tell within their context, to compliment them on their haircuts or groomed and styled dreadlocks and cornrows, to adopt lingo they create and add it to classroom repertoire, and to invite their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, cousins to participate in the educational experience.

To support Black boys is to celebrate their physical playfulness and the unique ways in which they may support and affirm one another. As with any other children, we must teach Black boys through instruction and by example how to read and write, and how to conduct themselves without erasing their identity and attempting to substitute another. We must hone their instincts, whims and knowledge base so they can be empowered to exhibit all the good in themselves. We must be willing to show them our human frailties so they know how to get up and carry on after falling down. Yes, these things can benefit all children, but many children receive them by default. Black boys do not.

To love Black boys is to refuse to be an agent of forces clamoring for their souls and instead to be their Morpheus, their god of dreams, to help them believe in their power to save all of us and to train them to step into their greatness. Those agents in the matrix are real. If everyone combines forces and uses common sense, we can declare victory for Black boys and eventually all of us.

But without a change in mindset, federal initiatives, no matter their good intentions or the incredible talents that give them life, will continue to leave Black boys by the wayside as collateral damage.

My husband and I will continue to fret, knowing the formidable challenges our son faces. We hope that if he has a son, that boy can be just a boy.

Brown is a former trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Educational Opportunities Section. She is president of Allison Brown Consulting, which works with educators, students, families and other key stakeholders to improve the quality of education, especially for black boys. America’s Wire is an independent, nonprofit news service run by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and funded by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Our stories can be republished free of charge by newspapers, websites and other media sources. For more information, visit www.americaswire.org or contact Michael K. Frisby at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

By Barbara Reynolds

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Despite reports of copy-cat threats, my suspicions that there is something inherently evil about the last Dark Knight trilogy and despite a you-tube public service announcement on how to zig-zag out an exit if shooting begins, I am going to be the hero of my own drama. I am going to drag myself into the movie to see the latest Batman trilogy with the expectation that I can emerge alive.

I am going to fight the villain in my own mind that warns if I enter a darkened theatre to see Batman, I just might end up a casualty in a real-life scene of a crazed shooter like James Holman, the alleged killer who announced he was the “Joker’’ before gunning down 12 people in a showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colo.

I am going to fight the feeling that the creepy movie itself is cursed, a state which hopefully is not transferable. Heath Ledger, who played the role of the psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic Joker in 1989, died of prescription drug overdose before the debut of the film. Morgan Freeman, who played Lucius Fox in the film, was seriously injured in a car accident in Mississippi in August 2008. His co-star, and the star of the franchise, Christian Bale, hit the headlines in July 2008 when he was arrested for allegedly assaulting his mother and sister shortly before the London's premiere. Several other stunt persons were injured.

For anyone who has ever suffered from phobias (irrational fears that feel real) panic attacks of doom dread of death or nightmares from over-identifying with victims of horrific crimes, you know we have to beat down every menacing scary thought before it becomes a full-fledged horror that can take over our lives and push us away from friends, familiar places and the ordinary pleasures of life.

In years past, movie themes like The Birds, a 1963 suspense/horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock where flocks of violent birds attacked a town and a murderous shower scene in Psycho, left some of us still queasy about feathered creatures  flying overhead and still keeping a watchful eye for intruders while showering. If those scenes can produce such phobias, imagine what the mind can conjure up when murderer leaps from the screen into the movie seats.

In fact, phobias which are irrational fears that prevent people from carrying on ordinary activities can result from something far less cataclysmic than a massacre of innocents attending a movie.

I suffer from gephydrophobia, a fear of bridges, for example. The cement paved Wilson Bridge is a breeze, but the tall 4.3 mile Bay Bridge, one of the world’s largest when it opened, exposes drivers to a watery abyss that is so terrorizing that scores of people like me pay drivers to take us across.

This fear of bridges all started because of a joke. In 1983 I was driving across it and my friend joked that she thought I was going to drive off the bridge like news reporter Jessica Savitch. When I heard that, I looked at the water and my heart pounded, my knees shook and my foot froze on the accelerator.  I had virtually an overwhelming desire to get out the car and start running. Someone else had to take the wheel and drive me across. To this day, I still can’t drive across it and a recent accident where a driver did drive off the bridge only confirmed my worst fears.

There are about 520 types of phobia. At least 20 million people have them. There  are football players who are petrified at the sight of a little mouse, office workers who would rather walk up 20 flights of steps than ride an elevator, people who won’t  touch others for fear of germs and people who the very thought of leaving their house induces shaking and overwhelming anxiety.

We must not allow enough craziness to creep into our minds where an alleged gunman like Forman can imbed another phobia in our mental lexicon, such as the irrational fear of movie-going, a source of positive escapism and family entertainment. Psychiatrist Dr. Jan Hutchinson says, “It is natural to feel some anxiety or nervousness about attending a movie after such a disastrous event like Aurora but to vow never to attend a movie because of one event is irrational, what we call a phobia. And the only way to rid yourself of a phobia is to do whatever you are afraid of. Ninety nine percent of the time you will be fine.”

So, according to Hutchinson in the last 29 years I could have rid myself of bridge fear simply by driving across it, which in my mind still means driving off of it. Too late for that. What I can do now is aggressively resist this creeping anxiety each time I think about the massacre in the Aurora theatre, which, if prolonged could turn into full-blast cinemaphobia. Dark Knight is a must-see for me; only because what it means not to see it.