To Richard and to All who have biases...in other words, all living People!
Often we accuse one another of being biased when we actually mean,
liar. Is Bill Moyers biased? Is Jeff Sessions biased? Or is one of
them deceptive in attempting to hide their real beliefs?
If we are unbiased, as most of us want to believe we are, we will look
at the records of these two men and make our decision based upon their
records. Now, in my entire time on this list, I've never denied that
I am a biased individual. Opinionated, too! But I believe that I try
not to cram my biases down the throat of anyone else, nor use the word
"bias" as a cover for calling others a Liar.
So for me, Jeff Sessions is biased. He has a long public record that
demonstrates his biases. The question we should be asking, instead of
whether an individual is biased or not, is how we can work together to
bring about an end to racial hatred and prejudice and discrimination
toward anyone who does not meet our biased standards?
Is the Bias of the White Ruling Class one we all want to be measured by?
We are all swimming in a pool that is so contaminated that it is
difficult to see how it can be cleaned up. Especially when we are in
deep denial. Especially when our first defense of those supporters of
the long established White Supremacy is to attack anyone who exposes
their true beliefs.
Discrimination is so deeply entrenched in America, that we find it
hard to believe that we are not the wonderful, caring People we tell
ourselves we are.
My first wife and I belonged to a Protestant Church in North Seattle.
All White. Then two young sisters began to attend Sunday School.
They were Black. No one from the congregation ever knocked on the
family's door and invited the parents to attend any of our services or
church functions. After several weeks of not fitting in, the two
sisters quit attending.
That same Fall, a young Mexican man appeared in our church. Dressed
in clean trousers, a white shirt without a tie, and well scrubbed, he
sat in the back Pew. No one else sat with him. He had the entire Pew
to himself. He could have lain down and taken a snooze. After the
morning service, church members walked around this man, looking past
him and not speaking to him. My wife and I came up to him and thanked
him for choosing our church. After we talked a bit, he said he was
trying to earn enough money to bring his wife and baby daughter up
from Mexico. He asked if we knew of any work. He was a skilled
Gardner. We asked him if he could mow and weed our yard. For several
weeks he came around and did an excellent job. We did what we could
do to spread the word, and he began picking up enough jobs in the area
that he bought an old pickup truck to haul his equipment in. But each
week he came to church and sat in the back Pew, alone. When
Thanksgiving came around, my wife and I invited him to join us for
dinner. Our church friends were shocked and concerned. "You don't
really know this man. He could come into your home and rob you." My
mother-in-law said, "What if he knocks you out and rapes Judy(my first
wife)?"
We had a most enjoyable Thanksgiving dinner. No robbery, no rapes, no
hard words at all. Such a kind and gentle man, and our church family
passed up the privilege of knowing him. Sometime shortly after
Thanksgiving, he drove back to Mexico and brought his wife and
daughter to live here. He called us and told us that they had moved
to an affordable apartment in the South End of Seattle, and we never
saw him again.
As for that White Church Family, over the years their children moved
away to the far corners of the world, and the older members died, and
the younger members became old and died, until there were so few of
them left that they sold the church building and went...I have no idea
where. I had long ago left the closed world of those White
Christians, in order to live in the real world.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/13/17, Richard Driscoll <llocsirdsr@att.net> wrote:
> All:
>
> Do you think Mr. Moyers is biased?
>
> Richard
>
>
> On 1/12/2017 4:52 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
>> The 'Hidden Figures' Jeff Sessions Wants to Keep in the Shadows
>> Published on
>> Thursday, January 12, 2017
>> by
>> Common Dreams
>> The 'Hidden Figures' Jeff Sessions Wants to Keep in the Shadows
>> A new movie reminds us of past racial injustice as a new administration
>> tries to roll back the clock
>> by
>> Bill Moyers
>>
>> A scene from Hidden Figures. (Image: Courtesy 20th Century Fox)
>> As the Senate hearings for Jeff Sessions' nomination as attorney general
>> ran
>> into their second day, I kept thinking about the movie Hidden Figures,
>> which
>> my wife Judith and I saw three days earlier. The film is based on a book
>> by
>> Margot Lee Shetterly about three African-American women in the early
>> 1960s
>> who lived in the segregated South while working on NASA's first manned
>> space
>> missions.
>> These women were educated engineers and mathematicians - one a prodigy
>> with
>> an extraordinary capacity for calculating numbers and theorems in her
>> head.
>> When astronaut John Glenn prepared to become the first American to orbit
>> the
>> Earth, calculations for his re-entry into the atmosphere require an
>> urgent
>> adjustment. Glenn knows whom to ask for: "the smart one," he says of
>> Katherine Johnson, played in the movie by Taraji P. Henson. Sure enough,
>> she
>> gets it exactly right - in the film just as she did in real life.
>> "Benign in manner, soft of voice but hard at the core, Jeff Sessions is
>> the
>> perfect figurehead for the resurgent white nationalists who now aim not
>> to
>> make history but reverse it."
>> Yet for all her skill and talent - for all her genius - Johnson and the
>> other black women are routinely subjected to humiliation and insults, to
>> the
>> condescension and cruelty that were the common lot of black Americans
>> when
>> "Whites Only" and "Colored Only" signs - and burly state troopers
>> enforcing
>> Jim Crow laws - maintained strict segregation between the races.
>> Despite several white restrooms in the NASA control center where she
>> works,
>> whenever nature calls Johnson has to run half a mile to the colored
>> bathroom
>> in another building. She is the only black and the sole woman among an
>> all-white team who will not even allow her to share the coffee machine.
>> When
>> she is called out for taking such lengthy breaks, her suppressed anguish
>> at
>> the second-class treatment suddenly erupts. You can feel her pain - and
>> then
>> the shame of her boss, played by Kevin Costner.
>> While her friend Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) oversees 30 or more
>> black
>> "computers," as the women officially were identified, she is consistently
>> and rudely denied the title and pay of white supervisors. Mary Jackson
>> (Janelle Monae), the third woman, is barred from attending engineering
>> courses at the town's all-white school until a judge reluctantly agrees
>> she
>> can attend - the night class. Somehow these three survived the malice,
>> meanness and pervasive oppression of everyday life to carry on successful
>> lives with dignity intact.
>> Washington, DC in the mid-'60s glowed with pride over America's besting
>> of
>> the Soviets up in the heavens, and there I got to know NASA Administrator
>> Jim Webb. I attended meetings on space policy over which he presided,
>> shared
>> in moments of celebration at the agency's successes and relished his
>> boisterous remembrances of the first thrilling but precarious days of the
>> space program. I never heard these women mentioned. There were no
>> shout-outs
>> to them, no newspaper features, no official recognition. They were
>> swallowed
>> back into anonymity and invisibility - into the suffocating holding pen
>> that
>> was American apartheid.
>> The civil rights movement was then beginning to gain force, a power that
>> would bring change, and at the end of Hidden Figures, we see photographs
>> of
>> the real women and learn they finally earned recognition through
>> intelligence, skill and hard work. As we left the theater we saw
>> tear-stained faces throughout the auditorium, and we ran into several
>> friends who had unabashedly wept both in joy for the three women and
>> their
>> "ultimate triumph," as one said, and in sadness at "the long neglect
>> through
>> which they had to pass."
>> I thought again of those photographs later that evening during the Golden
>> Globe Awards, when Tracee Ellis Ross of the TV series Black-ish dedicated
>> her award "for all of the women, women of color and colorful people,
>> whose
>> stories, ideas, thoughts are not always considered worthy, and valid and
>> important. But I want you to know that I see you. We see you."
>> Finally.
>> If he could, Jeff Sessions would take back all the racial progress. Now
>> he
>> will at last have the chance to turn the clock back, which is why Donald
>> Trump chose him. I watched Sessions feint and evade during the hearings
>> and
>> thought what an insult his appointment is to a half-century of history in
>> which the civil rights movement helped end overt oppression and won for
>> Johnson, Vaughan, Jackson and countless others the standing and
>> recognition
>> they earned and deserved as citizens. As Americans.
>> So much struggle and sacrifice over the years, so many burning churches,
>> mutilated bodies, ticking bombs and bloodshed - so much venomous human
>> behavior before we finally began to get it right. Racism still remains a
>> powerful toxic stream flowing through American life. Too many people are
>> still unseen.
>> Through his career as a prosecutor in Alabama and as a US senator Jeff
>> Sessions has done what he could to frustrate the gains of all the "hidden
>> figures" among us by attempting to disenfranchise or suppress their
>> votes.
>> He called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 "an intrusion" before cynically
>> voting to reauthorize it and then quickly signing on to a Republican
>> effort
>> to undermine it. When the conservative Supreme Court eventually gutted
>> the
>> Voting Rights Act in 2013, Sessions said it was "good news. for the
>> South."
>> Since then he has championed voter-ID laws and remained indifferent as
>> Republican state legislatures undertook a massive campaign of repression
>> against black voters.
>> In the 1980s he prosecuted civil rights activists on dubious charges -
>> behavior that when coupled with an allegation that he'd called a black
>> colleague "boy," cost him a Reagan-era appointment as a federal judge.
>> The
>> NAACP, which Sessions once called "un-American," describes his record on
>> voting rights as "unreliable at best and hostile at worst," and also
>> notes
>> "a failing record on other civil rights; a record of racially offensive
>> remarks and behavior; and [a] dismal record on criminal justice reform
>> issues."
>> And he opposed reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.
>> Benign in manner, soft of voice but hard at the core, Jeff Sessions is
>> the
>> perfect figurehead for the resurgent white nationalists who now aim not
>> to
>> make history but reverse it - by a hundred years or more if they can.
>> This
>> is the man to whom Donald Trump is handing the enforcement of our laws
>> from
>> civil and voting rights to environmental protection, antitrust
>> enforcement,
>> housing, employment and all the rest.
>> Expect new laws but little justice, and be vigilant as America's shadows
>> become ever more crowded with hidden figures of every shade.
>> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
>> 3.0
>> License
>> Skip to main content
>> //
>> . DONATE
>> . SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTER
>>
>>
>> Thursday, January 12, 2017
>> . Home
>> . World
>> . U.S.
>> . Canada
>> . Climate
>> . War & Peace
>> . Economy
>> . Rights
>> . Solutions
>> The 'Hidden Figures' Jeff Sessions Wants to Keep in the Shadows
>> Published on
>> Thursday, January 12, 2017
>> by
>> Common Dreams
>> The 'Hidden Figures' Jeff Sessions Wants to Keep in the Shadows
>> A new movie reminds us of past racial injustice as a new administration
>> tries to roll back the clock
>> by
>> Bill Moyers
>> . 1 Comments
>> .
>> . A scene from Hidden Figures. (Image: Courtesy 20th Century Fox)
>> . As the Senate hearings for Jeff Sessions' nomination as attorney
>> general ran into their second day, I kept thinking about the movie Hidden
>> Figures, which my wife Judith and I saw three days earlier. The film is
>> based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly about three African-American
>> women
>> in the early 1960s who lived in the segregated South while working on
>> NASA's
>> first manned space missions.
>> . These women were educated engineers and mathematicians - one a
>> prodigy with an extraordinary capacity for calculating numbers and
>> theorems
>> in her head. When astronaut John Glenn prepared to become the first
>> American
>> to orbit the Earth, calculations for his re-entry into the atmosphere
>> require an urgent adjustment. Glenn knows whom to ask for: "the smart
>> one,"
>> he says of Katherine Johnson, played in the movie by Taraji P. Henson.
>> Sure
>> enough, she gets it exactly right - in the film just as she did in real
>> life.
>> . "Benign in manner, soft of voice but hard at the core, Jeff Sessions
>> is the perfect figurehead for the resurgent white nationalists who now
>> aim
>> not to make history but reverse it."
>> . Yet for all her skill and talent - for all her genius - Johnson and
>> the other black women are routinely subjected to humiliation and insults,
>> to
>> the condescension and cruelty that were the common lot of black Americans
>> when "Whites Only" and "Colored Only" signs - and burly state troopers
>> enforcing Jim Crow laws - maintained strict segregation between the
>> races.
>> Despite several white restrooms in the NASA control center where she
>> works,
>> whenever nature calls Johnson has to run half a mile to the colored
>> bathroom
>> in another building. She is the only black and the sole woman among an
>> all-white team who will not even allow her to share the coffee machine.
>> When
>> she is called out for taking such lengthy breaks, her suppressed anguish
>> at
>> the second-class treatment suddenly erupts. You can feel her pain - and
>> then
>> the shame of her boss, played by Kevin Costner.
>> While her friend Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) oversees 30 or more
>> black
>> "computers," as the women officially were identified, she is consistently
>> and rudely denied the title and pay of white supervisors. Mary Jackson
>> (Janelle Monae), the third woman, is barred from attending engineering
>> courses at the town's all-white school until a judge reluctantly agrees
>> she
>> can attend - the night class. Somehow these three survived the malice,
>> meanness and pervasive oppression of everyday life to carry on successful
>> lives with dignity intact.
>> Washington, DC in the mid-'60s glowed with pride over America's besting
>> of
>> the Soviets up in the heavens, and there I got to know NASA Administrator
>> Jim Webb. I attended meetings on space policy over which he presided,
>> shared
>> in moments of celebration at the agency's successes and relished his
>> boisterous remembrances of the first thrilling but precarious days of the
>> space program. I never heard these women mentioned. There were no
>> shout-outs
>> to them, no newspaper features, no official recognition. They were
>> swallowed
>> back into anonymity and invisibility - into the suffocating holding pen
>> that
>> was American apartheid.
>> The civil rights movement was then beginning to gain force, a power that
>> would bring change, and at the end of Hidden Figures, we see photographs
>> of
>> the real women and learn they finally earned recognition through
>> intelligence, skill and hard work. As we left the theater we saw
>> tear-stained faces throughout the auditorium, and we ran into several
>> friends who had unabashedly wept both in joy for the three women and
>> their
>> "ultimate triumph," as one said, and in sadness at "the long neglect
>> through
>> which they had to pass."
>> I thought again of those photographs later that evening during the Golden
>> Globe Awards, when Tracee Ellis Ross of the TV series Black-ish dedicated
>> her award "for all of the women, women of color and colorful people,
>> whose
>> stories, ideas, thoughts are not always considered worthy, and valid and
>> important. But I want you to know that I see you. We see you."
>> Finally.
>> If he could, Jeff Sessions would take back all the racial progress. Now
>> he
>> will at last have the chance to turn the clock back, which is why Donald
>> Trump chose him. I watched Sessions feint and evade during the hearings
>> and
>> thought what an insult his appointment is to a half-century of history in
>> which the civil rights movement helped end overt oppression and won for
>> Johnson, Vaughan, Jackson and countless others the standing and
>> recognition
>> they earned and deserved as citizens. As Americans.
>> So much struggle and sacrifice over the years, so many burning churches,
>> mutilated bodies, ticking bombs and bloodshed - so much venomous human
>> behavior before we finally began to get it right. Racism still remains a
>> powerful toxic stream flowing through American life. Too many people are
>> still unseen.
>> Through his career as a prosecutor in Alabama and as a US senator Jeff
>> Sessions has done what he could to frustrate the gains of all the "hidden
>> figures" among us by attempting to disenfranchise or suppress their
>> votes.
>> He called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 "an intrusion" before cynically
>> voting to reauthorize it and then quickly signing on to a Republican
>> effort
>> to undermine it. When the conservative Supreme Court eventually gutted
>> the
>> Voting Rights Act in 2013, Sessions said it was "good news. for the
>> South."
>> Since then he has championed voter-ID laws and remained indifferent as
>> Republican state legislatures undertook a massive campaign of repression
>> against black voters.
>> In the 1980s he prosecuted civil rights activists on dubious charges -
>> behavior that when coupled with an allegation that he'd called a black
>> colleague "boy," cost him a Reagan-era appointment as a federal judge.
>> The
>> NAACP, which Sessions once called "un-American," describes his record on
>> voting rights as "unreliable at best and hostile at worst," and also
>> notes
>> "a failing record on other civil rights; a record of racially offensive
>> remarks and behavior; and [a] dismal record on criminal justice reform
>> issues."
>> And he opposed reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.
>> Benign in manner, soft of voice but hard at the core, Jeff Sessions is
>> the
>> perfect figurehead for the resurgent white nationalists who now aim not
>> to
>> make history but reverse it - by a hundred years or more if they can.
>> This
>> is the man to whom Donald Trump is handing the enforcement of our laws
>> from
>> civil and voting rights to environmental protection, antitrust
>> enforcement,
>> housing, employment and all the rest.
>> Expect new laws but little justice, and be vigilant as America's shadows
>> become ever more crowded with hidden figures of every shade.
>> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
>> 3.0
>> License
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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