The Right is "Taking Back" the Civil Rights Movement, Remember?

Black Power's Gonna Get You Sucka:
Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism
By Tim Wise

July 10, 2010

Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism.

Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad.

Who in Hell Left the Gates Open?! [Updated}

Update: This is the most recent info I could find. Now. There are several out there who feel the whole ordeal was Gates's fault, that had he just complied with the police and been polite, he wouldn't have been arrested - police don't like to be shown up no matter what the other person's race is. All that junk, you'll have to google on your own.


Smooth Criminal (Radio Edit) - Michael Jackson

Me? I hope this finally convinces those individuals who believe that it's not about race as much as class that race does indeed trump class. I personally don't believe the police account that Gates became combative and accused the police of racial bias - mostly because Gates doesn't believe in the overarching construct and impact of racism. But assuming Gates did become belligerent, do the cops really arrest every person who becomes belligerent. Are there no white people who became belligerent with cops and didn't get arrested? I know that's not the case because I've already read a few personal accounts to the contrary.

And it's widely documented that white people accept more disrespect or combativeness from other white people than from people of color. It's also widely known, amongst black people at least, that any sign of resistance will be met with a billy-club and handcuffs. Like I said, I can hardly imagine Gates being belligerent. And the plain truth is he could've done everything the police asked and been as perfectly polite as Emily Post instructs, that does not mean that a request for the cops name and badge would not be met with handcuffs. Or maybe, considering all the cases of police brutality that I've seen and heard, I just think a black person has to give 110% effort at demonstrating their cooperation and respect for the police. Including but not limited to keeping your hands visible at all times. I mean for real. I know of a 19-year-old black guy who was the passenger in a car driven by a white person, and the black guy ends up dead. I'm not even sure the white driver was arrested. I know of a situation where a woman was in some kind of state of medical emergency, I can't remember if she had overdosed on some drug or was in a diabetic shock, but she was shot several times by the police and killed even though, and the police say because, from start to finish she did not move.

The other issue that convinces me this was about race is the neighbor. I mean, why was it necessary to describe the possible thieves as "black?" Whatever it may be and whatever the race of the neighbor, there are racial implications and reason for describing a suspect as "black." Maybe you didn't know you had any black neighbors and you're using the descriptor to indicate the people you're calling about don't belong there. Or, maybe you know that saying "dangerous black male" will get a quicker response. And just who is this neighbor and how long has she been living there? Maybe it's because I've lived in the same neighborhood all my life, or because my eyes are wonderfully healthy, but I'd be able to recognize my neighbors across the street even if it were just by their silhouette.

But there's another issue to address, and this no matter how racism-deniers (You know, like holocaust-deniers? My term, my term.) respond to this, is what it says to black kids and maybe even all kids of color. White people don't know it, but within the black community, adults do stress the importance of education. Work hard, go to college, be the best "you" you can be. We tell our young people that the sky is the limit, they can become whatever they want to become, racism is an obstacle but it has been, can and will be, overcome. In fact, I go as far as to say one of the many strategies of assault on racism is to use education to learn how the "system" works and be able to manipulate it, whether from the inside as a lawmaker criminalizing racial profiling or from the outside as a community activist. But here's the hard-hitting truth, the part of Pres. Obama recent speech to the NAACP that mainstream media ignores: at the end of the day, no amount of education or success can shield you from racism. And especially if it's coming from US senators during your confirmation hearing on your nomination to the Supreme Court and you're a wise Latina woman.
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I just heard about this. Just heard about this. Here's what racismreview has to say . . . my thoughts, and a Michael Jackson song, later.

Racism in Cambridge: Harvard Prof. Gates Arrested
Posted by admin on Jul 21st, 2009 2009
Jul 21Arriving home after a recent trip to China and struggling to get into his own home in Cambridge because of a jammed door, esteemed scholar of African American Studies and Harvard Professor, Henry Louis (”Skip”) Gates, Jr., was arrested by police. According to one report (h/t @BlackInformant for a couple of these links), this incident began when someone alerted police:

A witness, 40-year-old Lucia Whalen of Malden, had alerted the cops that a man was “wedging his shoulder into the front door” at Gates’ house “as to pry the door open,” police reported.

None of the reports I’ve read online describe Ms. Whalen’s race, or why someone from Malden was doing calling the cops about a man entering his own home in Cambridge, but apparently it was her call that began this series of events. Here’s what happened next, according to several reports, this one from HuffingtonPost:

By the time police arrived, Gates was already inside. Police say he refused to come outside to speak with an officer, who told him he was investigating a report of a break-in.

“Why, because I’m a black man in America?” Gates said, according to a police report written by Sgt. James Crowley. The Cambridge police refused to comment on the arrest Monday.

Gates continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him,” the officer wrote.

Gates said he turned over his driver’s license and Harvard ID – both with his photos – and repeatedly asked for the name and badge number of the officer, who refused. He said he then followed the officer as he left his house onto his front porch, where he was handcuffed in front of other officers, Gates said in a statement released by his attorney, fellow Harvard scholar Charles Ogletree, on a Web site Gates oversees, TheRoot.com.

As this story has begun to get out on the web in the last 12-24 hours, it seems to be touching off a tsunami of outrage at the persistence of racial inequality in the U.S., even for one of the most well-known and accomplished scholars. If this could happen to Skip Gates, at his home in Cambridge, Mass., it does not speak well for the state of racial progress in the country as a whole. As Rev. Al Sharpton said, “If this can happen at Harvard, what does it say about the rest of the country?”

But, make no mistake, this outrage is not universally shared. Almost as soon as this story broke, the undertow of white backlash to the reality of racism began to counter the outrage. For example, Bruce Maiman, writing at The Examiner, contends that the Cambridge police were just doing their job, responding to a call about a break-in to a home, and that Prof. Gates escalated the situation. Here’s Maiman:

So I ask you: Who’s the person who caused this encounter? Professor Gates is now being represented by another distinguished law professor from Harvard, Charles Ogletree, and they’re going to claim that this cop was racist and mishandled this situation because the fact that a black male was involved.

I don’t see any racism, do you? Tell me where? No names were called. Nobody was hassled or pushed around. Legitimate requests were made and cooperation was not forthcoming from a man, Henry Louis Gates, who know better than most people on this planet what happens when you escalate a confrontation with the police. But he does it anyway.

Is there racial profiling in America? Sure there is. But if you justify the behavior of Henry Louis Gates because other black men have been hassled by other police officers unfairly and thus you assume every black man has a right to a chip on his shoulder every time he meets a cop, you are asking for trouble.

This doesn’t appear to be racism. It sounds to me like a colossal case of extraordinarily bad judgment on the part of a distinguished African American historian who happens to teach at Harvard, and who certainly should’ve known better.

Here, Maiman’s interpretation of these events is completely steeped in the white racial frame. He says, “I don’t see any racism” and, of course, he can’t from the WRF. He only sees a black man “with a chip on his shoulder,” not the racist behavior of the cop. Maiman further diminishes Gates by referring to him as someone “who happens to teach at Harvard” and questions his judgment because he “certainly should’ve known better.” Known better than to what, try and enter his own home? Maiman is simply wrong on the facts here, and wrong on his interpretation of the events. Maiman is like other whites, as philosopher Charles W. Mills writes, “unable to see the world he has created,” unable to see how his not-seeing-racism contributes to the problem of racial inequality.

The research on the racial inequality in policing, arrest, and incarceration in the U.S. is starkly clear (as we’ve recounted on this blog hundreds of times): those who are black or brown, particularly men, are much more likely to be stopped, frisked, harrassed, arrested and convicted than whites. And, this inequality in criminal ‘justice’ is part of a larger pattern of racial inequality that operates systematically throughout U.S. institutions. The irony, for those that have followed Gates’ scholarship closely, is that he has tended to downplay the significance of institutional racism in the contemporary U.S. Reports are that Gates’ is “shaken” by this experience, as anyone would be. This is a horrifying, and yet all too common, experience for black men in this country. Perhaps Gates’ next volume will be called “Harvard Professor, Still a Suspect.”

More good sociological analysis on this case (and others) from City College Prof. Dumi Lewis, here.
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As a history student, and nerd, I know Gates and hold him in fairly high regard. However, I've always been disappointed in his views, or maybe his lack of outspokenness, on systemic racism. I wonder if this will do anything to change his thinking. Though, regardless, whatever it matters and to the extent that I can, I got his back like black.

Ruling from Ideology

I've been around the last week. I'm up on everything. Can't get over Michael. He was just an incredible, once in ever artist. I'll never reach his level on music heights. And I wonder what would've come had he gone into acting. Or, if he had gotten some help. I won't even lie, I even wonder if the man was just a musical savant and a little diminished in other areas.

But I do hope that I can have the same impact when it comes to humanitarianism and people's lives in the area of social justice.

So, I've been watching the lastest, and the latest from the Supreme Court has me even more determined to help bring about justice and righteousness. And you know it was 5-4. Stank Kennedy. He must've been one of those other Kennedy's, you know? (Listen, if you don't understand the snide comment I'm making, please ask about it before you assume something stupid.) And for my white readers or any one of y'all just passing through, this is why Uncle Clarence gets his own title.

I swear! Just read the article and let me know what you think. And if you got something smart to say but didn't read the article, oh, I will be drawing blood. Make no mistake about it. And just so we're clear, yes, I'm saying this decision is racist. Yes, I'm saying the fact that we have so many "empathetic" white male judges not only influenced the outcome; but, at least 3 of'em are racist. Plain and tall.

I'm Forced to Ask . . .

You know, I haven't really heard of anyone from the pro-choice camp murdering anybody for, I don't know, preventing women from having abortions. If you have, please drop a line. But how anyone can murder in the name of "pro-life" is beyond me, even if you argue they're ultimately saving lives.

By the by, has anyone heard anything for Gloria Steinem or Geraldine Ferrarro responding to the racist and sexist attacks against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor? I mean, I know they didn't defend Michelle Obama much when she was being called an "angry black woman" or Pres. Obama's "baby mama," so I guess their silence here is par for the course. A little disappointing, though. A little disappointing. You know. They come across as only being interested in making white women the equal of white men, not in equality for all. Of course, I already thought Ferrarro was racist, but Steinem? I'm disappointed. Maybe they'll say something by the time Judge Sotomayor is confirmed.

And oh, yeah. I'm sure you've heard all the "colorblind" talk about how Sotomayor's race and gender shouldn't play a role in the decision to confirm and deny her. Which is odd. I mean, you never hear that about white men. Don't get me wrong, I know that's because white men are held as the "norm" and everything else is a deviation from the "norm." But, it just bothers me because the people making all the "colorblind" talk are conservatives who, you know, aren't exactly thrilled to have a more diverse court. They want to argue that her race and gender shouldn't matter in that they don't necessarily make her a better judge; they have more sense than to argue her race and gender make her a worse judge. But, with all the talk that she's too focused on her race and how she's an anti-white racist based on all of one phrase and her membership in the National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino civil rights group, I kinda get they feeling they'd like to if they could.

What really gets me is how they argue that a court of 9 white men can make just as good decisions as a court of 9 Latinas. To prove this, they point out that a court of 9 white men decided Brown vs Board of Education which overturned Plessy vs Ferguson, as though it wasn't 9 white men who decided Plessy vs Ferguson in the first place.

But, every time I hear someone say Sotomayor's race and gender shouldn't matter, it's like a cloud floats by right out of my reach. I can't quite get my mind to figure out why it bothers me. I guess because conservatives want to pretend that you don't have to take race and/or gender into consideration in order to reach a fair decision in choosing who to place on the Supreme Court. They call her an "affirmative action" pick, which is ironic in itself. They, of course, mean that she was chosen just because of her race and gender and nothing else. As if excusing her race and gender, she doesn't have any other qualifications. They question her depth of intelligence as though graduating in the top 2 of Princeton University is so easy a caveman could do. As though Bush did it. They question if she's smart enough to be on the court, as though she hasn't spent the past 17 years as a judge in the federal courts. They question her temperament, which actually doesn't bother me accept they use the word "temperament" as a euphemism for "she may not always decide for the rich, the white, or the corporations."

But, of course, affirmative action means we just made sure her race and gender didn't hold her back. I guess what conservatives don't want to publicly acknowledge is that due to historical and recent racism, if you just reach into a pool of judges "color-blindly" you'll probably pull out a white guy. I'm guess they would disagree, and Clarence Thomas would be their example, but according to their rhetoric, the only way to choose someone without regard to their race or gender would be to choose a white man. And that, of course, only furthers the cause of white male dominance, of patriarchy and racism. I guess that's what bothers me about the whole argument that Sotomayor's race and gender shouldn't matter. For conservatives, it seems like the only time race and gender don't matter, which probably means as much as anything else that it's the only time they don't notice, is when a white man is involved. And that's just plain racist and sexist and I wish I knew how to scream this to them and put a stop to it. If only, if only.

If only I could further crystallize my thoughts! We'll see in the coming days. I'll keep trying to think this out. Enough for tonight, though.

Here's a Thought: Section 5 Should Apply to All States Equally

Here's an article on slate.com summarizing the arguments, from both the principle parties and the justicies, in the most recent challenge to protecting minority voting rights. Here's a NY Times op-ed explaining things.

When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, they wrote Section 5 of the act which singled out Southern states for special federal oversight. Now, conservatives, including the conservative justices, are arguing that it should maybe overturned for unfairly attacking states' rights. Even though Congress just recently reauthorized Section 5 in 2006, and according to conservatives it's not the job of judges to "legislate from the bench," if proponents of voting rights can't sway Justice Kennedy to their perspective, Section 5 just might be overturned. What makes Section 5 particularly insulting to Dixie is that there're are northern states who track much worse than they do. (I have to add here that that's an odd, historical argument - that Dixie should not be judged because there are places in the north that are much more virulently racist.) At least, that's how I understand it.

I have a suggestion. Why not place all 50 states under Section 5?

Freedom Writing, Am I?

I just finished watching the movie Freedom Writers. And by just finished, I mean it went off two minutes ago. I'm embarrassed to confess I actually had the book for about a month but never read it. And I'll tell you why. One reason is that given my situation, I try not to add anymore sadness to my environment. That's why I didn't read the book.

But as for why I'm just now watching the movie? I had already seen Dangerous Minds. I have seen some Meyrl Streep movie where she plays a violin teacher, is it? I've seen the Ron somebody movie.

So. Another movie where some pasty, suburban white teacher comes into a rowdy, poor, urban classroom and manages to teach these kids of color where everyone else had failed? My feelings were, simply, "Seen it."

And, I'm going to stick with that thought for a moment. My mom was a teacher. My aunt is a teacher. My great-grandfather help build a school for black children during neo-slavery, or rather, Jim Crow. I'm afraid teaching may be my truth. But that's for later.

My point is this. With the exception of Lean on Me, I haven't seen or heard of a movie where a black teacher, or any other teacher of color for that matter, comes in and changes the lives of his/her students. Even though as I've laid out, I know it happens everyday. And what about the movie of the black teacher, or any other teacher of color for that matter, who comes into a suburban, white class, honor students, disciplined, well behaved, and changes their lives? Has that not happened? Ever? When's that movie coming out?

Come to think about it. I've even seen the movie of the first little black girl who integrated some Southern school, and because none of the white parents wanted their child(ren) in class with her, she ended up in class alone. Being taught by a white teacher. For a year. One on one.

And even in that movie, the white teacher was the "star."

What is it with white people and their, or maybe your, need to be the "star" in every show. Amistad. A Time to Kill. Ghosts of Mississippi.

Mississippi Burning. I mean, damn. You people will rewrite history to make yourselves the hero(ine)(s), and then bitch and moan because the first black attorney general over 200 years after the "birth" of a nation that has always had black people in it called everyone a "nation of cowards." And you wonder why anyone would call you a coward? It's because you're too much of a punk to look yourself in the mirror and say . . .

"I'm prejudiced . . .

"The country I live in and cheer for was founded on the subjugation of another group of people . . .

"The country I live in and cheer for grew territorially by genocide and theft of another group of people . . .

"Today, I still benefit from discriminatory practices against my fellow citizens because I am white and they are not . . .

Until you can say that to yourself, or something like it, you are less than a coward. I mean, damn. Even a coward has the courage to admit he's afraid. (Oo! There goes my flair for writing! Love that line.)

So anyway, I just saw the movie Freedom Writers. And it struck me personally for a number of reasons. Not the least of which that this woman unexpectedly found her calling. Plus, what she and her class did encompass all of my best and worst qualities. Never settling for "not going to happen." Challenging and questioning the system. Writing.

And the funny thing about me and writing is that I haven't read a fiction novel since the first semester of my first year in college. So, literally not since 2000. But writing is what I do. It's one of the innumerable things I am. I wake up in the morning, put myself to sleep, usually keep myself up - writing.

Teaching and inspiring is something else I do. When you get me in front of a group of people to talk, it's magic. And the funny thing is, I can convince people of things I don't necessarily believe myself. Things I'm saying just to convince myself!

But, when it comes to issues I'm passionate about - history, education, social empowerment, justice, spiritual salvation - I can move people by the sheer force of my own passion. My own desire for what's right.

I mean. It's not like I close my eyes and really see myself with the courage of a Miep Gies or Ida B Wells or Ella Baker. I just know from my own experience, when push comes to shove, I. do. not. break. Oh, I'll let you win the battles I don't care about. And I do shy away from unnecessary confrontation. I mean. I'm not going to get into a big thing with my pastor about Original Sin when I know upfront I'm going to believe whatever I want to believe anyway regardless of what he says. And now that I think about it, perhaps my biggest problem with Original Sin is that I know in my spirit, there's just something about the need for "doctrine" that ain't quite up to snuff.

But I digress.

I am a woman who, as a child, did not shy away from challenging my parents when I thought they were wrong and I right. One who refused to cry even when being "spanked" with a belt (because my mother takes exception to my describing what occurred as "whooping"). One who would go to the well again, knowing what I could expect. So deep down, yeah. I'd be just the teacher on the forefront of challenging my department head, my principal, my school board. Everybody. Even in college, I told my history professor I thought one of the historians we were reading had mis-analyzed, if that's a word, a situation and gotten it wrong. She looked at me funny, the professor that is, looked at me funny and made one of those parental threats to call the historian. "I know her. I can call her." My response? "Good. Call'er."

But what really agitated me was that department head lady who refused to give Erin and the kids credit for anything. And that male teacher who said integration was a farce. Though, I disagree with the girl about speaking for the entire black community. Personally, I loved to speak from my experience and tell the truth, especially if it provoked some guilt. I'd be thrilled to be called on to give the "black perspective" if for no other reason than just to make sure my white classmates knew their lived experiences weren't shared Or even true. But I can be contrary like that. I don't know whether or not I would've chosen to go to a the Freedom Writer's class. If I knew upfront I was going to piss someone off, maybe.

But trust me. Just like our enslaved forebearers, we all still challenge the system in our own ways. Victoria's strategy no better or worse than my own.

Anyway. What I saw in that department head lady and that male teacher is the same thing I see and read and hear from so many white people today: the desperate fight to maintain the status quo.

Don't get it twitted (my creative lisensed "twisted," nothing to do with "twitter"). The majority of white Americans voted for John McCain. And as for the rest, those white Americans and other non-blacks who voted for Barack Obama, did they really have any other viable choice? So, from where I'm sitting . . . but I digress.

It's not just white people who fight to maintain the status quo. It's men. It's bankers. It's the wealthy. It's anyone who benefits from the status quo and if you are one of those people who benefit or are content with the status quo I ask you I implore you to ask yourself do you really benefit? Are you really content?

Don't be a coward.

Scott. He wasn't really content, but he wasn't willing to fight for what he wanted.

Me? It hasn't been a question of whether or not I'd fight. My struggle has been deciding just how to fight. I'm loathed to become a teacher for several reasons that don't need discussion here.

But I am a fighter.

I guess my question is, for you my reader, and even for me on those days when I become so tired, my question is - are you?

Oh, Shut Up!

If you've read a good number of my posts, you know I support gay rights, including same-sex marriage or at least some legal approximation. (There is a credible argument to be made that throughout history, even Greek history when philosophers were sleeping with their male protegees, marriage has always and only applied to the covenant between a man and a woman.)

If you've read a good number of my posts, you know I have little respect for the so-called Christians Evangelicals and Fundamentalists. I have referred to them as "gellies" and "fundies." I think they're wrong to focus so much attention on things they have no right to control, like women's bodies and other people's sexuality, while they dismiss and even aggravate the need for racial and economic justice. They ignore the growing prison industrial complex that is ravaging communities and making use of legalized slavery. They ignore our over reliance on the military. They ignore the growing military industrial complex. They ignore the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghans who have died in our ill-conceived "war on terror." They can make no credible claim to concern for "life." Not while the vote against S-CHIP and other attempts to make healthcare affordable and accessible. Not while they sit complacently as our schools return to a pre-integration state in the disparity of money spent per child and children in integrated schools end up racially segregated.

Don't get me wrong. I've read Purpose Driven Life. But I'm a much bigger fan of Rachel Maddow than I am of Rick Warren.

Having said that, I wish the gay community would stop with their whining and crying over Rick Warren giving the invocation at the inauguration. They claim that his presence is a slap in the face and a signal that the LGBT community won't have a seat at the table during Barack Obama's administration. But the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who supports gay rights, including gay marriage, is giving the benediction. What does that mean? Does Rick Warren's presence make anything Joseph Lowery represents as far as gay rights null and void? And if so, why? Cause I know you wouldn't be acting as if Lowery's presence means nothing just because Warren is white and Lowery is black. (Of course, I'm being facetious.)

And quit crying about your social status! You're not at the back of the bus; and if you are, you're certainly not their alone. When you move into a community, people don't rush to move out! The property doesn't go down, it goes up! So shut up with you're whining.

You make the same mistake the gellies and fundies make: you act like your issue is the only one that exists. It's not, and you're both wrong. You act like racism and sexism and economic justice no longer exist. You're both wrong. You act like that only people who matter are white people. You act like only the concerns of white people should be addressed. Again, you're both wrong.

And what's more, shut up complaining like Obama owes you something! All he owes you is living up to his campaign promises. He's been doing that. What I find most especially disturbing is this sense that a group of people beyond Obama's choosing is going to control what he does. I mean, really. Do you think that you're supposed to order him around or something? That he's your White House negro? Come on! I've seen this show before. A black person reaches some position of influence and power, and the white people below and around him/her act as though they're still going to tell him/her what to do. I'm sorry. Try as I might, I can't separate the way the LGBT community is carrying on from race.

Not that Rick Warren is great on issues of race. From what I can see, he'd vote against affirmative action. And still, you don't see people of color carrying on like the sky is falling.

For goodness sake people, it's just an invocation! Some of you don't even believe in God. What do you care who gives the invocation?

It's just an invocation! He's not righting a bill for Obama to sign. Obama's not "pandering" to the evangelical community. How can he be when he has someone who supports gay rights doing the benediction? Or am I missing something.

Yeah, I don't think I'm missing anything. Now, I know the entire LGBT community includes people of color. So, I'll admit, it's really the white LGBT community I find aggravating. Just like their pout-fest over Donnie McClurkin, someone they probably had never heard of, singing at a gospel concert aimed at the black community reeked of white privilege, this whole outcry against Rick Warren stinks, too.

Now again. Don't get me wrong. I disagree with Warren's position on proposition 8. Personally, I'm wrestling with whether to understand homosexuality as a sin or not. I certainly understand it is beyond the person's control. If a person is sexually attracted to people of the opposite, I don't know if there's much to gain from "choosing" to be gay. Or, at least, I don't think many if any heterosexuals "chose" to be straight; it just so happens that they are. So, I reject the exclusionary language a lot of professed Christians use.

But, I also reject the apparent exclusionary track the gay community is taking in regards to Rick Warren. I mean really. He's apparently removed the most offensive language from his website. That's as far as you're going to get. I doubt you'll succeed at changing his mind in regards to the question of whether or not homosexuality is a sin. So, stop the pouting about Rick Warren and move on to something more substantive like "don't ask, don't tell."

Sorry if this post seems even less lucid than usual. My head is foggy, and I'm just really fed up.

I'm Flabbergasted!

Why? I can't really say. You'd think with my level of cynicism and skepticism, this wouldn't surprise me, much less leave my flabbergasted. UPDATE: Especially since Blackwater was in New Orleans soon after Katrina.

It's not secret I haven't really done the reading and engaging in politics that I started off doing earlier. I needed a break from just this sort of thing. But the lead article for this video was posted on a social networking site I frequent, and I couldn't ignore it.

The most ironic thing is that I'm currently trying to convince myself that the LGBT uproar with President-elect Obama's choice of having Pastor Rick Warren do the invocation to his inauguration has some legitimacy and has nothing to do with the fact that Obama's black. I'm trying not to see a white hood behind every angry white face. But . . . it's not easy. I mean. I don't agree with Rick Warren on a number of issues, same-sex marriage maybe being one. But they are certainly taking his words out of context, if they understand really what he's saying at all. And even if they're upset with Rick Warren for his opposition to proposition 8, his giving the invocation says absolutely nothing about Obama's views and policy towards the LGBT community. (As promised in the previous post, more about my views on the issue later. I was going to address it today, but the doctor's appointment cause some aggravation of my chronic fatigue. And immune dysfunction syndrome. :P )

Here's a video, produced by The Nation and shown below, detailing the anti-black violence that occurred in the days immediately following Katrina. The white shooters defend and even celebrate their actions with the excuse that blacks were engaged in crime and looting - a myth that was spread and believed all too easily. No one has even been charged. There has not even been an investigation, though since he's read the article, Congressman John Conyers is calling for one.

You're probably wondering with Katrina has to do with Obama and the LGBT community. It's that it just seems like white Americans feel they have some right by birth to control black people. It's criminal. It's unjust. It's racism.

McCain's View Are Racist

I'll take time to explain. Not to give any hype or pub to the guy who published these two videos on youtube.com, but it's the material I need.

Here's the thing to keep in mind when considering wealth redistribution and the Black Freedom Movement. A form of slavery, on author Douglass Blackmon calls neo-slavery, continued well into the 1950s. That's not to take into account the how little money was spent on black education, the educational pursuits blacks were prevented from attempting, the unequal pay for more work given to blacks and so forth. Not to mention the redlining, the FHA loans and GI Bills that benefited and grew predominantly the white middle class. Let's not pretend that the "ghettos" just popped out of nowhere and consider the money spent on highways to help the new white middle class along with new jobs move to suburbs.

Yes, we're starting to talking about reparations. Barack Obama is correct in saying that's something the BFM missed out on. In fact, if you remember, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was in Memphis marching with striking black union workers for better pay when he died. There are many companies and businesses even now that at some point was involved in slavery and neo-slavery.

And there is no doubt that while the income gap had been closing, the wealth accumulation gap has been increasing.

See, what you have to consider is a number of things. First of all, slaves were never given in reparations and after maybe a sip of freedom, found themselves again drowning under white male control. Thousands of black men were lynched. Probably thousands, if not tens of thousands, of black women and children were raped. No reparations. Finally, the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s were passed, and no reparations were paid.

And before open housing laws even passed, white Chicagoans were demanding the right to sell their homes to whomever they chose.

So, let's then add the discrimination and inequality that occurs today. The poor schools in poor majority black neighborhoods. The job discrimination, pay discrimination, the discrimination in the justice, so forth and so on, McCain's views, are in short, either ignorant, racist, or both.

John McCain 10/27



Now, let's walk through this. If your parents own their home and have more money to help with college or buying your own home, as most whites did and do by comparison to most African Americans - then you don't have to take out as high a college loan, if you have to take one out at all. You have help with a mortgage down payment. In short, you have a head start in accumulating your own wealth.

And while those who propagate racist ideas and notions would lead you to believe that blacks are fiscally irresponsible, facts show that blacks are as responsible if not more than white Americans. One large difference is that blacks do spend more money trying to help out more family, but that again points out to a gap in wealth accumulation that started decades and centuries earlier.

The radio interview.


So McCain and the guy who posted this videos need to learn more about American history. And McCain cannot be trust to stand up for equal rights for all. Period.

And we haven't even gotten into the discrimination in health care or sub-prime lending. Or even all the, "Kill him!" cheers and neo-nazi plans of assassination, or the fact that I guess McCain remains proud of all his supporters.

Oh, and by the way racially resentful white person who believes affirmative action is reverse-racism - black people don't have your money; rich white people do. (That's why Rev. Jeremiah Wright wasn't talking about all of you and is not an anti-white racist.)

Quick Question

Democrats, and now especially Barack Obama, are accused of being "anti-American." Though, the truth is simply that there are many of us, including myself, who believes America needs to start doing better. We're the ones who were for regulation and would've put a stop to the sub-prime lending fraud. We're the ones who want people to a pay check that's worth their work. But, because we see flaws in America, speak about the flaws and try to call attention to these flaws, we're anti-American.

Republicans and conservatives, on the other hand, are anti-government. Anti-regulation. Law taxes especially for the rich so the wealth is redistributed up. They're the ones who press for trade laws that short change the American worker, and that has to be anti-American, right?

But anyway, as I intended, a quick question - what's the functional difference between being anti-American and anti-government.

Cause let's start talking honestly. Bill Ayers was anti-war, not anti-American. And the people who died were fellows members of Weathermen Underground.

And right now as I'm listening to Hardball with Chris Matthews, and Chris is there tonight, and as I listen to Pat Buchanan's racism and Katrina vanden Heuvel's thoughtfulness, I lean all the more to the left.

Also, bombing in the name of anti-war and peace and bombing in the name of racial oppression aren't the same thing.

Lastly, the Rev. Wright is not an Afro-racist. He doesn't hate white people. As I've explained before, he and many, many others African Americans hate the system to privileges white Americans to our disadvantage.

And Chris just finally said some truth. Pat had better be careful because his true instincts were coming. If MSNBC knows Pat's a racist, and how can they not? I know he is, they need to fire him.

And let me explain again for Pat

Kill McCain! He's a Terrorist!

Yeah. That's right. I'm an Obama supporter and I'm shouting "Kill McCain" and "He's a terrorists" and "Assassinate him!"

Yeah. That's right. Soak it up conservatives. Let that marinate for a minute.

Oh. I'm not finished. He is a terrorist. And not a very good one at that. We had no just cause to go into Vietnam. In fact, from what I recall, we never declared war. We just there killing innocent Vietnamese and dying by the thousands. That makes his as much a terrorist as any "Arab." And that makes the US as much a "terrorist state" as supposedly Iran and Syria.

So chew on that conservatives. How does that feel? How does that sound?

Now, I don't actually think of McCain as a terrorist, or at least not yet, and I don't wish him to be killed or anything like that. But for McCain to say this morning that he's proud of all his supporters, even the ones who think Obama is a single-cell Arab terrorist who should be killed . . . I can't even put it into words. Honestly, I was already upset that McCain spent much of the debate last night lying. I certainly didn't like his stance on the "health" of the mother in the case of abortion. And I honestly didn't think my opinion of him could be any less. I thought it hit rock bottom last night. But this morning, when he declared his pride for all his supporters, McCain dug a hole and fell right into it.

And for all that guy on Hardball said, John McCain has not corrected people shouting "kill him!" and "he's a terrorist!" concerning Barack Obama. And like the guy on Hardball is saying now, John Lewis is absolutely right: it only takes one crazy person to assassinate someone. So, McCain pride is just repulsive.

And that reminds me of something else. Let's drop this illusion that Ronald Regan is such a good president for having ended the Cold War without spilling blood. That's a lie. Maybe he "ended" the Cold War. But he personally called for the spilling of Grenadian blood as part of the "Cold War." The Vietnam Conflict was about the "Cold War." Osama bin Laden earned his bonafide as a mujahudeen fighting for Afghanistan in the "Cold War." The Congo is in the mess it's in partly because the US assassinated Patrice Lumumba, helped support the cleptocracy of Mobutu Sese Seko. And now, over 5, maybe even 10 million people have died and millions of women are raped daily over a conflict that started because of the "Cold War."

The notion that the Cold War ended without blood shed is not only a lie - tens of thousands of Americans died - it's racists - millions of people of color died.

This Is Interesting

. . . well, probably to you, but not so much to me. Take for example, those people who declared their shock and anger about where we are in this election, so close to Obama winning. They're really just surprised a "negra," and an "uppity" one at that may become president.

What's interesting is this article from the Washington Post. It details experiments over a number of years that confirm that white Americans don't see Americans of color as fully America. They even attribute "Americanness" to white foreigners while attributing foreignness to Asian and African Americans.

This one of those "I told you so moments" where white indignation at the accusation that America is a racist nation falls flat. In fact, in proves Dr. Rev. Jeremiah Wright's US of KKK-A point, and should this show any accusations that he's a hate-monger as false and racist.

Here I'm Is

Yeah, I don't mean that sentence literally. It's not acceptable in any form of English. It's just something I heard my little cousin say when she was 2-years old.

Again, today. Some stream of consciousness about the world around me.

Let me start by saying that Americans, especially those who lack the melanin content of others, need to get over ourselves. We're not God's gift to the world. Right at this very moment, while we claim to support democracy and are willing to occupy a country that posed no danger to us, we're undermining a democracy in South America. Quite possibly just because Evo Morales and his left-leaning government doesn't dance to our tune.

No, America. We're not the greatest place on earth. We're not the the Disney Land of the world. Get over it!

We claim to be a land of religious tolerance. Not true. Ask the Muslim in your neighborhood. There aren't any? Try your job. Still none? Find someone who looks Arab, promise you're not wired, and ask them their truest thoughts of America.

We claim to be a Christian nation. That's not true, either. Oh, I know how candidates for president have to profess a belief in Christ. I know how we treat the poor, the orphaned, the widowed, etc, etc, so on and so forth. All of which leads me to the conclusion that we got a bunch of people who're crying, "Lord, Lord!" and ain't nowhere near heaven.

We claim to be a racially tolerant nation. Well, I'm black so I know that's a load of crap. In fact, that's what the previously mentioned male friend added to my list of traits I want in a husband. He's anti-assimilation. Which is odd if you knew him. But, that's what I heard him say. And, well, I like that. I'm anti-assimilation, too. Yes, I can speak standard American English with the best of'em. I have my "white" voice. I can "act white" when necessary. But ultimately, I feel as though I'm being deceptive when I do those things. And I am indeed deceiving the audience of my "white" performance into accepting me for the person they would like me to be, and not the person I really am. I do that to get what I want. Studies have shown that the average person responds more positively to whiteness than blackness. So, I get what I want and go on with life.

I mean, take a look at the most liberal site you can find. Huffington Post. Alternet.org. Read the articles, then read the comments.

Which further proves my point that we're not a Christian nation. Over 30% of our citizens, in order to be successful, have to put on a performance. We 30% have to spend at least 8 hours of our day lying about who we really are. Um, yeah, any religious leader who spent more time with the so-called "sinners and tax-collecters" than he did high priests and scribes would not force others to be anything but who they are in order to be successful.

Now, granted, I'm kinda down right now. My football fantasy teams aren't performing as well as I had hoped. You'd think I'd be able to just shake that off, but no.

So, here I'm is with a few of my general complaints about America.

And when I mention our lack of religious tolerance, I'm including dogmatic atheists and agnostics as well. It bothers me that these intellectuals who understandably demand rational proof of God can't separate religious teachings from religious people and their most demonstrably religious actions. I once can across someone who was trying to make the barb that in Christianity, a man dies to receive 10 virgins while at least Islam gives him 72. The guy was referencing a parable, a story Jesus told to help explain how the Kingdom of God works. The fact that he couldn't tell the difference between a parable and actual promises led me to the conclusion that he's not the genius atheist he thinks he is.

Which brings me to another point. We claim to be a sexually tolerant nation. We're not. Whether or not your sexuality and sexual activity is accepted depends on your race, your gender, and the particular group you're in at the moment. We have a healthy margin of people who believe whole-heartedly in sexual purity - at least for females - and who decry the relatively high amount of sexual content on TV. As though they can't turn the channel. Then there're those who think waiting until you're married to have sex is a terrible idea. No, no one's actually explained to me why that is, but whoa! Just find yourself someone who's "sexually liberated" and find out just how uptight they are.

Yes. I'm a virgin. Oh, believe me. It's by choice. If at this moment right now, I decided to have sex, I could change my networking-site status and find at least 10 sexual partners available tonight. And another 10 who'd be willing to fly in or fly me out by tomorrow.

And, as promised, I suppose I should list some general complaints about the world at large.

Okay. Let me first start with America's international affairs. We went to war with the Taliban if Afganistan, illegally invaded Iraq, talking tough about Iran and Russia. Meanwhile, there's a genocide in the Darfur region of the country of Sudan on the continent of Africa and what have we done? At least 5 million people have died in the war(s) in Congo on the same continent and what have we done? . . . Oh, I should be clear. I mean, what have we done to promote peace? Cause the fact that we're selling weapons in these regions does count for doing something, just not something constructive. And before you fault "those people" as though we American are above such destructive actions, interview some Iraqis and also, some women in our military.

And as far as international affairs apart from America, Georgia needs to stop their illegal, genocidal actions in South Ossetia.

Okay. I gotta go now. But I'll be back. And I'm not promising a better mood.

See what I mean? The debate can't be about race.

And don't read the comments. They only display that even the most "liberal" white can be racist, or at least so insensitive to the plight of African-Americans, that s/he might as well be racist and probably is. - No1KState

Obama can't escape race questions
Poll gives distressing news about bigotry in voting booth

September 23, 2008

BY MARY MITCHELL Sun-Times Columnist
F or all of his efforts to transcend race, Barack Obama's campaign keeps running smack into the color line.

According to the recently released AP-Yahoo News poll, Obama's race could cost him 6 percentage points -- enough for him to lose in a closely contested race.

The poll of white Democrats found that one-third of them harbor "negative views toward blacks," and suggests that a percentage of voters may turn away from Obama because of his race.

"There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean there's only a few bigots" said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman, who helped analyze the survey, according to the AP story.

As it stands, the presidential election is stacking up to be a squeaker.

But don't expect Obama to make another race speech.

Throughout this long campaign, Obama has been loathe to talk about race. During the primary, I once asked him point-blank if racial prejudice would play a role in the election and he told me "No."

"If I lose this campaign it won't be because of race. It will be because I failed to get my message out," he said.

At the time, there was some basis for his optimism.

He had won in Iowa and in several other states that have overwhelmingly white populations.

Still, Obama could wash the feet of lepers and some white people would not vote for him because he is not a white man.

But I expect the Obama camp to point out the positive aspects of the poll's findings rather than risk alienating white voters by confronting the exposed bigotry. His campaign points out that -- according to the poll -- "more whites apply positive attitudes to blacks than negative ones," and "two-thirds" of Democrats said they would vote for him.

The fact that racial prejudice is lower among college-educated whites living outside of the South goes a long way in explaining why Obama has had a difficult time winning over blue-collar whites.

Frankly, it is interesting that the poll was taken in the first place.

Technically speaking, Obama isn't a black man. He's biracial. His mother was white and he was raised by white grandparents.

You could argue that the very premise of the poll reflects a bias since it purports to glean insights about the Obama candidacy which, frankly, just don't fit.

If Obama wins the White House, it won't prove that America is ready for a black president as much as it will prove someone other than a white male can be elected to the presidency.

Because of his unique race, Obama has been between a rock and a hard place throughout this campaign.

At first he was dogged by speculation that he wasn't "black enough" for some black voters. Now he is being cast as "too black" for some white ones.

Because Obama has embraced his black heritage, he is likely being subjected to the same biases ordinary African Americans face.

For instance, 40 percent of all white Americans surveyed said they hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, believing them "lazy" "irresponsible" and "complaining."

The pollsters assume that people who hold these negative views about blacks are "significantly less likely" to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.

Despite this latest race poll, Obama continues to avoid these troubled waters.

"Look, if you are asking me are there some people who might not vote for me because of my race? Of course. Are there some who might vote for me because of my race? You bet," he said during a "60 Minutes" interview that aired Sunday night.

"I think ultimately, though, the question's going to be decided by a guy or a woman who is working hard every day trying to save enough to send their kid to college, trying to pay the bills."

Obama has spent most of his campaign trying to sell himself to white voters, but he can't change the skin he is in.

The Democrats should take heed.

If the party lets the bigots determine the outcome of the election, it will likely lose black support for decades to come.

SNCC: White Privilege and the Election (Corrected)

From: MALIK M. CHAKA
Subject: FW: white privilege and the election
Date: Sunday, September 14, 2008, 12:49 PM

Essay by Tim Wise

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are
constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list
will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and
everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal
matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every
family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar
"challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters
of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol
Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll
"kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun,
and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law
to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like
Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to
after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions
your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who
did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got
in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than
most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same
number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready
to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with
laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and
constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in
the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding
fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from
holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and
the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading
accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the
Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it),
is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people
immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist
political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto
was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family,
while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so
she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately
think she's being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work
they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for
civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think
you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a
small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a
class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with
you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway,
because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in
these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political
campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician
who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from
the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors
say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are
going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job
of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and
who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's
punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just
a good churchgoing Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black
pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense)
that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks
about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist
who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a
reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick
question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the
queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem
overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at
all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing
racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone
to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the
time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes,
inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion,
just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know,
it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same,
which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Remember How the Republicans Used the Term "Community Organizer" . . .

. . . with such comtempt? According to Prometheus6, here's why:

Neo-Confederate Vocabulary

The Party of the Neo-Confederates has been tossing about the term "community organizer" with disdain. Some of y'all, especially those community organizers among you, have noted the absurdity of hating on people whose job it is to help people.

Ah, but that because you've been fooled again by the fact that Neo-Confederate English uses the same sounds as Standard English while assigning them wholly different meanings. It's like the phonic version of written Chinese.

In this case, what you think means "someone whose job it is to help people" means, to them, "outside agitator."

The More Things Change . . .

In my estimation, this article details the historic tension between white feminists and feminists of color. It's why so many white women could only see history being made by Hillary Clinton and could ignore the history being made by Barack Obama. Is why when someone decides to play a game of whose most oppressed, white women always cry about black men being given the right to vote before they were, never mind that black women couldn't vote, and black men's voting rights were complicated eradicated by the time white women got to vote. There are some white feminist would drop all other issues relating to nonwhite women altogether.

1921: Alice Paul Pulls the Strings

By Freda Kirchwey

This article appeared in the March 2, 1921 edition of The Nation.
July 31, 2008

Women won the right to vote in 1919, but African-American women continue to be disenfranchised. At the National Women's Party convention in 1921, their pleas for representation were rebuffed by suffragist leader Alice Paul. The Nation's outraged correspondent Freda Kirchway reports.

The spirit of the National Woman's Party convention at Washington last week was summed up in two striking sentences. Said a disheartened delegate after the last day's session: "This is the machine age." Said one of the leaders of the Party to another delegate who tried to plead for a free consideration of a real program: "At a convention human intelligence reaches its lowest ebb."

That was what it amounted to; the leaders acted on the theory of an amiable contempt for their followers; the rank and file, either cynically or enthusiastically, watched the wishes of the leaders become the law of the convention. With quiet precision the Woman's Party machine--a veritable tank--rolled over the assembly, crushing protestants of all sorts, leaving the way clear--for what? If anyone left the convention with a distinct idea of what the Party will do now that it has solemnly disbanded and solemnly reorganized, it is, perhaps, Alice Paul and the Executive Committee and some members of the Advisory Council and a few State chairmen. The rank and file, not realizing that their intelligence was at a low ebb, are vaguely disappointed. They do not know what their party will do; they only know that no action was taken in behalf of the Negro women, who have not yet got the vote in spite of the Nineteenth Amendment; that birth control and maternity endowment and most of the questions that stir the minds of modern women were ignored; that disarmament was ruled out; and that the program finally adopted--the majority report of the resolutions committee--declared vaguely against "legal disabilities" and for "equality" leaving the future definition of those terms and their translation into action to the executive board. The only specific application of the word equality appeared in the demand that it be "won and maintained in any association of nations that may be established"!

It may, of course, be asserted that since this mild and hypothetical program was adopted by a vote of the convention it was therefore the will of the convention, but one is forced to wonder whether the result would have been the same if a dissenting delegate or a minority committeeman had presented the winning report, and if Alice Paul's program had included disarmament or birth control or the enfranchisement of Negro women. I, for one, would back Miss Paul's chances on either side she chose to support. When the minority report recommending disarmament was before the house it was opposed vehemently by several ardent militarists of the order who declare: "I am as much against war as anybody in this room, but when the world is on fire . . . " From the point of view of the leaders this opposition was undesirable; the majority report would only be weakened by militarist adherents. Presently the floor was taken by a well-known pacifist who set herself squarely on the side of immediate, complete disarmament and then proceeded on other grounds to an effective attack on the disarmament program. Later in the day this same pacifist--who is also a radical and a feminist--had a program of her own in the field in opposition to the majority report. This new dissenting program was specific. It demanded, in addition to the removal of the legal disabilities of women, the rewriting of the existing laws of marriage, divorce, guardianship; and sexual morality on a basis of equality; the abolition of illegitimacy; the establishment of motherhood endowment and of the legal right of a woman who chooses homemaking as her profession to an equal share in the family income; the repeal of all laws against the dissemination of information regarding birth control.

These proposals were sternly opposed by the machine. The leaders declared that such a program was too vague; they declared that it was too definite; they declared that it was too comprehensive; they claimed that the majority program could be interpreted to include all those demands and more besides. But in expounding the majority program they were cautious; not one of the leaders specifically stated, for example, that it should be interpreted to cover the question of birth control. "And after all, that's the acid test," said one of the younger delegates. The new program received the support of a few of the less orthodox members of the Advisory Council, but its most persuasive advocates were among the young Party workers who charged that the majority report offered no more inspiration than the programs of other women's organizations which they had long been trained to look down upon as cautious, respectable, dull. Again the leaders were worried; they couldn't let the idea get about that only middle-aged respectability stood for the majority report. And presently a couple of the younger workers rose from their seats and opposed the radical program and swore by all the suffrage prophets that the majority report offered inspiration enough for any feminist. And it was well known to those who hung about in the lobby or watched the play from the wings, that Alice Paul had spoken the word necessary to make the pacifist oppose disarmament and the young radicals oppose the radical program.

Some day the story of the working of the National Women's Party machine will be told. It will be an interesting story, full of strange contradictions. It will tell of valiant self-sacrifice and magnificent defiance coupled with an incongruous willingness to appeal to the tradition of feminine weakness. It will be full of idealism and steadfast purpose and yet of a readiness to use any trick or pretense that might bring that purpose nearer to fulfillment. It will tell of independence and individual heroism existing side by side with obedience bordering on subservience. It will show sympathy and ruthlessness walking together. But that story cannot be written until the people who know it get out from under the spell of the Alice Paul legend. Today any attempt would be futile.

The efforts--finally successful--of the birth control advocates to secure a chance to speak at the convention would form an amusing chapter of that story. At the second day's session representatives of women's organizations with legislative programs made brief addresses stating their aims. Even old-time enemies of the Woman's Party were given a place. For weeks before the convention the head of the Voluntary Parenthood League had been in correspondence with the Party leaders demanding her chance to be heard. First the leaders refused, then they demurred, finally they surrendered; but their written objections to the presence of this organization on the platform of the convention were redolent with the faint fragrance of Victorian delicacy and reserve.

The efforts--wholly unsuccessful--of the representatives of the colored women would form a tragic chapter of the same story. A delegation of sixty women sent by colored women's organizations in fourteen States arrived in Washington several days before the convention. They requested an interview with Alice Paul so that they might take up with her the question of the disfranchisement of the women of their race. They were told Miss Paul was too busy to see them. They said they would wait till she had time. Finally, grudgingly, she yielded. The colored women presented their case in the form of a dignified memorial--which read as follows:

We have come here as members of various organizations and from different sections representing the five million colored women of this country. We are deeply appreciative of the heroic devotion of the National Woman's Party to the women's suffrage movement and of the tremendous sacrifices made under your leadership in securing the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

We revere the names of the pioneers to whom you will do honor while here, not only because they believed in the inherent rights of women, but of humanity at large, and gave themselves to the fight against slavery in the United States.

The world has moved forward in these seventy years and the colored women of this country have been moving with it. They know the value of the ballot, if honestly used, to right the wrongs of any class. Knowing this, they have also come today to call your attention to the flagrant violations of the intent and purposes of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in the elections of 1920. These violations occurred in the Southern States, where is to be found the great mass of colored women, and it has not been made secret that wherever white women did not use the ballot, it was counted worthwhile to relinquish it in order that it might be denied colored women.

Complete evidence of violations of the Nineteenth Amendment could be obtained only by Federal investigation. There is, however, sufficient evidence available to justify a demand for such an inquiry. We are handing you herewith a pamphlet with verified cases of the disfranchisement of our women.

The National Woman's Party stands in the forefront of the organizations that have undergone all the pains of travail to bring into existence the Nineteenth Amendment. We can not then believe that you will permit this amendment to be so distorted in its interpretation that it shall lose its power and effectiveness. Five million women in the United States can not be denied their rights without all the women of the United States feeling the effect of that denial. No women are free until all are free.

Therefore, we are assembled to ask that you will use your influence to have the convention of the National Woman's Party appoint a special committee to ask Congress for an investigation of the violations of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in the elections of 1920.

Miss Paul was indifferent to this appeal and resented the presence of the delegation. Their chance of being heard at the convention was gone. A Southern organizer told the one active supporter of the colored women--a white woman and a delegate from New York--that the Women's Party was pledged not to raise the race issue in the South; that this was the price it paid for ratification. But no such sinister motive is necessary to explain the treatment of the colored delegation; they were simply an interruption, an obstacle to the smooth working of the machine. Their leading members were not allowed to ride in the elevators of the Hotel Washington where the convention was held, until finally they made a stand for their rights. And only by the use of tactics bordering on Alice Paul's own for vigor and persistence, did their spokesman--the delegate from New York--get a moment to present a resolution in their behalf-a resolution which was promptly defeated and which left the question precisely where it stood.
The attitude of Alice Paul and her supporters toward these disturbers of the peace--Negro women and birth control advocates alike--was the attitude of all established authorities. "Why do these people harass us?" asked Miss Paul. "Why do they want to spoil our convention?" The answer, that never occurred to her, was this: "For the very same reason that made you disturb the peace and harass the authorities in your peculiarly effective and irritating way: because they want to further the cause they believe in."

In the lobby, among the futile opponents of the machine, there was much discussion of the cause of their leaders' hostility to all that was new and clear-cut. The great fighting issue was gone; if the organization was to continue it must turn its attention to other issues and work for them one at a time or several together, not only in Congress but in the States. Would the leaders evolve out of their vague program an issue which they could again attack with military precision and on which they could hope again to raise their disciplined volunteer army? Would they justify their tactics, as they had so often done before, by the brilliant success of their results? Or were they only greedy of power, eager to hold the final decision close in their own hands, unwilling to trust to the desires of their followers? Or were they, perhaps, only half awake to the fulness of life? Absorbed in a task of immense proportions, for years they had forfeited, as soldiers must, the common enterprises of life--love, marriage, children, the economic struggle. Had they thereby lost touch with the plain demands of modern women who are more interested in their opportunities for personal expansion and economic freedom and the right to bear children when they choose than they are in the presence of women in the councils of an unborn or dying League of Nations? The opponents of the machine never decided those questions; the Alice Paul legend hung too closely over them and its phrases sounded in their ears through the closed doors of the convention hall.

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About Freda KirchweyFreda Kirchwey was a former managing editor, literary editor, editor and, ultimately, publisher of The Nation. She died in 1976.

I Tried to Say Basically the Same Thing. Linda Burnham Says It Better.

But let me just say, white person, unless you've taken courses in undergrad and graduate school and black America, racism, and politics, or maybe you're like Macon D and you're really trying o figure this stuff out, otherwise, shut up talking about black politics. You don't know what you're talking about.

I mean really. You guys are the same people who blamed the spike of crime in post-bellum South on freedmen and women, even though up to 95% of the crime was committed by whites, and got away with it. Not just that, but now it's a reputation we just can't shake. So know, you don't get to "objectively" judge the state of black politics.

Obama's Candidacy: The Advent of Post-Racial America and the End of Black Politics?

By Linda Burnham

The Obama candidacy has provoked a torrent of observations and speculations about race in America - some grounded in reality, some approaching the realm of sheer fantasy. In the latter category are the commentaries heralding the advent of a 'post-racial America' and 'the end of Black politics.'

Matt Bai's August 10th piece in The New York Times, entitled 'Is Obama the End of Black Politics?,' is one of the more coherent versions of the genre. In it he argues that a newly emerging generation of Ivy-bred black elected officials, with Obama as their chief representative, are more interested in representing universal interests than in representing the black community; that therefore 'black politics might now be disappearing into American politics in the same way that the Irish and Italian machines long ago joined the political mainstream'; and that an Obama win would likely undermine the argument for race-based measures such as affirmative action.

The post-racial, end-of-black-politics crowd rests its case on at least five fallacies:

Fallacy #1: That the end of a racially unjust society is a declarative act.

Some commentators seem to be confused by the forms racism takes in the post-civil rights era, and prepared to declare that, since there are no laws explicitly upholding racial inequity, it must be dying out of its own accord.

Racial apartheid and the most blatant 20th century forms of discrimination are behind us, but the colorline has hardly faded away. Centuries of affirmative action for whites built up an enormous wealth gap, along with stubborn inequities along nearly every other economic and social parameter. Active discrimination persists, especially in employment and housing, as the experience of testers repeatedly confirms. (According to the New York Time's own recent poll, 'nearly 70 percent of blacks said they had encountered a specific instance of discrimination based on their race, compared with 62 percent in 2000.') Millions of white people -most of them lacking control of the resources required to actively discriminate - nonetheless make daily choices about which neighborhood to move into or out of, which schools to send their kids to. Too often those choices amount to the preservation of white space, and the privileges that attach to it. And the gains of the freedom movements of the 1950s and 60s came under attack before the ink was dry on the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act - and have been under attack ever since. Meanwhile, nominally race neutral policies, particularly those related to the social safety net, criminal justice and tax policy, have a disproportionately negative impact on people of color -hardening, if not widening the racial divide. And the globalization of the demand for labor, in the absence of the protection of the laborers themselves, has stoked a toxic mix of nativism and racism.

This is not the picture of a post-racial society.

Social reality is rude. It tends to break through even the most sophisticated screens designed to mask it. The Katrina debacle, the repeated exposure of the debasement of immigrant labor, the disproportionate impact of the housing crisis and the generalized recession in communities of color -all these phenomena attest to the continuing salience of racial inequity and bring the conversation about race out of the post-racialist clouds and back to earth.

Fallacy #2: That the sum total of black politics is electoral politics.

There are many forms of political leadership among African Americans, as is true for other racially or ethnically distinct groups. Elected representatives are critical and central to moving policy, but religious leaders, community organizers, think tankers, opinion leaders, policy advocates, legal strategists, and politicized artists and cultural figures all give shape, texture and substance to the complex thing that is black politics. The complete collapse of the political into the electoral ill serves a community that has been so ill served by mainstream politics. Challenging power requires the coordination and synchronization of many different actors, some located within legitimized structures, some working well outside the mainstream. Furthermore, while the politics of protest and mass action may be in extended abeyance, a death warrant is probably premature.

Fallacy #3: That the most legitimate black leaders are those elected representatives who are most legitimated in the eyes of whites.

The promoters of the 'end of black politics' draw a sharp generational divide between the confrontational protest style of the Jesse Jackson generation, who are constructed as speaking to and for 'only' the interests of African Americans, and the more universalist approach of the younger generation of politicians, as exemplified by the Corey Bookers and Deval Patricks of the world. This is a problem on a few different counts. Gary Younge, writing in The Nation, addressed the careful selectivity of this view. 'The emergence of this cohort has filled the commentariat with joy--not just because of what they are: bright, polite and, where skin tone is concerned, mostly light--but because of what they are not. They have been hailed not just as a development in black American politics but as a repudiation of black American politics; not just as different from Jesse Jackson but the epitome of the anti-Jesse.

There are many problems with this. Chief among them is that this `new generation' is itself a crude political construct built more on wishful thinking than on chronological fact. Patrick, born in 1956, is hailed as part of it, but hapless New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who was born the same year, and civil rights campaigner Al Sharpton, who was born just two years earlier, are not. Obama and Booker are always mentioned as members of this new club, but Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who was born between them and spent his twenty-first birthday in prison protesting apartheid, is not. So whatever else this is about, it is not just about years. It is one thing to say there is a critical mass of black politicians of a certain age and political disposition. It is entirely another to claim that they represent the views of a generation.'

This view also rewrites and narrows the politics of Jesse Jackson, Martin King and a generation of leaders, many of whom were, and still are, clear that racial justice for African Americans is central to deepening democracy for all Americans and who, through the Civil Rights movement and the Rainbow Coalition, mobilized, inspired and transformed the political thinking not only of African Americans but of millions of whites and other people of color as well.

Finally, this view posits associations between black politics and parochialism, mainstream politics and universalism, and white politics and .? Actually, in this view there is no such thing as white politics - that is, politics that represent the interests of whites as a group -only universalist politics inclusive of all and the narrow, race-based politics of the past.

Put fallacies # 2 and #3 together and you get the absurd notion that the undeniably significant expression of politics represented by Obama, Booker, Patrick, et al. is the sum total of black politics -a claim not even they would make -and that the future of black politics depends, first and foremost, upon its appeal to white voters.

Fallacy #4: That African American political expression is the black equivalent of white ethnic voting, and will soon fade as a distinct trend.

The most focused reflection of black political consensus is the 90% of black votes that regularly go to Democratic candidates in presidential elections. No other demographic votes in such a consistently and dramatically lopsided fashion. Whites split their votes, ranging between 55 and 60% Republican and 40 to 45% Democratic. Latino and Asian American votes split much more evenly than those of African Americans, and vary more from one election to the next. So if, as Bai maintains, black politics are 'disappearing into American politics' somebody better tell the Democrats who, in presidential elections, are completely reliant on the consistency of that vote. As Amiri Baraka notes in a recent piece, 'the foundation of Obama's successful candidacy is the 90% support by the Afro-American people.' Even though '90% of 12% is not enough to win the presidency,' it's something to build a campaign around, a stable factor in political strategizing, when you can count on it every time. African Americans widely view the Republican Party as the chief protector of white interests. Until that changes, that is until the Republican Party changes its core platform, African Americans are unlikely to follow the course of Irish and Italian politics and disappear as a remarkably cohesive voting block, at least in presidential elections.

Fallacy #5: That the progress of middle class African Americans is a stand in for the progress of African Americans in general.

Bai notes that 'when millions of black Americans are catapulting themselves to success' it's hard to make a case for the ongoing significance of race and racism. And nearly every election commentator has observed that the changed class configuration of black America has given rise to a new political cohort: those who walked through the doors swung open by the gains of the civil rights movement, and who are now themselves opening new doors in U.S. politics.

But in an era in which significant numbers of African Americans have substantially improved their social and economic standing, there are major countervailing trends: the black poverty rate still hovers between 20 and 25% and remains more than twice that of whites; the class profile of African Americans is still weighted toward the bottom; while median income rose dramatically for African American women in the 30 years between 1974 and 2004, it fell for African American men; and those African Americans who do achieve middles class status face much greater difficulty than whites in passing that status along to their children. It may be that the biggest problem a segment of African Americans faces is whether they can hail a cab successfully in New York City. This is not the case for the black majority.

And so the issue is not whether Black politicians who aspire to represent a broader constituency can do so effectively. Undoubtedly they can. More to the point is whether they also have the orientation and the capacity to represent the interests of those who are disadvantaged on the basis of both race and class. This will take more than lessons in uplift, finger wagging at black fathers and lectures on how to turn off the TV and help the kids with their homework.

* * *

Apart from these five fallacies, the other thing that seems to confuse the post-racialists is that no one in the political mainstream makes overtly racist appeals to the white majority. So maybe racism is over with.

We can count it as a victory, only recently won in terms of the long arc of white supremacy, that blatant racism is widely viewed as morally repugnant. While it is the role of the activist right to preserve the prerogatives of racial hierarchy, they'd prefer to do so without being tagged as the guardians of white power. Happy to claim their allegiance to unregulated markets, regressive tax policies, 'family values,'small government, and robust militarism, the frank embrace of white supremacy is a bit beyond the pale.

And so they've become masterful shape shifters, skilled at promulgating policies that protect white privilege while insisting that race is the furthest thing from their minds and skilled at framing and controlling the national dialogue about race. Racist expression has taken new, coded and perverse form. And the presidential campaign itself provides more than enough evidence that some white politicians recognize the power of race-based appeals.

We now have:

Double-bind racism, in which those who make reference to the actually existing racial regime or advocate on behalf of anti-racist practices and policies are themselves accused of being racist, of 'playing the race card.' (The whose-face-is-on-the-dollar-bill flap.)

Dog-whistle racism, in which racist messages are conveyed on a separate frequency, through racially coded words and phrases, reaching ears that have been primed and are highly attuned. (Clinton's 'hard working Americans' appeal to white working class voters in Pennsylvania. Yep, the Dems do it too.)

Color-blind racism, in which the racial status quo is sustained and defended by those who pledge allegiance to purportedly race-neutral policies. (Perfected by opponents of affirmative action.)

Visually evocative racism, in which imagery is purposefully deployed to surface deeply engrained racial stereotypes. (The Paris Hilton/Brittney Spears/McCain ad fandango.)

All these stratagems and more have been skillfully manipulated to stoke fear and resentment, undermine black candidates, confuse potential allies, undercut the efficacy of racial justice organizing and advocacy, and silence the anti-racist voice. It is our job to learn to decode and expose these forms of expression for what they are - maneuvers to obstruct racial equity.

We will not reach a post-racialist U.S. by announcement or decree. The only way to get there from here is by way of racial justice. We can already identify some of the markers on that route: substantially diminishing disparities in health, education, housing, income distribution, wealth, police practices, sentencing and incarceration, political participation and representation. Whether we steadily approach these markers or they recede into a murky, unapproachably distant future depends, in large part, on the continuation and renewal of black politics in diverse, increasingly effective form.