Elon Musk is Mad Mythological Creatures Aren't White

Director Christopher Nolan is coming under fire from conservatives after the trailer debuted for his upcoming film, “The Odyssey,” based on the classic mythological poem by Homer. Nolan’s apparent crime in the eyes of the right-wing is the decision to cast Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o (who is Black) as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page (who is transgender) as Achilles.

Elon Musk, who also happens to be the most high-profile political donor to the Republican Party, is leading the hate brigade via his social media account. Musk  was on a tear amplifying bigoted posts about the movie while he accompanied President Donald Trump on a trip to China onboard Air Force One.

For instance, Musk amplified a post by conservative pundit Matt Walsh, who whined, “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave ‘the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman.” In response, Musk wrote “true.”

Musk labeled another post that went after Page’s gender with a crude sexist joke about women purportedly not being able to open jars as a “banger.”  The right-wing network Newsmax is also a part of the hate campaign. Conservative host Rob Finnerty complained on his program about Nyong’o’s casting, insisting that Helen of Troy “was definitely white.”

Of course, Helen of Troy wasn’t “definitely” anything because she did not exist. The entire epic poem is a myth involving Greek gods, the Cyclops, sirens, the underworld, and other things that are not real. Conservatives have a habit of getting upset about diversity in fiction, particularly decisions to swap the race or gender of made-up characters.

The right was also up in arms when Black actress Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel in Disney’s live action “The Little Mermaid.”  Like Helen of Troy, mermaids are not real either.  But at the highest levels of conservative punditry and activism, diversity must be stamped out. The richest man in the world and right-wing television hosts agree that mythology is the domain of only straight, white people.

 

Supreme Denial

 

Trump Pushes White Nationalist Fantasy in Front of Embarrassed King Charles

King Charles of the U.K. sat awkwardly yesterday as convicted felon Donald Trump delivered a racist, blood-and-soil speech to “welcome” him to the White House.  In a bizarre and deeply uncomfortable moment during the visit of King Charles III, Donald Trump delivered a rambling, race-tinged tribute that sounded more like 19th-century white supremacist rhetoric than a modern presidential address.  In the first few minutes of his remarks (which surely must have been written in part by white nationalist Stephen Miller), Trump unleashed the following: 

Long before Americans had a nation or a constitution, we first had a culture, a character, and a creed. Before we ever proclaimed our independence, Americans carried within us the rarest of gifts: moral courage, and it came from a small but mighty kingdom from across the sea. For nearly two centuries before the revolution, this land was settled and forged by men, women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride, and that’s what it is: glory, destiny, and pride.

The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.

In recent years, we’ve often heard it said that America is merely an idea, but the cause of freedom did not simply appear as an intellectual invention of 1776. The American founding was the culmination of hundreds of years of thought, struggle, sweat, blood, and sacrifice on both sides of the Atlantic.

Let me first say that "moral courage" in the United States didn't come solely from a "small but mighty kingdom from across the sea."  It also came from America's indigenous peoples, African slaves and Mexican immigrants, whose descendants are an integral part of the American culture.  In his ignorant mind, Trump was arguing that "America" was the result of “hundreds of years of thought, struggle, sweat, blood and sacrifice on both sides of the Atlantic” –  implying that America’s greatness comes from white European bloodlines.

 

His attempt to shoehorn in a paraphrase of Churchill at the end fell completely flat and came off as awkward and forced in context. Trump, who often comically claims he’s the “least racist person” in the room, is nonetheless standing beside the King of England, pushing a vision of American identity rooted in racial and ethnic purity rather than the ideals of liberty, equality, and democracy that actually define this country.

 

It was embarrassing, ahistorical, and revealing.  Trump isn’t celebrating America’s founding values. He’s pushing a white nationalist fantasy that has no place in 2026.

 

Artemis II Returns to Earth Today

 

There's No Longer a Debate About Whether Trump is a Racist

I'm not going to re-hash the racist video (depicting the Obamas as gorillas) recently posted by convicted felon Donald Trump on social media.  I doesn't matter if it was one of a long string of late-night posts by the Orangeman-- we already know that he is a racist, and the evidence goes back years.

He was sued for racial discrimination in the 70's and lost twice. He said the five black teenagers wrongfully accused of raping a woman in Central Park should be executed (even though they were minors and the victim survived).  He repeated his accusation and vitriol even after another guy confessed and his DNA matched the victim (while there was no physical evidence connecting the black teenagers to the crime). Also, the death penalty is generally reserved for adults who commit really heinous murders or treason, not children who happen to be black.

Trump used to require that all his black employees at his casino be removed from visibility when he visited because he didn’t like seeing them.

Trump spent years saying Barack Obama wasn’t an American.  

Trump used to say that he didn’t like having a black accountant because …

• "Black guys counting my money! I hate it."
• "The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day."
• "I think that guy's lazy. And it's probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks."

Trump's own staffers and his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, have confirmed he’s a racist. He reportedly used the N-word multiple times behind the scenes on The Apprentice.  Trump also grew up with a racist father who was arrested at a KKK riot.  Trump also recently stated that the Civil Rights movement was “bad for white people.”  Huh? 

But yet here we are still debating whether the Pumpkin Pinochet is or isn’t a racist?  Stop already-- the case in closed.

Didn’t Trump have Nick Fuentes for dinner at Mar-A-Lago next to raging anti-semite Kanye West?

Didn’t Trump claim that he didn’t know who David Duke was, although a decade before, he knew exactly who David Duke was?

• Initial Disavowal (Feb 26, 2016): When asked about David Duke's support, Trump told reporters, "I disavow, okay?".
• CNN Interview (Feb 28, 2016): Two days later on CNN's "State of the Union," Trump told host Jake Tapper, "I don't know anything about David Duke" and "I don't know what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists".
• Backlash and Re-disavowal: Following widespread criticism from opponents and fellow Republicans, Trump claimed he had a "bad earpiece" during the CNN interview and asserted he had already disavowed Duke on Twitter and in previous,, statements. He later formally disavowed Duke again.

The bigger problem is that much of the Republican party are Racists or at least they don't find Racism to be a deal breaker-- they're fine with it.  That’s why Trump is popular with them in the first place; he frequently says the racist shit they’ve been afraid to say until now. And Trump does the racist shit (like Ethnic Cleansing) they want done. This is the real difference between MAGAs (those with the privilege to not have to care about people being fucked over) and the rest of us with basic human decency and empathy.  They’re willing to sell out their values on the cheap.

 

Happy MLK Day!

Hegseth and His Weird Thing With Beards

Pete Hegseth is laser-focused on what is really important: making sure America’s armed forces are clean-shaven.   What? You were expecting that his priority would be overseeing a bombing campaign that is quite clearly extrajudicial murder?

While in South Korea, Hegseth has declared that he will not be meeting with any troops who are not clean-shaven,  The beard thing is an absolutely unhinged and bigoted obsession for Hegseth. Service members are required to be clean-shaven, but they can obtain a shaving waiver and maintain a beard if they have a medical necessity or a religious exemption. However, since Hegseth’s eyes cannot abide the sight of a beard, he’s eliminated permanent shaving waivers. 

This fixation is not just a weird idiosyncratic thing for Hegseth (something on which he places outsized importance but doesn’t really matter to others). What's really underlying it is Hegseth’s constant obsession with stripping the military of everyone except white men. 

Most soldiers who need a shaving waiver for medical necessity are Black, because Black men get pseudofolliculitis barbae, where curly hair grows back into the skin and causes painful bumps and scarring. The only real treatment for it is not to shave closely. About 3% of white men have the condition, but for Black men it’s anywhere from 45-80%.   So, Hegseth’s “no beardos” rule is going to disproportionately affect Black men, which is precisely what Hegseth wants. Now, anyone who requires a shaving waiver for longer than a year will be involuntarily separated from the military. 

There are also religions that require men to maintain beards-- and let’s just guess they are probably not religions Hegseth thinks should exist. Both Islam and Sikhism require beards, so this policy may also have the effect of forcing those troops to choose between their faith and their jobs. Real nice religious freedom you got there!

 

Public Service Message for the MAGA Crowd

Musk's Memphis Supercomputer Facility Poisoning the Air of Black Communities

Local regulators should immediately stop Elon Musk’s supercomputer project from operating in South Memphis because it's out of compliance with environmental rules, the NAACP wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Shelby County officials.

The civil rights group addressed the request to Dr. Michelle Taylor, director of the Shelby County Health Department, and to the commissioners of Memphis Light Gas and Water. The health department is responsible for implementing federal air regulations in Shelby County, which encompasses Memphis.

“Being the world’s richest man doesn’t give you the right to pollute Black communities and jeopardize the health of its residents,” NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement to NBC News. “We urge the health department to step in immediately.”

xAI has come under scrutiny in recent months for operating methane gas turbines at its Memphis facility to meet the electricity needs of the supercomputer Colossus. The turbines emit pollutants, including nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde, according to their manufacturer. 

Environmental groups and the NAACP believe the turbines required permits under the Clean Air Act; the city’s health department, the mayor and the Chamber of Commerce have said permits were not required for the turbines’ first year of use. xAI, which is now seeking a permit for 15 permanent turbines, said those would be equipped with pollution controls and only be used as backup once other energy options are available.

Earlier this month, NBC News reported on a South Memphis neighborhood called Boxtown, about two miles from xAI’s facility, where residents are concerned that Musk’s project will harm the area’s already poor air quality. 

“They got money. And they can do what they want to do, you know, without consulting us,” said Easter Knox, who has lived in the area since 1977. Knox told NBC News she and her husband both struggle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which can be exacerbated by pollution. 

Colossus, which xAI calls the world’s largest supercomputer, came online in September 2024 to train Grok, the company’s chatbot. But critics say the project’s potential economic benefit to the community is outweighed by environmental concerns.  “While we applaud research and innovation,” the NAACP letter states, “there must be limits that ensure that communities are healthy and alive to enjoy the benefits of any potential innovation.”  Shelby County health officials are expected to make a decision on xAI’s application in the coming weeks.  Memphis Mayor Paul Young previously told NBC's "Nightly News" that the city plans to work with a researcher to implement air monitoring in the months ahead.

Will This Be the Year For Lamar and Beyonce at the Grammy's?

Next weekend are the Grammy awards-- a cultural institution that continues to be plagued with accusations of racism and exclusion.  Ella Fitzgerald became the first black artist to win a Grammy (at it's inaugural ceremony in 1959) but in recent years, landmark artists such as Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé have failed to win the big prizes for albums that will surely go down in music history as some of the best in their careers.

FarOut Magazine, Lauren Hunter said this:

To this day, the main means of musical recognition of the highest order is through the Grammy's, but with the awards body having frequently been subject to discriminatory racial biases over its nearly 70-year history, it has been made appallingly more difficult for Black artists to receive the same level of plaudits as their white musical counterparts over time. With only 11 Black artists having ever won its most coveted ‘Album of the Year’ prize, it is plain to see that the Grammys still has a long road to travel in terms of its recognition and reverence of the Black musical landscape and the monumental role it indeed plays across the modern sonic realm as a whole. 

Last year, Marie Claire’s Quinci LeGardye wrote:

The Grammys have faced accusations of racial discrimination since its first ceremony in 1959, and several notable snubs and upsets have continued raising eyebrows well into the 21st century. In March 2021, a study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that Black performers represented approximately 38 percent of all artists on the Billboard Hot 100 from 2012 to 2020, but they only received 26.7 percent of top Grammy nominations during that same period. That was the same year that the Weeknd boycotted the ceremony, after receiving zero nominations for his After Hours album, including his hit song “Blinding Lights.” That year, the Grammys’ nomination process, including the use of "special committees" to decide the final set of nominees, came under heavy scrutiny, with fans wondering whether the lack of racial diversity in the upper echelons of the Recording Academy was the reason why Black albums—which ultimately shake culture and have proven to change the entire record industry (even earning Pulitzers)—still couldn’t break into the “Big 4” categories (Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best New Artist, and Album of the Year).

In 2020, Princess Weekes at The Mary Sue explored the Grammy Awards’ snub of Beyoncé’s album, Lemonade: 

Lemonade was her sixth solo studio album and the second “visual album” she’d done after the release of the self-titled Beyoncé album in 2013. With this album, the Houston chanteuse got some of the best critical praise of her career. It was ranked the number one album of 2016 by many, including Rolling Stone. Yet when the time came for the Grammy’s she lost Record of the Year and Song of the Year, to Adele’s 25.

Later on, Adele  made a statement that reflected a lot of what people were saying. “I thought it was her year,” she said of Beyoncé. “What the fuck does she have to do to win album of the year?”

[Beyoncé's] eighth album, the queer-pop masterpiece "Renaissance," was the obvious choice for album of the year in 2023.  To make matters worse, the Recording Academy spent a large chunk of the ceremony exalting Beyoncé for becoming the most-decorated person in Grammys history — and patting themselves on the back for allowing it to happen — just to end the night by handing the top award to Harry Styles. And to be clear, "Harry's House" is good, but it's no "Renaissance." It's not even close.

At this year's ceremony, Kendrick Lamar is up for Record and Song of the Year for "Not Like Us"-- a critical and chart smash that ought to land him long-overdue Grammy gold.  This year’s nominees for Album of the Year are: André 3000's  “New Blue Sun”,  Beyoncé's “Cowboy Carter”, Billie Eilish's  “Hit Me Hard and Soft”, Chappell Roan's “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess”, Charli XCX's “Brat”, Jacob Collier's “Djesse Vol. 4”, Sabrina Carpenter's “Short n’ Sweet”, and Taylor Swift's “The Tortured Poets Department.”   The critical consensus is that this will finally be Beyoncé’s year-- but who knows if backlash from the MAGA world will affect the vote. Tune in next week to find out.

Trump's GOP Thinks Racism and Hate Are Funny

Donald Trump wanted his Nazi-style rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York City, the media capital of the world. And then he let out his MAGA movement’s ugly all-out bigotry.  It wa his campaign’s biggest blunder, and it’s a big one. Even Republicans are freaking out.

One of the early speakers let loose with this racist gem: “There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico”

Right-wing “comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe literally called Puerto Ricans garbage. And … why? Because they think racism is funny.  What shouldn’t be funny for the Trump campaign is that 3.8% of Pennsylvania’s population—467,000 people—is Puerto Rican. President Joe Biden won the state by only 80,555 votes in 2020.  The stupidity of this “joke” cannot be understated, yet it serves as a stark reminder of just how much Trump republicans hate anyone that isn’t white men like them. 

But other Latinos shouldn’t feel left out. He was just getting started: "And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country." Those evangelicals who sold their souls in service of Trump? Congrats, now they’re on the team making ejaculation jokes at big political rallies.

And heck, if you’re going to go all-out racist, why hold back?  Hinchcliffe also said, “That’s cool, a Black guy with a thing on his head. What the hell is that? A lampshade? …I’m just kidding. That’s one of my buddies. He had a Halloween party last night. We had fun. We carved watermelons together.” 

 

Enough With the Sick Crap About Race-Based Genetics

Donald Trump has once again invoked the debunked and bigoted notion of race science, this time in a interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.  While criticizing President Joe Biden’s administration over immigration, Trump claimed that some migrants who enter the United States via an “open border” (which doesn't exist, btw) have “bad genes.”

In the interview Trump claimed, "How about allowing people to come to an open border—13,000 of which were murderers—many of them murdered far more than one person. And they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now."

Race science is the long-debunked racist notion that certain negative human traits are inherent to one race over another. In the United States, this was one of the justifications used to keep Black people as slaves.

Trump’s most recent argument echoes the claim he made in December 2023 when he said that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the United States.

False arguments that Jewish people were “poisoning” blood were perhaps most infamously used by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime to justify the mass murder of millions of people in the Holocaust.

Trump has also promoted the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which argues that Latino immigrants are being allowed into the U.S. to vote and replace white people.

Trump’s race-science rhetoric has been widely criticized by Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris.  “It is language that I think people have rightly found similar to the language of Hitler,” Harris told MSNBC in December. “I think it’s just critically important that we remind each other, including our children, that the true measure of the strength of a leader is based not on who they beat down, but who they lift up.”

 

Supreme Court's Ruling Against Affirmative Action Gets the Intended Result

University of North Carolina recently released a profile of incoming freshman and transfer students that shows in the year since the Supreme Court gutted affirmative action in college admissions, the number of Black students admitted to the university dropped from 10.5% to 7.8% – an incredible drop of around 25%.

Harvard University also experienced a similar drop in Black enrollment, according to data released this week which shows a 22% decrease in Black freshmen when compared to the year before. Both schools were named as plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case in which activist conservative judges ruled against the long-held practice of considering race and ethnicity in college admissions.

“I chose this school because I saw the robust amount of diversity that was here and the results of it as well,” said Samantha Greene, president of the Black Student Movement at UNC. “So, to see that kind of go a little bit down the gutter definitely has me thinking about my choice to be here.”

As admissions offices across the country release their latest racial demographics, a murky portrait is beginning to emerge of the Class of 2028 – one that’s left some experts warning about the long-term effects of a lack of diversity on campus. 

At Yale University, the percentage of Black students admitted this year held steady at 14% when compared to those who started last fall, but the number of Asian students fell by 20% compared to last year.  

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the number of Black students admitted to the Class of 2028 utterly collapsed-- falling from 15% last fall to just 5% this year (a whopping 67% decrease), while Latino students saw a 31% decrease.  In an interview with the university’s news outlet last month, Stu Schmill, MIT’s dean of admissions, said the change in demographics reflects the negative impact of the Supreme Court’s widely discredited ruling.

Last year's freshman class had the “highest proportion of students from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds in MIT history,” Schmill said, and the university used race as a factor in identifying “well-prepared students who emerged from the unequal K-12 educational environment.”  But after the shameful Supreme Court ruling, Schmill said he has “no doubt that we left out many well-qualified, well-matched applicants from historically under-represented backgrounds who in the past we would have admitted — and who would have excelled.” 

History shows ending affirmative action can have long-term economic repercussions for students of color. Backlash to affirmative action policies reached a fever pitch in the 1990s, leading several states, including Texas, Washington, Florida and California, to enact bans on race-conscious admissions policies.

Zachary Bleemer, an economics professor at Princeton University who studies the impact of affirmative action bans, said the bans passed in the 1990s – similar to today – had an immediate negative effect on the diversity of the student body.  When California ended affirmative action in 1998, what “you saw was this immediate decline between 40 and 50% of Black and Hispanic enrollment at Berkeley and UCLA, the two most selective schools in the state,” Bleemer said.  For Black and Hispanic students, losing access to California’s most selective colleges and universities also had long-term economic consequences.  “If you follow [Black and Hispanic students] forward to the labor market, you see meaningful decline from the order of 5 or 6% of wages that disappear because they end up going to a less selective school instead.” 

 

The Latest Vile Racism From Vance and Trump

GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance repeated an ugly conspiracy theory this week with a claim that immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets. Vance then encouraged his supporters to repeat these disgusting lies and to join him in dehumanizing legal immigrants.

Both Vance and idiot billionaire Elon Musk amplified false claims first made on Facebook about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets and animals from local parks. In addition, Vance accused the immigrants of “generally causing chaos” all over the small midwestern city and blamed Vice President Kamala Harris.

Vance posted a claim on Musk’s social media platform that “In the last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who've said their neighbors' pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. “   It’s safe to say that anyone who has lost a pet does not respond by calling their senator. And it’s a bit strange that the claim is never that their pets had gone missing, but that their neighbor’s pets were lost. 

Local police and city officials made it clear that the claims made by Vance and Musk were absolutely false. The police department expressed regret that “people are using this as an opportunity to spread hate or spread fear.”

But rather than apologizing for his gross mistake, Vance is continuing to make things worse.   Vance elaborated on his claims of pet consumption by insisting that Haitian immigrants were responsible for spreading diseases, that local schools were being ruined because immigrants didn’t speak English, and that immigrants had overwhelmed local health care systems. He also claimed that a Haitian immigrant was responsible for the unspecified murder of a child.

What Vance is saying about legal immigrants in Ohio is pure racism. And it’s the worst kind of racism. It’s meant to not just draw a line between a group of people and others who share their community, it’s meant to present immigrants as “other,” as lesser, as violent uncivilized outsiders with unacceptable customs. It’s meant to make them seem dangerous. And it’s meant to make people angry.

it’s no coincidence that this came on the same day that Trump was bragging that his mass deportation of immigrants would become a “bloody story.” In that speech, Trump falsely claimed that most immigrants were violent criminals and spread lies that they had “taken over” parts of Colorado. Trump also continued to claim that immigrants were causing a crime wave in the country, which is explicitly false.  These claims, aimed at generating outrage among an overwhelmingly white base, are the heart of the Trump-Vance campaign.

 

Republican National Convention Wrap-Up

In the week leading up to the expected campaign speech re-hash from the ear-bandaged Orange Man, there was a pathetic, protracted prologue from an assortment of other losers up in Milwaukee:

JD Vance gave a really boring acceptance speech, where he didn't talk about his radical position on abortion, or his equally radical desire to end no-fault divorce.

Kellyanne Conway didn't talk about abortion either-- even though earlier this year, she was urging Republicans to “own” their draconian abortion stances. 

Former senior Trump adviser Peter Navarro was released from prison on Wednesday—and headed straight for the stage of the Republican National Convention.  After making a hack prison tattoo joke, Navarro played the persecution card, crying that if he and former Trump adviser and fellow convicted criminal Steve Bannon can end up in prison for breaking the law, so can anyone who breaks the law.  For all of their “law and order” talknRepublicans sure do love their criminals.

Tech bro and Stalin wannabe Vivek Ramaswamy told America that in the face of all evidence to the contrary, the Republican Party loves Black and Latino Americans.  

We also saw the world's most humiliated man, Sen. Ted Cruz, who once called Trump a “sniveling coward” for attacking his wife and father.  Cruz told an entirely fabricated story of how America is “facing a literal invasion on our southern border, claiming that 11.5 million people have crossed our border illegally under Joe Biden.” It isn’t true, but whatevs. Kiss that ring, Lyin’ Ted! 

Nikki Haley refrained from calling Trump “unstable and unhinged,” to receive a mixed reception from the RNC audience. She then bent the knee to the man who called her “BRAINDEAD” and “BIRDBRAIN,” and endorsed him. Always on brand, Trump didn’t even deem to clap. 

Ben Carson took time away from whining about people trying to cancel Dr. Seuss stories to expound upon how great a second Trump presidency would be.  Florida. Sen. “Little Marco” Rubio and Gov. “Ron DeSanctimonious” gave speeches in support of the Orange Man. Rubio, best known for justifiably calling Trump a “con artist,” did his best to genuflect to Trump, by whitewashing the racist origins of Trump’s “America First” campaigns.

DeSantis put on his best boots and showed the lack of charisma that led to his untimely exit from the Republican primary. Gone from his speech was the admission that Trump actually lost the 2020 election.   At one point DeSantis told the convention audience that the GOP supports “law and order, not rioting and disorder.” Anyone ever heard of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021? 

South Dakota puppy killer Gov. Kristi Noem took time away from defending her state’s abortion ban to reminded people that her big claim to fame (before becoming the 21t century’s Cruella de Vill) was how poorly she managed her state's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Most of you probably first heard about me during Covid,” Noem said, “because South Dakota was the only state in the country that stayed open for business. We didn't mandate anything. We never ordered a single business or a church to close.”  It was allowing superspreader events like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally that led to South Dakota’s horrific COVID rates.

Republican Sen. Tim Scott put on a brave face after being rejected by Donald Trump for the vice presidential slot, assuring the delegates that there is no racism in America. “This is going to offend the liberal elites. Every time I say it, it offends them,” Scott promised. “But let me say it one more time. America is not a racist country! No, we're not.”   But not really.  “If you are looking for racism today, you'd find it in cities run by Democrats," he later said.  Got it. So there’s no racism, except the racism that does exist. 

Even the buff bimbo barbie made an appearance.  Marjorie Taylor Green performed a recital of GOP talking points that included anti-trans rhetoric, immigration fear-mongering, and just a taste of whining about sending aide to Ukraine  She ended by saying one true thing—at least for the people at the very top who benefited from Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, and the billionaires he has promised to serve if elected again.  “Donald Trump will make us wealthy again,” Greene said. The only question is who the “us” is, because it certainly isn’t regular Americans. 

 

A Story of Perserverance To Mark Juneteenth

Silvia Hector Webber was one of the conductors on the Underground Railroad route from Texas to Mexico.  She was widely known for taking in people of need, and she worked with her husband John to smuggle enslaved people to freedom over the Rio Grande river to Mexico. 

Silvia's story started in Louisiana, where she was born into slavery in 1807.  When she was twelve years old, she was sold to Morgan Cryer, Sr. of Clark County, AK for $550 ($11K in today's dollars). In 1826, Silvia came to Texas with the Cryer family when they got a land grant as part of the new Austin Colony.

John Webber was among the original settlers of  the Austin Colony, and was neighbor and business partner of John Cryer. Together, the two men were in the business of smuggling tobacco in Northern Mexico,  Webber Silvia at some point between 1826 and 1829 and became infatuated with her. John Webber eventually was married Silvia Hector by Father Michael Muldoon (interracial marriage was legal in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas). While still enslaved, Silvia gave birth to three children with John Webber. John and Silvia were finally able to negotiate with John Cryer the freedom of their three children, as well as the freedom of Silvia herself by June 11, 1834.  Webber and Cryer documented their negotiation in a legal document, which was latter dubbed the "Freedom Papers."  The document required John and Sylvia to “pay” Cryer “a negro girl three years of age . . . and a negro boy to be two years old,” with the Webber land east of Austin as collateral.  The Webbers never intended to pay the bond, and eventually agreed to forfeit a large portion of their Webberville property.

Silvia was one of the first free black persons to live in Travis County. Initially, she and John were accepted as an interracial couple, although Silvia was never seen as an equal. Their neighbors at Webberville treated Sylvia with respect because they appreciated her kindness and early settlers considered her kind, welcoming and intelligent. She is remembered for taking in and comforting an orphaned child, as well as opening her home to a man disabled with rheumatoid arthritis for years. When white women visited her house, she served them while they ate, but she and her children did not eat with them. When women offered to return the favor, she ate alone in their kitchen. Because the Webber children were not allowed to attend the local school due to racial prejudice, they hired Robert G. McAdoo, a North Carolinian school teacher, to be a live-in tutor for their children. 

In 1836, the Republic of Texas was established following the Texas Revolution. Its constitution took away the rights and freedoms that Black people had enjoyed under Mexican law and outlawed interracial marriage. As more people from the Deep South moved into the area, Silvia and their children experienced cruel prejudice and discriminatory treatment. The new Webberville settlers wanted to rid the settlement of its founder and his "family of mulato offspring."  The Webbers were also under the constant threat of slave stealers and slave catchers, who would kidnap freed slaves and sell them back into slavery.  By the early 1850's the Webbers' lives at Webberville had come under such threat, they chose to uproot and move to Hildalgo County.  Upon their arrival they were accepted among Mexican American families.  They established and ran a ferry from their land near the Rio Grande across the river to transport goods for their trading business.  To further protect his family, John changed his name to Juan Fernando Webber.

Silvia and John were anti-slavery advocates and Unionists, offering a safe haven to freedom seekers bound for Mexico. Silvia was known to be charitable to anyone that needed assistance. She and her family fed and provided shelter and asylum to runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad that led to Mexico. They used their ferry to deliver freedom seekers across the Rio Grande.  When the Confederate army occupied the Rio Grande Valley, Sylvia and John were persecuted for their position against the Confederacy and driven off their land.  After confederate troops kidnapped two of their sons, the family fled to Mexico and did not return until after the end of the war.

In 1872, John received a pension from the United States, and died ten years later. He was buried in the Webber Cemetery in Hidalgo County, near Donna, Texas. Silvia died ten years later in 1892.   Silvia's "Freedom Papers" have someone survived, and are now on exhibit at the Briscoe Center at the University of Texas-Austin.

GOP Representatives Emulate Confederacy Losers

The House voted this week to reject an amendment to restore a racist Confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery. The statue depicted a Black “mammy” holding a Confederate soldier’s baby and a Black enslaved person following a Confederate soldier into battle. In a 230 to 192 vote, only 24 Republicans joined Democrats in opposition to the monument.

The Reconciliation Memorial, also called the “New South” monument, was erected in 1914 by famed white supremacist President Woodrow Wilson. An independent commission recommended the statue for removal in 2022. In December 2023, the Army, which operates Arlington National Cemetery, informed Congress that it intended to remove the statue.

The amendment was brought by Georgia gun shop owner-turned-congressman Andrew Clyde. This was not Clyde’s first time exhibiting racist tendencies over memorials. In 2022, Clyde led House Republicans in blocking a “routine measure” to name a federal courthouse in Florida after its first Black state supreme court justice, Joseph W. Hatchett.

The House vote showed an increase in GOP support for white supremacist symbology vis-a-vis 2021 when only 120 Republicans voted against removing Confederate statues from the Capitol.

 

GOP Is Using White Women Victimhood to Stoke Anti-Immigrant Fear

Republicans who are pushing for more restrictive immigration policy ahead of a pivotal election year continue to lean on an old strategy in their appeal to voters: broadly framing immigrant men as dangerous next to imagery of young white women victims.

In 2015 it was Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old woman who was fatally shot on a San Francisco pier. A year later, Sarah Root, a 21-year-old Iowa woman, was killed in a crash involving a drunk driver. In 2018, 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts was killed while jogging in her rural Iowa hometown. Now, it’s Laken Riley, a Georgia college student killed last month while also jogging.

All were white women, and their deaths, linked to immigrant men, became flash points in Republicans’ push for hard-line immigration policies. Led by Donald Trump, the party is using these deaths to call for policies like mass arrests, detention camps and militarized deportations, and pairing that with violent anti-immigrant language.

The rhetoric — which recalls the nation’s long history of racist attacks against men of color by casting them as threats to white women — also threatens the safety of immigrants, advocates say.  Trump has highlighted the 22-year-old Riley’s death during campaign rallies and on social media, referring to her as an “American daughter.” 

Deborah Kang, an associate professor at the University of Virginia who studies U.S. immigration and border policy, said such language about security highlights a much longer history, especially in the American South, of white supremacists fighting to protect white women from perceived threats posed by men of color. She added that it echoes a kind of nationalist paternalism.  “So for Trump, one could argue that protecting the homeland and protecting so-called White womanhood are two sides of the same fight,” she said.

 Trump, whose administration once orchestrated the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border as an migration deterrent, has also complicated efforts to address immigration. He publicly denounced the federal immigration bill, which was subsequently tanked by Senate Republicans, arguing that it wasn’t politically advantageous for Republicans to help address issues at the border before the election.

Kang said voters should focus on at least one key fact.  “Multiple studies conducted by demographers, sociologists and economists have shown that historically and in fact, for centuries, immigration is actually associated with lower crime rates,” she said. “Despite that statistic, immigrants throughout history have been routinely scapegoated for a host of problems in the nation at any given time.”

“I think it’s being used politically to get those votes,” Jason Riley, Laken Riley’s father, said in an interview. “It makes me angry. I feel like, you know, they’re just using my daughter’s name for that."   

Rob Tibbetts, the father of Mollie Tibbetts, directly criticized the use of her death to defend conservative immigration policies.  “I encourage the debate on immigration; there is great merit in its reasonable outcome. But do not appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist,” Rob Tibbetts wrote in 2018.

Anti-immigrant messaging continues to fuel concepts like the “great replacement theory,” the belief that there’s an ongoing conspiracy to take power away from white Americans by growing the number of non-white people in the country. That notion has been linked to several incidents of hate-fueled violence, like mass shootings in El Paso, Buffalo, New York and Pittsburgh. It’s also become enmeshed with far-right anti-democracy groups, Cruz said.

“It’s really racist, problematic narratives that I think have become quite popular, especially with some members of the GOP that have continued to spew the great replacement theory,” Cruz said. “It’s incredibly problematic, and we’re trying to keep an eye on it. We get a sense that it’s only gonna get worse as we get closer to the general election.” 

AI Snafu at Google Raises Concern Over Anti-White Bias

Google CEO Sundar Pichai tried to address the company’s Gemini controversy last week, calling the AI app’s problematic responses around race unacceptable and vowing to make structural changes to fix the problem.

Google suspended its Gemini image creation tool last week after it generated embarrassing and offensive results, in some cases declining to depict white people, or inserting photos of women or people of color when prompted to create images of Vikings, Nazis, and the Pope.  The controversy spiraled when Gemini was found to be creating questionable text responses, such as equating Elon Musk’s influence on society with Adolf Hitler’s.

Those comments drew sharp criticisms, especially from conservatives, who accused Google of an anti-white bias. Most companies offering AI tools like Gemini create guardrails to mitigate abuses and to avoid bias, especially in light of other experiences. For instance, image generation tools from companies like OpenAI have been criticized when they created predominately images of white people in professional roles and depicting Black people in stereotypical roles.

In a memo to employees, Pichai wrote:

"I want to address the recent issues with problematic text and image responses in the Gemini app (formerly Bard). I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias – to be clear, that’s completely unacceptable and we got it wrong.

Our teams have been working around the clock to address these issues. We’re already seeing a substantial improvement on a wide range of prompts. No AI is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of the industry’s development, but we know the bar is high for us and we will keep at it for however long it takes. And we’ll review what happened and make sure we fix it at scale.

Our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful is sacrosanct. We’ve always sought to give users helpful, accurate, and unbiased information in our products. That’s why people trust them. This has to be our approach for all our products, including our emerging AI products.

We’ll be driving a clear set of actions, including structural changes, updated product guidelines, improved launch processes, robust evals and red-teaming, and technical recommendations. We are looking across all of this and will make the necessary changes.

Even as we learn from what went wrong here, we should also build on the product and technical announcements we’ve made in AI over the last several weeks. That includes some foundational advances in our underlying models e.g. our 1 million long-context window breakthrough and our open models, both of which have been well received.

We know what it takes to create great products that are used and beloved by billions of people and businesses, and with our infrastructure and research expertise we have an incredible springboard for the AI wave. Let’s focus on what matters most: building helpful products that are deserving of our users’ trust."

The Gemini controversy has provided fodder for critics on the right, who often accuse tech companies of liberal bias.  But to informed observers, this story isn't about bias. These new developments show that Google made actual technical errors in the fine-tuning of its AI models. The problem is not with the underlying models themselves, but in the software guardrails that sit atop the model.  Nobody really believes Google actually set out to force Gemini to depict the Pope as a woman, or Vikings as Black people, nor did anyone want it to find moral equivalency between Musk and Hitler. This was a failed attempt at instilling less bias and it went awry. The race to develop AI tools has likely forced Google to speed up product development faster than it would have preferred.  While these technical mistakes may be easily fixable,  the reputational damage may not be so easy to fix.

 

Books on Slavery Too Offensive for White People Visiting Former Slave Plantation

The Texas Historical Commission has removed around two dozen race-related books from the gift shops of two former slave plantations because one person complained, according to Texas Monthly.  Michelle Haas, a white amateur historian, began emailing a commission board member after visiting the Varner-Hogg plantation last year.

Titles reportedly removed included: “Remembering the Days of Sorrow,” a book of slave narratives; “Invisible Man,” the Ralph Ellison novel on the Black experience; “Stamped from the Beginning,” a history of racist ideas by Ibram X. Kendi; and “Roots,” the Alex Haley novel famously adapted for television in the 1970s.

The Texas Historical Commission is a state agency overseeing the preservation of certain historical sites across the state. As such, they were required to respond to an open records request from the Texas Monthly asking for emails relating to the gift shop situation.  As revealed in the emails,  Haas thought the Varner-Hogg plantation presented too much information about the enslaved Black people who worked the sugarcane fields and not enough about the white people who lived in the main house. She later reportedly emailed David Gravelle, a commission’s board member, a list of titles she did not like that were available at another nearby historical site, the Levi Jordan plantation.

Haas is the author of a book of her own, titled “200 Years a Fraud,” which takes the text of the “12 Years a Slave” memoir and points out what she considers historical inaccuracies in the primary author’s account of his own life.  Board member Gravelle took up Haas’ complaints with the board, claiming he feared the Republican-controlled state legislature would be upset if lawmakers found out about the titles on offer.