America’s racism runs deeper than a Philly pool

When a suburban Philadelphia swim club kicked out a group of black and Latino kids on June 29 because of their skin color, the incident generated much outrage throughout the country.

But it would be a mistake to think that such incidents and attitudes are a rare exception.

The Valley Swim Club — located in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., a mostly white suburb of Philadelphia — turned away 65 children from a day camp called Creative Steps. The day camp had paid the club $1,950 for the use of the pool for the summer. In a released statement, the president of the swim club said, “There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.”

The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission opened an investigation into the matter, and the day camp is suing the club in federal court for discrimination.

The Valley Swim Club incident forced me to remember my own painful and humiliating experiences with racism, growing up as a black youth in America in the 1970s and 1980s. Almost 30 years ago, I accompanied my cousin, then a budding teen golf player, to one of his tournaments at a white country club in the South. One of the patrons of the country club told me, “You know what? You can shine my shoes.”

Looking at the nation today, there is no denying that some things have changed. After all, unlike 40 years ago, I will not face arrest or imprisonment because of my interracial marriage. And the United States has elected its first black president.

Yet racism persists.

Black Philadelphia police officers have sued their police department for creating a hostile work environment by allegedly allowing white officers to maintain and use a racially offensive website called Domelights.com at work. The lawsuit also alleges that the website featured a poster that read, “Guns Don’t Kill People, Dangerous Minorities Do,” set with images of white officers and mug shots of black men.

Even Ivy League professors apparently aren’t out of reach of the sting of racism. In Cambridge, Mass., a white police officer arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr., a distinguished black Harvard professor, for disorderly conduct. Gates, who had difficulty getting his own front door open, finally got in. But someone had called the police, and an officer arrived at his home. Gates showed the officer his driver’s license and Harvard identification to prove he was a Harvard professor and lived at the address, but the officer continued to question him and Gates became upset and was finally arrested. (The local prosecutor has agreed to dismiss the case.)

Some racist sentiment reflects a backlash against having a black president in office.

Gary Frago, an Atwater, Calif., city council member, sent racist e-mails to city staff and community leaders, including one that said, “Breaking News Playboy just offered Sarah Palin $1 million to pose nude in the January issue. Michelle Obama got the same offer from National Geographic.” 

Audra Shay, the newly elected chair of the Young Republicans, responded to a Facebook friend’s comment that said, “Need to take this country back from all of these mad coons” with, “You tell em Eric!”

In a recent speech, former Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., said that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel should put “Gorilla Glue” on President Obama’s chair to keep him in the Oval Office.

We do not yet live in a post-racial society.

Like the members of the Valley Swim Club, there are many other Americans, I fear, who would have kicked those children out of the pool. 

And that’s a sad commentary for America in 2009, even with our first black president.

(From The Progressive)

Republicans Display Their Racial Hatred at Sotomayor Hearings

I learned very little about nothing much in particular from the Sonia Sotomayor hearings.

I already knew that Sotomayor has impeccable credentials, and is far more intelligent than many of the senators, and all of the GOP senators, who were in judgment of her. I heard a great deal about the Republican agenda - as demonstrated at the hearings for the first Latina Supreme Court justice, that is, White male privilege, gun worship, the evisceration of the reproductive rights of women, and corporate pimping - but I already knew about these things.

I learned little about a liberal-progressive agenda for the courts and the justice system. Democrats played it safe on the whole, with the exception of senators such as the newly minted Al Franken (D, Minnesota), who decried the loss of civil rights in America, and Benjamin Cardin (D, Maryland), who invoked his memories of growing up in a segregated Baltimore, when schools and movie theaters were segregated, and community swimming pools had signs which read “No Jews, No Blacks Allowed”.

One thing that I did learn from the hearings, however, was the extent to which the Republican Party will demonstrate the extent of their hatred for civil rights, diversity, foreign cultures and foreign law, Latino folks in particular and people of color in general. And in that regard, they did not disappoint. The Senate Republicans, which one political observer notes, ran the risk of appearing more like a “Republican Cracker Caucus” than anything else, showed nothing but utter contempt for Judge Sotomayor and those who look like her. Pandering to a dwindling, increasingly racist and jingoistic electoral base, these retrogressive senators showed their ignorance. They betrayed their poorly guarded secret - which is, that nothing less than an unexpected scandal or election defeat separates these neo-Dixiecrats from the backwoods outhouses from whence they came.

Having no concern for the judge’s record, they focused on a speech she gave at UC Berkeley Law School in 2001, in which Sotomayor, and rightly so, praised the virtues of a diverse court in which judges are informed by their life experiences and backgrounds. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life,” said Sotomayor in that speech.

Throughout the line of questioning, the Republican senators treated the judge like a child at best, and like the cleaning lady at worst, with their concerns that she is unable show fairness and impartiality because of her ethnic background. One was given the impression that they would not be happy until Judge Sotomayor repudiated her ethnicity and made herself more suitable for White conservative consumption, like conservative Linda Chavez of the Center for Equal Opportunity. One after another, the good ol’ boys greeted the judge with a barrage of racist invective. Seemingly engaged in a game of good Latino, bad Latina, their line of questioning seemed to focus less on her and more on Miguel Estrada, a failed Bush appellate court nominee who has nothing in common with Sotomayor except that both are Latinos. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma even tried to joke his way through his racism by channeling his inner Ricky Ricardo and telling Sotomayor that “you'll have lots of 'splainin' to do.”

But the ringleader, or perhaps more aptly, grand wizard, of the good ol’ boy caucus was Senator Jefferson Beauregard “Jeff” Sessions of Alabama, who was nominated by Reagan for a federal district court spot, but was dinged by a Republican-controlled Senate judiciary committee because of his problems. His problems? He was a critic of the Voting Rights Act, and called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” groups that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” As a U.S. attorney in Alabama, he reportedly called a Black assistant U.S. attorney “boy”, and told him to “be careful what you say to white folks.” And as a federal prosecutor, Sessions engaged in a voter-fraud witch-hunt against three Black civil rights workers, including a former aide to Dr. King. Moreover, during a 1981 KKK murder investigation, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he “used to think they [the Klan] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.”

And to pour even more salt into the wound, Sessions is affiliated with White nationalist and anti-immigration groups. So it is only fitting that Sessions would become ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in judgment over nominees to the federal bench, and an arbiter of who is fair and impartial. Sessions had the temerity to scold Judge Sotomayor for not voting with another Puerto Rican judge in an affirmative action case. “Had you voted with Judge Cabranas, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could have changed that case,” Sessions admonished Sotomayor.” Why, because all Puerto Ricans are supposed to vote alike?

Pat Buchanan - another paragon of on fairness, justice and integrity - says that Judge Sotomayor is an unqualified “affirmative-action appointment” by Obama, someone who was admitted to Princeton University to the exclusion of other White candidates with higher scores. He believes that the Republicans were not hard enough on Judge Sotomayor, that they should have racially attacked her in the hearings in order to gain the support of aggrieved White workers “who pay the price of affirmative action when their sons and daughters are pushed aside to make room for the Sonia Sotomayors.” When MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked Buchanan why 108 out of 110 Supreme Court justices have been white, he said “this has been a country built basically by white folks.” Buchanan added:

White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks, who were 90% of the nation in 1960 when I was growing up and the other 10% were African-Americans who had been discriminated against. That’s why.

If anything good comes from the Sotomayor hearings, it is that the Latino community, and everyone else for that matter, got to see the GOP in true form: angry and raw in their bigotry, and turning to the divisive racial strategies of the past in a futile attempt to fight changing demographics and an new understanding of what America should be.

Steven Colbert hit it on the head when he spoke of the “Neutral Man’s Burden,” this notion that “in America, White is neutral.” Whites do not let their experiences bias their decisions because they are White. After all, imagine how a Black justice would have upset the neutrality of the all-White court in the Dred Scott decision, or how an Asian-American judge would have threatened the neutrality of the court when it upheld the internment of Japanese Americans in World War Two!

People of good will can use this opportunity - not unlike the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings, which were replete with sexism and misogyny - to seek to diversify the Senate with more women, more senators of color, and specifically Latino senators. Latinos are America’s largest so-called “minority group”, in a nation in which minorities are edging their way into a majority. The nation’s leadership must and will reflect this reality. The people must break up the good ol’ boys’ club that is the U.S. Senate, and ensure that no judicial nominee is disrespected ever again.

(From BlackCommentator.com)

Hey, Who Turned Off the Music?

Did the music die? The recent passing of Michael Jackson made me ask that question.

Recently I started thinking about the songs of my childhood, actually the soundtrack of my youth growing up in Southeast Queens, New York. I have fond memories of listening to LPs with my father on his old but reliable stereo set, with the hand-crafted turntable, and sand-filled wooden speakers that gave an earthy, real-life sound. Here are some of the songs that come to mind from that day:

• “I Stand Accused” by Isaac Hayes
• Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”
• Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”
• “Harvest For The World” by the Isley Brothers
• “Ooh Child” by the Five Stairsteps
• Stevie Wonder’s “If You Really Love Me”
• “Get The Funk Out Of My Face” by the Brothers Johnson
• “Never Can Say Goodbye” by the Jackson 5
• “Ball Of Confusion” by the Temptations, and
• “Midnight Train To Georgia” by Gladys Knight and the Pips

Now, that was music! And it raises an important question in my mind, and possibly yours as well: Will music ever sound that good, ever again? Twenty or thirty years from now, will we remember the songs that are coming out today?

It seems that something went wrong along the way. Popular music, but specifically Black music, which dominates America’s and the world’s music scene, used to reflect the complexity of the human life experience, our emotions, our troubled times and our hopes and joys. In the music, there were the ever-present echoes of the drum rhythms and the storytelling griots of West Africa, of the Negro spirituals growing out of the experience of slavery in America, and of course the Blues. The cultural history was built into the music, and listening to it, at its best, is a religious and spiritual experience. And yet, the music always refined and redefined itself, through Jazz and Hip-hop and other incarnations. But all the while, the music reflected the aspirations and the full spectrum of what was going on in the community, the good and the bad, whether sitting on the street corner with friends, lamenting a lost love, or decrying injustice.

Then money entered the process. Don’t get me wrong, music has been a commercial venture for years. But it is worth noting that as the industry became more lucrative for its participants, or at least its owners, the music became more cookie-cutter, with more of the same and fewer options. Particularly in the past decade - when society was fed a steady dose of materialism and market growth - much of the music which was promoted reflected the materialism and hedonism of the times. Empty calories with little substance. There was much pain out there, to be sure, because after all the vast majority of people cannot afford a seaside mansion, a Hummer, diamonds, or a thousand-dollar bottle of whatever, and most common folk were slipping further as the moneyed few were getting fatter. But the music doesn’t reflect that reality, or at least the songs that get on the air do not. It seems almost fitting that the music industry is suffering financially, with a product no one is buying, just as the economy itself is suffering from systemic problems and is in need of big changes.

Part of the problem is that many talented musicians do not receive the exposure they deserve and we deserve. There are great artists out there, but they don’t get the air time. But on another level, society does not value musicians. Just look at the slashing of music and art education programs in public schools throughout the nation, as more focus is placed on teaching merely what appears on standardized tests. Music education is important to children’s lives as a part of a well-rounded education. Music develops creativity, self-expression, character and a sense of community. And it builds self-esteem, analytical and language capabilities, and innovation. I say this as someone who benefited from music programs throughout my childhood, and was introduced to the tenor saxophone as a sixth grader. Organizations such as the VH1 Save The Music Foundation and websites such as SupportMusic.com and Keep Music In Public Schools! are dedicated to restoring music programs in the schools.

So did the music die? Well, if it did, we need to make sure that we bring it back. We have the power to do it.

(Originally in BlackCommentator.com.)

Broken Immigration System Breaks Up A Jamerican Family

On July 7, 2009, Roxroy Salmon - a Jamaican immigrant, activist and Brooklyn, New York resident - appeared before an immigration judge to determine his future in this country. In a worst case scenario, Salmon, a longtime resident of the U.S. with deep roots here, was ordered deported.

What is his crime, you might ask? Two decades ago, he pleaded guilty to two minor drug charges, and served no time. But that doesn’t matter under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA), an unjust federal law which allows for the mandatory deportation of immigrants for past offenses, no matter how minor the offense, or how long ago it was committed.

The threat of deportation is bad enough for Salmon, 53, who came to the U.S. in 1977, undocumented, to better himself and get an education. He also has a family in America. This is a man who has lived the so-called American dream - he has worked hard and raised four girls with his wife, and also has a granddaughter, all of whom are U.S. citizens. And Roxroy’s mother, also a U.S. citizen, petitioned for U.S. citizenship for her son. But his minor drug charges from over a generation ago stood in his way. He applied for deferred action from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in the hopes that the government will not enforce his deportation and separate him from his family.

“I'm asking Congressman [Ed] Towns and Senator [Charles] Schumer to please save me and my family and other families that are in the same situation,” Mr. Salmon said as he left his hearing at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. “Because we have children - here are my children - we need to stay together. Don't put me in exile!”

Roxroy Salmon’s case is by no means unique. The group Families For Freedom notes that nearly 10% of American families are of mixed immigration status, that is, with at least one parent who is a non-citizen, and one child who is a citizen. And 3.1 million children who are U.S. citizens have at least one undocumented parent. In the end, 200,000 non-citizens are deported every year and separated from their families, even if the judge believes they should stay. As Human Rights Watch noted in a recent report, 72% of noncitizens who were deported had committed nonviolent offenses such as drug possession or traffic offenses. Of those legal noncitizens who were deported, 77 percent were thrown out for nonviolent offenses, meaning that only 23 percent had committed violent acts. As a result of this misguided policy of criminalizing immigration status, at least 1 million children and spouses have been separated from their family members.

Human Rights Watch concludes that U.S. deportation law fails to safeguard human rights, and “is far out of step with international human rights standards and the practices of other nations, particularly nations that it considers to be its peers” - the law lacks proportionality (after all, deportation is a severe penalty for petty infractions, including the charges to which Mr. Salmon pleaded guilty); disregards the importance of family unity (deprives one of the right to live with close family members, including minor children); fails to consider the individual’s ties to the U.S., and gives no consideration to the threat to the deportee’s life or freedom if he or she is deported to the country of origin. The report makes it plain:

Deportation, though not technically recognized under US law as a form of punishment, is a coercive exercise of state power that can cause a person to lose her ability to live with close family members in a country she may reasonably view as "home." Most deportees are barred, either for decades or in many cases for the rest of their lives, from ever reentering the United States. A governmental decision to deprive a person of connection to the place she considers home raises serious human rights concerns. Human rights law at a minimum requires that the decision to deport be carefully considered, with all relevant impacts and potential rights violations weighed by an independent decision maker. Unfortunately, the US fails to do this on a daily basis.

Civil rights practitioners and immigrant rights advocates agree. “The United States’ immigration policies and practices that aggressively seek to deport individuals, especially based on convictions where the sentences have been long ago been served, are draconian and unjust,” says Su Ming Yeh, a staff attorney at the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, an organization that represents indigent prisoners and detainees whose rights have been violated. “Frequently, the ones who suffer the most are the family members and children left behind. Immigration judges should, at a minimum, be permitted discretion to consider the best interests of the children and the overall contributions of the immigrant.”

In a nation that claims to uphold family values, this legalized separation of families boggles the mind. And in a nation of immigrants - excluding indigenous peoples and descendants of kidnapped Africans, of course - immigrants have a history of being scapegoated, hated, discriminated against, and otherwise singled out and targeted for ridicule, abuse, humiliation and degradation. And very often, the law played a fundamental role in the oppression of immigrants.

At first, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, some European immigrant groups were viewed as inferior to Anglo-Saxons, and often competed with African Americans to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. In those days, it was not uncommon to see signs such as “Irish Need Not Apply” or “No Irish or Dogs Allowed” or “No Dogs, Negroes or Mexicans” for that matter. Jewish Americans faced discrimination, rigid quotas in college admissions, and in the case of Leo Frank, lynching. Then there were the laws, regulations and ordinances targeting Asian immigrants, especially Chinese and Japanese Americans. This was a manifestation of xenophobic and racist sentiment and a White fear of the “Yellow Peril”, which culminated in the internment of Japanese Americans on U.S. soil during World War II.

And today, many immigrants come from the so-called Third World, from the nations of the South, places with warm, tropical climates, and people with brown or black skin, very often Caribbean and Latin American people, and many Spanish-speaking people. The current anti-immigrant fervor - complete with anti-Latino violence and calls for building a giant fence on the U.S.-Mexico border - must be understood within the context of changing demographics and resistance to the browning of America. Throw in the color-coded war on drugs, and the implications of the war on terror, and you get the immigration mess in which we find ourselves today.

For those who are threatened with deportation, there is hope on the horizon. New York Congressman José Serrano has introduced the Child Citizen Protection Act (HR182), which would allow immigration judges to consider the best interests of U.S. citizen children in deportation cases. The law would essentially allow children to be heard before their parents are taken away from them. The New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City and Families for Freedom, members of Mr. Salmon’s defense committee, support the immediate passage of HR182 by Congress.

And as for Roxroy Salmon, his fate is in the hands of ICE Field Office Director Chris Shanahan, who can be reached at (212) 264-2413.

(Published in Black Commentator).