Maxwell Is Getting Special Privileges Denied To Other Prisoners

Ghislaine Maxwell was the person who recruited girls (many of whom were underage) for Jeffrey Epstein's sex parties for his rich friends.  She was rightly convicted and sent to federal prison for her actions. But after refusing to name Donald Trump as having engaged in that illegal conduct, it seems she is getting special privileges that she is not entitled to get (including a transfer to a more minimum security prison that sex offenders are not supposed to be allowed in).

The following is from an article by Ken Dilanian at MSNBC.com:

Ghislaine Maxwell, the Jeffrey Epstein confidante and convicted child sex trafficker, is being waited on “hand and foot” by the staff at her minimum security prison camp while she prepares a request that President Donald Trump commute her sentence, according to whistleblower revelations made public on Monday by House Democrats.

“The deference and servility to Ms. Maxwell have reached such preposterous levels that one of the top officials at the facility has complained that he is ‘sick of having to be Maxwell’s bitch,’” according to a letter to Trump from Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

In August, Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein prey sexually on children and young women, had an unusual interview with the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who once was Trump’s personal defense attorney. She told Blanche she never saw Trump behaving inappropriately.

After the interview, she was transferred from a low security prison in Florida to a minimum security federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has not explained the transfer, which MSNBC and other outlets reported deviated from a policy that generally forbids sex offenders from serving in prison camps.

Days after her arrival, she said in emails to friends and relatives that she was much happier at the less restrictive facility.

Now Judiciary Democrats say they have obtained documents and whistleblower information that Maxwell is receiving special favors at the prison camp — benefits unavailable to other inmates.

Raskin’s letter said Maxwell has received customized meals personally delivered to her cell, after-hours time in a private exercise area and access to a service puppy.

Raskin said Maxwell was also afforded private meetings with visitors arranged by the warden, complete with snacks. The guests were allowed to bring computers, which Raskin described as “an unprecedented action” that risked Maxwell having “unmonitored communications with the outside world.”

When the phone lines went down for other inmates at the camp, Raskin said, Maxwell had friends and relatives call prison employees, who then could help her speak to them.

“These luxuries and amenities … mark Ms. Maxwell more as a guest at a Trump hotel than a federal prisoner and child sex offender,” Raskin wrote.

While prison officials “cater to her every need,” Raskin wrote, Maxwell has also been preparing a written request that Trump commute her sentence.

“The Warden herself is directly helping Ms. Maxwell copy, print, and send documents related to this application,” Raskin wrote.

Raskin said Democrats have been told that “any inmate or staff who questions or blows the whistle on the institution’s grotesque pampering of a serial sexual abuser and human trafficker at taxpayer expense is being punished and retaliated against” by the warden, Tanisha Hall.

Trump Is Working Hard To Protect Racism And White Privilege

There is a reason this country's racists voted for Donald Trump. They recognized one of their own. Trump has always been a racist and continues to be one. As a young man, he repeatedly violated civil rights law that said he could not refuse to rent to Blacks. And even after the "Central Park 5" were shown to be innocent, he continued to call for them to receive the death penalty.

It should come as no surprise that he is now acting to erase much of the racial progress in this country. It was something he did on his first day in office. He knows he can't overturn the Civil Rights laws passed in the Johnson administration - even the GOP Congress wouldn't go that far (because they know there would be a huge backlash).

But he can act to protect white privilege, and stop all efforts to eliminate it.

The right-wing likes to quote Martin Luther King, Jr. that everyone should be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. But they ignore the fact that Dr. King meant that was the ideal in a fair society - not the unfair society we live in.

The Civil Rights laws advanced our society, but it did not solve all of our racial problems. We still have a lot of racism in our societal institutions. This institutional racism (in courts, police department, schools, corporations, etc.) allows white privilege (a form of racism) to continue to exist. 

Our government was fighting this institutional racism with different kinds of affirmative action (including DEI programs) and with the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department. With a stroke of his pen, Trump is trying to do away with any programs that fight institutional racism. He has outlawed DEI in government agencies, and threatened corporations if they don't also do that. And he has suspended all actions of the Justice Department Civil Rights division.

He didn't stop there. His executive order stopping birthright citizenship is aimed at brown and black people from Latin America and Africa - not whites from Canada and Europe. 

When Trump says he wants to "make America great again", he is talking about taking us back to a time when rich white men ruled the country. He thinks the country was better when Blacks, Hispanics, women, and LGBTQ people were not full citizens. And he's trying hard to recreate that time by protecting white privilege and refusing to make sure Civil Rights law are enforced.

It's going to be a dark and troubled four years for anyone not rich, male, and white.

6 White Statements That Highlight Their Privilege

The following is part of an article by Kelsey Borresen at Huffpost.com: 

White people typically move through life unaware of all the head starts, resources and access the color of their skin affords them. They don’t recognize these unearned advantages until they’re pointed out — and even then, some white people will try to deny the existence of their privilege. . . .

We talked to educators, activists, therapists and professors about the things white people often say that highlight their privilege without them realizing it.

1. “It’s not my job to fix racism because I’m not racist.”

What you’re essentially saying is that because the systemic racism doesn’t hurt you personally — a privileged position to be in — you don’t need to be involved in the fight against it. White people must step up to the plate, act as allies and use their privilege for good.

2. “I don’t see color.”

The intent behind this statement is to demonstrate that you’re not a prejudiced person. But, as psychologist Erlanger Turner put it, “we all see racial difference unless we’re visually impaired.” Refusing to acknowledge the color of someone’s skin is also a refusal to acknowledge the struggles they’ve endured and discrimination they’ve faced because of their race.

3. “There’s no need to worry about the police if you’re not doing anything illegal.”

The way white people perceive and interact with law enforcement is far different from the way Black and Latino people do. Black people have been killed by police while doing everyday activities: Botham Jean was eating ice cream in his living room, Breonna Taylor was sleeping in her bed and Atatiana Jefferson was playing video games with her nephew,just to name a few. There’s also a history of police disproportionately pulling over, stoppingand arresting Black people over minor infractions or for no apparent reason. And, as was the case with George Floyd — the Minneapolis man who was killed in police custody after allegedly buying cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill — even minor incidents can escalate into deadly violence.

4. “I don’t want to post about racism on social media because I’m scared of the backlash.”

It is a privilege to not have to take a risk of alienating yourself from others. It’s saying that the drama or backlash you don’t want to face from potential racists is more important than speaking out against innocent people being oppressed.

5. “I don’t have white privilege.”

Some white folks insist white privilege doesn’t apply to them because they’re not wealthy or because they’ve worked hard for what they have or because their life has been a struggle in any number of ways. They get defensive when they hear the term because they don’t really understand it. White privilege doesn’t mean all white people live charmed lives.

6. “I’m not sure when I should start talking to my kids about racism.”

One of the most common concerns Hill hears from white moms is not knowing when or how they should broach the subject of racism with their children. The question itself demonstrates that white parents have the ability to wait for the “right” time to talk to their kids about racial discrimination; Parents of color are often forced into having those conversations with their kids at a young age.

A Message To Whites: Are You Okay?

The following is just a part of an excellent op-ed by Brian S. Lowery (pictured) in The Washington Post. (Brian Lowery is a professor of organizational behavior and senior associate dean for academic affairs at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.)

The question I would pose to my white friends: Are you okay? Are you okay after seeing a Minneapolis police officer casually pressing the life out of George Floyd? Are you okay after learning that police rushed in and shot Breonna Taylor, a woman not accused of wrongdoing, in her apartment? Are you okay after watching three white men chase and kill Ahmaud Arbery? Are you okay after watching an apparently liberal woman functionally weaponize her whiteness in Central Park? I know that many feel terrible that such atrocities continue to happen. I don’t know whether people understand that, because they are white, they are subject to the same forces that produced Derek Chauvin, the officers in Kentucky, those men in Georgia and Amy Cooper in New York.

Maybe you believe you have nothing in common with those people, that good intentions, tolerant upbringings or enlightened parenting will protect against such corruption. Maybe you believe the diverse activism on display nationwide will make things right. But sincere concern and time have not fixed our problems. They are not enough to protect any of us from the influence of the malignant system we all live in.

A significant part of my professional work has involved researching the psychological consequences of being white in this country. I and others have found that whites have deep discomfort with the realities of whiteness in America. When faced with evidence of white privilege, white folks report more life hardships. Of course, white people, like everyone else, face genuine hardships, but these hardships do not negate white privilege. Consider the difference in responses to the suffering of black people during the crack cocaine epidemic and that of rural whites during the opioid epidemic. One resulted in criminalization that devastated black communities; the other generated calls for an empathetic social response to those trapped in circumstances not of their making.

The question going forward is whether people suppress the desire to deny this problem or distance themselves from it. The forces that created the monsters so many now decry also help to generate white privileges. Talk alone will not dismantle a system that has torn at all Americans — body, mind and soul — since this country’s inception. It’s time to educate friends and family, and demand more of leaders. It is time to be more than a cheerleader or ally and find ways to make permanent change.

This will not be easy. The price of justice — the loss of privilege — will be a painful shock. But the privileges of dominance come at a steep moral and psychological price for whites and cause others significant harm. As Frederick Douglass said, without struggle, there is no progress. Let’s struggle together for our collective soul.

White Privilege Has No Place In A Nation of Immigrants

Trump supporters and apologists are bending over backward to deny that Trump's latest statements (about four women of color in Congress) were racist. They are wrong. While the trumpistas may not have been offended (being white), minority American citizens know better because they have heard similar slurs about their race/ethnicity all their lives.

Those white apologists are just clinging to their white privilege. They don't mind a few immigrants being here -- as long as they are servile and keep their mouths shut. But that isn't what American is supposed to be about. In a nation of immigrants and descendants of immigrants, all people should be equal (regardless of color, religion or ethnicity). Anything less is un-American.

The following is just a part of an excellent article in The Washington Post by Viet Thanh Nguyen (and I urge you to read the whole article). He writes:

When Donald Trump first proclaimed “Make America Great Again,” many white Americans focused on the slogan’s explicit appeal. Why wouldn’t we want America to be great again? But many of us who do not happen to be white understood the slogan’s subtext: Make America White Again. Immigrants, refugees and people of color have always recognized Trumpism for what it is — a politics of nostalgia for an era of unquestioned white superiority and power. Trump’s comments last weekend, that four congresswomen should “go back” to their ancestors’ countries if they don’t like this one, were also an argument that immigrants of color should simply be grateful to be here. Increasingly, post-white Americans are refusing to perform what many white Americans expect of them: docile compliance, with the implicit sequel of servitude. Instead, these proud Americans, who don’t hesitate to call Trump out, are both thankful and critical.

Call this mixture of gratitude and attitude a nuanced patriotism, a complicated love. Nuance like this is not a part of Trump’s rhetoric or his vision of America. Now, confronted by women of color who are not performing the gratitude and servitude he expects, he has made his own best case for even the most hesitant white people to recognize how white supremacy underlies his vision: “If they don’t like it here, they can leave.” This paraphrase of the classic insult “love it or leave it” implies that the four members of Congress do not belong to the United States, even though three of them — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — were born here. (The fourth, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, came here from Somalia as a girl and became a citizen.)

With these and other statements and silences, Trump is making whiteness, which has functioned as the politely invisible norm in American society, into the impolite, visible norm. Along the way, he is creating a situation where white people must choose: Be critical of their own whiteness or embrace it wholeheartedly. The fact that so many white people immediately recognized his racism is one good thing that has come out of this controversy, proof that they can identify and resist white supremacy.

Still, Trump’s appeal to a core group of Americans speaks to an uncomfortable truth in American history, which is that this is a country founded on the white racism of colonization, genocide, slavery and immigrant exploitation, which many white people who are not white supremacists benefit from. While Trump and his supporters would probably refuse words like “genocide,” they would still see the conquest of America by white people as a fact to be celebrated rather than apologized for. Trump’s vision of America is so explicitly racist that the 1950s can no longer be cited as the time period for which he might be nostalgic. The 1950s were the beginning of the end for government-sanctioned segregation and racist immigration laws that had kept out almost all nonwhite immigrants since the 1924 Immigration Act. What Trump wants is the America of the late 19th century, when Congress passed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first time it targeted a racial group for immigration exclusion.

Asian immigrants, and their American descendants, can testify to the pain of perpetually being suspected as foreigners. “Where are you from?” was the not-so-friendly question that many us have experienced. And if we tried to say that we’re from here, we braced ourselves for the follow-up: “No, where are you really from?” How often is a white person subject to this question? Do people ponder Robert Mueller’s ancestry? No. . . .

That is what is most dangerous about Trump: the nostalgia for purity that supposes America is a white homeland and that motivates him and his followers to tell others to go back to faraway homes. This nostalgia is based on a fiction that the uncontaminated America is an immaculate place, despite the realities of an imperfect social fabric and the many tragedies taking place in actual American households: divorce, violence, homophobia, mental illness, unemployment and drug abuse — to name only some maladies. As for many immigrants, their new home in America is often as much a place of discomfort, even torment, as one of love and belonging. Immigrant stories are full of pain — the trauma of past wars and refugee experiences, the brutality of working constantly, the mundane destruction of affection that comes about when parents cannot spend time with increasingly distant children. . . .

Nostalgia, which means homesickness, eradicates this complexity. Home often appears in our memory through a distorting longing so strong it borders on illness, where we forget all that might have been wrong and fetishize all that seemed good. “Make America Great Again” is an expression of this homesickness, threatening to hurt us all by defining home in only one way and turning it into propaganda, in the process expelling all those who do not fit home’s definition. Those fearful of change are homesick for an America that was, in fact, not so great for many people, including those white people who never benefited from America’s promise, from the poor to the working class to women of many backgrounds. To truly make America great requires the paradoxical ability to see that America as a home has always been imperfect. To make America a home for everyone means acknowledging that home is what we love and fear, what we remake and renovate. . . .

To progress, we must redefine home and who belongs to it. While Trump wants to separate us into white Americans and everyone else, we must forge connections among people who do not look or think alike. We must say that this home is capacious enough for the white people to whom Trump appeals and for the rest of us, and that our destinies are tied together in a fateful kinship that no amount of border-closing or deportation will forestall. Economic prosperity does not have to be tied to nostalgic white supremacy. Instead, economic equality can emerge only by working through the agonies of our racial history, one that has exploited the poor of all colors and divided struggling white people from their nonwhite allies who also seek economic justice.

This is our American home. Passions are high, voices are loud, but this is the reality: Home is where we are, home is what we claim, and no one can tell us to go home if we are already at home.

Over 40% Think Whites Suffer Discrimination In The U.S.

The charts above are from the latest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 27th and 29th of a national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,313 registered voters). The margin of error was 3.2 points for adults and 2.8 points for registered voters.

The top chart shows that most Americans recognize that racism still exists in this country. About 73% of all adults and 76% of registered voters says Blacks are discriminated against in the United States.

It is the second chart that troubles me. It shows that 41% of all adults and 42% of registered voters think Whites are discriminated against in this country. I don't understand how that can be. The population is still majority White, and Whites control most institutions and the legislatures (both national and in the states). How then, are they discriminated against?

I suspect they are confusing equality (the loss of some White privilege) with discrimination. They don't seem to understand that equality (equal rights) is not a pie. Giving equal rights to other groups does not take any rights away from Whites. And losing the White privilege we have had in the past does not denigrate our rights either.

If a person thinks losing White privileges is discrimination, then they are a racist. They may not like hearing that, but defending privilege is a racist act. Whites are NOT discriminated against in the United States.

The Privilege Given White Women Is Wrong (And Racist)

The woman pictured is Dallas police officer Amber Guyger. A few days ago, she entered an apartment that was not hers (without permission or a warrant) and killed the innocent occupant (a Black man).

Since then, there has seemed to be a concerted effort by Dallas police and many of the media to vilify the innocent victim and protect Guyger. She is pictured as having made a "mistake". Part of that is because she was a police officer, but a bigger part is because she was a white woman -- and in our society, white women are always given the benefit of the doubt when dealing with Blacks.

This is part of the racism in our society, and it's time for decent Whites to stand up and fight this racism. No color or sex should be given a privileged status -- especially in this country, where we pride ourselves on equality and the rule of law.

The following is part of an excellent op-ed by Kirsten West Sivali in Essence:

Dallas police officer Amber Guyger deserves the benefit of the doubt in the September 6 shooting death of 26-year-old Botham Jean; that is, if the reports being churned out by mainstream media outlets are to be believed. We are supposed to believe that she was neither reckless nor negligent when she, in essence, broke into Jean’s South Side Flats’ apartment Thursday night and killed him—and that her violent, criminal actions certainly weren’t intentional.

We’re supposed to believe that Guyger, that poor, over-worked woman, was exhausted after a 15-hour shift of protecting and serving the Dallas community. It’s supposed to make sense to us that she parked on the wrong level of her apartment complex, and entered what she thought was her own home—despite the brightly lit apartment number on the wall and the unfamiliar bright red rug clearly indicating otherwise. And when Guyger saw the “large silhouette” of a man who ignored her “verbal commands,” it’s supposed to make sense that she opened fire to protect herself from a potentially violent intruder.

This highly questionable, ridiculous story is what we’re supposed to believe. . . .

Guyger is being given the benefit of the doubt because she is a white woman who feared the large Black man in front of her; and in a white supremacist society, fear of Black bodies is just cause for murder, no matter how unfounded and racist the fear is that grips their throats and guides their trigger fingers.

More specifically, white women’s fear of Black male bodies carries more weight than the lives of the Black men they kill. After all, what’s one, dead Black man when a white woman’s future is at stake? . . .

Let’s make it plain: If a Black police officer entered a white woman’s apartment and killed her, the conversations around this case would be vastly different. The blue of his or her uniform would be washed away until only the negro remained. There would be no delicate wording, no calls for nuance, no questions as to the criminal, unjustified, violent nature of their actions, because to be Black is to not only live under constant threat, but be perceived as a constant threat. An avalanche of unverified excuses have been presented to protect Guyger, because the alleged fear of white killers wielding service weapons always takes precedence. Unhinged state power, exacerbated by the pedestaling and privileging of white women, is as American as redlining, lynchings, and white supremacist bigots in the White House.

“Botham Jean was exactly the sort of citizen we want to have in the city of Dallas,” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said. “A professional … a believer in his church, a neighbor to his friends. A man that always had a smile on his face. And for that reason, this is a terrible, terrible thing that has happened. Not only has he lost his life, but we’ve lost a potential leader for this city.”

No, it is a terrible, terrible thing because Botham Jean was a human being, not a “special” kind of Black man more deserving of life than those who carry the stench of caricatured and criminalized Blackness upon their skin. The racialized contortions to render him a perfect Black victim—unlike the “bad niggers” James Baldwin told us about in his 1966 Report from Occupied Territory—is a familiar, particular form of violence.

Jean’s life would have mattered even if he were not an upstanding member of the community who sang in the church choir and taught Bible study.

And Guyger, despite being a white woman with a badge, should be treated as nothing more than the cowardly killer she is. Because what we know—and this nation refuses to admit—is that they are often one and the same.

A Story Of Privilege

This cartoon story is by Toby Morris of Auckland. I found it at Liberals Unite. I think it sums up the problem of privilege pretty well. We're supposed to be a country offering equal opportunity for all citizens. We're not -- and it's time we fixed that.

White Privilege Must Be Eliminated By Whites

(These thought-provoking cartoon images are By Charlie Bink at charliebink.tumblr.com.)

The following post is from the diary of eodell at Daily Kos. I re-post it here because I think it's excellent -- and should be read by as many people as possible -- especially white people. It is about the continuing abomination of "white privilege" -- and why it is incumbent upon Whites to lead the fight against it. Eodell writes:

Dear white racists and your fragile fee-fees:

Relax, I'm white, too. Look, I can do the secret handshake and nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Lemme whitesplain something to you, fellow white men: no one buys your bullshit.

That's because your bullshit runs like this: For historically- and presently-oppressed black people to be treated decently, they must carefully avoid doing anything that could be remotely twisted into behaving like a white racist, even if you're squinting and looking at it from five hundred meters away in a thick fog. Because that would be racist, and therefore hypocritical, and if that's the case, they deserve to continue to be oppressed.

Here's the thing you thick-headed assholes totally fail to get: NO ONE DESERVES TO BE OPPRESSED, PERIOD. You can talk all you want about how it's okay for black people to be mistreated if--- but get this, there is no "if". It's not okay, ever. That's why we call it mistreatment. Your error is to think that it's ever justified, and your active misdeed is to constantly search for a justification. Black people, collectively, are not guilty of anything. In fact, a basic principle of civil society is that we reject the notion of collective guilt. Some individual black people, like individual white people, have done bad things, and in those cases, may deserve judicial punishments. But even those people don't deserve mistreatment from some random white guy on the street. And black people in general don't owe anyone anything as a prerequisite for being treated decently. No one does.

Now I know there are a bunch of you in the back of the room waving your hand and getting ready to launch the argument that it's racist to complain about white privilege. No, it is not. Complaining about white privilege is not the same as assigning collective guilt to white people. White privilege is a pervasive feature of our society and our legal system. It's hard to see if you're white (and you're not looking or actively trying not to look), but it is real, it is powerfully destructive, and if global warming had the kind of statistical support that evidence of white privilege has, Bill O'Reilly would be haranguing FOX News viewers to install solar panels.

And here's the subtle point that you folks either can't or won't grasp. White privilege is especially the responsibility of white people to fix, not because we're all racist schlubs like you are, but because white privilege itself means that we're the ones who have the power to change it. Black people don't have that power, again because of white privilege, and not because they aren't sufficiently careful in the way they phrase their complaints about being mistreated. It's our problem and our responsibility as white people to fix not because whites are collectively guilty, but because it is the responsibility of ALL PEOPLE to fight for decent treatment for ALL PEOPLE. It just happens that, because of our shithead ancestors and a helping handful of historical accident, we white people are the ones who can do something about it. When the finger on the trigger is white, it's pointless to ask a black guy to lower the gun.

And quite frankly, given all the shit that our black fellow citizens have put up with, and all the shit they have to deal with every. fucking. day., if some of them lose their tempers and say things that aren't carefully calibrated to kiss your privileged, hypersensitive asses, well, is that actually surprising? You lose your minds when black people just complain verbally about being kicked. Imagine how tough it would be for you to keep your cool if someone was actually doing something to you instead of just talking.

Finally, yes, I know this is pointless. You want to be offended to fluff your fragile egos, and you want black people to please shut the fuck up and stop harshing your mellow. I hate to break it to you, but as long as people are being murdered by the state, given draconian sentences for crimes that in many cases they haven't even committed, and being held in poverty and privation and a constant state of fear, those of us who actually give a shit about our fellow citizens are going, at the very least, to make some noise about it.

In the meantime, if you can't be bothered to do your duty as an American to protect your fellow Americans with the considerable power at your disposal, at least shut the fuck up and stop making an ass of yourself.

Regards,
Your fellow privileged white guy

(Image found at the web page http://afkeliesbeth.blogspot.com/2014/01/nelson-mandela-sinterklaas-en-pepsi.html.)