To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love Ad Considered Controversial by Amazon and Was Rejected for Display

Here’s the verbiage of an ad I placed on Amazon to get the word out about my book To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love:

“Interracially married and a witness to racial inequality in America for 42 years, Liuzzi Hagan calls upon all Americans to disavow systemic racism.”

I’ve run two ads in the past with the very same wording and haven’t had an issue, but this time I received an email with the following message from Amazon:

“Unfortunately, your ad campaign has not been approved to run on Kindle E-readers for the following reason(s):

    It is Amazon's policy to not advertise content in which our audiences may see a controversial topic, person, or event.”

My life story is suddenly considered controversial? Or is speaking about racism in America from any perspective considered controversial? Is my witness to racial inequality and the telling of my story the moral equivalent to white supremacists chanting “blood and soil” and carrying bats and rifles in Charlottesville? Is my call for equality reprehensible?  Please, Amazon, explain.

Fred is trying. Here is what he said:

Hello Dianne,

I'm very sorry for any frustration this issue has caused.

I checked and see that your ad is approved but it was rejected to run on Kindle E-readers.

I have escalated the issue with the Advertising team, please allow me some time to work with the since I need their expertise to solve this issue.  I've also prioritized the request to get more information on what needs to be corrected for the Ad to get approved to run on Kindle E-readers.

Your patience and understanding is highly appreciated.

As I’ll need a little time to look further into this, I’ll contact you with more information by the end of the day on April 25, 2018.

I do understand that if you've received more information on the email regarding the corrections that you've to made then that may be helpful.

I'll take your concern as feature request and communicate the same to our business team for consideration as we plan future improvements.

Thanks for your understanding and support.

In the meantime, I had already scheduled a free Kindle download promotion, but, unfortunately, because my ad was rejected, Kindle readers won’t even see it to know it is free.

To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love is the story of men and women who mattered, but their lives were ended by people who didn’t think they did. It’s my story of five decades of learning about race in America in ways I would never have experienced as a white woman if I hadn’t been interracially married. I’ve seen both sides of systemic privilege and bias, and I wanted to share that story as well as the story of those men and women who lost their lives to police, vigilantes, and white supremacist terrorists and their mothers and loved ones they left behind. My book is a call to disavow systemic racism and join together to demand race equality. 

That isn’t controversial. Rather it is about believing humanity can change the race narrative and reach the ideal that all people are created equal.

I hope you will join the conversation about race in America. Start by reading my book. Between April 21 – 25, 2018, it is free if downloaded to Kindle. That’s how important I feel my message of hope is.

And if you are so moved after you read it, please consider writing a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble to get the word out. I won’t let petty bureaucratic fear of backlash prevent my story and the story of those people whose lives, it seems, didn’t matter in this country, stop us from reaching the ideal of equality.

Here’s the link to purchase or get a free download of To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love. 

Read and join the conversation about race in America. Together we can change the narrative.

To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love

A year ago last month, Ronald and I saw the mothers of the Black Lives Matter movement at a restaurant after one of the Clinton rallies. For new readers, I am white and Ronald is black. We met forty-two years ago when I was 18 and he was 19. I wanted so much to go over to the mothers’ table and tell them how sorry I was for their losses and sorry that America failed them, but I am someone who feels others' pain acutely, and I was already in tears just being in their presence. I had shed many tears each time I heard about another unarmed black man, woman, or child murdered at the hands of a racially biased police officer, vigilante, or white supremacist terrorist, and I've felt the terror of having people treat us differently, unkindly, and, sometimes, violently because they didn't think we should be together. I did not want these beautiful women to feel they had to comfort me, and my husband agreed, so I did not go over. I regretted that decision, because they deserved to hear my condolences and that their children's lives mattered.

When we arrived home, I made a decision. I wanted to contribute to the conversation about race in America in an even bigger way than writing this blog. So, at age 60, I wrote my first full-length book, dedicated to the mothers of the movement, about my forty-two-year journey of learning about race in America. Forty-two years is not long enough, because we have already proven that 50 years or 150 years is not long enough. As the months wore on, under the great weight of a Trump-led America, where white supremacy moved into the White House and flooded mainstream culture, my book evolved, using posts from this blog—all written about the unjust murders of unarmed black men— revised, expanded,  and interwoven with my own experiences with racism, ranging from micro-aggressions to the truly terrifying, and the political landscape and racist backlash in America.

I am one tiny voice in the conversation about race that America must have, all of us, together, where people can put aside their feelings of frailty and of feeling attacked when talking about racism and inequality, and, instead, listen and ask what we need to do differently and how can we dismantle this system that benefits some while disadvantaging others, to create a better tomorrow where equality is an inherent right.

The book is published! It is titled To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love. You can order it here.

I hope, dear readers, you will join the conversation. I hope you will read my book, and it will inspire you to talk to your friends and family. Maybe it will give you the strength to speak out when you witness racial bias. Together, as a country, we can come to understand that systemic racism is a terrible, oppressive, unfair, and violent system, and it must be dismantled. Equality is right and righteous. Don't be silent. Vote for equality. Protest for equality. Take a knee during the anthem for equality. Let the mothers of the movement know that America knows their sons' and daughters' lives mattered.

You can find it here:
To the Mothers of the Movement, With Love

Sit, Swear, Stand

This government is of the people, for the people, and by the people. If you are not protesting this current administration, then you are handing our democracy to an inept despot whose advisors are white supremacists, Nazis, white nationalists, and, probably, the Russian government.

So when trump uses the power of his office to tell NFL owners to fire players who refuse to stand during the national anthem, we ought to align on the side of freedom of speech and on the side of equal justice in our police and justice system. If you don’t, just hand our country over and prepare to live without the freedoms we often take for granted but that aren't shared by all our citizens.

I stopped placing my hand over my heart during the pledge of allegiance and the anthem years ago. I’ve lived the ugly side of America. I understand many in this country don’t think my husband Ronald and my daughters Cara and Mackenzie matter, and in turn, don’t think my voice matters because I engaged in race mixing. That hasn’t stopped me from being a patriotic citizen. I continue to fight for the ideals and values of this country that are sometimes skipped over or ignored in the quest to prove this country is for white people and not all our citizens. Now I will not stand for the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance. I agree with the professional athletes who know that any day of the week when they are off the field or the court, they are just another black person at risk of becoming victims of dangerous and possibly fatal interactions with the police, vigilantes, and white supremacists. They are also representing the 28 percent of people of color who live in poverty and who do not have a national stage on which to speak about the issues their communities face. And don’t tell me how, as a few people already have, that professional athletes make so much money they should stay quiet.  No, they shouldn’t. Don’t be silent, especially under the rule of this racist administration.

The white team owners are horrid and racist if they cannot support the players who make them so much money and make sports so exciting to watch. They don’t deserve to have such great players if they are only valued for their skills and not because they are human beings who matter and who face discrimination and danger in this country.

In many of my Facebook posts, I swear. I use common swear words such as fuck, shit, asshole and bastard when I post articles about trump (I also refuse to capitalize his name—and I certainly will not call him president) and everyday articles that clearly show we are not living in a post-racial society. Rather we are living in a segregated society where it is dangerous and sometimes fatal to be a person of color.

This started after a homeowners’ association meeting I was holding when I was still the president—before I resigned because they refused to stop doing business with the attorney we hired to conduct our legal affairs when I discovered he was the state chapter chairman of the League of the South, a white supremacist, secessionist group that hopes to start a race war. At the HOA meeting we were talking to the district police captain, who came to our meeting to talk about safety and how to reduce crime in our neighborhood, about our shooter neighbor, the one who blindly shot through her garage door because she heard Mexican voices in her driveway and who also claimed an escaped prisoner, a black man, of course, had been captured behind her house—it was a lie. He was caught six miles away.

We were trying to explain to the cop that she made our neighborhood dangerous for the neighbors of color, many of whom were teenagers. In fact, she was a danger to all of us, because shooting blindly without knowing what is beyond your target, and not even knowing if your target is a true danger to you, puts everyone in danger.

The cop kept defending her Second Amendment right and said that he supported her shooting blindly because she had a small child in the house, and nothing would change his mind.

Ronald stood and told the story of how a police officer treated him while he was doing yard work at our old Syracuse home. He demanded to know if Ronald lived there—I suppose lots of criminals rake the lawn before breaking and entering. Then he told Ronald to get his “fucking license” to prove he lived there.  Ronald quoted the police officer in telling the story, so people would be aware of how quickly a police stop initiated by racial bias can escalate.

We were holding the meeting in the community room of the church near our neighborhood, where one of our neighbors is a pastor. He made Ronald leave the meeting for swearing in the house of the lord, and he locked him out. I was crying when I told him that Ronald does not swear, he was quoting the officer to make an important point about how dangerous it is to be black when certain neighbors were vilifying every black person who entered the neighborhood. He didn’t care, and he didn’t unlock the door. I asked the one black couple if they could give me a ride home after the meeting, but Ronald had waited for me out in the parking lot.

That evening made me want to swear, even though I don’t usually, because when people think using swear words is worse than people of color being murdered just for having brown skin, I think we should take a fucking stand against it. So I decided that night I won’t put up with that bullshit and I will take a fucking stand until it is safe for people of color to live their lives safely in America without the threat of dying by the hand of a racist while going about their daily business.

I will sit during the national anthem, in support of people of color who feel this country doesn’t want them here, doesn't think they matter, and will engage in murder to prove it, and until such time all Americans are duly able to exercise their rights as citizens and where they can safely be where they are; I will swear until Christians get their damned priorities straight and stop hating on people, claiming it is in God’s name that they are doing so, and until they remember the good news and act to live it;  I will stand beside people of color in protest of the new Jim Crow, the blatant murder of people of color, and the segregation of our country where people of color are expected to be invisible so white people can feel comfortable. I will stand with them because their lives matter. I hope you will, too, even if you think it doesn’t affect you. Check your white privilege and join in, or else nothing will change. Join me in being a creative maladjusted. Don’t be silent.

Washington Examiner

America Broke My Spirit

I spend anxious days and view many people with suspicion. I cry. I can’t quiet my mind at night. I keep the news on almost 24/7.  I talk about these days on FaceBook to the discomfort of my FB friends. Both my daughters report crying and anxiety, too. My husband is agitated.

The two days I decided to shut the news off, bombs went off in NY/NJ and a black man was shot and killed in a police stop after his car broke down in Tulsa, OK.

One of the pilots in the helicopter circling over the scene said, “… looks like a bad dude. Might be on something.” But I didn’t see that. In the video taken from the helicopter, Terence Crutcher was walking slowly with his hands in the air. He did not appear dangerous. Nor did he have anything in his hands. Later police claimed he might have had PCP in his car, the usual criminalization and thugification of the victim. His twin sister Dr. Tiffany Crutcher said, “He didn’t have a chance to live.”

Crutcher, 40, did not deserve to die that day.

Then one day later in Charlotte, NC, police shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott, allegedly for carrying a gun. His family disputes this fact, and many witnesses came forward to say he spent each day reading in his car.  The police videos have not been released to the public as I write this. The family got to review them, and the attorneys representing them said the review just raised more questions.  Protests broke out, and when police arrived in riot gear, violence broke out. One person was shot and killed, not by a police officer, and neither his name nor the circumstances of the shooting were released.

North Carolina passed a law that will go into effect on October 1^st. It will make it nearly impossible for the public to obtain access to police video. I believe the authorities are dragging their feet until the law goes into effect.

North Carolina, the state I live in, is an open carry state. People can wear a weapon to the grocery store, to restaurants, walking down the street, and sitting in their cars. How can anyone be shot for carrying a gun when it is perfectly legal? Easily. Just like the stand your ground law in Florida is for white people like George Zimmerman, open carry is for white people in NC and in other open carry states. America is for white people.

Two bits of positive news filtered through my veil of tears and anxiety: Officer Betty Shelby, the officer who shot and killed Terence Crutcher, was charged with first degree manslaughter and protests in Charlotte, despite a call for a state of emergency and a midnight curfew, remained absolutely peaceful on the third evening, even after protesters kept on marching well past midnight.

North Carolina Congressman Robert Pittenger said of the protesters, “"The grievance in their mind is the animus, the anger. They hate white people because white people are successful and they're not."

I am so tired of people like Trump and others who call black Americans poor, uneducated, resentful, angry, lazy, needy, and criminal, any negative adjective will do in their minds. My family, my interracial family, is full of educated professionals. They own homes and cars and buy their own food and go on vacations. My black friends (and I don’t just have one for kicks) are educated professionals, too, though I have certainly known poor people in my life. I was one of them, growing up in a white suburb outside Albany, NY.

White people don’t know how offensive it is when someone assumes you are poor, uneducated, and criminal just because your skin is brown.  And it doesn’t matter where you live, what car you drive, what your profession is. If you have brown skin, America views you differently. This goes for white liberals, too, who believe all the magnanimous equality stuff in theory but quickly revert to stereotypes in practice.

Racial bias is rampant in America. It is hard to deny. My own neighbors chose a white supremacist over Ronald and me, and we have lived here for nine years. I was president of the HOA. I did good things for the neighborhood and Ronald keeps our yard and garden in tiptop shape. Yet, when forced to choose, because I asked them to, they chose the white supremacist, someone who represented the HOA in legal matters, not a neighbor. Most people did not even know his name. But the HOA officer, who refused to replace him, in spite of my protests and resignation, said the attorney was more than just a person who was paid to perform legal services, he was part of HOA, one of them, and not a single neighbor disputed that statement. Not us, though. We aren’t part of the neighborhood. We are interlopers. We are liberals who don’t understand Southern culture, white Southern culture, where white men are superior and everyone else is submissive. We are, as we have been told since moving down here, an abomination because we are guilty of race mixing. We live someplace they don’t think we belong. The sad thing is, black families don’t belong anywhere in America, because white people don’t want them.

Another neighbor who lives behind us, angry that my husband said they had directed their drainpipe on to our property, causing flooding, said, “You think everything bad happens to you because you are black. You are a dumbass.”

Ronald said, “Interesting that you are the one who brought that up and not me.”

Secretary Clinton was lambasted for calling half of Trump supporters a basket of deplorables. She was not far off, as she has a brilliant mind for numbers and statistics.

From an NPR story:

…  a PRRI/Atlantic poll this spring found that Trump supporters are more likely than others to say that:

▪       The U.S. is becoming too soft and feminine (68 percent),

▪       It bothers them when they encounter immigrants who do not speak English (64 percent),

▪       The government has paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities (55 percent)

▪       Men and women should stick to more traditional gender roles and tasks (50 percent),

▪       Discrimination against women is no longer a problem (46 percent)

If anything Clinton may have been purposely underestimating the number.

The worst thing, the thing I keep replaying over and over in my head, is when a few HOA members told me I was wrong in saying the attorney was racist. They deemed he was not racist. My thoughts on the topic were not credible.

But here is a portion of a blog post from the national founder and president of the organization the attorney chairs in NC:

But [multiculturalism] is really not about ushering in equality among all races, religions, and cultures; rather, it is about destroying Western Christian civilization, the world's premier unmitigated evil. And because the South is the strongest enclave of this civilization, it finds itself square in the crosshairs of the MC crowd. Why do you think the Feds are not willing to lift a hand to stop our dispossession by a floodtide of illegal immigrants? It is the continuation of Reconstruction to the ultimate degree. We are being replaced as a people. 

Any attempt by Western man to defend himself and his civilization is called "racism," and is designed to paralyze him completely (even when no malice is shown toward any other group). This agenda points up the fact that the proponents of MC seek not fairness, justice, or equality but demonization and destruction of the white, Christian West. Only whites, and white Southerners in particular, are not allowed to have a country all their own. Asia for Asians, Africa for Africans, but no South for white Southerners! 

All indications point to the success of the MC agenda of paralyzing the West through guilt manipulation. Though we never had any sort of debate about whether we wanted to be a MC polity, it has been forced upon us anyway. Anyone who protests is silenced by the usual epithets. Even opposition to illegal immigration is enough to get you called a "racist" or a "xenophobe." If you don't believe me, check out the Southern Poverty Law Center's rants on the subject.

The xenophobic, racist right wants to get rid of political correctness, but they can’t stand to be called what they are, and that is white supremacists. My neighbors were quick to tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about. They were quick to blame my ignorance on “that liberal organization,” the Southern Poverty Law Center.  But, oh, don’t go calling them a basket of deplorables.

White supremacists are flocking to support Trump. They haven’t felt so emboldened since David Duke, once the grand wizard of the KKK, ran as a presidential candidate in 1988 – does anyone else even remember this? Today David Duke is running for a Senate seat.

Here is a snippet of an interview with Steve Innskeep of NPR:

[David Duke] was confident that Trump backers in Louisiana would support his Senate run.

"We've already polled inside the Trump voters, and we know that we're going to carry 75 to 80 percent of those who are going to vote for Trump," he said.

Steve asked, "You think Trump voters are your voters?"

"Well, of course they are!" Duke said. "Because I represent the ideas of preserving this country and the heritage of this country, and I think Trump represents that as well."

Black men get shot and killed if they are found in white neighborhoods, even when they live there, and they get shot and killed in predominately black neighborhoods. No place is home if you are black in America. No place is safe.

White people can’t imagine it. They get angry. Why do you keep talking about race? They blame president Obama for being the divisive one.  

Trump campaign chair Kathy Miller said, “If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” and she also called Black Lives Matter “a stupid waste of time.”

Then she blamed it all on Obama, saying, “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this ... Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.”

She has since resigned her position, playing the scapegoat in a campaign rife with hatred and ignorance.

You can tell me she is just one person. But she is one of the deplorables and there are many more where she came from.

You know what hurts and outrages me the most? When family and friends choose white over acknowledging that what we experience is different than what they experience, and that it is dangerous and scary at times. I don’t need anyone to weigh in on how they perceive the situation. If you haven’t lived it, you have no idea.

I am sure some of my FaceBook friends wonder why I still talk about the HOA incident. Why am I still emotional and why haven’t I put to rest the whole issue because the attorney resigned and the other officers resigned? Why is it a fresh wound that won’t heal?

Because now I know how our neighbors feel about us.

As soon as the police pull over a black man in a traffic stop, he is already considered not one of them, “looking like a bad dude” just for having brown skin. That’s what racial bias does to one’s perception of an individual. Even when the police officer is black, as in the Charlotte shooting, racial bias plays a part. How can having a broken down car, a broken taillight, or maybe “fitting the description” which is oftentimes simply “black male,” turn so deadly, so quickly, and in so many stops?

Don’t tell me not to mourn. Don’t tell me my tears and anxiety are only hurting me. Don’t tell me things aren’t dire. Don’t tell me it only looks bad because the media is drawing attention to it.

Maybe my anger scares you. Your unwillingness to be outraged scares me.

I am not asking you to give away your sense of status and privilege as an American. I am only suggesting it should be available to every American.

You know what would be nice, though? Maybe saying what my friend on FB said to me last night when I was feeling pretty low. She said, “You're not alone. I can't fight your fight, but I can struggle along in my own way.” Thank you.

Footage just released by Scott family. His wife recorded it. She told the police he had traumatic brain injury. There is nothing on the ground by him, but then there is after an officer leans over. Release the police video.
9/24/2016 I had to wait a day to be able to say this because my anger and sorrow reached a terrible place while I watched the video Mrs. Scott took (over and over, I watched): how strong must a person be to record, hold herself still, put aside the terror raging inside her, engage calmly with the police, and watch the them murder her husband in cold blood? Why must she be that strong? Because in America, it is a must. The whole legacy of black American history is to not let them, the white man, break you.  I don't know if I could be that strong. But I know I have to think about it because I may have to one day unless we can stop the senseless murder of black men and women.