Uppity-Negro.com

Wandering around the remains of the Warren Ellis Forum, which I'd stopped reading regularly before the end. Because I suck.

Reminded of the thing by this quote:

Dogs are vermin. They must all die.

Which I think is as true today as it was when it were originally said, but, y'know, that's just my opinion.

Any questions?

Why does it seem that black people, particularly women, are afraid of dogs - even friendly ones?

That link also has answers:

My grandma alway kept all the pets outside. We had dogs, but they were for guarding the house, not to be play with. I know a lot of people have them as pets, but I still think of dogs as wild things that will tear your face off.

Being afraid of dogs is not a fear that I have, but it is a very common phobia. I don't speak for all blacks or women, but if you have ever examined footage from the Civil Rights Movement, you will see how dogs were used against black people, which justifies fears many may have concerning dogs. Although the Civil Rights Movement was 40 years ago, many people who experienced being savagely attacked and malled by dogs may have passed those fears on to their offspring.

Which may or may not apply for any given person, in any given situation.

Anyway.

Am half-listening to a discussion of the Chicago Defender on WBEZ's Eight Forty-Eight. From the second-to-last link there:

The Chicago Defender, which was founded by Robert S. Abbott on May 5, 1905, once heralded itself as "The World's Greatest Weekly." The newspaper was the nation's most influential black weekly newspaper by the advent of World War I, with more than two thirds of its readership base located outside of Chicago.

The topic of discussion is the recent sale, detailed in Crain's Chicago Business among other places:

Nearly six years after the Chicago-based newspaper chain went on the block, a group of investors has purchased Sengstacke Enterprises Inc., whose holdings include the Chicago Defender and three other papers serving African-American communities.

[. . .] In addition to the Defender—the only black-owned daily newspaper in the U.S.—Real Times' holdings include the Michigan Chronicle, New Pittsburgh Courier and Memphis Tri-State Defender. The deal also includes a merger with The Michigan FrontPage, which was not part of Sengstacke Enterprises.

“The black community needs a voice,” William Pickard, a Detroit-based investor and board member, said in a statement. “We intend to ensure our independent papers will have the necessary technologies, financial acumen and community commitment that will maintain their status as pillars in the black community.”

I'm blanking on the last time I read the Defender (which I guess I could italicize, for consistency's sake). Affection for it might be another holdover from the old days, like the dogs thing, but this would require more introspection than I'm up to at the moment.

Coffee. I think I shall make more coffee.