Kenyan Authorities to Arrest Lion Killers

Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) spokesman Paul Mbugua speaks to journalists in Nairobi, Kenya, Friday, June 22, 2012. Maasai warriors who speared to death six lions in the outskirts of Nairobi will be arrested because they did it to satisfy a cultural tradition that ranks killing a lion with a spear as one of the highest honors a man can achieve, Mbugua said Friday.

Photo: Khalil Senosi / AP

BY TOM ODULA Associated Press News Fuze
Updated Friday June 22, 2012

NAIROBI, Kenya—Maasai warriors who speared to death six lions in the outskirts of Nairobi will be arrested for killing wildlife, which is a crime in Kenya, an official said Friday.

The warriors killed the lions to satisfy a cultural tradition that ranks killing a lion with a spear as one of the highest honors a man can achieve, said Paul Mbugua, a spokesman with Kenya's wildlife authority, the Kenya Wildlife Service. After the warriors killed the lions they cut off the end of their tails to keep as trophies of their achievement, said Mbugua.

The Maasai of Ilkeek-Lemedung'I village—a collection of mud, stone and iron-sheeting homes 40 kilometers (25 miles) outside Nairobi near edges of Nairobi National Park —said Wednesday they grew tired of waiting for veterinarians to arrive while the lions devoured their goats, a precious commodity in their community.

Mbugua said the warriors did not heed calls by rangers to wait for vets to tranquilize the lions. Two adult lionesses, two younger lions and two cubs were then killed.

"We are reviewing footage and pictures from the killing to identify who did it. Even the perpetrators of the heinous act know that they have done wrong and have taken to their heels," Mbugua said.

According to U.S.-based Maasai Association, a group trying to preserve Maasai culture, lion hunting is a sign of bravery and personal achievement but hunting a female lion is prohibited unless she has posed a threat to humans or livestock. The association's website says that when the lion population was high, the community encouraged solo lion hunting.

Early Friday, one male lion killed a donkey a few miles (kilometers) from where the goats were killed, said Michael Mbithi of the conservation group Friends of Nairobi National Park. Kenya Wildlife Service rangers prevented members of the community from killing the lion in retaliation.

As Nairobi continues to grow, small towns on its outskirts are cropping up and expanding, in part fuelled by the demand for low-cost housing from the city's working class.

As Nairobi enjoys a boom in apartment and road construction, an expanding population center is putting heavy pressure on the animals, especially big cats. Nairobi National Park is the only wildlife park in the world that lies in a country's capital.

Killing lions is a crime in Kenya, but those who lose livestock to big cats frequently retaliate. About 100 lions are killed each year, and the country's lion population has dropped to about 2,000. Lions, especially ones who leave Nairobi National Park, which is not completely fenced in, are at risk. After Wednesday's killings, the park had 37 left, Kenya Wildlife Service estimates.

Black Folks - Ya'll ain't even thought about in this~ WHITE WORKING CHAOS

Where do you see yourself in the America that is taking shape out of the current resources and collective consciousness that will make the future?

You might have gotten jubilant, shoutin' and singing Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" when Obama got elected. So how are you feeling now? The past couple of years have been a good example of how silly it is to make judgements based only on appearances. The need to sharpen one's ability to see more clearly beneathe the surface of social and political games has never been more critical.

Clarity and strength was the message I received from a hexagram of a recent IChing reading. I know how to interpret that message for my life. How about how it might apply to your Dear Life?

Be sure you are able to identify old negative paradigms arising again. Whether they are your own negative thoughts and habits, or something you experience in your external environment, inwardly say, "No" to these. Now is the time to pay attention to your inner guidance, in order that from a position of solid conviction and confidence, you can take the right actions so that YOUR Life thrives, as it has always been meant to do. Here's some information to integrate in your understanding.

I'm also attaching links to two other stories that I feel tie in with this issue. And that is the issue of how America is changing, and basically, what this will mean for white people unable to shed their notions of white supremacy operating at some levels in their lives.

never forget to say I
lovu,
Kentke



The Untold Future of American Politics
By ZOLTAN HAJNAL and TAEKU LEE
June 4, 2012, 10:05 pm — Updated: 9:04 am -->68 Comments
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/the-untold-future-of-american-politics/?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20120605

Hello, Heterogeneity
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
June 4, 2012, 12:05 am — Updated: 1:12 pm -->182 Comments
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/hello-heterogeneity/

White Working Chaos

June 25, 2012, 12:13 am

Sorry that the graphs did not copy over to my blog, so Click here for the article where you can see the four graphs that illustrate the statistics presented here. But more important, skim through the Comments of NY Times readers at the article's end. They are most interesting:


http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/white-working-chaos/


By THOMAS B. EDSALL
122 Comments

Political analysts, journalists and academics are fighting over white working-class voters – over how to define them and what their political significance is. Part of the reason for the furious tone of the argument is that this is an issue of central importance in American politics. And it’s not just crucial for the presidential election: understanding what the white working class is and where it is going is fundamental if we want to understand where the country is going.

One side of the argument contends that the Democratic coalition retains much of its low-to-middle-income white working-class core. The other side argues that this alliance has been fractured by the defection of working-class whites and that the traditional Democratic coalition is permanently gone.

Part of the problem is that different people mean different things when they are talking about the working class. Is this cohort made up of those without college degrees; those in the bottom third of the income distribution; or those in occupations described by the federal government as “blue-collar”? (The government’s list of blue-collar jobs includes “heavy mobile equipment mechanic,” “pipefitter,” “welder” and “food service” workers.)

Whites without college degrees have been steadily shrinking as a percentage of the electorate, but they remain a very substantial block: in 2008, they made up 39 percent of all voters
The current outbreak of hostilities within an all-star team of academics over the political allegiance of the white working class and even the definition of the white working class began with the publication on June 5 of an essay in the left-leaning British newspaper, The Guardian, “Why Working-class People Vote Conservative,” by Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Righteous Mind” and a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Unfortunately, as Haidt quickly acknowledged, he made the “careless mistake” of failing to specify that he “was talking only about the WHITE working-class.”

Before Haidt posted his correction, Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, posted a critique of Haidt on June 8 on Monkey Cage, a forum for politically-inclined academics. Gelman’s piece was titled, “Lamentably ignorant psychology researcher spews political platitudes without realizing that he’s trying to explain a phenomenon that does not exist.” Gelman included a link to his own blog with the intriguing headline, “Stop me before I aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.”

Gelman pointed out that:
Ronald Reagan did about 20 percentage points better among voters in the upper third of income, compared to voters in the lower third. The relation between income and voting since 1980 is about the same as it was in the 1940s.

Gelman defines “working-class” as those in the bottom third of the income distribution. He is also including all races and ethnicities and not focusing on whites. This will prove important in the debate.

On June 17 Haidt amended his argument to refer specifically to white working-class voters. He broke white voters into four categories: those without college degrees who were working; those without degrees who were not working; those with college degrees and a job; and those with degrees but without a job.

Tracking Democratic and Republican self-identification among these four groups of whites, using findings from the American National Election Studies surveys conducted over four decades beginning in the 1970s, Haidt concentrated his attention specifically on employed whites without college degrees.

As a way of defining the white working-class, this category — whites without college who are working — has the advantage of eliminating students, the retired, those unable to work because of disability and those on welfare. The disadvantages of this definition include the failure to count unemployed blue-collar workers, who are certainly working-class, and the inclusion of highly successful businessmen who do not have college degrees. Bill Gates, for example, would be included in this category.

Nonetheless, Haidt’s results are striking. Democratic self-identification among employed whites without degrees (the red line) nosedives from roughly 37 percent to 25 percent over four decades.

Republican self-identification over the same period, among these same voters, grows from roughly 21 percent in the 1970s to 30 percent in the 2000s:
Courtesy of Jonathan Haidt
After Haidt posted his amended analysis, Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Vanderbilt, weighed in on the debate, posting an essay on Monkey Cage on June 17 called “The Party of the American Working Man and Woman.”

“How did a nice psychologist like Haidt wander into this minefield?” Bartels asked:
Ah, the white working-class, yet again. I wish some psychologist would study why this particular topic generates so much interest and emotion. Perhaps it has something to do with the resonance of the term ‘working-class’ — and with the flexibility of that term in successive iterations of the debate.

Bartels went on to raise a key question: is the white working-class defection limited to the South, and primarily an issue of race, or is the defection national in scope, involving the broader social, cultural, and moral revolutions of the past 50 years.

Bartels produced the following graphic to argue that the defection is entirely southern:

"While southern working whites without college degrees have become more Republican in their presidential voting behavior (by 4.5% per decade), non-southern working whites without college degrees have become more Democratic (by 1.6% per decade),” Bartels wrote.
Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist from Emory University who has written extensively about the changing composition of the two parties, countered Bartels in an e-mail to participants in the debate:

My view is that the single best indicator of ‘working-class’ status is occupation—white-collar vs. blue-collar. This excludes non-working respondents. And when you look at northern whites over time there is a very clear pattern — there has been a sharp decline in Democratic identification among blue-collar whites while Democratic identification among white-collar whites has remained stable.

A similar trend is evident when it comes to House voting. When it comes to presidential voting, there is a lot of year to year variation, but blue-collar whites used to be much more Democratic than white-collar whites. Recently, however, they have voted almost identically.

Abramowitz produced the following two charts to show that the sharp movement away from the Democratic Party by white working-class voters occurred in the North as well as the South.
First, by party identification:
Party Identification by DecadeNorthern Whites Blue-collar (green line) White-collar (blue line)
Courtesy of Alan Abramowitz
Second, in actual voting:
House VoteNorthern Whites
Courtesy of Alan Abramowitz

Enter Sam Best, of the University of Connecticut, and Brian Krueger, of the University of Rhode Island, political scientists who work with election day exit polls conducted by television networks and cable news stations. Best and Krueger provided exit poll evidence to The Times supporting the argument made by Abramowitz that white working class support for the Democratic Party declined across the board, but that it declined at a much sharper rate in the South than in the North. They show that in two election years, 1984, with Reagan at the top of the ticket, and in 1994, when Newt Gingrich loyalists gave the Republican party control of the House for the first time in 40 years, that Democratic House candidates took a beating in both the North and South.

In the South, Democratic House candidates in 1984 lost the white non-college vote by 39.7 – 60.3, and by 35.6 – 64.4 in 1994. In the North, Midwest and West, the white non-college vote for Democratic House candidates was just 44 – 56 in 1984, and fell to 40.8 – 59.2 in 1994. Since 1994, according to the Best- Krueger data, Democrats have not been able to break 50 percent with either group, losing northern non-college whites by an average of 46.9 – 53.1 and southern non-college whites by 34.4 – 65.6.

Although this is an intra-academic dispute, the stakes are high. Differing stands determine competing interpretations of the past 40 years of American politics, conflicting analyses of the 2012 election, and alternative projections of the near-term future of American politics.
White working class voting trends are obviously of vital interest to key players in this November’s election. Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, noted that last year Obama’s already weak support among non-college whites was dropping. “Working-class white voters were a Republican opportunity,” Garin said in an interview with The Times.

In 2010 – the year of a decisive Democratic rout — non-college whites, North and South, cast only 33 percent of their ballots for House Democratic candidates, the lowest level in exit poll history.

With that constituency ready and waiting, “Republicans this year picked their worst possible candidate,” Garin argues, contending that Romney’s wealth and background provoke animosity to Republican elites among white working-class voters, partially counterbalancing the hostility of many of these voters to President Obama.

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, published a study last month assuming three different scenarios for turnout and voting margins among whites and minorities in the upcoming November election.

In the first of Frey’s scenarios, 2012 will replicate the turnout and voting patterns of 2008 among both whites and minorities. “If that occurs, Obama wins with 29 states and 358 electoral votes,” Frey writes.

The second Frey scenario provides that both white and black turnout and voting patterns of 2004 are repeated in 2012. Under this Frey scenario, Romney beats Obama with 286 electoral votes in 30 states.

The third Frey scenario calls for white turnout and voting patterns to replicate those of 2004, and for minority turnout and voting patterns to replicate 2008 — “something closer to what this year’s election promises – strong partisan participation by both whites and minorities.” In this case, Frey writes, “results favor an Obama win – but barely.”

According to Frey’s third scenario, “Obama squeaks by with 292 electoral votes spread among 24 states,” but his victory depends on winning by very slim margins in four key states — Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Oregon — which together have 66 electoral college votes, far more than enough to tip the contest to Romney if they go the other way.

Frey’s analysis demonstrates a crucial fact about current presidential politics: that white voters (76 percent) and minorities (24 percent), despite making up vastly different percentages of the electorate, are both key to the outcome. Little shifts in behavior in either group matter.

In an e-mail to The Times, Bartels described the strategic choices facing both campaigns:
If the Democratic Party can do something to win one more non-college white vote, without alienating anyone else, it is exactly one vote closer to winning. If it can do something to win one more college white vote, or Latino vote, or Asian vote, without alienating anyone else, it is exactly one vote closer to winning. If it wins one more non-college white vote and loses one college white vote, or Latino vote, or Asian vote in the process, it is not any closer to winning.

The interesting strategic questions have entirely to do with the marginal shifts in vote probabilities produced in different groups by different sorts of appeals, and their collateral political costs (whether alienation or opportunity costs).

In other words, the white electorate remains central to the strategic choices of both the Romney and Obama campaigns, but so does every other significant slice of the population.



Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book “The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics,” which was published in January.

The First Family: A New Glimpse of Michelle Obama’s White Ancestors

Henry Wells Shields is the man with the white beard. His wife, Christian Patterson Shields, sits to his right. Charles Marion Shields is the third man standing from the right.
Courtesy of Jarrod Shields, in honor of Melvin Shields

New York Times
Friday, June 22, 2012

We knew that the Sunday article (noted below) about Mrs. Obama’s white ancestors would stir considerable interest so we decided to invite readers to pose questions and make comments. We never imagined that one of those readers would provide us with the first glimpse of two key figures in the first lady’s family tree: The white man who owned Mrs. Obama’s great-great-great grandmother, Melvinia Shields, and his son, who most likely fathered Melvinia’s child.

The photograph of those two men and their relatives, which is believed to have been taken in Georgia sometime around 1884, is being published here for the first time.

The slaveowner was Henry Wells Shields, who inherited Melvinia when his father-in-law died in 1852. DNA testing and research indicate that he and his wife, Christian Patterson Shields, are the first lady’s great-great-great-great grandparents.

Their son, Charles Marion Shields, worked as a farmer and a teacher. DNA testing and research point to him as the father of Melvinia’s son, Dolphus Shields. That would make Charles Mrs. Obama’s great-great-great grandfather.

The photo came from Jarrod Shields, a science teacher at a community college in Alabama who also happens to be the great-great-great grandson of Henry Wells Shields. He was getting ready to mow the lawn when his wife, Tonya, got a call about the article and called him to come inside. Jarrod had grown up knowing that his family had once owned slaves and always wondered what happened to their descendants. His wife sent me an e-mail this week, outlining her husband’s connection to the Shields family, along with the photograph.

When I spoke to Jarrod by phone, he told me that he hoped that he might be able to meet his extended black family, he said of the descendants of the slaves his ancestors had owned. “I always really wanted to say I was sorry. I also wanted to let them know that we’re glad that you’re part of our family, however it came about.’’ — Rachel L. Swarns

Sunday’s article is adapted from “American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama” by Rachel L. Swarns, published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Readers wrote the author and asked many questions after the article was published. She was kind enough to answer many of their queries, and they add deeper insight into the issues raised by this history. I present them for you here and you can also click this link should provide direct access to the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/22/us/first-lady-family-q-and-a.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120623#/#1

Mrs. Obama’s Participation
Did Mrs. Obama concede to this research?

"I suspect that there will be many more books to come about Mrs. Obama, given her historic role. ”
Mrs. Obama has a policy of not participating in book projects so unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to interview her. I did interview members of her family – an aunt, an uncle, a great-aunt, a great-uncle, some cousins and some more distant relatives. I also briefed the first lady’s staff periodically on my research and gave Mrs. Obama and her aides copies of the book prior to publication. Americans are fascinated by their first ladies and there have been books written about Laura Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt, just to name a few. I suspect that there will be many more books to come about Mrs. Obama, given her historic role as the first African American first lady.

Family Tree
It would be helpful if a family tree diagram were provided.

Yes, there is a detailed family tree in my book, “American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama.” The family tree in the enhanced ebook is interactive and includes photos and historical documents along with the names of the first lady’s ancestors.

Making the Connection
Who decided to pursue the DNA and connection between this lady in Georgia and Mrs. Obama?

"Many Americans are doing this now, using DNA testing to find out more about their origins. ”
I suspected that the white father of Dolphus Shields, Mrs. Obama’s great-great grandfather, was probably a member of the Georgia family who owned him. So I tracked down as many descendants of that family – the white Shields family -- as I could. In the end, three agreed to be tested. Many Americans are doing this now, using DNA testing to find out more about their origins and their families. It allows people to take their research a step further than your grandfather could."

Other Cousins
I wonder if they're interested in meeting their not so famous black cousins?

Both Sherry George and Joan Tribble, who are the descendants of the man who owned Mrs. Obama’s ancestors, would like to meet Mrs. Obama as well as their black relatives who are not famous.

The Moten Side
Can you tell us more about the Moten side of the family?

"The spelling of their names changed at times in the census. ”
The Motens are on Mrs. Obama’s paternal line. Her great-grandmother was Phoebe Moten, who was born in Villa Ridge, Ill. in 1879. Her great-great-grandparents were Nelson and Mary Moten, who arrived in southern Illinois sometime during the 1860s. The spelling of their names changed at times in the census; sometimes they appeared as Morten; other times as Moulton. But Mrs. Obama’s relatives say that they spelled it Moten.

DNA Testing
If you don't have close male relatives, what can you find out from female DNA alone? How do you go about getting tested?

These days, you can find out a good deal about your family line without having close male relatives. Companies like FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe, among others, do such testing.
Jewish Connection

I’d be interested in reading about Michelle Obama’s Jewish ancestors.

"The surname Cohen suggests a possible link to the white Cohen family, a very prominent Jewish family in Georgetown in the early 1800s. ”
Mrs. Obama’s paternal great-grandmother was Rosella Cohen of Georgetown, S.C., and her origins remain something of a mystery. We can’t say with certitude who Rosella’s parents were, but some historical documents suggest that they were Caeser and Tira Cohen, who were born into slavery in Georgetown. The surname Cohen suggests a possible link to the white Cohen family, a very prominent Jewish family in Georgetown in the early 1800s. Moises Cohen, who emigrated from London to South Carolina around 1750, was the first chief rabbi of Charleston’s Congregation of Beth Elohim, the birthplace of Reform Judaism in the United States. His two sons, Abraham and Solomon, moved to Georgetown and became deeply involved in its civic and political life. Abraham, who fought in the Revolutionary War and served as the town’s postmaster, met with George Washington when the American president visited Georgetown in 1791. Solomon was a director of the Bank of the State of South Carolina and his son, Solomon Jr., was elected to the South Carolina State Senate in 1831. Several Cohens were also slave owners. Most of the Cohens eventually left Georgetown for Charleston, but before they did, it is possible that a member of this prominent Jewish family owned Caeser or his parents.

African Ancestry
Were any DNA tests conducted on the white Shields family to determine whether any of them have African ancestry?

None of the white Shields descendants who were tested had African origins. You’re absolutely right that there’s a long history of “passing” in this country.

European Ancestors
Out of curiosity, what percentage of Mrs. Obama's ancestors are European?

"I do know that all four of her grandparents had multiracial roots. ”
Growing numbers of Americans are coming to terms with these issues as they learn more about their origins through genealogy and DNA testing. It’s not always easy for people to find out that their ancestors were slaveholders. These can be difficult things to confront. But it is our history. As for Mrs. Obama, I don’t know what percentage of her ancestors are European. But I do know that all four of her grandparents had multiracial roots: In addition to African ancestry, some had Irish American ancestry; some claimed Cherokee ancestry and others were simply described as mixed-race or mulatto without any specific reference to their European roots.

Issue of Consent
Why does this article give so much credence to the idea that a slave woman could have had a consensual relationship with her owner?

"We will never know whether there was any affection between the two of them. ”
Slave masters, their sons and overseers often preyed on their female slaves. Georgia instituted the death penalty for any man of color who raped a white woman. But white men who raped black women were not considered criminals; such assaults were not deemed crimes under Georgia’s criminal code. No one knows what happened to Melvinia, but given the frequency of sexual assaults against enslaved women at the time, it is quite likely that she was raped. However, the descendants of Melvinia’s slave owners – and some of her own descendants – hope that there was some affection between Melvinia and the white man who fathered her child.

Melvinia continued to have biracial children as a free woman, after slavery was over. She also continued to live close to the Shields family and to the man who fathered her son years after slavery ended. We will never know whether there was any affection between the two of them, or whether she stayed because she was brutalized and too terrified to leave or because she was dependent on his financial support.

Michelle Obama Family History - A Book Review

Dolphus Shields, seated, with relatives in Birmingham, Ala., was born into slavery on a Georgia farm. He was Michelle Obama's maternal great-great-grandfather.
Notice how the little girl next to Mr. Shields resembles the Obama girls.

The First Lady’s Family
By EDWARD BALL

AMERICAN TAPESTRY
The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama
By Rachel L. Swarns
Illustrated. 391 pp.
Amistad/HarperCollins Publishers.
$27.99.

I encourage you to order by phone from Esowan Books in Los Angeles, or Marcus Book Stores, San Francisco, or Oakland. For decades, these California bookstores have excelled at providing literature by Black authors and all genres of reading material related to Black life.They are businesses and cultural institutions that are truly worthy of your support.


Twelve American presidents were slaveholders, and perhaps another dozen (including the two named George Bush) came from families that once upon a time owned slaves. In common with many of our most venerable institutions, the presidency has ample connection to “slavery time”: the White House is like an Internet link that, if you click on it, bounces you to the lawn of a plantation.

For 42 million Americans — African-Americans — having slaves in the family tree is almost a given, but this fact wasn’t relevant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until the current first family. Michelle Robinson Obama happens to descend from people once enslaved in South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Kentucky. She can peer at American history from that far side of the looking glass. Her husband, with no slaves in the family, may not see America in quite the same way.

After the president’s term began, one expected to hear more in the press and from the Obamas about blackness, whiteness and the nation’s never-ending debates about race and class. But Barack and Michelle Obama have not made theirs into a “black” White House. An exception jumped up for two nights last winter, when the commander in chief, on camera, sang the opening lines of a Robert Johnson blues standard, “Sweet Home Chicago,” and Al Green’s R&B ballad “Let’s Stay Together” — the kind of songs that used to be called “race music.”

“American Tapestry,” a fascinating account of the first lady’s family, corrects the omission of race from the Obama White House. No political memoir has ever looked or sounded like this one: the book spans several generations of Mrs. Obama’s people and reads like a panorama of black life.

Rachel L. Swarns, a reporter for The New York Times, has uncovered the story of an ordinary black American family, typical in so many details: generations of forced work on Southern farms; sexual exploitation; children born half white; attempts to flee slavery; emancipation at the end of a rifle barrel; terrorization by the Klan during Reconstruction; futility stirred in with pleasure and church in the 1900s; a stepladder into the working class — and finally, the opportunity that allowed for Michelle Obama’s superior education and unlocked 150 years of bolted doors.

The book is nonfiction, but with some 30 characters competing for space it’s like a saga or perhaps a mini-series, minus the dialogue. It starts wide, intercutting the stories of four families in four Southern states during the early 1900s. Each of them deposits Northern-bound migrants, refugees from the Jim Crow South, into the growing black neighborhood of South Chicago, where, after chance meetings, dates and marriage, they produce all of Mrs. Obama’s grandparents. The book then turns around and stitches together the back stories of the first lady’s family lines during the 1800s, in slavery and out of it.

Some of Mrs. Obama’s people lived as human property at Weymouth plantation, near Georgetown, S.C., owned by Ralph Izard, from an old family of rice planters. They became sharecroppers after the Civil War. A couple on her father’s side, Mary and Nelson Moten, with a young daughter named Cora, achieved that rarest of feats — they escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad. Living in Kentucky, not far from the town of Lexington, the Motens managed to make their way about 300 miles west during the Civil War and sneak across the Ohio River to Illinois. They settled in Pulaski County, north of the town of Cairo, and waited for the general emancipation.

But the hero of the book is Melvinia, Mrs. Obama’s great-great-great-grandmother, who in 1852 was an enslaved 8-year-old girl living on a farm in Spartanburg, S.C., along with 20 other slaves. When her owner, David Patterson, died, Melvinia was appraised at $475, taken from her parents and shipped to another Patterson family property, south of Atlanta. And there, seven or eight years later, the child who had been snatched from her family was raped by, or consented to sex with, her owner or one of his relatives, and gave birth to a boy named Dolphus. Swarns digs out from Mrs. Obama’s background this cruel vignette, along with many others like it, and pushes them front and center. “ ‘Mulatto’ forebears pop up all across Mrs. Obama’s family tree,” she writes. Melvinia’s life goes a long way toward explaining what Mrs. Obama means when she says, regarding her family’s tendency to speak softly about the past, “A lot of times these stories get buried, because sometimes the pain of them makes it hard to want to remember.”

Swarns persuaded a number of Mrs. Obama’s relatives to sit for interviews, but the first lady herself did not, and she seems to have given only passive consent to the herculean investigations made on her behalf. Some of the stories here will be news, one suspects, even to members of Michelle Obama’s family. There can be little doubt that she, and the president, will savor this book, but political necessity requires that she not publicly “own” her family’s slave history, which conceivably could cost her husband votes in the coming election.

The book is not about the living family in the White House. It’s about the dead: the field hands, housekeepers, single mothers, sharecroppers, brick workers, postmen, shoe repairmen, Pullman porters and maids — Mrs. Obama’s relatives all, plain people who owned no property and left no writings. Theirs was mostly a bitter tale, full of abandonments, early death, poverty, orphans and illiteracy. Yet it is also an occasionally sweet story of church, home-buying, business-founding and weddings.

Swarns struggles to answer the question of how many of the first lady’s female ancestors were compelled to have sex with white men, a common occurrence in the Old South (the most famous instance being Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings), though one that black families still find it hard to talk about — and that’s to say nothing of the descendants of slave owners. Swarns is at her best when airing such painful matters and the contradictory emotions they release — pity, shame, curiosity, revulsion. She gives less attention to other signal moments of Mrs. Obama’s family history, like how Melvinia was freed, at age 21, after Gen. William T. Sherman’s 60,000 troops swept toward Atlanta and burned her master’s town in August 1864.

The first lady has said that growing up, she talked about “almost everything” with her parents, and spent summer vacations in South Carolina within shouting distance of the plantations where some in her family may once have worked as slaves, but as for slavery, “we didn’t talk about that.” Swarns wrestles with this phenomenon, which might be compared to the Holocaust effect, “an almost willful, collective forgetting, an intentional loss of memory,” and finally accepts it as the necessary censorship of trauma.

A drawback of the book is that Mrs. Obama’s ancestors are presented as having an obsession with uplift. They seem always to be seeking and striving. One “stepped eagerly into her new future,” another is “poised to seize the widening opportunities,” a third was “nurtured by a family that strived for success.” Personal journeying is not what ordinary folks, swamped with work and kids and grief and laughter — and weighed down by the additional burden of racism — have tended to do. Striving is a sentiment we like to project back onto the dead.

Another problem is the heavy use of plot points that “probably” happened. In the absence of letters and written remembrance, Swarns relies too much on the conditional mood. Characters “would have,” “could have” and “may have” done things, until speculation becomes a stylistic tic.
But the narrative line of “American Tapestry” is extraordinary because, at least some of the time, we see the first lady as indisputably “black.” No decorous White House hostess — from Mamie Eisenhower to Jackie Kennedy to Barbara or Laura Bush — has anything to compare with Mrs. Obama’s sturdy timber of a family story. Few important women come from such raw places. The book makes you remember why the Obamas, four years ago, seemed so new, so implausible.

Edward Ball is the author of “Slaves in the Family” and other books. “The Inventor and the Tycoon” — his account of the partnership between Eadweard Muybridge, the motion picture pioneer and admitted killer, and Leland Stanford, the Western railroad baron — is forthcoming.

The Original Original Gangsta

Ice-T and Chuck D in Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap

Ice-T talks about his Star-Studded Directorial Debut, his Famous Affiliates and Life with Coco in New York

By Ben Westhoff
published: June 14, 2012
L A Weekly

Like fellow local hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg, Ice-T has made a career out of cashing in on his former street credibility. It's understandably lucrative, as audiences never seem to grow tired of seeing the former heist specialist and pimp in fish-out-of-water scenarios, be it as detective "Fin" Tutuola on Law & Order: SVU or as a married, domestic guy on E! reality show Ice Loves Coco.

One could almost forget that he was (arguably) the first gangsta rapper, but hip-hop remains close to Ice-T's heart. His documentary, Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap — which he directed, partly funded and hosts — explores the nuances of his original craft. For the film, which opens at about 150 theaters nationwide on June 15, he went deep into his Rolodex and traversed the country to secure interviews with the genre's biggest names — Eminem, Kanye West, Dr. Dre — many of whom perform on-the-spot freestyles.

Speaking out against "pop rap," he commiserates with the genre's originators; scenes with such practically forgotten trailblazers as Grandmaster Caz and Doug E. Fresh are particularly memorable.

We caught up with Ice-T at the Beverly Hills Montage hotel, where he was promoting the film. Looking fit and sporting a diamond bracelet and red Adidas, he discoursed on everything from Dr. Dre's luxurious new house and the LAPD to his curvaceous wife, Coco, at times standing up to act out the scenes he was describing and even rapping old verses. Below are highlights from our conversation.

L.A. WEEKLY: You got practically everyone notable in rap for this documentary. How long did it take to film?

ICE-T: Two years. We shot [the trailer] and got the film funded, got a few hundred thousand dollars, and now we can get helicopters, we can step it up. Then, we had to triangulate, which means get the film crew guys from London, the artists and myself — who's doing Law & Order full-time — in the same place on a particular day at a particular time. You have no idea how hard it is to get a rapper to stop moving.

Who was the hardest person to get, logistically?

We had to go to Detroit to get Eminem, but then when he's ready, I'm not because I'm working, or the guys in London are doing their thing. So we had to fly out there, and we actually had to get the aerial footage another time. We really wanted to shoot Eminem in Detroit because we wanted to use that movement across the country. But he gave me unparalleled access.

[We used] no stock footage. We don't want rappers to say anything they've said before. Basically you're making a movie of talking heads. How do you make a movie of people talking for two hours without making it boring? So you shoot them, you get the shoes, you get the feet, get the hands. Some of the best shots are when you see that we both have the same sneakers on. The aerial shots are to let the movie breathe, so you don't feel so claustrophobic.

The aerial shots of Dr. Dre's house are especially cool.

We wanted to show something from nothing. The [shot] starts off grimy, and then it ends up in Beverly Hills. I thought Dre's house said it all. It's his new house, the $13 million house, with a view of downtown to the beach, unobstructed. It's the craziest view ever. I was, like, "OK, you make N.W.A, you make Tupac, you make Eminem, you make The Game, you make 50 Cent, you get a $13 million house."

Beyond the freestyles, the film featured tons of classic, and I'd imagine very expensive, hip-hop songs. How'd you get the rights to all of them?

We did a "favored nations" scenario. It's something they do on compilations, where they say that everyone gets paid the same. So with the soundtrack, we told everybody, "We have this much for each song, and we're paying everyone the same — do you want to be on the soundtrack?" The only people who had a problem were the sample licensees who aren't hip-hop.

The film goes out of its way to emphasize the craft of hip-hop, rather than pop-oriented rap.
Pop was always the enemy. You heard Mos Def say in the film, "Rap is not pop. If you think it is, you need to stop." Quincy Jones taught me that pop is doing what everyone else wants you to do. Art is doing what you want to fuckin' do. If you're just saying what everyone wants, you're being pop. If you say, "I don't give a fuck," then you're rocking. ...

Here's my comment. If you have more words in your hook than in your rap, you're not rappin', you're hookin'. [Laughs.]

What was Coco's role in the documentary?

She was rollin' right behind me every day, on the phone. While I'm on the camera, somebody needs to be wrangling artists. Today, actually, she would be here, but she's doing RuPaul's Drag Race. Coco's been there for years, like my executive secretary. She helps me handle everything. I have to give her credit because she sat through every interview.

Do you two have a place in L.A. anymore?

I sold my house in L.A. It was up on Sunset Plaza. So now we have the house in Arizona, New York and a spot in Miami. Even after I [moved to New York] I used to have a house in L.A., and I let my buddy live there. I would call him and be, like, "How's my house?" I'd hear people in the background laughing, jumping into the pool, and he's like, "Hold on." I'm going, "Motherfucker, it's my house!" It was cool. It was documented on MTV Cribs, but there's no sense in my holding that property. ...

We figured out we want to plant our roots in New York. I operate out of New York a little bit better than L.A. L.A.'s cool, but people move slow here compared to New York. I like the grind of New York. Now I live in Edgewater, N.J., which is facing Manhattan over the Hudson. When I first got to New York I was staying there, but then I was like, "They got the good view of Manhattan." We're actually building a house over there now; we live in a condo now.

You've talked about how L.A.'s changed since the riots. Do you think the aftermath ultimately compelled the cops to be more respectful to inner-city residents?

People have to police the government just like the government polices us. When we break the law, there's a consequence. When they break the law, there should be a consequence, or else they'll keep doing it. Like with the Occupy Wall Street thing, they have to know that people aren't going to take it. Like, if I take your pad and I take [your recorder], I'm going to keep taking things until you stand up [for yourself].

LAPD only checked themselves when the people demanded it. Now, when a cop pulls you over, other people might pull over and watch, too. We need to police the police. That's how we gotta be, because they're not all good.

That's the way that the world should operate. We need to watch everyone else, like even with a Neighborhood Watch. You're just supposed to make the phone call; it's not "neighborhood hunt." Everybody has to be accountable for everybody else.

Again Individuals in Israel Demonstrate a Change of Heart

In this June 11, 2012 photo, Andre Pshenichnikov, a 23-year-old immigrant from Tajikistan who was recently detained by Israeli police for residing illegally in the Dheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem, poses for a picture in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, Israel. In what has to be considered one of the oddest twists to the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian saga, Pshenichnikov has embarked on a new fight: renouncing his Israeli citizenship and moving to a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank. It's incredibly rare for Israelis to seek living under Palestinian rule, only a few precedents of Israelis who have done so are known. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Ex-Israeli soldier seeks Palestinian citizenship

Jun 14, 3:40 AM (ET)

By DALIA NAMMARI

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - In an odd twist to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian saga, a former Israeli soldier has embarked on a new fight: He wants to renounce his Israeli citizenship and move to a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank.

Andre Pshenichnikov, a 23-year-old Jewish immigrant from Tajikistan, was recently detained by Israeli police for residing illegally in the Deheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. There he told police that he wants to break all ties with Israel, give up his Israeli citizenship and obtain a Palestinian one instead.

Pshenichnikov is currently traveling in Europe for two months. When he returns, he hopes to move to the West Bank.

It's incredibly rare for Israelis to seek to live under Palestinian rule. There are only a few known cases of Jewish Israelis who have done so, mostly ones who have married Palestinians, as well as a journalist for the Israeli daily Haaretz who moved to Ramallah and reports from there. None are known to have renounced Israeli citizenship - though some Israelis living abroad have. Nor are any known to have sought Palestinian residency instead. People are not allowed to be dual citizens.

Reached at his Israeli home, Pshenichnikov's mother Svetlana said she was troubled by her son's plans.

"I'm his mother and I am trying to support him like a mother should," she said. "But I don't support his war."

The family immigrated to Israel when Pshenichnikov was 13. Israel grants automatic citizenship to anyone who is Jewish. He later completed his three years of mandatory military service, enlisting as a computer programmer in the army's signals corps, and even served an additional year and a half as a career soldier.

But sometime during his military service, he began to question Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. Since then, he has completely rejected his adopted country. After his service ended, he moved to the refugee camp in April and worked as a waiter in a Bethlehem hotel and as a construction worker in Deheishe.

"I hate Zionism ... I want to be part of the Palestinian resistance," Pshenichnikov told The Associated Press. "I call for other Israelis who support the existence of a state of Palestine to do the same, to come live in the West Bank or Gaza as Palestinians."

The Palestinians want to make the West Bank part of an independent state. For the time being, in accordance with past agreements with Israel, they technically don't have a Palestinian citizenship but the self-rule authority issues I.D. residency cards and Palestinian passports.
Pshenichnikov said he chose to live near Bethlehem in hopes of taking advantage of his fluency in Russian to guide Russian tourists in Jesus' traditional hometown.

Residents say he was initially treated with suspicion. Many Palestinians suspected him of being an Israeli spy and Palestinian officials eventually handed him over to Israeli authorities. But Pshenichnikov remained undeterred, returning to Deheishe where was apprehended by Palestinian forces and handed over to Israel again.

Israeli police released him under restrictive conditions and banned him from entering the Palestinian-controlled areas pending the end of legal proceedings against him.
Tareq Abu Sheikha, who rented Pshenichnikov a room for a month, said he was "suspicious and not honest."

Abu Sheikha said Pshenichnikov presented himself as a Russian foreign activist and was even seen throwing stones at Israeli soldiers during demonstrations. But he was also heard speaking in Hebrew on his phone and carried his old military I.D. card with him.

"We don't have a problem with any Israeli coming to be one of us. We'll be honored and give them an I.D. card, but this young man was suspicious and he lied and that's why we handed him to the Israelis," he said.

Officially renouncing Israeli citizenship is a lengthy, complicated process. Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad said that one has to file a request at an Israeli representative office overseas, prove that one has another citizenship and then await a ruling, which is not always granted. She said she wasn't familiar with Pshenichnikov's case, but that only few hundred people have their citizenship revoked each year.

The Israeli military declined to comment on Pshenichnikov.
Abdel-Fatah Hamayel, the governor of Bethlehem, said that in principle there should be no problem granting Pshenichnikov Palestinian citizenship, but that it would have to go through the proper legal channels.

"He wasn't supposed to come illegally. If people knew his true identity, there's no guarantee for his safety. He should have informed the Palestinian side with an official request and his request would be considered," he said.