Colorlines

Black farmers are once again in the spotlight, but this time they're defending themselves against accusations of fraud. Just a few years after winning a landmark $1.33 billion settlement for decades of discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the New York Times published a deeply critical look at those court judgements. The Times' investigation alleges widespread fraud and questions whether similar settlements should be made with Latino and women farmers, as mandated by the Obama administration's political appointees in the Justice and Agriculture Departments.

From the Times:

The deal, several current and former government officials said, was fashioned in White House meetings despite the vehement objections -- until now undisclosed -- of career lawyers and agency officials who had argued that there was no credible evidence of widespread discrimination. What is more, some protested, the template for the deal -- the $50,000 payouts to black farmers -- had proved a magnet for fraud.

Soon after the Times published its findings, the Network of Black Farmers issued a point-by-point rebuttal of the paper's claims. When I reached the network's Heather Gray by phone this morning, she underlined an important point. "The New York Times inappropriately targeted black farmers who are the victims [of discrimination] rather than talking about the behavior of the Agriculture Department, which has for years denied its services to its [black] U.S. citizens."

See a portion of the farmers' rebuttal after the jump.

• The story is largely anecdotal - sure there are people at USDA who are vested in the system who refuse to admit the undeniable legacy of discrimination at the department.

• The presentation of data is misleading. The number of farms operating in 1997 is essentially irrelevant. The case covers a 16 year period during which there were over 125,000 African Americans engaged in farming at one time or another.

• Minimal documentation was required because 1) USDA destroyed the denied loan applications and civil rights complaints; 2) the case went back to 1981 so many folks had lost or destroyed their own records. It went back to 1981 because USDA shut down its civil rights office in the early 80's so minorities were denied the opportunity to present their claims at a time when they would have had records.

• Out of 503 cases referred to the FBI, they chose to investigate 60 - 3/10 of 1 percent of the 22000 claims. That is miniscule.

• The denial of credit and benefits has had a devastating impact on African American farmers. According to the Census of Agriculture, the number of African American farmers has declined from 925,000 in 1920 to approximately 18,000 in 1992. CRAT Report at 14. The farms of many African American farmers were foreclosed upon, and they were forced out of farming. Those who managed to stay in farming often were subject to humiliation and degradation at the hands of the county supervisors and were forced to stand by powerless, as white farmers received preferential treatment.

Brookings Institution scholars are reporting that African Americans turned out to vote at a higher rate than white voters last November. Brookings demographer William H. Frey analyzed 2012 census election data, along with Pew Research Center numbers, and found that black voters turned out at a higher rate than any other race, which was consistent with similar findings by Pew in December. Back then it was also estimated that black voters turned out at a higher rate than white voters, but Frey's analysis finally confirms that conclusion.

The Associated Press, for whom the analysis was commissioned, reports that the finding reflects "a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home."

One key downer from the report is that overall turnout rates have steadily decreased: 58 percent voter turnout in 2012 compared with 62 percent in 2008 and 60 percent in 2004.

Still, the milestone for African American voters is particularly significant given that they overcame many threats to the ballot franchise -- namely voter ID laws and the attacks on early voting -- in order to reach this peak in turnout.

"Black turnout set records this year despite record attempts to suppress the black vote," said NAACP president Ben Jealous in an interview with AP. He also told them that the upcoming 2014 midterm elections will be "the real bellwether" for black turnout.

Today is the 21st anniversary of the uprising in Los Angeles shortly after the Rodney King trial verdict was announced. "Sa-I-Gu", Korean for April 29, opens a window on Korean American women in Los Angeles whose stores -- and lives -- were devastated during in the aftermath.

Three Korean women, Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, Christine Choy and Elaine Kim started making the film "Sa-I-Gu" just three months after the uprising in Los Angeles. They interview interview several Korean women shopkeepers and use newsreel footage and family photographs to help tell their side of the experience.

Sa-I-Gu provides an important perspective for better understanding the Los Angeles riots, community studies, and ethnic relations and racism in the United States.

I was 9-years-old and living about a mile away from the epicenter of the L.A. Riots and remember the events vividly. I knew that they were other children who remembered the events like they happened yesterday and created a series of video portraits of young adults who were 8, 9 and 10-year olds during the LA Riots.

Visit "Two Decades Later, Children of the L.A. Riots Share Memories" to listen to how children who lived through the riots remember the events today.

North Carolina's Republican-dominated legislature passed the Voter Information Verification Act through its House chamber Wednesday. If the bill passes the Senate, it would only need the governor's signature to make it mandatory for voters to show photo identification in order to cast a ballot. The governor, Pat McCroy (R), has indicated he intends to sign it into law.

To protest the voter ID bill and other proposed legislation that would make voting more difficult, students from universities across the state sat in the House chamber on Wednesday wearing duct tape over their mouths with messages such as, "Do not silence my vote," and "Say no to voter suppression." The action was coordinated by students in the North Carolina NAACP Youth and College Division.

Other legislation on the table in North Carolina are bills that would levy a tax penalty on parents whose children register to vote where they attend college, cut early voting -- which 70 percent of black voters in the state use -- and one that would create the harshest felony disenfranchisement law in the nation.

(L-R) First lady Michelle Obama, former first lady Laura Bush, former first lady Hillary Clinton, former first lady Barbara Bush and former first lady Rosalynn Carter attend the opening ceremony of the George W. Bush Presidential Center April 25, 2013 in Dallas, Texas.

The library is the 13th presidential library in the National Archives and Records Administration system.

Georgia's Wilcox County High School will hold its first ever integrated prom this Saturday, nearly 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education desegregated the nation's school system. The integrated prom comes after a small "group of [young] ladies" teamed up with the NAACP to pressure school administrators and community leaders to let the event go forward.

In Georgia, proms are organized by private groups, like parents, and not by the school. But since Wilcox County is the last county in Georgia where dances are still segregated by race, WMAZ-TV reported, that has meant separate proms for black and white students.

The students from the small town in rural south Georgia called attention to their efforts by starting a Facebook page that has more than 24,000 "likes." The "Integrated Prom" page says it represents a group of adamant high school seniors" who "want to make a difference" in their community.

"For the first time in the history of our county, we plan to have an integrated prom," the Facebook page's description reads.

"At first, we had a whole bunch of students who you could tell that wanted to support it, but they were too scared to stand out and stand against, not their peers, but their parents," student Brandon Davis told Democracy Now. "But as times progressed we've had more and more students change come help us out -- and we've actually had more parents. At first, parents were like, 'Well, that's tradition, let's just stay it this way.' But after time, their children changed and they were like, 'Hey, I'm going to support my children, this is their memory, Lets go.'"

The Wilcox County Board of Education published a statement on their website that explains "earlier in this school year, a group of ladies approached the Wilcox County Board of Education and the Superintendent to discuss their plans for hosting an 'integrated prom'." They go on to point the students may be making history by creating institutional changes.

"The Board and Superintendent not only applauded the idea, but passed a resolution requesting that all activities involving WCS students be inclusive and non-discriminatory," the statement read.

Democracy Now! has an extended interview with two of the students who are helping to organize the integrated prom: Mareshia Rucker and Brandon Davis. Also interviewed is Mareshia's mother, Toni Rucker, who encouraged her daughter's efforts.

This morning NBA player Jason Collins revealed he's gay in an essay published in Sports Illustrated.

"I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay," the 34-year-old center wrote in his first person article published online this morning.

Collins' article sparked messages of support, including from his friend Chelsea Clinton, who was his classmate at Stanford. "I am very proud of my friend Jason Collins for having the strength and courage to become the first openly gay athlete in the NBA," Clinton posted on her Facebook page. "His decision marks an important moment for professional sports and for our country."

Clinton's father, former president Bill Clinton also issued a statement in support.

"I have known Jason Collins since he was Chelsea's classmate and friend at Stanford," reads Clinton's statement. "Jason's announcement today is an important moment for professional sports and in the history of the LGBT community. It is also the straightforward statement of a good man who wants no more than what so many of us seek: to be able to be who we are; to do our work; to build families and to contribute to our communities. For so many members of the LGBT community, these simple goals remain elusive. I hope that everyone, particularly Jason's colleagues in the NBA, the media and his many fans extend to him their support and the respect he has earned."

White House press secretary Jay Carney also announced the president's support for Collins.

"We commend him for his courage and support him in this effort," Carney told reporters at a daily briefing.

The Wizards, whom Collins has been playing with most recently, also released a statement that read, "We are extremely proud of Jason and support his decision to live his life proudly and openly. He has been a leader on and off the court and an outstanding teammate throughout his NBA career. Those qualities will continue to serve him both as a player and as a positive role model for others of all sexual orientation."

In April 2011, Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 for calling a referee an anti-gay slur and it appears he may have learned a thing or two. Shortly after Collin's Sports Illustrated piece was published there was a message of support from Bryant's Twitter feed.

Proud of @jasoncollins34. Don't suffocate who u r because of the ignorance of others #courage #support #mambaarmystandup #BYOU

— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) April 29, 2013

NBA Commissioner David Stern also issued a statement this morning in support of Collins: > "As Adam Silver and I said to Jason, we have known the Collins family since Jason and Jarron joined the NBA in 2001 and they have been exemplary members of the NBA family. Jason has been a widely respected player and teammate throughout his career and we are proud he has assumed the leadership mantle on this very important issue."

At a Planned Parenthood gala in Washington this morning, President Obama said the women's health organization is "not going anywhere," despite GOP-led efforts to defund it.

"No matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, if there's one thing the past few years have shown, it's that Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere today. It's not going anywhere tomorrow," the president said on Friday.

Full (rush) transcripts of his speech is below:

Remarks by the President at the Planned Parenthood Conference

Marriott Wardman Park Hotel

11:17 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody! (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you! (Applause.) All right, everybody have a seat. Have a seat. You're making me blush. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love you!

THE PRESIDENT: I love you back. Thank you. (Applause.)

Cecile, thank you for the warm introduction, and thank you for the outstanding leadership that you've shown over the years. You just do a great, great job. (Applause.) I want to thank all of you for the remarkable work that you're doing day in, day out in providing quality health care to women all across America. You are somebody that women -- young women, old women, women in between -- count on for so many important services. And we are truly grateful to you.

I'm sorry that I could not be at the party yesterday. I understand it was a little wild. (Laughter.) That's what I heard. But as all of you know, obviously, we've gone through a pretty tough week and a half, and I was down in Texas, letting the people of West, Texas know that we all love them and care about them in their time of grieving. (Applause.)

But obviously this is a special national conference, because it's been nearly a hundred years since the first health clinic of what later would become Planned Parenthood opened its doors to women in Brooklyn. And for nearly a century now, one core principle has guided everything all of you do -- that women should be allowed to make their own decisions about their own health. (Applause.) It's a simple principle.

So what I see in this audience, extraordinary doctors and nurses, and advocates and staff who work tirelessly to keep the doors at health centers all across the country going, then I'm reminded of those very early efforts and all the strides that we've made in subsequent decades. And I also think about the millions of mothers and daughters and wives and sisters, friends and neighbors who walk through those doors every year.

Somewhere there's a woman who just received a new lease on life because of a screening that you provided that helped catch her cancer in time. Somewhere there's a woman who's breathing easier today because of the support and counseling she got at her local Planned Parenthood health clinic. Somewhere there's a young woman starting a career who, because of you, is able to decide for herself when she wants to start a family. (Applause.)
One in five women in this country has turned to Planned Parenthood for health care. One in five. (Applause.) And for many, Planned Parenthood is their primary source of health care -- not just for contraceptive care, but for lifesaving preventive care, like cancer screenings and health counseling.

So when politicians try to turned Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they're not just talking about you; they're talking about the millions of women who you serve. And when they talk about cutting off your funding, let's be clear: They're talking about telling many of those women, you're on your own. They're talking about shutting those women out at a time when they may need it most -- shutting off communities that need more health care options for women, not less. (Applause.)

So the fact is, after decades of progress, there's still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century. And they've been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women's health.

Forty-two states have introduced laws that would ban or severely limit access to a woman's right to choose -- laws that would make it harder for women to get the contraceptive care that they need; laws that would cut off access to cancer screenings and end educational programs that help prevent teen pregnancy.

In North Dakota, they just passed a law that outlaws your right to choose, starting as early as six weeks, even if a woman is raped. A woman may not even know that she's pregnant at six weeks. In Mississippi, a ballot initiative was put forward that could not only have outlawed your right to choose, but could have had all sorts of other far-reaching consequences like cutting off fertility treatments, making certain forms of contraception a crime.

That's absurd. It's wrong. It's an assault on women's rights. And that's why when the people of Mississippi were given a chance to vote on that initiative, they turned it down. (Applause.) Mississippi is a conservative state, but they wanted to make clear there's nothing conservative about the government injecting itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctor. And folks are trying to do this all across the country.

When you read about some of these laws, you want to check the calendar; you want to make sure you're still living in 2013. (Laughter.)

Forty years after the Supreme Court affirmed a woman's constitutional right to privacy, including the right to choose, we shouldn't have to remind people that when it comes to a woman's health, no politician should get to decide what's best for you. No insurer should get to decide what kind of care that you get. The only person who should get to make decisions about your health is you. (Applause.) That's why we fought so hard to make health care reform a reality. (Applause.)

That principle is at the heart of the Affordable Care Act. Because of the ACA, most insurance plans are now covering the cost of contraceptive care, so that a working mom doesn't have to put off the care she needs just so she can pay her bills on time. Because of the Affordable Care Act, 47 million women have new access to preventive care like mammograms and cancer screenings with no copay, no deductible, no out-of-pocket costs, so they don't have to put off a mammogram just because money is tight. Because of the Affordable Care Act, young people under the age of 26 can now stay on their parent's health care plan.

And insurance companies soon will no longer be able to deny you coverage based on preexisting conditions like breast cancer, or charge you more just because you are a woman. Those days are ending. (Applause.) Those days are ending. (Applause.)

Now, I know how hard you worked to help us pass health care reform. You and your supporters got out there -- you organized; you mobilized; you made your voices heard. It made all the difference. But here's the thing -- if Americans don't know how to access the new benefits and protections that they're going to receive as we implement this law, then health care reform won't make much of a difference in their lives.

So I'm here to also ask for your help, because we need to get the word out. We need you to tell your patients, your friends, your neighbors, your family members what the health care law means for them. Make sure they know that if they don't have health insurance, they'll be able to sign up for quality, affordable insurance starting this fall in an online marketplace where private insurers will compete for their business. Make sure that they know that there are plans out there right now that cover the cost of contraceptive and preventive care free of charge.

We've got to spread the word, particularly among women, particularly among young women, who are the ones who are most likely to benefit from these laws. We need all the women who come through your doors telling their children, their husbands, and the folks in their neighborhoods about their health care options. We need all the college students who come through your doors to call up their friends and post on Facebook talking about the protections and benefits that are kicking in.

And you are all in a unique position to deliver that message, because the women you serve know you and they trust you. And the reason for that is that you haven't let them down before.

I know it's not always easy. As Cecile described, Planned Parenthood as the only organization that she's ever been at where there are opponents who, in her words, "literally got up every day trying to figure out how to keep us from doing our work." Now, if she had worked in the administration -- (laughter and applause) -- she'd be more familiar with this phenomenon. (Laughter and applause.) But when it comes to your patients, you never let them down -- no matter what.

And that's because you never forget who this is all about. This is about a woman from Chicago named Courtney who has a disease that can leave women infertile. So in college, she turned to Planned Parenthood for access to affordable contraceptive care to keep her healthy. You didn't just help her plan for a family; you made sure she could start one. And today, she's got two beautiful kids. That's what Planned Parenthood is about. (Applause.)

This is about a woman in Washington State named Joyce who for years could only afford health care at her local Planned Parenthood clinic. And heeding your advice, she never missed her annual exam. During one of them, your doctors helped catch an aggressive form of cervical cancer early enough to save her life. Today, she's been cancer-free for 25 years. (Applause.)

So every day, in every state, in ever center that Planned Parenthood operates, there are stories like those -- lives you've saved, women you've empowered, families that you've strengthened. That's why, no matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, if there's one thing the past few years have shown, it's that Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere today. It's not going anywhere tomorrow. (Applause.)

As long as we've got to fight to make sure women have access to quality, affordable health care, and as long as we've got to fight to protect a woman's right to make her own choices about her own health, I want you to know that you've also got a President who's going to be right there with you fighting every step of the way. (Applause.)

Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you. God bless America. Thank you.

President Obama visited the the "Today Show" on Wednesday morning and explained how he and the first lady plan to keep their daughters from getting tattoos.

"What we've said to the girls is, 'If you guys ever decided you're going to get a tattoo, then mommy and me will get the exact same tattoo in the same place. And we'll go on YouTube and show it off as a family tattoo," Obama said. "And our thinking is that might dissuade them from thinking that somehow that's a good way to rebel."

The women injured when Los Angeles police opened fire on them during the manhunt for ex-cop Christopher Dorner have reached a $4.2-million settlement with the city, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich told the LA Times.

Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71, were delivering newspapers in Torrance on Feb. 7, when officers mistook their blue Toyota Tacoma for Dorner's gray Nissan Titan. Hernandez was shot twice in the back, and Carranza sustained minor injuries from broken glass.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called the shooting "a tragic misinterpretation" by officers working under "incredible tension" hours after Dorner allegedly shot police officers.

Trutanich told the Times the agreement was a "no brainer because the costs were going to skyrocket."

"We got out of this thing pretty cheaply all things considered," he said.

Immediately after the bombing in Boston last week, even before we knew the identities of the suspects, the press began to tie the violence to Islam. The networks flooded themselves with experts on terrorism who all wanted to talk about what they call "radicalization."

Some evidence has emerged that the Tsarnaev brothers spent time watching videos with Islamic content, and according to USA Today, in an article strewn with intimation of guilt by association, they attended a mosque visited by other Muslims accused of supporting violence. Throughout the news media, the implicit claim has been that their move to an extreme act was tied to their religion. For the younger Tsarnaev in particular, the burning question has been, how could such a "normal" guy turn so radical? How have his religious views caused this change? 

These are the same questions that fuel the New York Police Department's mass spying program in Muslim communities. The program's operating premise is that more Muslim someone becomes, the more likely they are to act violently. The authorities have to watch all young Muslim men, mindful to detect that radicalization moment.

But at the core of the questions about radicalization is the assumption that extreme religious, ideological or political beliefs are causal in acts of mass violence carried out by people like the Tsarnaevs. Aziz Huq, a professor of law at the University of Chicago who has written about the idea of radicalization and how it is used in political culture, has wrestled with that assumption. Huq calls the conversation about radicalization "tangled." 

"Too often in the debate," says Huq, "the ideas of radicalization as changing your mind and as moving to violent activism are conflated and sometimes intentionally confused." I asked him to help us untangle the debate.

So what's wrong with the idea that there's a relationship between changing views and violence? 

First of all, if we look at the pool of cases that are available, of acts of violence that are associated with religious identity in the post 9-11 era, it's not clear that what you are seeing is a pool of people drawn from the most religious extreme part of the spectrum. Second, and more important, the idea that it's the change in religious views that drives people to political violence, there's just little or no empirical support for that. There are somewhere between two and five million Muslims in the U.S. To say that a faith that influences millions of people [can drive them to political violence], on the evidence that several of those people commit acts of violence is--from a social science perspective--either a very weak claim or intentionally farcical.

There is plainly a religious rhetoric promulgated by Al Qaeda that frames and justifies violence in religious terms. And in some cases of post 9-11 violence, those committing violence sometimes pick up that rhetoric. But finding evidence of the religious language at work is not the same as knowing that there was a causal effect on the decision to use violence.

That's exactly what seems to be happening in much of the press coverage. That is, reporters are looking for indications of attachment to or involvement with Islam and then treating that attachment as evidence of causation. 

[Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's] Twitter account suggests that he is just as religious as he is immersed in non-religious consumer culture, as any comparative kid his age. It's not clear what violence has to do in this case with religion. You have here someone who decides to commit an act of violence and the religious texts are attached.

Had this person been acculturated into the belief system of the [white] militia movement in the Midwest, and committed an act of violence, or had they been born in one of the African American neighborhoods in Chicago where I live, where there are on some weekends five to 10 murders, the conversation would look very different. The fact that he committed those murders would be treated as totally unexceptional in the Chicago context. We would not have this conversation: why is he doing it, what is the role of religion? These would not be part of it at all.

Well it seems to me that what all of the cases you cite have in common is that they are all young men who are somehow alienated, pushed out. Is it possible that we're missing that much less grandiose point in the search for the brothers' path to radicalization?

What we see here is a refusal to even begin to ask the same kinds of questions that we asked in other contexts, like the Newtown massacre, about psychological causes, social causes, about the role that availability of guns plays. It's very clear that the brothers had access to tremendous amounts to firepower. [Note: There are now conflicting official reports on how many firearms the brothers actually had.] There is almost no discussion of whether regulation of weapons is an appropriate response.

Instead, somehow the political energy is channeled into immigration. That's because it's the salient regulatory tool in this situation--salient in terms of the available narrative. Talking about immigration is a way of satisfying an emotional impulse to explain or blame it on some other alien force.

The Rhode Island Department of Health confirmed today the body found earlier this week in waters off Providence is that of Sunil Tripathi, the missing Brown University student who disappeared more than a month ago. Tripathi's name made national headlines earlier this month after users on social news forums said the Indian-American student resembled one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.

"On April 23, our beloved Sunil was discovered in the waters off India Point Park in Providence, Rhode Island," the Tripathi family's statement read on Facebook.

"As we carry indescribable grief, we also feel incredible gratitude. To each one of you-from our hometown to many distant lands-we extend our thanks for the words of encouragement, for your thoughts, for your hands, for your prayers, and for the love you have so generously shared," the note continued.

"Your compassionate spirit is felt by Sunil and by all of us."

"This last month has changed our lives forever, and we hope it will change yours too. Take care of one another. Be gentle, be compassionate. Be open to letting someone in when it is you who is faltering. Lend your hand. We need it. The world needs it."

The statement was published on the Facebook page the family started to help find their son. It was the same page the family took down because of racist hate messages they received minutes after Tripathi was labeled as the Boston Bomber on sites like Reddit. At the time, news reporters also gathered in front of their home looking to speak to the family of the supposed bomber.

The Tripathi family closed their statement with a few meaningful words.

"With love, The Tripathi Family"

Watching professional broadcast journalists attempt to compete with social media hobbyists for any nugget of information during last week's manhunt for suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, many us felt a familiar dread. We know, either intuitively, through direct experience or via professional training, that media have a collective power to help diffuse or fuel the fear and tension that so often triggers racial violence in this country. Despite all of the post-9/11 reflection and lessons learned, it seems that some members of traditional media cannot help but have a racist response to the unknown. The hysteria of social media users--who enjoy the luxury of using handles rather than their names and faces--serve to intensify the racist response.

So despite their public atonement, it still appears as if people with power don't understand the impact of their decisions.

American history shows us time and time again that without an incredible amount of resistance to and clarity about the white supremacy undergirding our culture, mob rule serves as the default.

So although some media members have made public apologies for the racism they fed into via silence, doublespeak or rote reporting, there is still work to be done. A lot of work. One way to begin is by examining the language we use when we're doing our jobs.

Let's probe the Monday mea culpa from Reddit general manager Erik "@hueypriest" Martin. He described the racist behavior of some the site's users as a "witch hunt."

In 2013, on the Internet, "witch hunt" can apply to the post-9/11, Islamophobic, and racist branding of Sunil Tripathi, the Indian-American student who had been missing since March 16.

But the centuries-long American usage of "witch hunt" refers to the 1692-1693 trials in Salem, Mass., of more than 200 women accused of practicing "the Devil's magic." All of the authorities and most of the victims in this shameful chapter were what we today consider white. Yet people use "witch hunt" in a racially neutral way because Salem, at the time, was an English colony. So "England" was the oppressor, "Puritanism" and "religious intolerance" was the problem, the victims were "women" and nobody's white except for the "Caribbean slave" Tituba.

The redditors who "crowd sourced" the wrong information about Sunil Tripathi and the blogs that spread the conjecture were not conducting a witch hunt. They were mimicking the behavior of American white supremacist mobs.

Now, think about how CNN's John King reported the nonexistent arrest of a phantom "dark skinned man" last Thursday afternoon during the manhunt, then tweeted that evening a self-defense that declared, "...What I am not is racist." As several Twitter users helpfully pointed out, the system of racism is about outcomes for the multitude of men in this country who don't appear to be white, not John King's perception of himself.

This is how the United States of America does racism. We live in an ahistorical culture that continually attempts to deny the white supremacy that determines who is and isn't defined as a U.S. citizen, a criminal, a terrorist or a victim. But a trip through our history is instructive.

Human Mob Theory

Because living things have trouble coping with pain, let's start with something neutral about how mobs behave.

In an interview over email, Nicole Monteiro, Ph.D.,* a clinical psychologist and professor from the United States who currently teaches at the University of Botswana, explained:

"Mobs allow for [the] diffusion of responsibility, anonymity, the illusion of authority and 'othering.' Racist ideology provides a fertile breeding ground for all of these dynamics because it lures adherents with the promise of clear-cut, unambiguous identities and allegiances," she wrote last week. "Modern media reinforce racist ideology via repetition of stereotypes and by presenting a racially biased, 'Us vs. Them' mentality as objective fact."

Monteiro, who was watching American news coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings from Botswana, added, "The broadcast media is definitely looking for the 'Muslim,' 'foreign' or 'other' angle to re-establish that 'mainstream,' 'wholesome,' white America."

Many Americans talk about the dynamics of American white supremacist mob rule as a series of isolated "tragedies." The outcome of this behavior is 100 percent tragic. But American white supremacist behavior and the media that fuel it aren't some cosmic accident.

Let's look at where we've been.

It's impossible to tell the whole thing here. I'd like to start in Memphis, 1892. The African-American journalist Ida B. Wells began her eight-year investigation into the ritual of white mobs kidnapping, hanging, burning, castrating and otherwise torturing black men for the alleged rape of white women. In response to an editorial about the lynching of three of her friends published in The Free Speech and Headlight--a black newspaper she co-owned--a white mob destroyed The Free Speech office.

Now, lets try 1910. From the online version of the photo book "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America", here's an account of a white supremacist mob-lynching of a black man named Allen Brooks in Dallas. (Text italicized for emphasis):

The H. J. Buvens family had esteemed Allen Brooks a trusted servant until Flora Daingerfield, a second servant, claimed to have discovered Brooks with their missing three-year old daughter in the barn. Dr. W. W. Brandau examined the child and concluded, rather vaguely, that there was "evidence of brutal treatment." A local newspaper described the alleged crime as "one of the most heinous since the days of Reconstruction." Immediately following Brooks' arrest, a mob attempted, but failed, to kidnap him from authorities. But while his trial was underway, a second mob, of two hundred whites and one "conspicuous Negro," entered the courtroom and successfully overwhelmed a "defending force" of fifty [sic] armed deputies and twenty [sic] policemen.

Of course mobs are formed to protect whiteness from more than black people in America. Let's move to 1943, in Los Angeles, during World War II. In this setting the leading threat is supposed to be "Communism" and Japanese Americans, whom the United States government rounded up by the thousands and trapped in internment camps. But we also end up with the so-called Zoot Suit Riots, which according to an American Experience summary, lasted from May 31 through June 9 of that year.

In this episode of white supremacist violence, we have white military servicemen leaving the Naval Reserve Armory and trolling downtown L.A. with the purpose of street-harassing young Mexican-American women, and of trading antagonisms with young Mexican-American men wearing the baggy, colorful "zoot suits" associated with black bandleader Cab Calloway. On May 31, a white serviceman grabs the arm of a Mexican-American teen and ends up severely beaten. In retaliation, mobs of white men representing the United States Armed Forces come into the city to beat up people they see as Mexican.

In the major papers, such as the Los Angeles Examiner and the Los Angeles Daily News, it's reported as "riotous disturbances" by "zoot suit hoodlums" provoking "revenge-bent servicemen."

And two years later, in a report from--not making this up-- the "Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California" we learn that "zoot suits," "Negro and Mexican youth" and "Communism" are to blame for the actions of a pack of white males who rushed into a movie theater, beat up 13- and 14-year-old Mexican-American boys, stripped them near naked and burned their zoot suits. An excerpt from the 1945 report:

The Pachuco, or so-called "zoot-suit," fad among Negro and Mexican youth in Los Angeles' east side was a golden opportunity for Communist racial agitation. The riots that occurred in June of 1943, together with the activities of certain Communist front organizations and the vociferous charges of the Communist press, forcefully brought the situation to the attention of the Committee. ...

Gangs of Mexican and Negro boys, garbed in the fantastic costumes now generally known as 'zoot-suits,' had been roaming the streets of the east side of the City of Los Angeles since early in 1941. Many of these boys were armed with clubs, knives, brass knuckles and links of chains. Every properly attired ' zoot-suiter' wore heavy-soled oxfords. In extreme cases the soles of these 'zoot-suit ' oxfords were in excess of an inch thick and when properly used in a gang fight became formidable weapons. United States sailors and soldiers were assaulted on the streets and in cocktail bars by groups of ''zoot-suiters" and violent disturbances were reported from time to time. Early in June of 1943, the long-smouldering antagonism flared into violence.

We can't skip over September 11, 2001, of course. The years of mob violence that ensued are ongoing. Under George W. Bush's successor, Barack Obama, we have "targeted drone strikes" in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, that routinely kill brown people--including children--that we don't see. In this country, we've had racially motivated attacks on Sikhs and other brown folks.

And now, in April 2013, with all of our "democratized" media and "crowd sourcing" we quickly began forming mobs in search of "dark-skinned" suspects, Arab-American joggers, missing Ivy League students with foreign names, Muslims--those who would threaten whiteness. The whole effort was initially thrown into confusion by the fact the actual suspects were literally Caucasian.

But then as Sarah Kendzior pointed in an Al Jazeera essay, the Tsarnaev brothers were soon found to be "the wrong kind of Caucasian." To wit, we witnessed absurdities such as the attempt by TMZ.com to link the terror-producing, deadly behavior of 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who grew up in Boston, to the suddenly novel concept of hip-hop consumption.

The older brother who was killed and suspected in the Boston bombings was deep into hip hop, and it appears he belonged to a fan website that touted that genre of music. ...

The site provides information about hip-hop artists and upcoming DVD releases.

What's interesting ... hip hop lyrics are notoriously violent and often degrading to women. Tamerlan Tsarnaev has a boxing profile in which he says he doesn't take his shirt off much because he doesn't want women to get bad ideas, adding, "I'm very religious." This statement is significantly more conservative than the hip hop genre.

And today and indefinitely, we're going to hear details of how 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his Caucasian brother were "radicalized" by Islam. In an Associated Press report, we learn of the ominous figure "Misha," a bald, bearded man whom reportedly befreinded the older Tsarnaev and turned him to the dark side of Islam. AP reports that days of searching, it was unable to actually find a trace of this mysterious man. Nobody's white in this equation.

In fact, the label "terrorism" demands they cannot be white, according to Princeton professor Imani Perry, Ph.D., J.D., author of "More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States."

"Efforts to try to fit [the Boston Marathon bombing] into the standard racialized narrative didn't work. That became clear once the names and photos of the Chechen brothers were released and the speculation about whether they were Muslims or terrorists and Caucasian started," Perry said in a Wednesday interview. "I think it's a reflection of how [media] language of 'terror' registers as the vulnerability of whiteness, because 'American' is read as 'white.'' To capture the label of 'terrorism' it has to be whiteness threatened by 'The Other'."

*Post has been updated for clarity since publication.

Members of UC Irvine's Asian-American fraternity Lambda Theta Delta put their racial ignorance on display last week when they released a video of a student wearing blackface. The college community, which caught wind of the video this week when a YouTube user reuploaded the deleted video, is predictably outraged.

The video includes four Asian-American men dancing to Justin Timberlake's "Suit and Tie" to promote the spring induction of the fraternity's new recruits. One man in blackface plays the part of Jay-Z. It is the very definition of bad taste. I watched as much of it as I could stomach and cringed during the worst of it.

With their racist antics LTD is carrying on the long and horrid tradition of campus racism, which is its own genre of racial antagonism. C. Richard King and David Leonard broke down the history of college goers partying in blackface in the pages of Colorlines--in 2007. King and Leonard describe the "ghetto fabulous" parties of yore as a reactionary aggression toward demands for "political correctness"--but what's going on seems to be just as much the result of endemic racial ignorance.

Such incidents are especially egregious at a campus like UC Irvine, where Asian Americans are 49 percent (PDF) of the undergraduate student population and black students are just 2 percent. Within the University of California network UC Irvine's has for years been the campus with the highest percentage of Asian-American students.

To their credit, the fraternity issued an actual apology, as opposed to the disingenuous non-apology-apologies that so often follow such offenses. Lambda Theta Delta wrote on their Facebook page:

The collective house is aware of the great ignorance of the video as it perpetuates a gravely offensive stereotype against African- Americans. Rest assured that the individuals have already been punished for their actions and it is an issue we have already addressed within the house. We apologize for its creation as well as any mental anguish the production has caused to the community. We did not realize it was still in circulation as the house intended its complete deletion for its extremely insensitive content.

The collective house is aware of the great ignorance of the video as it perpetuates a gravely offensive stereotype against African- Americans. Rest assured that the individuals have already been punished for their actions and it is an issue we have already addressed within the house. We apologize for its creation as well as any mental anguish the production has caused to the community. We did not realize it was still in circulation as the house intended its complete deletion for its extremely insensitive content.

Earnest apologies aside, this isn't the first time that the fraternity's pulled this kind of racist stunt, the OC Weekly reports. The fraternity's Fall 2012 recruitment video includes shots from a costume party where a partygoer is wearing blackface and another is wearing a sombrero and poncho.

The Sierra Club officially endorsed immigration reform today. The environmental organization's president Allison Chin published a statement saying "we cannot solve either the climate crisis or our broken immigration system by acting out of fear or by supporting exclusion."

The Sierra Club Board of Directors announced they unanimously adopted supporting immigration reform:

Currently at least 11 million people live in in the U.S. in the shadows of our society. Many of them work in jobs that expose them to dangerous conditions, chemicals and pesticides, and many more of them live in areas with disproportionate levels of toxic air, water, and soil pollution. To protect clean air and water and prevent the disruption of our climate, we must ensure that those who are most disenfranchised and most threatened by pollution within our borders have the voice to fight polluters and advocate for climate solutions without fear.

The Sierra Club takes a position to support an equitable path to citizenship for residents of the United States who lack official documentation. America's undocumented population should be able to earn legalization and a timely pathway to citizenship, with all the rights to fully participate in our democracy, including influencing environmental and climate policies. The pathway to citizenship should be free of unreasonable barriers, and should facilitate keeping families together and reuniting those that are split whenever possible.

"By establishing an equitable path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in America today, we can empower those in our society who are most vulnerable to toxic pollution to fully participate in our democracy, fight back against polluters and demand public health protections and clean energy solutions," Allison Chin, Sierra Club president said in a statement.

Polls conducted by the Sierra Club found that Latinos support environmental and conservation efforts with even greater intensity than the average American: 90 percent of Latino voters favor clean energy over fossil fuels. In a blog post published on the organization's website, Chin pointed also pointed out one "California study found that 74 percent of Asian-Americans, the fastest growing group in America, accept climate science. Yet, significant numbers of these stakeholders and change agents have been denied their civil rights in the public arena."

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, witnesses described the chaos at the finish line, where thousands of bystanders fled away from the blasts as first responders did the opposite--running toward the smoke and destruction with brave determination. Several people compared the police and medics to salmon swimming upstream, against the tide of the crowds. This is what public service and leadership looks like--and it is a lesson the news media would be wise to learn.

It's trendy to praise the democratization of media via the Internet as harnessing "the wisdom of crowds." But this time, the crowds were dumb. Clouded by biases, CSI-wannabes deluged the Internet with pictures from the marathon marked up with theories about suspects. Those theories were too often based on pernicious assumptions about race and ethnicity. In one of the most widely circulated collection of images, a young man was singled out as a suspect because he was wearing a backpack, alone and brown. On the image, posted on 4chan, "alone" and "brown" were written in all caps. Subsequently, the website Reddit wrongly fingered a missing South Asian student from Brown University as the suspect--for which they, rightfully, later apologized.

We Americans all swim in centuries of racial bias only made more acute by 9/11 and its aftermath. Unchecked, such bias can take over. This is why we have public servants in the professional news media, to resist the rushing crowds of assumptions, to swim upstream by responding to biases and fear with context and insight. But in the wake of the Boston bombings, far too often, news media got caught downstream.

Like Reddit, the New York Post jumped on the amateur sleuth bandwagon and put a picture of a 17-year-old Arab American student on its cover, naming him as a suspect. Unlike Reddit, the New York Post did not apologize--but simply posted a story that the kid and his friend were "cleared" by authorities. Yet while the New York Post was by far the worst offender in piling onto and perpetuating bias-tinged information, they were by no means alone within the professional news community. Many in the media contributed reason and restraint, but too many did not.

Resisting the tide of conventional wisdom has always been challenging. That challenge is even greater in the era of social media, where the sheer volume and speed of information coursing past us can become a deluge, constantly threatening to drown traditional media in obsolescence. Reportedly, the first tweet about something potentially amiss at the marathon was sent at 2:50 p.m. on Monday. According to TVNewser, cable news stations didn't report the explosions until 3:06 p.m. (first Fox, followed by CNN in the same minute, then MSNBC two minutes later). In a reflection of the hurry-up-and-join-the-crowd ethos of the moment, TVNewer noted, "All three cable news networks were several minutes behind the first reports of the explosions on Twitter."

But is that a bad thing? Twitter is a mush of unverified information. Don't we want journalists calling sources and getting multiple confirmations before reporting news and setting the aftermath into motion? And certainly confirming things as important as the identification of suspects and their race and ethnicity? In times of crisis, the rush of social media can push us faster and further downstream; more than ever, we need a reliable countervailing force willing to buck the tide.

As Simon Rickets wrote in the Guardian last week:

One of the theories you learn when you train to be a journalist is the "funnel" of news. Imagine a funnel. It's getting all the information about a certain news story poured into it--from the top. Wild rumours and hard facts. Witness accounts alongside back-of-a-cigarette packet theories. The funnel is the journalist. And the funnel's job is to take all the information, from the crazy and the correct, and pour it, with a measure of control, into the story. Take out the impurities, crush up the lumps, and make the resulting article a distillation of the thousands of snippets, with no errors.

And that includes trying, as best as possible, to filter out the fears and biases from which we as human beings are rarely immune.

After the actual suspects were identified, media figures--including myself--quickly referred to the brothers as Chechens. But then it was pointed out to me (on Twitter, incidentally) that no one was calling them Americans, which they of course were. If the situation had been reversed--if these two brothers had been victims of the bombings instead of alleged perpetrators--we would all be emphasizing their American-ness, wrapping the fallen in our flag. As a people, we Americans are notoriously fickle in our inclinations to grant and revoke our sense of national identity. As a media, we should responsibly resist such subjective portrayals. In moments like these, people make assumptions. It becomes all the more important for media to challenge those assumptions and keep our prejudices in check.

The job of a public servant is to run away from conventional wisdom and toward the tangled mess of reality from which facts and insights--and humanity--can be rescued. Our public servants with badges and uniforms performed heroically in the face of mass chaos, saving the lives of hundreds and helping calm the fears of an unsettled city and nation. But too many of our public servants with pens and cameras let us down by repeating or even feeding our worst fears and biases.

Sadly, there will probably be a "next time." When it comes, I hope that more of us in the news media will swim upstream.

Sally Kohn is a regular contributor to Colorlines. She is an activist, writer and political analyst on Fox News. You can find her online at SallyKohn.com.