"Civil Rights" Groups Being Used to Limit Blacks' Access to Internet

A Key, Unknown Player in Civil Rights Groups' Attack on the Open Internet

By James Rucker, Color of Change

Last Wednesday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed Network Neutrality rules that he claims will save the open Internet.

As another FCC commissioner has attested, these ruleswill do no such thing. Instead, they will allow the big broadband companies, like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, to erect toll booths on the Internet that will result in segregated online communities where wealthy content and application providers will pay a premium for carriage, with everyone else discarded to a secondary, lower quality tier.

Such a policy would be disastrous for the Black community. Today, the Internet — unlike cable television, broadcast radio, or print — is the sole medium where we can communicate with each other nationally and globally, pushing back on the political and social status quo without the interference of corporate gatekeepers.

If Chairman Genachowski succeeds in letting the big phone and cable players carve up the Internet, the day will come when many in the civil rights community will realize and regret their role in making it happen.

Net neutrality is a core principle that is largely responsible for the Internet being such a powerful and transformative tool. It requires that content gets carried by Internet service providers with the same priority and speed regardless of the sender. It's the way the Internet has worked since the beginning. Those who are arguing for net neutrality are simply trying to maintain the status quo — a status quo that has enabled the Internet to flourish in a way that no other communications technology has.

Without net neutrality, Google, Facebook, the Huffington Post and MoveOn.org would not exist; neither would Barack Obama be President. And it's an open Internet that has made the campaigns that we've run at ColorOfChange possible — everything from holding Fox News accountable for the likes of Glenn Beck, to stripping away Beck's advertisers, to telling the story of the Jena 6, or advocating for the rights of Katrina survivors.

For over a year, several of the most prominent civil rights groups have been aligned with AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast — whether knowingly or not — in those companies' efforts to end net neutrality. But they have not acted alone. In my conversations with many groups and individuals inside the Beltway, one man emerges as the nerve center for much of the action we've seen on the part of the civil rights groups. His name is David Honig.

David is the executive director of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC). He is in many ways the face and voice for Black America in Washington, D.C. on Internet issues, and perhaps the most influential person from the civil rights community representing our interests on media and telecom policy.

For years, national civil rights groups have relied on his counsel on what positions to take on key communications issues. And for years, he has been regarded as an honest and helpful broker when it came to addressing broadcasting issues.

But when it comes to Internet policy, David is writing a new and different chapter. Over the past couple of years, Honig's positions and statements seem to align him with the phone and cable companies who are set on undermining the open nature of the Internet. And those statements repeatedly appear in filings endorsed by the major civil rights groups. In my opinion, Honig is leading many of the respected civil rights groups he is advising off of the digital cliff.

Two weeks ago, I made a fact-based argument in a letter to House Majority Leader Pelosi about my concerns regarding a Black member of Congress, who has been aligned with AT&T and Comcast in opposing net neutrality and is vying for a subcommittee post with oversight over the Internet. The Congressman's response was to attack me personally, and to side-step my arguments.

Shortly thereafter, Honig and his organization appeared on a letter with every civil rights and black legislative group you can imagine to counter my letter with their own letter to Pelosi (Honig has organized groups around letters and FCC filings in the past; I presume this time is no different).

Did they engage any of the arguments I put forth? No. Not one.

After personally attacking me for allegedly being "uncivil," Honig then asserted that the Congressman's "position is on all fours with the Open Internet policy endorsed by the labor unions, all the minority intergovernmental organizations and virtually every national civil rights organization except ColorofChange."

Honig doesn't mention that he himself has been a driving force in getting these organizations to sign on to letters of support for the policy he mentions, and, in my opinion, using weak and debunked arguments. He also doesn't mention that the groups to which he's referring have been recipients of millions of dollars from AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast (I don't know if MMTC has received financial support from AT&T, Verizon or Comcast, but if it has, it should disclose that as well). While one can argue that these dollars don't have influence, the disclosure is important when making such statements, as is providing a characterization of an organization's funding picture and any other evidence to show how these dollars don't introduce influence.

Along with many others, I have written pieces here and elsewhere that have described the relationship between corporate dollars from AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, advocacy groups, and Black members of Congress. And I've deconstructed the core, faulty logic in the arguments carried by these messengers: that if we let these large corporations have their way and do away with net neutrality, they'll take their increased profits and suddenly invest in our communities where they traditionally haven't (historically they simply haven't done so, despite already seeing profit margins as high as 80 percent). It's a cynical trickle-down argument that defies the basic logic of how businesses operate. And it's the core sentiment that seems to anchor the anti-net neutrality statements in the filings and statements authored by Honig.

Some in Honig's camp also like to say that net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem. To say that, or to defend someone else's doing so, is to ignore statements made by the major players expressing their desire for a tiered system; instances where they've been caught attempting to censor or control content and applications on the Internet; and the obvious business incentives the companies have for doing so.

I'm interested in an honest debate and discussion about this issue but I still can't find, after almost a year of trying, arguments that hold water or that justify the civil rights groups' opposition to net neutrality. I've also had the good fortune of talking with David Honig directly and will continue to do so, but none of the arguments he has presented to me thus far have altered my perspective on the core issues I've raised here and elsewhere. In the meantime, I hope to get as much sunlight as possible on the dynamics I see in play.

Let's give Hillary a chance in 2012!

I am disgusted with President Obama for his supply-side, help-the-banks solutions to Black America (and everyone else's) loss of equity in homes and high unemployment.  As Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich pointed out this week,

Last Friday’s jobs report showed 159,000 new private-sector jobs in October. That’s better than previous months. But 125,000 net new jobs are needed just to keep up with the growth of the American labor force. So another way of expressing what happened to jobs in October is to say 24,000 were added over what we need just to stay even.

Yet the American economy has lost 15 million jobs since the start of the Great Recession. And if you add in the growth of the labor force – including everyone too discouraged to look for a job – we’re down about 22 million.

Or to put it another way, we’re still getting nowhere on jobs.

One out of eight breadwinners is still out of work. Most families in the Average Worker economy rely on two breadwinners. So if one out of eight isn’t working, chances are high that family incomes are down compared to what they were three years ago.

And that means the bills aren’t getting paid.

According to a recent Washington Post poll, more than half of all Americans — 53 percent — are worried about making their mortgage payments. This is many more than were worried two years ago, when the Great Recession hit bottom. Then, 37 percent expressed worry.

Delinquency rates on home loans are rising. Distressed sales are up as a percent of total sales.

Most people in the Average Worker economy own few shares of stock, if any. Their equity is in their homes. But with all the delinquencies and distressed sales, the housing market has a glut of homes for sale. As a result, home prices are still dropping. So the net worth of most Americans is still dropping.

Admittedly, Republicans blocked much of what Obama attempted to do in this area, such as funding the states and cities to maintain public employees and, e.g., creating a national public works project that would employ workers while fixing roads and bridges.  Republicans blocked these programs, but the President was too accommodating and docile to strongly criticize Republican resistance, which arguably contributed to Republican Congressional gains.

Now, if President Obama moves to the right to collaborate with Republicans, Obama will become even more of the right hand of the Republican Party and the super-rich, which is utterly unacceptable.

I am disgusted with President Obama's supply-side approach to medical reform, rather than a public option.  President Obama has incomprehensibly accepted using the same medical insurance companies that screwed us in the past to deliver our health care in the future, with no public option directed toward our care.  Our only option continues to be health care denials by health care giants, and with no national public option that provides us care wherever we go.

President Obama inexplicably allowed his health care programs to go into effect only in 2013--after his re-election campaign and TWO Congressional election campaigns.  It ought to be clear by now that the Republicans will demagogue this issue right through the 2012 elections, requesting a public mandate to abort President Obama's health care "victory" and his Administration before they can even be seen up and running.

And so, I'm ready to give Hillary Clinton a go at the presidency.  At least she knows a greedy, callous and inherently untrustworthy insurance company when she sees one, and she and Bill know instinctively that such companies will not be the solution to health care denials or to the utter lack of real health options, aside from the supply-side alternatives that President Obama invested with omnipotence when he caved in on the matter of the Public Option.

Yes, Bill and Hillary insulted and endeavored to marginalize all Black people mightily in the 2008 Primaries, trying to color-arouse the electorate for political gain, but she has since joined the President's administration and been loyal to the President, at least to the extent of not criticizing him, even when it is obvious that his Administration's anti-insurgent campaigns in Afghanistan and now Pakistan are utterly out of control and are serving neoconservatives more than they are serving the Democratic Party base's basic values of less war and more humility in international affairs.

Plus, as regards Hillary, she and Bill were punished mightily for first taking the Black vote for granted and then trying to win the presidency by appealing to whites while insulting Blacks.

Bill Clinton deserved a Nobel peace prize for his work in Bosnia/Herzegovina, while it is now clearer than ever that Obama should rip up his Nobel Peace Prize and throw it in the toilet. The only thing he has done for peace is to demonstrate a way that a Black person could reach the pinnacle of apparent power and stay there for two years without having without an armed rebellion by Blacks or whites.  That's a great accomplishment in a campaign for the presidency and even in his two years as president, but it's utterly inadequate to the tasks in terms of substance in government like health care, home foreclosures and war, more war.

Let's give Hillary a chance. In 2012, she can promise to fix all that is bad with Obama Care, just as President Bill Clinton said about affirmative action, "fix it, don't end it."  With the economy in 2012 no better than it is right now, and perhaps dramatically worse, Hillary can promise a change from Obama's supply-side pusillanimity and offer solutions aimed directly at the public pain, rather than seeking to use and virtually begging corporations to do that which they are utterly unable and unwilling to do: focus on the public good.

Sometime in the near future, Obama should install Hillary as his vice president (a first), and then free her to form cogent Democratic Party criticisms of Obama's mistakes.  Then Obama should bail out and let Hillary run as the incumbent in 2012.  Of course Republicans would attack her mightily, but that would divert their attention from trying to undo what little President Obama has accomplished.

African American Pundit: DNC Triples Effort Reaching Out To Black Voters

African American Pundit: DNC Triples Effort Reaching Out To Black Voters

Americans Might Benefit from Successful Court Challenges to ObamaCare

President Obama has Given us a New Form of Buggery
that all Americans Can Get Behind

Courts across the United States are being asked to consider whether ObamaCare is constitutional.  I think it might actually be helpful for the US Supreme Court to determine that ObamaCare is unconstitutional because it compels people to pay for medical coverage that they do not want.

Here's my reasoning:  There would be nothing unconstitutional about Obama and the US Congress making Medicaid, Medicare, the Veterans Administration hospitals and/or the US Public Health Service into universal access entitlement programs.  That would be true health care reform. 

I think it OUGHT to be legally unacceptable for Obama to compel Americans to pay money to medical insurance companies that are hardly any less incorrigibly greedy and callous than the banks and brokers who have turned the nation's mortgage market into utter chaos and contributed to a fall of the value of the dollar by 50% over the last seven years.

Insurance companies simply cannot be trusted to offer affordable health care, and President Obama himself cannot be trusted when he tries to compel us to trust medical insurance companies.  (The same can be true of the Obamian supply-side economic fixes that always give more money to banks and other classes of corporations while stingily and callously letting individual American families lose their homes, live out of their cars be blown in the wind like US flags during a hurricane.) 

It's quite obvious by now that President Obama sees the failure of the banks as a more serious problem than 10% unemployment (an official 15% among Blacks), and the highest rate of mortgage foreclosures that the nation's citizens have suffered since the Great Depression.

Even now, he is more concerned about the effects that a moratorium on foreclosures would have for banks and markets than he is about the effects that lawless and fraudulent systemic banking practices have had on the individual homeowner's ability to know which bank (or which set of mortgage bundlers) has the legal authority to file foreclosure actions against individual American families.

American right-wingers need not concern themselves that President Obama could be a socialist when, in fact, his supply-side policies are almost as stringent toward working people as were those of Ronald Reagan.  The difference is that Reagan endeavored to remove every bit of safety-net that working Americans had, while Obama has passively sat by and watched as Americans lose every bit of safety that middle class Americans have.  But, he's been there for the bankers, the automobile manufacturers, and has created a program with 40 million new obligatory consumers of often-worthless health care insurance.

I don't think I'll cry if Obama is not re-elected in 2012, although I would be very chagrined to see the US Congress turned over to the Republicans now, partly as a result of Obama's insanely unpopular legislative pizzas.  (In Brazil they call massively unconscionable screw-ups and multi-party political train wrecks "pizza".)

I used to argue that Americans should prefer Democratic Party presidents because even if we don't care about what Republicans do within our borders, we should not be callous about the wars and suffering that Republican presidents and legislatures cause overseas.  President Obama has taken that abstract political argument away from me.

President Obama is at war in Iraq; at war in Afghanistan; turning Pakistan into an Afghanistan at war; looking at military options with Iran; and even building 7 new military bases in Columbia as a staging area for an invasion of Venezuela.  President Obama is just as warful as his Republican predecessors and considerably more warful than any Democratic Party president since President Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War. 

And yet, the Vietnam war was officially limited on one country, which Obama's mental genius has been able to multiply six-fold while still calling himself a Democrat.  No, admittedly Obama has not instituted a draft as President Johnson did, yet.

How am I supposed to argue that the US Government would be more bellicose under a Republican administration?  Obama is bellicose in six foreign countries simultaneously.  All he has to do now is start dropping white phosphorous on one of these battlefields and we can declare that we have a Republican foreign policy president elected by the Democratic Party.

Obamian health care is as welcomed as universal syphilis.

Back to the point of this screed.  If the Supreme Court finds that it is unconstitutional to make individual Americans give their money to insurance companies, then the only alternative will be what most Americans wanted in the first place:  a Public Option. 

If utter defeat in the US Supreme Court comes soon enough, there might still be time in Obama's one-term presidency for the legislation and implementation of a national government-sponsored program of Public Option health care that will not be a huge Government privatization of a health care vacuum, and giveaway to greedy, venal and callous insurance companies. 

Obama has not created more Government insurance.  He has simply privatized the market for insurance for the 40 million people who capitalist medicine was previously ignoring.

Obama sees Americans being financially raped by the unhealthy grasp of insurance companies and what does he do?  He says he believes it will be fairer if all of us are financially raped by medical insurers, so that some of us will not get financially raped twice or thrice while others of us are not raped at all.  Thanks President Obama!  You've given us a new national form of buggery that we can all get behind. 

This is one instance where the conservatives on the US Supreme Court could create Public Option medical care by finding that privatization of obligatory medical insurance is an unconstitutional "taking."

It's time for Obama to let the Congress go back to the drawing board and give us a Public Option in the US that is at least as good as the one I now have in Brazil.

How Much is President Obama's Presidency Similar to Jimmy Carter's?

In order to figure out what chances President Obama has of being reelected in 2012, we have to look back to the last Democratic Party president who presided over intractable economic troubles and foreign policy crises, neither of which he was able to contain.

Jimmy Carter had the misfortune of Iran taking American hostages, which left the media and the public wondering what Jimmy Carter would do about it.  Ultimately, Jimmy Carter was able to do little at all about this problem that the country came to see as a top priority:

On November 4, 1979, an angry mob of young Islamic revolutionaries overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than sixty Americans hostage. "From the moment the hostages were seized until they were released minutes after Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as president 444 days later," wrote historian Gaddis Smith, "the crisis absorbed more concentrated effort by American officials and had more extensive coverage on television and in the press than any other event since World War II."

If Jimmy Carter had bombed and Iranian city to ruins and promised more mayhem unless the hostages were released, this would probably have been perceived as a strong response, "not negotiating with terrorists" as Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, so often explained his overt public policy.  However, Jimmy Carter did not want to see senseless deaths on either side and was unwilling to lose thousands of US soldiers to save two-dozen US hostages.  His unwillingness to do anything other than negotiate made him seem week and prepared the way for the election of Ronald Reagan.

No one doubted that Jimmy Carter was intelligent, well-intentioned and Christian, but they ultimately concluded that he was ineffective and his policies were ineffectual.  Likewise, few people doubt that Obama is intelligent, well intentioned and Christian, but his policies are proving bureaucratic, incomprehensible  and he seems to be biting off far more wars than he will be able to chew.

Like President Johnson, President Obama now sees himself in the middle of too many unpopular wars--in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, potentially Iran, as well as Columbia, where US troops have built bases and are setting up fighting positions.  When it became apparent that President Johnson was unable to achieve his goals in Vietnam, Nixon was elected.  When it became obvious that Carter had no more ideas for saving the hostages in Iran, then Ronald Reagan was elected.  And when it becomes apparent that President Obama has no end game for his wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and covertly in Iran and overtly in preparations for Columbia vs. Venezuela, then any Democrat or Republican who claims to have a better plan might be nominated and elected.


Obama is similar to Jimmy Carter in another way.  Both Obama and Carter faced intractable and insufferably high unemployment rates; Blacks were substantially more unemployed than whites, costing the support and enthusiasm of the one group whose fidelity to the Democrats most makes it essential that that Blacks see a clear-cut reason to go to the polls on Election Day.  There seems to be a strong likelihood that many Blacks will be unemployed in 2012, having also lost their homes to mortgage foreclosures.  It is not clear how Obama will demonstrate to Blacks that his presidency has done us substantial rather than merely symbolic good.

While Obama faces negative economic statistics on virtually ever side, Jimmy Carter faced unprecedented inflation as well as high gas prices and rationing at the pumps.   If intractable economic and military problems show that a president has lost control and can assure neither domestic economic security nor national security as he has defined it, then Obama might find himself like Jimmy Carter did in 1980--first facing a challenge from within the Democratic Party, and then facing a Republican opponent who can convince the public that she is more resolute and more determined to do what needs to be done, domestically and internationally.

If President Obama's efforts to help people save their homes is any harbinger of his health plan, the health plan will have been proved useless to most people even before many of its provision take effect in 2014.  In fact, one of the poorest decisions Obama may have made as president was to provide health care relief only after his first term ends.  He seems to have assumed that he would get a second term during which he would implement this plan rather than see a Republican Congress and president undo all of the change that Obama hopes will someday come.


President Obama had better "check himself."  The people whom I know of who have homes in foreclosure, seeking relief, are not getting that relief from any of the programs the Obama Administration put in place.  The only things guaranteed by Obama's mortgage legislation has been bank and bank executive lucre, as well as overwhelming bureaucracy and hesitance from banks to reformulate mortgages, even when paid to do so by the Federal Government.


Obama privatized the response to the banking crisis by giving individual corporations money in the hopes that they would subsequently take actions that have not been forthcoming.  Obama privatized the Gulf Oil Spill by depending upon BP to fix their machinery and clean up the coasts, as well as indemnify those who lost income.  Those who have lost income say they face daunting bureaucracy.  And Obama privatized the response to individual home-owners with mortgage problems when Obama left the banks themselves to make the crucial decisions in these cases.

Obama might ultimately find that he is a right-leaning Democrat for whom the Democratic base has no respect or desire, but his ineffectual policies leave him indefensible across the political spectrum. 

Lawrence A. Summers and Timothy Geithner Have Taken the Country Out of Rut and Into a Mudslide

Do Blacks and Whites Benefit Equally from the Word and Concept of "Race"?

I wrote the following to Professor Lawrence D. Bobo, Ph.D., W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University, challenging his use of the word "race":

Professor Lawrence D. Bobo, Ph.D.
W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences
Harvard University

Dear Professor Bobo:

I am a Black blogger from the American Journal of Color Arousal (AMJCA), researching the use of the word "race" among America's Blacks.  I would like to pose a question regarding your use of the word "race" in an article at The Root entitled, "Time to End the Criminal-Punishment Binge."  

I concur with the position of your article.  However, in your sentence as follows, what difference would it make if you removed the word "race" and inserted the term "skin color" instead?

Let us be the generation that undoes the connection between race and who populates our jails and prison.

I ask this question because if there is one thing that white supremacists and Black intellectuals can agree upon, it is the continued fundamental nature and necessity of the word and concept of "race." For example, here's what the white supremacist "Nationalist Party USA" says about "race:"

The Nationalist Party embraces the differences in Cultures and races, and allows for each group to embrace their own heritage -- while recognizing the right to live separately, if we choose; and to preserve our unique Culture and heritage. Nationalist Party USA (Emphasis added.)

Clearly the Nationalist Party's belief in different "races" rationalizes, in their minds, their belief in and advocacy for segregation and white supremacy. And why not? Do we not segregate the dog species from the cat species at the dog pound?

It seems to me that as soon as we concede that we and whites are from different "races," we supply intellectual and moral support for white supremacists' belief in segregation, with separate and unequal roles for whites, Blacks and Latinos in society. 

Here's another quote from the same website:

"The question is not why anyone would believe the races are unequal, but why anyone would believe them equal."

As Prof. Levin points out, a book like Why Race Matters should not have to be written. The only sensible conclusion to be drawn from simple observation is that races differ: "To put the matter bluntly, the question is not why anyone would believe the races are unequal in intelligence, but why anyone would believe them equal." For centuries, people as different as Arabs and Englishmen have judged Africans to be unintelligent, lascivious, jolly, and keen on rhythm. Today, in whatever corner of the globe one looks, blacks behave in certain consistent ways." Nationalist Party USA  (Emphasis Added.)

There you have it. White supremacists agree with many Black intellectuals, including Harvard University professor Lawrence D. Bobo, Ph.D., that Blacks and whites are from separate "races."  With white supremacists and Black intellectuals in agreement on this point, why should we even bother to consult the relatively new and opposite findings of the  U.S. Department of Energy's Human Genome Program which says:

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Human Genome Program devoted 3% of its annual Human Genome Project (HGP) budget toward studying the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) surrounding the availability of genetic information. Some of these projects studied potential effects of ELSI, and others sought to educate professionals through literature, conferences, workshops, and multimedia. Among the programs funded by DOE ELSI were educational materials for physicians, educators, students, clergy, and judges and other legal professionals. 

DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.

Ari Patrinos, Director for Biological and Environmental Research, Office of Science, US Department of Energy, says on behalf of the DOE, in 'Race' and the Human Genome,

With very rare exceptions, all of us in the US are immigrants. We bring with us a subset of genes from our homelands, and for many Americans, often first-generation but more commonly second-generation, the plural noun 'homelands' is appropriate. From this perspective, the most immediately obvious characteristic of 'race' is that describing most of us as Caucasian, Asian or African is far too simple. Despite attempts by the US Census Bureau to expand its definitions, the term 'race' does not describe most of us with the subtlety and complexity required to capture and appreciate our genetic diversity. Unfortunately, this oversimplification has had many tragic effects. Therefore, we need to start with the science

( . . . )

In the end, each person must be treated as an individual with his or her own medical issues, rather than as an exemplar of a race. We anticipate a future in which accurate predictive medicine, based on one's individual genetic profile, will promote longer and healthier lives and a better ability to manage interactions with our environment and the challenges it constantly presents, be they allergens, diseases or environmental hazards. If nothing else, among so many potential benefits, the kind of solid science presented and discussed in this issue and at the Howard conference is providing proof that oversimplified concepts of race simply don't work in any objective realm. It's bad medicine, and it's bad science.   'Race' and the Human Genome,
 

Clearly what we have called "race" does not exist as a matter of science, yet the premise of "race" continues to be the single most fundamental commonality between white supremacists' arguments and those of Black intellectuals.  Do white supremacists and Blacks benefit equally from the ubiquitous use of the word "race'?  Historically, did we all benefit equally from the "N" word, whose use is just about as old as the word and concept of "race"? 

Words and concepts can empower and disempower whole classes of people.  We must either believe that whites gave Blacks the word "race" to empower us, or whites gave themselves the word "race" to empower whites. 

I propose that we Blacks challenge white supremacists, as well as journalists, newspapers and websites of all skin colors to cease and desist using the word "race," based on the new Human Genome Project declarations.  Rather than agree with white supremacists about "race," our strongest political high ground comes from insisting, based on new genomic science, that the word "race" be must be dropped from all public discussion of skin color, because the word "race" is nothing more than a pseudo-scientific and highly controversial political synonym for "skin-color group." 

Those who insist on continuing to use of the word "race" are "racists."

Sincerely,

Atty. Francis L. Holland
Brazil