Sometimes, desperate and difficult circumstances require that we change the game a little bit, shake things up, if you will. If recent reports are true, then President Obama plans to mint his own Mideast peace plan in an attempt to loosen up the gridlock the parties are experiencing in that troubled region of the world.
And this is precisely the type of leadership for which people voted in the 2008 election. Tired of being hated when they traveled abroad -- due to the misguided cowboy diplomacy practiced by George W. Bush for eight long years -- Americans wanted a president that would once again make their country a place that was respected among the community of nations. And with his historic Mideast speech, Obama clearly laid out a new vision for Israel, the Palestinians and the greater Arab world.
"The truth is, in some of these conflicts, the United States can't impose solutions unless the participants in these conflicts are willing to break out of the old patterns of antagonism," the President said last week. A U.S. led plan would address Iran, a big concern of Israel, and involve Arab neighbors as well. "We want to get the debate away from settlements and East Jerusalem and take it to a 30,000-feet level that can involve Jordan, Syria and other countries in the region," in addition to the Palestinians and Israelis. The President knows that incrementalism hasn't worked.
All parties involved in a solution to the problem can afford to look at things in a different way. Israel is led by a right-wing government that has been a thorn in the side of the Obama administration. And realpolitik dictates that empires cannot allow their satellite nations to chump them out. Allowing the construction of additional housing units in East Jerusalem, the presumptive capital of a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Netanyahu does not come to the negotiating table as an honest partner. Self-determination and nationhood are a must for the Palestinians, and actions which show contempt for this reality certainly will not bring anyone peace and security, most of all Israel. True leadership comes when so-called leaders do the unpopular, though it is best for their people. Cowardice is doing the expedient, that which may yield short-term votes, yet fails to address the long-term crisis and only exacerbates it. So, for the purposes of this analysis, Netanyahu is a coward.
For Palestinians, suicide bombers will not bring peace, and a culture of violence will not build a nation. Although Israel has erred in characterizing what is primarily a liberation struggle as terrorism, the Palestinians have been mistaken in believing that killing innocent people will accomplish anything other than continuing the cycle of violence. The people in the occupied territories are suffering plenty, to be sure. The blockade of Gaza is a human rights violation and a humanitarian crisis, part of the greater outrage that is the occupation itself, with its apartheid system of checkpoints, passes and Bantustans. People of all faiths and backgrounds -- including progressive Jews -- choose to protest an unjust Gaza policy by fasting and other peaceful means.
As if to learn a lesson from the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South, many Palestinians are realizing that nonviolent resistance is the path to freedom. They are staging peaceful protests and boycotting goods made in the settlements. The Palestinian prime minister traveled to the West Bank to plant trees and declared that land, not presently under his authority, as part of a future Palestinian state. Gandhi and King surely would be proud.
As far as the U.S. is concerned, a laissez-faire policy of shoulder shrugging has not worked in the Mideast, and neither has the appearance of siding with one party over another. Obama realizes that if there is any hope for stability in the region, he must deal with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hotheads and peddlers of extremism have a vested interest in the status quo, and would like nothing more than to derail any attempts to transform today's sad state of affairs.
As an aside, somehow, the legendary African-American poet Gil Scott-Heron is caught in the crosshairs of the Mideast conflict. He was involved in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s. And now he is being criticized for his plans to perform in Tel Aviv, which, critics say, would violate the unified call among Palestinian civil society for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, a call which is "directed particularly towards international activists, artists, and academics of conscience."
Whether Gil Scott-Heron is compromising his ideals by performing in Israel is a question that goes far beyond the scope of this commentary. However, I am reminded of the title of one of his songs, "Home Is Where the Hatred Is." And for people living in Israel and the occupied territories, home definitely is where the hatred is. It is what South African Justice Richard Goldstone called "a situation where young people grow up in a culture of hatred and violence, with little hope for change in the future. Finally, the teaching of hate and dehumanization by each side against the other contributes to the destabilization of the whole region."
April 25, 2010
April 20, 2010
Gulf Coast recovery efforts are a human rights disaster
From The Progressive and McClatchy:
The scandal of Katrina is not yet over.
Post-hurricane recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast states are a violation of human rights law, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
Katrina and Rita, the two hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast region of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas in 2005, devastated people's lives. An estimated 1,800 people died in these storms, and 3 million were evacuated. The pathetic response by government officials was responsible for much of this.
The hurricanes revealed the cracks in local law enforcement. Federal prosecutors have accused New Orleans police officers of shooting unarmed black civilians at close range on the Danziger Bridge, and covering up their crimes. Three officers have pleaded guilty to charges related to the shootings, which killed two people, including a man who had severe mental handicaps.
Even to this day, the most vulnerable residents of the affected communities, including the poor and people of color, have been left out of recovery efforts, according to the Amnesty report, "Un-Natural Disaster: Human Rights In the Gulf Coast." Officials have violated the basic human rights of these residents, including the right to adequate housing, health services and equal access to the justice system.
"The botched recovery effort has exacerbated the discrimination and inequality present in many Gulf Coast communities," says Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
The region suffers from a lack of affordable housing, and little is being done to replace demolished public housing and affordable rentals. Almost 82,000 rental units in Louisiana were lost due to storm damage, mostly in New Orleans. Sadly, only 38 percent of lost rental units in New Orleans have been rebuilt, and rents are 40 percent higher than before Katrina struck. As a result, many are unable to come home, and those who remain are threatened with homelessness.
Right after Hurricane Katrina hit, there was an acute lack of access to health care. Today, there is still a lack of access to health care. In Louisiana, 20.1 percent lacked health insurance in 2008. And maternal deaths in that state are among the highest in the nation, with 15.9 deaths per 100,000 live births.
Of the more than 400,000 New Orleans residents prior to Katrina, 350,000 of them lived in areas damaged by the hurricane. Of those, 75 percent were black, and almost 30 percent were under the national poverty level of $19,350 for a family of four in 2005.
We can only wonder if the government would have responded differently to all the victims of Katrina had they been of a different race or on a higher rung of the socioeconomic ladder.
The scandal of Katrina is not yet over.
Post-hurricane recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast states are a violation of human rights law, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
Katrina and Rita, the two hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast region of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas in 2005, devastated people's lives. An estimated 1,800 people died in these storms, and 3 million were evacuated. The pathetic response by government officials was responsible for much of this.
The hurricanes revealed the cracks in local law enforcement. Federal prosecutors have accused New Orleans police officers of shooting unarmed black civilians at close range on the Danziger Bridge, and covering up their crimes. Three officers have pleaded guilty to charges related to the shootings, which killed two people, including a man who had severe mental handicaps.
Even to this day, the most vulnerable residents of the affected communities, including the poor and people of color, have been left out of recovery efforts, according to the Amnesty report, "Un-Natural Disaster: Human Rights In the Gulf Coast." Officials have violated the basic human rights of these residents, including the right to adequate housing, health services and equal access to the justice system.
"The botched recovery effort has exacerbated the discrimination and inequality present in many Gulf Coast communities," says Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
The region suffers from a lack of affordable housing, and little is being done to replace demolished public housing and affordable rentals. Almost 82,000 rental units in Louisiana were lost due to storm damage, mostly in New Orleans. Sadly, only 38 percent of lost rental units in New Orleans have been rebuilt, and rents are 40 percent higher than before Katrina struck. As a result, many are unable to come home, and those who remain are threatened with homelessness.
Right after Hurricane Katrina hit, there was an acute lack of access to health care. Today, there is still a lack of access to health care. In Louisiana, 20.1 percent lacked health insurance in 2008. And maternal deaths in that state are among the highest in the nation, with 15.9 deaths per 100,000 live births.
Of the more than 400,000 New Orleans residents prior to Katrina, 350,000 of them lived in areas damaged by the hurricane. Of those, 75 percent were black, and almost 30 percent were under the national poverty level of $19,350 for a family of four in 2005.
We can only wonder if the government would have responded differently to all the victims of Katrina had they been of a different race or on a higher rung of the socioeconomic ladder.
Fuse still lit 15 years after Oklahoma City bombing
Published in theGrio:
Fifteen years ago today, 168 people died in the Oklahoma City bombing - an attack that, at the time, was the greatest act of terrorism on U.S. soil. Among the dead were 19 children under the age of six. More than 680 others were injured. The perpetrators of that unspeakable act were members of a right-wing militia and patriot movement that gained steam in the 1990s.
Today, that movement is resurgent, fueled by hard economic times, anti-immigrant sentiment, hatred of government, a distaste for taxes, and disapproval of a black president named Barack Hussein Obama. Once again, extremist groups are backing up their rhetoric with acts of violence, and it seems that America has learned little since 1995.
The co-conspirators in the Oklahoma City bombing -- army buddies Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols -- blew up a truck filled with explosives outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Building. McVeigh, who was awarded a Bronze star and other medals in the Gulf War, harbored anti-government sentiments. Specifically, he resented the government's handling of the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the 1993 shootout and fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, which left cult leader David Koresh and 76 followers, including over 20 children dead. McVeigh timed the bombing of the Murrah Building to coincide with the second anniversary of the siege at Waco.
Until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Oklahoma City attack was regarded as the worst terrorist act in U.S. history. Many in the black community, however, commonly refer to a much earlier example of home grown terrorism in Oklahoma -- the Tulsa Race Riot of May 31, 1921, when a white mob destroyed the thriving black community of Greenwood, known as Black Wall Street. As many as 300 people were killed, with 35 square blocks razed and 3,000 homes destroyed. For African-Americans, terrorism is not a new phenomenon.
"Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear," said then-President Clinton at the memorial service for the Oklahoma City victims, just four days after the bombing. "When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it. In the face of death, let us honor life. As St. Paul admonished us, Let us 'not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.'"
Fifteen years later, Clinton is warning us of the parallels between today and 1995. Back then, he suggests, anti-government sentiment, the vilification of government officials and a growing militia movement created a climate that led to the bombing of the Murrah Building.
"I remember when Newt Gingrich, shortly after becoming speaker, said that Hillary and I were the enemies of normal Americans. It didn't bother me a bit," the former president said in a recent speech. "But what we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or reduce our passion from the positions we hold -- but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike."
Last year, the Department of Homeland Security issued "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." The report warned that the current economic recession and the election of the first black president have provided fertile recruitment opportunities for extremist right-wing and white supremacist groups. The current environment could lead to confrontations between these radicals and government authorities, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and other examples of domestic terrorism in the 1990s. These right-wing, anti-government forces are united by their hatred of Latinos and immigrants, hostility towards gun control laws, and racial resentment towards President Obama.
Meanwhile, a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a dramatic increase in extremist groups in just one year. These groups, which range from Klansmen, neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates to homophobes, vigilantes and Holocaust deniers, have exploited popular anger with their outrageous anti-government conspiracy theories.
In 2009, the number of active patriot groups jumped 244 percent, from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 groups in 2009. Much of that increase was due to the growth of the paramilitary organizations called militias - which increased from 42 groups in 2008 to 127 in 2009.
"This extraordinary growth is a cause for grave concern," said the SPLC's Mark Potok. "The people associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead."
In addition to Patriot and militia groups, the U.S. is witnessing a record number of racist hate groups -- from 926 in 2008 to 932 in 2009 -- in a decade when hate groups jumped 55 percent. Meanwhile, "nativist extremist" groups not only oppose current immigration policy, but these vigilantes take matters into their own hands and harass presumed immigrants. Nativists increased 80 percent in one year, from 173 in 2008 to 309 last year.
In total, according to the SPLC, extremist groups increased 40 percent in 2009, from 1,248 groups in 2008 to 1,753 last year. We are reaping the consequences of their rise, with right-wing violence that harkens back to the 1990s: The murder of six police officers since the start of the Obama administration, racist skinhead plots to assassinate the president, and bomb plots on the part of anti-government, racist and survivalist groups.
What is particularly disturbing about the rise of the patriot movement is their success in penetrating the mainstream and becoming part and parcel of conservative American politics, something which had not occurred in the 1990s.
"The 'tea parties' and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism," the SPLC report notes. Consider high-profile personalities with large followings that embrace the anti-government rhetoric and conspiracy theories of the patriot movement, such as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, Minn), who suggested Obama was planning re-education camps for young people, and FOX News host Glenn Beck, who promoted the conspiracy theory that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is operating secret concentration camps.
The Oath Keepers -- a militia group consisting of current and ex-soldiers and police officers -- similarly warns about concentration camps, a coming dictatorship, and a "New World Order." This organization, which considers President Obama "an enemy of the state", is co-sponsoring the Second Amendment March on Washington set for, not surprisingly, April 19th.
Birthers, who have been legitimized by conservative news outlets and members of Congress, believe that President Obama was born in a foreign country and is not a U.S. citizen. James Von Brunn, the white supremacist who opened fire and killed a security officer at the National Holocaust Museum, was part of the Birther movement, which has racist and anti-Semitic origins.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma legislators and tea party members have proposed the formation a volunteer militia group to defend against the federal government. And the Colorado Court of Appeals has rejected on Second Amendment grounds the University of Colorado's ban on students carrying weapons on campus.
Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the extremist groups are back and they're bigger and badder than ever. And this time, they are coalescing, working from the same page, and enjoying support from some circles in government and the media. Once again, we have failed to learn from the lessons of history. Are "the dark clouds of fascism gathering" in America, as Noam Chomsky suggests? Although we must hope he is wrong, perhaps he has a point.
Nevertheless, we should all make it a point to watch our back.
Fifteen years ago today, 168 people died in the Oklahoma City bombing - an attack that, at the time, was the greatest act of terrorism on U.S. soil. Among the dead were 19 children under the age of six. More than 680 others were injured. The perpetrators of that unspeakable act were members of a right-wing militia and patriot movement that gained steam in the 1990s.
Today, that movement is resurgent, fueled by hard economic times, anti-immigrant sentiment, hatred of government, a distaste for taxes, and disapproval of a black president named Barack Hussein Obama. Once again, extremist groups are backing up their rhetoric with acts of violence, and it seems that America has learned little since 1995.
The co-conspirators in the Oklahoma City bombing -- army buddies Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols -- blew up a truck filled with explosives outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Building. McVeigh, who was awarded a Bronze star and other medals in the Gulf War, harbored anti-government sentiments. Specifically, he resented the government's handling of the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the 1993 shootout and fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, which left cult leader David Koresh and 76 followers, including over 20 children dead. McVeigh timed the bombing of the Murrah Building to coincide with the second anniversary of the siege at Waco.
Until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Oklahoma City attack was regarded as the worst terrorist act in U.S. history. Many in the black community, however, commonly refer to a much earlier example of home grown terrorism in Oklahoma -- the Tulsa Race Riot of May 31, 1921, when a white mob destroyed the thriving black community of Greenwood, known as Black Wall Street. As many as 300 people were killed, with 35 square blocks razed and 3,000 homes destroyed. For African-Americans, terrorism is not a new phenomenon.
"Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear," said then-President Clinton at the memorial service for the Oklahoma City victims, just four days after the bombing. "When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it. In the face of death, let us honor life. As St. Paul admonished us, Let us 'not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.'"
Fifteen years later, Clinton is warning us of the parallels between today and 1995. Back then, he suggests, anti-government sentiment, the vilification of government officials and a growing militia movement created a climate that led to the bombing of the Murrah Building.
"I remember when Newt Gingrich, shortly after becoming speaker, said that Hillary and I were the enemies of normal Americans. It didn't bother me a bit," the former president said in a recent speech. "But what we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or reduce our passion from the positions we hold -- but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike."
Last year, the Department of Homeland Security issued "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." The report warned that the current economic recession and the election of the first black president have provided fertile recruitment opportunities for extremist right-wing and white supremacist groups. The current environment could lead to confrontations between these radicals and government authorities, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and other examples of domestic terrorism in the 1990s. These right-wing, anti-government forces are united by their hatred of Latinos and immigrants, hostility towards gun control laws, and racial resentment towards President Obama.
Meanwhile, a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a dramatic increase in extremist groups in just one year. These groups, which range from Klansmen, neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates to homophobes, vigilantes and Holocaust deniers, have exploited popular anger with their outrageous anti-government conspiracy theories.
In 2009, the number of active patriot groups jumped 244 percent, from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 groups in 2009. Much of that increase was due to the growth of the paramilitary organizations called militias - which increased from 42 groups in 2008 to 127 in 2009.
"This extraordinary growth is a cause for grave concern," said the SPLC's Mark Potok. "The people associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead."
In addition to Patriot and militia groups, the U.S. is witnessing a record number of racist hate groups -- from 926 in 2008 to 932 in 2009 -- in a decade when hate groups jumped 55 percent. Meanwhile, "nativist extremist" groups not only oppose current immigration policy, but these vigilantes take matters into their own hands and harass presumed immigrants. Nativists increased 80 percent in one year, from 173 in 2008 to 309 last year.
In total, according to the SPLC, extremist groups increased 40 percent in 2009, from 1,248 groups in 2008 to 1,753 last year. We are reaping the consequences of their rise, with right-wing violence that harkens back to the 1990s: The murder of six police officers since the start of the Obama administration, racist skinhead plots to assassinate the president, and bomb plots on the part of anti-government, racist and survivalist groups.
What is particularly disturbing about the rise of the patriot movement is their success in penetrating the mainstream and becoming part and parcel of conservative American politics, something which had not occurred in the 1990s.
"The 'tea parties' and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism," the SPLC report notes. Consider high-profile personalities with large followings that embrace the anti-government rhetoric and conspiracy theories of the patriot movement, such as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, Minn), who suggested Obama was planning re-education camps for young people, and FOX News host Glenn Beck, who promoted the conspiracy theory that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is operating secret concentration camps.
The Oath Keepers -- a militia group consisting of current and ex-soldiers and police officers -- similarly warns about concentration camps, a coming dictatorship, and a "New World Order." This organization, which considers President Obama "an enemy of the state", is co-sponsoring the Second Amendment March on Washington set for, not surprisingly, April 19th.
Birthers, who have been legitimized by conservative news outlets and members of Congress, believe that President Obama was born in a foreign country and is not a U.S. citizen. James Von Brunn, the white supremacist who opened fire and killed a security officer at the National Holocaust Museum, was part of the Birther movement, which has racist and anti-Semitic origins.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma legislators and tea party members have proposed the formation a volunteer militia group to defend against the federal government. And the Colorado Court of Appeals has rejected on Second Amendment grounds the University of Colorado's ban on students carrying weapons on campus.
Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the extremist groups are back and they're bigger and badder than ever. And this time, they are coalescing, working from the same page, and enjoying support from some circles in government and the media. Once again, we have failed to learn from the lessons of history. Are "the dark clouds of fascism gathering" in America, as Noam Chomsky suggests? Although we must hope he is wrong, perhaps he has a point.
Nevertheless, we should all make it a point to watch our back.
Poor Whites Get Confederate History Month & Coal Mine Disasters
I have a question and I need a quick answer: Exactly what benefit is derived from the commemoration of Confederate History Month? Does it increase the standard of living for its celebrants, presumably poor and working-class whites? Does it provide them better wages, benefits and working conditions? I need to know…
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is teaching us the realities of the present-day Republican Party. When you want to appeal to the ultra-Right base, you’ll have to dabble in white supremacy, plain and simple. The Governor issued a proclamation in honor of Confederate History Month, “to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.” The original proclamation failed to mention slavery even once. In response, McDonnell said that “there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”
Then, he issued a clarification, with a revised proclamation stating that “the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Virginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders.” Mississippi Governor and former RNC chair Haley Barbour – who recently characterized himself as a “fat redneck” – has drawn praise from the national chaplain of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans (SCV) for failing to mention slavery in his state’s Confederate Heritage Month proclamation. By the way, the SCV is a neo-Confederate group which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is dominated by radical racists, and whose leaders are tied to segregation and white supremacy.
According to Barbour, this whole slavery flap isn’t worth “diddly”. And as if to ignore the legacy of Jim Crow, McDonnell has brought back the literacy test for nonviolent felons who want to restore their voting rights.
So, once again I ask, why celebrate the Confederacy? McDonnell said it would increase tourism for Virginia, which I suppose is a valid reason if you plan to host a Klan convention. Don’t get me wrong, I think we should learn as much as we can about that important time in history. But these proclamations are not the stuff of history buffs, antique collectors and Civil War re-enactors. Rather, this is the glorification of slavery, domestic terrorism, secession and treason.
To invoke the Confederacy in 2010 is to throw a bone to disaffected white voters. They are bitter and angry because they can’t make ends meet, and rightly so. But their anger is misdirected. They want their country back, and hope to return to the “good ol’ days”, which was pretty horrible for minorities, women, the poor, and everyone except for rich white WASPy dudes with connections. They’re angry over all of these changes in society, with brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking illegal immigrants coming into the country and taking all of the good jobs picking fruit, washing dishes and busing tables. And of course there’s that black Muslim-socialist-fascist president who can’t find his birth certificate, and who made good on his promise to slip black folks some reparations and civil rights in the form of health care reform. Lord, have mercy.
So, the powerful always threw the bone to white folk of meager means, and many of them took it and ran, even though it was against their interests to do so. The Confederate soldiers who supposedly fought and died so bravely did it to maintain a system of slavery that kept themselves poor and dumb, and rendered their labor unnecessary. But at least they were white, so they thought. They remained poor during Jim Crow, but at least they could rally around the Confederate flag, and against black people. And that flag was a tool used to fight integration, civil rights, and the hopes and dreams of African-Americans. It was no coincidence, for instance, that Georgia added the stars and bars to their flag in 1956, after the 1954 Brown Supreme Court decision. From the 1960s on, Dixiecrats went Republican for the most part, and the GOP became the standard bearer for race card politics with a winning Southern Strategy. Meanwhile, the party of Lincoln – which once claimed over 1,500 black elected officials throughout the nation – has been rendered a Southern-based white nationalist party in the twenty-first century. Now that’s progress.
This is where the tragic West Virginia coal mine disaster comes in. “Low information” voters, as they are called, get very little from the GOP aside from empty-calorie values issues such as race, abort ion bans, gun rights and legalized homophobia. Republican policies, with help from corporate Democrats, have actually widened the gap between rich and poor since Reagan. Inequality is now worse than it was right before the Great Depression. Trickle-down economics has created a massive redistribution of wealth, making America far less socially mobile than those so-called socialist European nations the teabag crowd so enthusiastically derides. A big part of this bonanza for the rich has been deregulation. A Republican utopia would be completely free from regulations because they stand in the way of total profits, and the workers be damned. Massey Energy – the company whose millions of dollars in safety violations led to the recent West Virginia mine explosion that killed 29 workers, the worst such disaster in 40 years – gives 91 percent of its money to Republican candidates. Massey CEO Don Blankenship said safety regulators are “as silly as global warming,” and argued that the Mine Safety and Health Administration “seeks power over coal miners.”
Perhaps Republicans should spend more time caring about workplace safety and the well being of people, rather than pander to their voters with empty calories, nonsense values and racial hatred. These white voters, to their detriment, have fallen for the okeedoke every time. The challenge for progressives is to sustain a movement that welcomes these poor and working-class whites, and shows them how to act in their own economic self interests for a change.
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is teaching us the realities of the present-day Republican Party. When you want to appeal to the ultra-Right base, you’ll have to dabble in white supremacy, plain and simple. The Governor issued a proclamation in honor of Confederate History Month, “to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.” The original proclamation failed to mention slavery even once. In response, McDonnell said that “there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”
Then, he issued a clarification, with a revised proclamation stating that “the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Virginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders.” Mississippi Governor and former RNC chair Haley Barbour – who recently characterized himself as a “fat redneck” – has drawn praise from the national chaplain of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans (SCV) for failing to mention slavery in his state’s Confederate Heritage Month proclamation. By the way, the SCV is a neo-Confederate group which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is dominated by radical racists, and whose leaders are tied to segregation and white supremacy.
According to Barbour, this whole slavery flap isn’t worth “diddly”. And as if to ignore the legacy of Jim Crow, McDonnell has brought back the literacy test for nonviolent felons who want to restore their voting rights.
So, once again I ask, why celebrate the Confederacy? McDonnell said it would increase tourism for Virginia, which I suppose is a valid reason if you plan to host a Klan convention. Don’t get me wrong, I think we should learn as much as we can about that important time in history. But these proclamations are not the stuff of history buffs, antique collectors and Civil War re-enactors. Rather, this is the glorification of slavery, domestic terrorism, secession and treason.
To invoke the Confederacy in 2010 is to throw a bone to disaffected white voters. They are bitter and angry because they can’t make ends meet, and rightly so. But their anger is misdirected. They want their country back, and hope to return to the “good ol’ days”, which was pretty horrible for minorities, women, the poor, and everyone except for rich white WASPy dudes with connections. They’re angry over all of these changes in society, with brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking illegal immigrants coming into the country and taking all of the good jobs picking fruit, washing dishes and busing tables. And of course there’s that black Muslim-socialist-fascist president who can’t find his birth certificate, and who made good on his promise to slip black folks some reparations and civil rights in the form of health care reform. Lord, have mercy.
So, the powerful always threw the bone to white folk of meager means, and many of them took it and ran, even though it was against their interests to do so. The Confederate soldiers who supposedly fought and died so bravely did it to maintain a system of slavery that kept themselves poor and dumb, and rendered their labor unnecessary. But at least they were white, so they thought. They remained poor during Jim Crow, but at least they could rally around the Confederate flag, and against black people. And that flag was a tool used to fight integration, civil rights, and the hopes and dreams of African-Americans. It was no coincidence, for instance, that Georgia added the stars and bars to their flag in 1956, after the 1954 Brown Supreme Court decision. From the 1960s on, Dixiecrats went Republican for the most part, and the GOP became the standard bearer for race card politics with a winning Southern Strategy. Meanwhile, the party of Lincoln – which once claimed over 1,500 black elected officials throughout the nation – has been rendered a Southern-based white nationalist party in the twenty-first century. Now that’s progress.
This is where the tragic West Virginia coal mine disaster comes in. “Low information” voters, as they are called, get very little from the GOP aside from empty-calorie values issues such as race, abort ion bans, gun rights and legalized homophobia. Republican policies, with help from corporate Democrats, have actually widened the gap between rich and poor since Reagan. Inequality is now worse than it was right before the Great Depression. Trickle-down economics has created a massive redistribution of wealth, making America far less socially mobile than those so-called socialist European nations the teabag crowd so enthusiastically derides. A big part of this bonanza for the rich has been deregulation. A Republican utopia would be completely free from regulations because they stand in the way of total profits, and the workers be damned. Massey Energy – the company whose millions of dollars in safety violations led to the recent West Virginia mine explosion that killed 29 workers, the worst such disaster in 40 years – gives 91 percent of its money to Republican candidates. Massey CEO Don Blankenship said safety regulators are “as silly as global warming,” and argued that the Mine Safety and Health Administration “seeks power over coal miners.”
Perhaps Republicans should spend more time caring about workplace safety and the well being of people, rather than pander to their voters with empty calories, nonsense values and racial hatred. These white voters, to their detriment, have fallen for the okeedoke every time. The challenge for progressives is to sustain a movement that welcomes these poor and working-class whites, and shows them how to act in their own economic self interests for a change.
April 8, 2010
A Klan By Any Other Name Would Smell as Racist
Can't we just call them what they really are? I speak of the Tea Party crowd who hates Obama and thinks he's a socialist, fascist, communist Muslim who was born in Kenya and pals around with terrorists. They have allies in the Republican Party, and enablers on Fox News and rightwing talk radio. And I also refer to those white domestic terror groups -- anti-government, anti-tax, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, racist, homophobic, gun worshipers, whatever -- who would take matters into their own hands.
I call them all Klan. And why not? They also happen to be the radicalized base of the GOP, those barrel scrapings that call themselves the ultra-right these days. Back to the barrel scraping in a moment.
Some of you may conclude I'm painting in awfully broad brushstrokes here. You're entitled to your opinion, but I have my reasons, if you just listen.
First of all, the recent images of the unwashed Tea Party faithful threatening members of Congress -- of spitting at African-American lawmakers and calling them n*gger, calling a gay lawmaker a f*ggot, and so on -- are shocking, although not entirely surprising. Since the 2008 election, empowered by the McCain-Palin rallies, these folks have been on a rampage. They came with their racist placards and Obama monkey dolls complete with nooses. Some arrived with their loaded weapons. Under the banner of "taking our country back," these people were and still are angry, to be sure.
Those of you who remember the televised images of angry white protestors in the 1950s and 1960s know that this is nothing new. Whenever a black child tried to integrate a school in the Jim Crow South, the teabaggers of their day were out there to show their outrage. Whenever African Americans tried to register to vote or sit at a segregated lunch counter, the same crowd was out there. They came with their fists, their vulgarity, threats of violence and spitting. They, too, wanted to take their country back, and for the same reasons as their twenty-first century heirs. While some of these hotheads limited their protest to the usual rabble rousing, others went the extra mile and engaged in lynching, bombing and other acts of terror.
Meanwhile, the Dixiecrat lawmakers of the day, hoping to curry favor with their Southern Democratic base, gave a wink and a nod to the racial violence. And so, Southern politicians signed the Southern Manifesto and filibustered civil rights legislation. They vowed to fight to preserve segregation, and stood on the schoolhouse steps to defy the federal authorities, in an expression of white Christian nationalism and skin-tone solidarity. The white-collar Klan was on the same page with the down-and-dirty Klan, not to mention the everyday racist on the streets. They all read from the same game plan, and they all knew what to do, a distinct role cut out for each. Some did the dirty work, while others appeared stately, as if to remain above the fray. But the overall goal was to stop black people from becoming full citizens.
Although times are rather different now, the comparisons between the days of the civil rights movement and today are compelling. Amidst the increasing acts of violence, threats of violence and polluted discourse that we are witnessing, Republican leaders are for the most part silent about the hate emanating from their base. Sometimes they are too busy justifying the violence their base represents, if not actively fomenting it. Cynical politicians that they are, they want to harness the Teabagger, Birther and militia hate. This is their ticket to electoral victory, they believe.
And RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Rep. Eric Cantor (R, VA), a black and a Jew, should be ashamed for their participation in this blatant exercise in extremist intolerance called the Republican Party. These two men appear to be among the last vestiges of diversity in the once Grand Old Party, the party that once boasted 1,500 black political officeholders during Reconstruction. Michael Steele claims he is facing scrutiny from the party because of his race, and perhaps he is correct. But as a person of color, Steele cannot cry racism. He cannot claim victimization when he has willingly cast his lot with those who revel in their white skin privilege, and depend on the race card for their bread and butter. In other words, he knowingly assumed the risk.
And exactly why is the Republican base so angry these days? What do they want? Is this really all about taxes and the size of government? And why were they so eager to protect the interests of health insurance companies, who on a daily basis commit grand larceny against the struggling schlubs of America? Corporate lobbyists bankrolled the Teabaggers because low information voters (a.k.a. the ignorant and uneducated) have a propensity to act against their economic self interests. For years, poor whites sided with the wealthy to maintain an economic system that rendered their labor superfluous. And they refused to join forces with workers of color in a collective effort to unionize and raise everyone's standard of living. They were poor and dumb, but at least they weren't black, so they thought.
In 2010, the Tea Party anger is depicted in the media as a legitimate beef with the government. But when you look below the surface, they're really just racist. They want their country returned to them, from the hands of a black boogeyman President Obama. They want the immigrants expelled. Surely they are concerned that over half of the babies born in the U.S. are of color. When the right fringe gains control of school boards, as is the case with Texas, they literally erase all the color from the history books and "can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don't exist." And they oppose taxes and government programs such as health care because they think that blacks and Latinos are the beneficiaries. Rush Limbaugh said himself that health care reform is a civil rights bill, reparations for slavery. This attitude reflects a natural progression of the GOP since the 1960s, when aggrieved racists formed white Christian "segregation academies," and fled the Democratic Party to make a home in the GOP.
The GOP benefited from a "Southern Strategy" that exploited white opposition to the civil rights movement, and antipathy towards black folks. One of the chief practitioners of that strategy was the late Lee Atwater. He described the Southern Strategy this way:
This strategy served the GOP very well in past elections, but now demographics are catching up with the party. In a browning America, their base is shrinking. With every race-baiting campaign, more reasonable moderate and liberal whites fled the Republican Party until there were virtually none left. What remains now, for the most part, is a regionalized, ultra-right core, many of whom are racist. And apparently some are violent as well.
Embracing the fringe, the GOP is scraping the bottom of the barrel and courting the troubling and troubled byproducts they find. They do so at their own peril, as now some violent anti-government "Guardians" have sent death threats to Republican and Democratic governors. The recent incarnations of the angry mob have many brand new names, but they're still the old Klan to me.
I call them all Klan. And why not? They also happen to be the radicalized base of the GOP, those barrel scrapings that call themselves the ultra-right these days. Back to the barrel scraping in a moment.
Some of you may conclude I'm painting in awfully broad brushstrokes here. You're entitled to your opinion, but I have my reasons, if you just listen.
First of all, the recent images of the unwashed Tea Party faithful threatening members of Congress -- of spitting at African-American lawmakers and calling them n*gger, calling a gay lawmaker a f*ggot, and so on -- are shocking, although not entirely surprising. Since the 2008 election, empowered by the McCain-Palin rallies, these folks have been on a rampage. They came with their racist placards and Obama monkey dolls complete with nooses. Some arrived with their loaded weapons. Under the banner of "taking our country back," these people were and still are angry, to be sure.
Those of you who remember the televised images of angry white protestors in the 1950s and 1960s know that this is nothing new. Whenever a black child tried to integrate a school in the Jim Crow South, the teabaggers of their day were out there to show their outrage. Whenever African Americans tried to register to vote or sit at a segregated lunch counter, the same crowd was out there. They came with their fists, their vulgarity, threats of violence and spitting. They, too, wanted to take their country back, and for the same reasons as their twenty-first century heirs. While some of these hotheads limited their protest to the usual rabble rousing, others went the extra mile and engaged in lynching, bombing and other acts of terror.
Meanwhile, the Dixiecrat lawmakers of the day, hoping to curry favor with their Southern Democratic base, gave a wink and a nod to the racial violence. And so, Southern politicians signed the Southern Manifesto and filibustered civil rights legislation. They vowed to fight to preserve segregation, and stood on the schoolhouse steps to defy the federal authorities, in an expression of white Christian nationalism and skin-tone solidarity. The white-collar Klan was on the same page with the down-and-dirty Klan, not to mention the everyday racist on the streets. They all read from the same game plan, and they all knew what to do, a distinct role cut out for each. Some did the dirty work, while others appeared stately, as if to remain above the fray. But the overall goal was to stop black people from becoming full citizens.
Although times are rather different now, the comparisons between the days of the civil rights movement and today are compelling. Amidst the increasing acts of violence, threats of violence and polluted discourse that we are witnessing, Republican leaders are for the most part silent about the hate emanating from their base. Sometimes they are too busy justifying the violence their base represents, if not actively fomenting it. Cynical politicians that they are, they want to harness the Teabagger, Birther and militia hate. This is their ticket to electoral victory, they believe.
And RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Rep. Eric Cantor (R, VA), a black and a Jew, should be ashamed for their participation in this blatant exercise in extremist intolerance called the Republican Party. These two men appear to be among the last vestiges of diversity in the once Grand Old Party, the party that once boasted 1,500 black political officeholders during Reconstruction. Michael Steele claims he is facing scrutiny from the party because of his race, and perhaps he is correct. But as a person of color, Steele cannot cry racism. He cannot claim victimization when he has willingly cast his lot with those who revel in their white skin privilege, and depend on the race card for their bread and butter. In other words, he knowingly assumed the risk.
And exactly why is the Republican base so angry these days? What do they want? Is this really all about taxes and the size of government? And why were they so eager to protect the interests of health insurance companies, who on a daily basis commit grand larceny against the struggling schlubs of America? Corporate lobbyists bankrolled the Teabaggers because low information voters (a.k.a. the ignorant and uneducated) have a propensity to act against their economic self interests. For years, poor whites sided with the wealthy to maintain an economic system that rendered their labor superfluous. And they refused to join forces with workers of color in a collective effort to unionize and raise everyone's standard of living. They were poor and dumb, but at least they weren't black, so they thought.
In 2010, the Tea Party anger is depicted in the media as a legitimate beef with the government. But when you look below the surface, they're really just racist. They want their country returned to them, from the hands of a black boogeyman President Obama. They want the immigrants expelled. Surely they are concerned that over half of the babies born in the U.S. are of color. When the right fringe gains control of school boards, as is the case with Texas, they literally erase all the color from the history books and "can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don't exist." And they oppose taxes and government programs such as health care because they think that blacks and Latinos are the beneficiaries. Rush Limbaugh said himself that health care reform is a civil rights bill, reparations for slavery. This attitude reflects a natural progression of the GOP since the 1960s, when aggrieved racists formed white Christian "segregation academies," and fled the Democratic Party to make a home in the GOP.
The GOP benefited from a "Southern Strategy" that exploited white opposition to the civil rights movement, and antipathy towards black folks. One of the chief practitioners of that strategy was the late Lee Atwater. He described the Southern Strategy this way:
"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger,' " said Atwater. "By 1968, you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites."
This strategy served the GOP very well in past elections, but now demographics are catching up with the party. In a browning America, their base is shrinking. With every race-baiting campaign, more reasonable moderate and liberal whites fled the Republican Party until there were virtually none left. What remains now, for the most part, is a regionalized, ultra-right core, many of whom are racist. And apparently some are violent as well.
Embracing the fringe, the GOP is scraping the bottom of the barrel and courting the troubling and troubled byproducts they find. They do so at their own peril, as now some violent anti-government "Guardians" have sent death threats to Republican and Democratic governors. The recent incarnations of the angry mob have many brand new names, but they're still the old Klan to me.
April 2, 2010
140 years after the 15th Amendment, more progress must be made on voting rights
From the Progressive:
It has been 140 years since the 15th Amendment was ratified, but we still have a ways to go to ensure the right to vote.
The 15th Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution on March 30, 1870. It states: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” And it adds: “The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
With voting rights granted to former slaves, the change to the American political landscape was dramatic. There were more than 1,500 black political officeholders during Reconstruction, all of them Republicans. They included a governor and a lieutenant governor, state legislators and members of Congress and the Senate.
Despite the new voting rights protections guaranteed under the 15th Amendment, there was considerable Southern white resistance to black participation in American civic and political life. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan were formed to intimidate blacks. And as federal troops left the South and Reconstruction came to a close, the South descended into an era of Jim Crow segregation. States engaged in the wholesale disenfranchisement of blacks, wiping them off the political map.
It was not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that full citizenship rights would be restored to black people. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, dozens of people died securing that right.
And sadly, now, in 2010, remnants of Jim Crow remain.
An estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of felony convictions, including 4 million who are out of prison. A third of them are black. That means one in eight black men can’t vote.
“As of 2004, more African-American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the 15th Amendment was ratified,” says Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
Some politicians want to return us to the days of Jim Crow laws. At a Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tenn., in February, former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo told an audience he lamented that “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.” He added, “People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House.”
Tancredo’s objectionable statement was a not-so-subtle reference to literacy tests, a weapon of choice used by Jim Crow states to disenfranchise black voters.
On the 140th anniversary of the 15th Amendment, Tancredo and others would have us turn back the clock, and return to a time when people of color were denied the right to vote.
Let’s expand democracy rather than shrink it.
The Catholic Church As A Safe Haven For Criminals
Let us explore for a moment the notion that the Catholic Church is a safe haven for criminals -- if not a criminal organization, then at least an organization whose leadership engages in criminality.
Such a topic goes beyond the comfort level of some people because it is interpreted as an attack on religion, or specifically on the Catholic Church. People are entitled to their own expressions of faith, to express God in the manner in which they choose, or to refuse to acknowledge the existence of a higher power or Supreme Being. With that said, religious organizations, of which the Catholic Church is an example, are merely social constructions, entities devised by human beings to meet certain goals. No institution is sacrosanct and beyond the laws of nations. There is no mysticism involved, no divine hand sweeping down to make the rules, just people with their selfish motives. Their policies for self-preservation, including maintaining power and the status quo, may or may not correspond with the needs of their followers. Often, the followers be damned so that the corporation can remain intact.
The recent news coming from the Catholic Church does not bode well: when he was a cardinal, the current Pope refused to defrock a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys. Another priest faces extradition to Ireland for raping a 15-year-old boy 40 years ago. European politicians are calling on the Church to hold sex abuse inquiries in Ireland and Germany. Germans want to know what the Pope and his brother knew about the decades-long abuse in an elementary school and a German boys' choir that the Pope's brother once directed. And new abuse scandals have cropped up in Switzerland, Austria, and Brazil. Once viewed as solely an American phenomenon, the problem is going worldwide. The Vatican tells its bishops to cover up the sex abuse cases or risk being thrown out of the Church. Child victims are forced to sign statements vowing that they will remain silent about the abuse they suffered. Pedophile priests are not fired or turned in to the authorities but are transferred to other parishes, where they continue to prey on children.
In a game of bait and switch, the Vatican has pushed back at the criticism, attacking the media for a "conspiracy" against the Church for focusing on allegations of the Pope's role in covering up the abuse. But those who themselves are engaged in a criminal conspiracy are in no position to blame their accusers of a conspiracy. That's just getting to the facts.
Surely, some will point to the good deeds of the Church, and good deeds exist, to be sure. A track record of charity, of helping the poor, and of improving society exists alongside a troubling history of participating in slavery and colonization and maintaining indifference towards the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. All institutions are human and therefore flawed. But to whitewash a systemic problem of child sex abuse and pretend it doesn't exist? What is there to fear in the truth, and whose interests are protected by covering up the scandal? The interests of the children? Certainly even the most ardent parishioners cannot excuse the inexcusable and must realize that there is no wiggle room when it comes to the rape and torture of children.
I have concluded that any nonreligious organization with such a track record of abuse would have been indicted under the RICO Act a long time ago. Racketeering, pedophilia, rape, assault, and criminal conspiracy to cover up all of the above -- these are the things for which prisons were made.
The Vatican and its agents are a major worldwide repository for child abusers and pedophiles. Surely, part of the reason for this is the environment of secrecy and sexual repression. Another part of it is a vow of celibacy that encourages an unhealthy attitude towards human sexuality. And it always comes back to sexuality, doesn't it? A policy of homophobia forces gay priests to remain in the closet, in a Church where a sizable proportion of priests is likely gay. The Church condemns contraception, an irresponsible stance given the rampant spread of AIDS in Africa and elsewhere. And the subjugation of women allows an all-male club of crusty old dudes to dominate the Church hierarchy. Certainly, one can envision a more open atmosphere if women were allowed to become priests and provide leadership to a Church badly in need of new leaders.
The Catholic Church is hemorrhaging money due to the billions of dollars in compensation required to settle the sex abuse claims. And no one wants to become a priest, for obvious reasons. This is an anachronistic institution that refuses to change to meet the realities of a modern world. Such institutions eventually die under the weight of their own irrelevance, intransigence, and corruption. And if Church authorities' top priority is saving the Church rather than saving lives, protecting children, and weeding out the criminals in their midst, then it is a fitting demise indeed. Ultimately, those who truly care about the future of this or any other Church should strive to change it.
April 1, 2010
Harvard Murder Highlights the Perils of Being Young, Gifted and Black
Smith was charged with being an accessory after the fact in the May 2009 murder of 21-year old Justin Cosby. Specifically, Smith is accused of participating in a drug deal gone bad, of giving three New York men--including her boyfriend--access to her Harvard ID swipe card, which gained them access to her Kirkland House dorm. The men allegedly robbed and shot Cosby, who is linked to the campus drug trade and died the next day. Smith allegedly hid the murder weapon, helped the men escape, and lied to a grand jury. In other words, she's in a heap of trouble. And while the accused are innocent until proven guilty, she deserves little of your sympathy if all of this is true. But that doesn't mean that we cannot mourn ruined lives, and the loss that is associated with broken dreams unfulfilled expectations.
Smith and another Harvard student linked to the incident, Chanequa Campbell, were banished from the college and not allowed to graduate. Campbell, who has not been charged, came short of accusing Harvard of racism. "The honest answer to that is that I'm black and I'm poor and I'm from New York and I walk a certain way and I keep my clothes a certain way," Campbell told the Boston Globe, in response to a question about Harvard's reason for ordering her to leave. "It's something that labels me as different from everyone else."
To be sure, Campbell and Smith did not receive the support from black folks on campus that Professor Henry Louis Gates enjoyed after his incident. Of course, I speak of Gates' altercation with a Cambridge police officer as the scholar tried to enter his home. But then again, Gates had done nothing wrong except "break into" his own house while black. The students' alleged association with the campus drug trade, and their apparent involvement in the incident in question, resulted in the murder of a young man on campus. It is not my goal to prosecute this case in this commentary, nor can I assess whether race played any role in this case. But I do know that cries of racism ring hollow here. Drugs are no stranger to Harvard or any other university, and while Harvard students have experimented with drugs for years, never did it result in a drug-related murder.
The lesson learned here is to mind the company you keep. This goes for African American students, and anyone else for that matter.
The fall from grace of these two Harvard students, these young black women with faded promise, reminds me of Edmund Perry. In 1985, 17-year old Perry, a Harlem native and then-recent graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy who was about to enroll in Stanford, was shot to death by a plainclothes police officer. Witnesses claimed Perry and his brother, a Cornell engineering student, tried to mug the officer. It just so happens that Eddie, who decried his prep school's racism and "adopted a street-savvy swagger to mask his own insecurities", was dealing drugs at Exeter. White folk with something other than good intentions tried to use this incident to prove the argument that, you can dust them off, dress them up and school them as you may, but "these" people are beyond our help.
And in 1994, 24 year old Kemba Smith pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute crack, and was sentenced to 24.5 years. Her case was a true travesty, and put the spotlight on America's harsh, draconian and disproportionate drug sentencing laws. Her true crime was having an abusive drug dealer boyfriend, a guy she met as a student at Hampton University in Virginia. Smith described herself as someone who grew up in a sheltered middle-class existence, and hung out with the wrong crowd at school. Fortunately President Clinton pardoned her after she served six years, and she can use her second chance in life to teach others.
These cases are blatantly vivid reminders that young people, in this case African-American, lead fragile lives. Even for those who appear to be gliding on a road to success, that road is precarious and fraught with danger. There are negative influences and the corrosive effects of peer pressure. Black kids are ridiculed by their classmates for trying to act white, as if being intelligent, scholarly and gifted are incompatible (rather than synonymous) with blackness. College-bound students of color have a hard time of it, often with little support even from family, and incurring the resentment of a community short on opportunities. Some young people cannot reconcile their personal aspirations with their desire to "keep it real" and stay true to their community. Perhaps they can't take the pressure of navigating two worlds, and the culture shock it entails. Perhaps in this materialistic society, they lack grounding, whether social, political or spiritual, and they eke out an existence feeding on media stereotypes. Maybe we are all to blame for not properly imbuing children with more character-building, positive influences. Maybe they just aren't comfortable living in their own black skin.
This is not to make excuses for those who seem to have so much, yet waste it all. After all, many people have soared high with much less to work with, while others seem to squander their opportunities and fall so far, so hard and so fast. Certainly it is not as simple as a case of black youth gone bad, of rotten criminals getting what they deserve. Nor is it as simple as a case of racial victimization. I don't think the civil rights movement fought for the right of black students to get caught up in the campus drug game, with dead bodies strewn along their path. But one thing is certain: we must learn from the Chanequa Campbells, the Brittany Smiths, the Kemba Smiths and the Edmund Perrys. We must learn what can go wrong when you are young, gifted and black.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)