Plus: Great Lakes Segregation & Race Theorist Abe Lincoln
“Evanston Public Library officials on Monday re-issued a speaking invitation to a Palestinian-American writer after their earlier decision to call off his talk sparked an angry response on social media,” the Tribune reports.
“The Chicago writer, Ali Abunimah, said in a post on his website that he will accept the library’s change of heart over his Aug. 11 appearance for a reading and discussion of his book, The Battle for Justice in Palestine.”
Interest in Abunimah’s reading has surely multiplied thanks to EPL’s goof, but he deserves a higher local profile, given the influence of his website The Electronic Intifada.
Great Lakes Segregation
“During World War II, the United States was fighting for freedom while denying its black citizens their rights and freedom,” Patricia Hruby Powell writes for the Champaign News-Gazette.
“In The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights (Roaring Brook 2014), Steve Sheinkin paints a picture of the segregated armed forces. Rather than being assigned to battle, blacks worked in the mess hall. Or worse.
“At Great Lakes Naval Training Center, there was one line in the mess hall for whites who ate upstairs, and another line for blacks who ate downstairs. The sports teams, music bands, blood banks and blood suppliers were all segregated.”
Abe Lincoln, Race Theorist
“Experts confirmed Tuesday what had long been whispered at a public library in the small town of Clinton, Illinois – a name written on a page in the book Types of Mankind was penned by none other than Abraham Lincoln,” Time reports.
“The 700-page tome offers up the theory that different races on earth were created at different times and thus could not be equal and it was part of the natural order that Caucasians would enslave Africans and Native Americans. The book, published in 1854, was popular among racists and slave owners for lending support to their way of life.
“Historians at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library stressed that Lincoln did not subscribe to the beliefs put forth in the book, but that racial division was a hot button issue at the time of his presidency and he was likely educating himself on opposing arguments.”
Um, okay.
“Everything we know about Lincoln’s legal, religious and scientific thinking tells us he rejected that argument,” museum curator James Cornelius said.
Really?
Here’s Lincoln in 1858 in Charleston:
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
No Shit, Sherlock
“A federal court has ordered the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle to pay $30,679.93 in legal fees to the plaintiff in a successful copyright challenge, calling its practice of demanding licensing fees for use of the character Sherlock Holmes ‘a form of extortion’ with ‘no legal basis,'” the New York Times reports.
The ruling was made here in Chicago, and appeals court judge Richard Posner went off, as he is wont to do.
K-Cool
“In her new book, The Birth of Korean Cool (Picador), journalist Euny Hong takes on the challenge of decoding the success of South Korea, peeling back the layers of the culture’s stronghold in music, film, style, technology, video games, and more,” Refinery 29 reports.
“Through Hong’s interviews with the nation’s biggest influencers, and through her own humorous anecdotes (Hong moved to the Gangnam neighborhood from Chicago when she was 12), this fascinating read is an essential for anyone obsessed with South Korea’s fast-track to pop-culture dominance.”
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Comments welcome.
Posted on August 6, 2014