Racism Daily Intelligence Update ⋅ July 13, 2015

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Knoxville congregation taking action against racism

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) — At least half a dozen southern churches have been set on fire this past month. This all comes after a gunman opened fire on a historically black church in South Carolina.

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White people may deny it, but racism is back in Britain 

A good friend, an academic in San Francisco, emailed: “Harper is finally telling the truth. Those guys like Finch, who pretended to be with us, were lying to themselves. They liked to be anti-racist heroes, but only when it suited them. Inside their liberal hearts and heads they are supremacists. My son married the daughter of a lawyer who loved Martin Luther King and all that. He refused to walk her down the aisle. So I did.”

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 Forget racism – we need informed debate

Aucklanders from all walks of life have offered their views. Many have welcomed what they see as a long overdue debate. Others, notably in the Twittersphere, have been quick to accuse me of racism because I have talked about a particular ethnic group.

But here’s the thing. We do need to have a mature public debate about Chinese foreign investment in New Zealand real estate.

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Two Newton churches come together against racism

“He reached out to me,” the Rev. George B. Martinez told the congregation seated before him. “I want to repeat that — he reached out to me.” Seated behind Martinez was the Rev. Robert Griner, the collared “he” of whom Martinez spoke. And for the first time in those 10 years, the members of Cavalry Baptist, a traditionally black church in town, sat side-by-side with parishioners from Christ Episcopal Church, a centuries-old branch of Christianity.

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Have the property wars become racism’s new frontier? 

Back in 1913, C.A Jeffries and John Barr, two writers from The Bulletin, made a small but critical contribution to the diversity debate that has us scratching our heads more than a hundred years on. The pair wrote Australia Calls, a silent film directed by Raymond Longford, which cast members of Sydney’s Chinese community as “Mongolian” invaders that storm the city, set landmark buildings on fire and interrupt a horse race before taking off with an outback damsel named Beatrice who – in a move straight out of Jerry Bruckheimer – is rescued by legendary NSW aviator William E. Hart.

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Sorry, Louisiana, Quebec, and France: The Fleur-De-Lis Might Be Racist Now 

Now that the Confederate Flag has been effectively dealt with, the outrage machine is turning on another symbol: the fleur-de-lis. A video posted by USA Today on Friday posed the simple question: “Is the fleur-de-lis racist?”

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The Cosby Show ‘Enabled Some of the Ugliest Reagan-Era Fantasies’ About Race and Class

In a Sunday article for Salon, DeVega opined that the series “lied to its white viewers about the nature of racism, white supremacy, and white privilege” and “enable[d] the colorblind white racist fiction and delusion that anti-black racism is a thing of the past.”

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Miss Oklahoma wins Miss USA, Donald Trump M.I.A.

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