Disqus - Latest Comments for blacksmythe

Re: A Portrait of a Little Brick-and-Mortar Camera Repair Shop

blacksmythe — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 17:59:00 -0000

Lev tool care of me twice that I can recall. He fixed my 20d then I think he fixed one of my lenses. So glad to see him and implicitly his wife shouted out here.

Re:

blacksmythe — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 18:38:41 -0000

I get it. But in effect they made a blind regime change in bringing in Patricia. Not blind as in "we don't know what we are getting" but blind as in "we don't know how drastic changing from a players coach to a disciplinarian will be". We now know. And it'll likely get worse.

Re: A Welcoming Church No More

blacksmythe — Sun, 06 May 2018 00:01:07 -0000

There's something to this....but. Many of the white evangelicals he writes of are poor themselves. They aren't going to church to celebrate their successes because they don't have any to speak of. They may very well be on a cruise ship with a mad captain at the helm, but they definitely aren't traveling first class. What to make of them?

Re: subrealism: Flint's 2nd/3rd line inheritor water department didn't know how to handle high pH water, period....,

blacksmythe — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 14:48:20 -0000

Nope. See my comment to Don above. Most of the state of Michigan has serious governing problems. But if this was solely or primarily a matter of your second line inheritors, Detroit would've poisoned its (and much of the state's) population decades ago. What happened with Covington doesn't have much to do with what's empirically accurate. Points #1-3 are wrong...and somehow #4 (which logically flows from the other three) is the one worth focusing on.

Re: subrealism: Flint's 2nd/3rd line inheritor water department didn't know how to handle high pH water, period....,

blacksmythe — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 14:39:31 -0000

Nope. This doesn't explain it. Detroit's been pumping water to most of the state for years....and unless something's changed, they've been predominantly black for a minute. Find another explanation.

Re: subrealism: Flint's 2nd/3rd line inheritor water department didn't know how to handle high pH water, period....,

blacksmythe — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 13:40:33 -0000

Been more than a minute. hope things are well, considering.

Just wanted to chime in briefly. i don't know who the person is you cribbed this from, but i think it's empirically wrong in two ways. that vote the city council had? it was symbolic. the city was already being managed by the flint EFM. the city council had no authority to put its will into law. Now here's ME speculating but I'm pretty sure that the Flint EFM had made the suggestion and the council went along.

Secondly, I've seen an email from the Detroit Water folk that proposed a new deal that would've been significantly cheaper than the deal they previously had with Flint AND cheaper than the deal they were going to get from their new provider. These emails were just released after Snyder's state of the state address.

Third...and this is "importantly tangential"...the person you're citing seems to put more weight on your second line inheritors. You know where the Flint EFM went after Flint? He became the EFM of the Detroit Public School system.

Yes. THAT Detroit Public School system.

Re: How Neoliberalism Infiltrated Black Politics

blacksmythe — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 15:05:10 -0000

Thanks so much. I got it a few years ago!

Re: Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics (FAQ) (Updated)

blacksmythe — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 08:08:53 -0000

I just added a link (and the cover). You should be able to order it through the usual online suspects as well as through Punctum's website during the Fall.

Re: At Johns Hopkins, a spirited pickup basketball tradition enters its fourth decade

blacksmythe — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 17:15:04 -0000

I haven't looked at the link, but we are still playing. The gym just re-opened for the summer and we played yesterday. If the gym is open tomorrow (small possibility it's closed) we'll be there. My birthday is tomorrow so I'm hoping the gods favor me and I go 3-0.

Re: At Johns Hopkins, a spirited pickup basketball tradition enters its fourth decade

blacksmythe — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 17:15:01 -0000

We just started back again. Come if you can.

Re: Karma Go will arrive a few weeks late

blacksmythe — Sun, 03 May 2015 17:03:06 -0000

I don't have a cellphone. I don't really want to go back to having a cellphone. Even given the delays, this device is currently the best option for those who don't want to have to spend money every month on a cellphone bill. As such it's worth the wait. Here's my link: https://yourkarma.com/invit...

Re: Thoughts on Dyson, West, and the Black Public Intellectual

blacksmythe — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 17:04:21 -0000

On this we disagree. I think when it comes to political identities we should take more into account than individual ascriptions. And I'm also thinking about those six figure checks he likely still gets.

Lester Spence :: Associate Professor, Political Science, Johns Hopkins University :: http://lesterspence.com :: protocol.by/lks

Re: Thoughts on Dyson, West, and the Black Public Intellectual

blacksmythe — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 16:48:52 -0000

First thanks for the link (and for reading!).

Second you're right. Along with West's support of the Steven Salaita case I do think it's important to note that West sacrificed a great deal in his decision to take the stances he has. But I'd neither call him a black socialist, nor would I defend him in this particular case.

Re: Thoughts on Dyson, West, and the Black Public Intellectual

blacksmythe — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 16:46:45 -0000

Both your question and your suggestion make sense. Thanks for them.

No individual has the power to kill an idea. I was being purposely provocative. I do think though that our ideas about politics are partially shaped by intellectuals.

As for the link suggestion, I provided the link to Reed's piece (and would've provided the link to the other one if it were available) as a public service. I didn't do it for the Dyson piece because I'd prefer people find it on their own. Not to make them do more work but rather because I don't really want to contribute to the click economy.

Re: Genes Don't Cause Racial Health Disparities, Society Does

blacksmythe — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 10:21:21 -0000

Jason, folks kind of know this already. Do a keyword search in JSTOR on "health disparities" and you'll come up with dozens of articles that examine the social determinants of public health. The problem isn't that scientists are looking at A when they should be looking at B, it's that policy makers are ignoring the large and growing body of research that focuses on B.

Re: At Johns Hopkins, a spirited pickup basketball tradition enters its fourth decade

blacksmythe — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 22:11:30 -0000

age is more than a number.

Re: At Johns Hopkins, a spirited pickup basketball tradition enters its fourth decade

blacksmythe — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:44:07 -0000

We play every wednesday and friday from 11:30 or so to about 1pm. Come. Bring your friends.

Re: What is the Conservative Remedy for Abuses in Ferguson?

blacksmythe — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 14:18:02 -0000

This article isn't about the left.

Re: What is the Conservative Remedy for Abuses in Ferguson?

blacksmythe — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 14:10:03 -0000

Why shouldn't "black crime" be ignored here? The report suggests that the biggest and most violent criminals in Ferguson is the local government. Not individual black criminals, not black drug gangs. The government. And while the drug war may indeed be as problematic as you argue, the war on drugs doesn't appear to have anything to do with the behavior of the Ferguson police department. The militarization may have shaped Ferguson's response to protest, but militarization doesn't have anything to do with the way Ferguson police officers behaved.

Re: What is the Conservative Remedy for Abuses in Ferguson?

blacksmythe — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 08:06:45 -0000

I am going to teach my American Racial Politics course in a few hours. I read this piece hoping that it'd do what I don't have the time to do--examine what the Ferguson report tells us about modern American politics, parties, and ideologies.

It doesn't.

Connor, I urge you to re-think your ideas about what racism looks like, about how racism functions. While this piece does a masterful job of collecting links, it's incredibly weak in its analysis. Racism is a constitutive element of American conservatism. THIS is why it's difficult to find American conservatives willing to see Ferguson for what it is. THIS is why Goldwater and Buckley were so wrongheaded about the Jim Crow South.

Re: American Racial Politics Week Five

blacksmythe — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 12:34:00 -0000

FROM NAOMI LEEDS:

This week’s readings address the contrasting shades of representation through democracy and their significances. The two types of representatives addressed by Cameron, Epstein and O’Halloran are substantive and descriptive. The first describing a representative who supports and argues from the perspective of minority views while the latter means the representative is of a minority race. This in and of itself demonstrates the false theory that progress in the representation of minority political values can be measured in the number of minority representatives there are in office. The article went on to explain an interesting trade-off between electing minority representatives and electing representative with minority views. This trade-off explained that the more racially diverse congress looks, the less they must act. Therefore, it is important to have some degree of diversity in congress but we must be careful in order to keep a good amount of white people with democratic, liberal and colorblind ideas in office in order to ensure that there is continuous progressive action in office that will get us closer and closer to an American Politics uninfluenced by race. In order to do so, the smartest approach is to ensure that the black population is well dispersed throughout the country so that there is some degree of minority representation distributed everywhere, instead of big concentrated populations of minorities. This research was carried out and the conclusion stated that, “the marginal gain in the representation effect from placing more minority voters in any given district is less than the marginal loss from the electoral effect elsewhere.” (807)

Re: Spider-Man In Love

blacksmythe — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 10:42:40 -0000

The thing is though, the genre isn't really aimed at "young males" anymore. You ever been to the comic shop near hopkins in Baltimore? Or the one downtown? For the last couple of decades perhaps, comics have been produced, distributed, and consumed by middle aged men.

Which made the decision to un-marry Peter Parker both more understandable (in a Moonlighting kind of way), and more problematic.

Re: Adolph Reed on culture, politics, and #Blacklivesmatter: A commentary

blacksmythe — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 06:16:06 -0000

Sorry it took me a bit to respond to this. White poor voters, just like most voters, are held hostage by the two party system. But at the same time, every piece of data I'm aware of, from voting behavior at the local, state, and national level, to survey data, shows that white poor voters tend to support conservative ideas and policies, even those that go against their material interest. As it relates to the police it's complicated. They tend to support the right to bear arms as a way to protect themselves from government....but this rarely translates into support for victims like Michael Brown.

Re: Adolph Reed on culture, politics, and #Blacklivesmatter: A commentary

blacksmythe — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 16:49:16 -0000

This is misleading. They vote democratic (although this is changing) but the Democrats they tend to vote for are incredibly conservative on issues of social justice. They tend to be anti-union, anti-minimum (much less working) wage, pro-guns, anti-government (but NOT anti-police). Along these lines to the extent they are organizing in rural areas they are organizing mostly (note MOSTLY) around the types of policies that go against their class interests. THEY too are "identitarians"...however while blacks and Latinos tend to (note TEND to) organize around race issues that simultaneously fit their class interests, whites tend to organize around race issues that go against their class interests.

Re: Adolph Reed on culture, politics, and #Blacklivesmatter: A commentary

blacksmythe — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 15:27:48 -0000

This is an important question. Where are the white poor organizing? What are they organizing for? What ideological predispositions do they have?