Coloring Inside the Lines; Lining Them Up by Colors

Click for a larger view. Via Balloon Juice.

 

The One Drop Rule

Ta-Nehisi Coates has been on fire recently, with a series of extremely thoughtful posts on the Civil War. Check out his recent archives. I want to do a more comprehensive post on the Civil War later this month, but Coates' "Honoring CHM: One Drop" features some stories about recently freed slaves in a photograph. Here are three of the most striking tales:

Charles Taylor is eight years old. His complexion is very fair, his hair light and silky. Three out of five boys in any school in New York are darker than he. Yet this white boy, with his mother, as he declares, has been twice sold as a slave. First by his father and "owner," Alexander Wethers, of Lewis County, Virginia, to a slave-trader named Harrison, who sold them to Mr. Thornhill of New Orleans. This man fled at the approach of our army, and his slaves were liberated by General Butler.The boy is decidedly intelligent, and though he has been at school less than a year he reads and writes very well. His mother is a mulatto; she had one daughter sold into Texas before she herself left Virginia, and one son who, she supposes, is with his father in Virginia. These three children, to all appearance of unmixed white race, came to Philadelphia last December, and were taken by their protector, Mr. Bacon, to the St. Lawrence Hotel on Chestnut Street. Within a few hours, Mr. Bacon informed me, he was notified by the landlord that they must therefore be colored persons, and he kept a hotel for white people. From this hospitable establishment the children were taken to the "Continental," where they were received without hesitation.

Augusta Boujey is nine years old. Her mother, who is almost white, was owned by her half-brother, named Solamon, who still retains two of her children. Mary Johnson was cook in her master's family in New Orleans. On her left arm are scars of three cuts given to her by her mistress with a rawhide. On her back are scars of more than fifty cuts given by her master. The occasion was that one morning she was half an hour behind time in bringing up his five o'clock cup of coffee. As the Union army approached she ran away from her master, and has since been employed by Colonel Hanks as cook.

Wilson Chinn is about 60 years old, he was "raised" by Isaac Howard of Woodford County, Kentucky. When 21 years old he was taken down the river and sold to Volsey B. Marmillion, a sugar planter about 45 miles above New Orleans. This man was accustomed to brand his negroes, and Wilson has on his forehead the letters "V. B. M." Of the 210 slaves on this plantation 105 left at one time and came into the Union camp. Thirty of them had been branded like cattle with a hot iron, four of them on the forehead, and the others on the breast or arm.

It's difficult to to imagine the horrible reality behind these tales. It's staggering and humbling.

I'm glad that some bloggers writing on the Civil War, including Coates, Dennis G and Hart Williams, have discussed class in addition to race and region. I wish more people looked at the class issues in the Civil War, and up to the present day. However, Coates' post is a stark reminder that, as crappy as being a mill worker or dirt farmer or conscript could be - and those experiences matter, too - slavery wins the prize for exploitation and cruelty.

Thomas Jefferson, a man of many contradictions (as was his fellow Virginian and fellow slave owner General Robert E. Lee), once said, in reference to slavery: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever."

 

MLK Day 2010: Letter From a Freedman

This year for Martin Luther King Day, I wanted to feature a letter written in 1865 by a former slave to his former master. I've linked it before elsewhere in honor of Juneteenth, but it's pretty extraordinary. This comes via Facing South (in turn via Ta-Nehisi Coates). Facing South describes it as a:

...letter by freedman Jourdon Anderson of Dayton, Ohio. He was writing in response to an invitation from Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Springs, Tenn., his former enslaver, to return to as a laborer to the plantation where he was once held captive...

[The] document... is part of the online Digital History Archives at the University of Houston. The letter, dated Aug. 7, 1865, was published in the Cincinnati Commercial and later reprinted in the New York Tribune.

Here's the full text:

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday- School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, "The colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free- papers in 1864 from the Provost- Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly -- and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty- two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good- looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve and die if it comes to that than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits. <>P.S. -- Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson

Many of the lines - "As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score," "what we are in justice entitled to," and "We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers," - are wry, thoughtful and moving. The post scriptum is in a class by itself, though.

MLK Day to me has always meant stopping to consider the dignity of all human beings, and to honor those who have fought for rights for all. It was a special day for history and reflection at the school where I taught. I continued to be dismayed by public figures casually endorsing torture. It's monstrous. However, there are so many smaller indignities in our culture and around the world, too. Fighting for basic civil or human rights isn't always in fashion, but it's one of the best fights there is.

Tavis Smiley has a special on Martin Luther King's speech against the Vietnam War that will be airing on March 31, 2010 on some PBS stations. In the meantime:

No Racists Here, Nosirree

Obviously not everyone on the right opposed to Obama, and health care reform specifically, is a racist. But it's ridiculous to pretend that some of the furor over Obama – particularly all the Muslim-Kenya-birth certificate stuff – doesn't have a racist tinge. And come on, what reasonable person could possibly view this as racist:



Or this:



Then there's this, this, this and this - in addition to other irresponsible charges.

The photo below is from February 2009, but just made the news. It's of teabagger Dale Robertson in Houston:



This comes via Digby, who has more.

This sign reminds me of an old Atlantic article that argued that the existence of slavery in colonial America leading up to the Revolution played an important role in the Founding Fathers' mentality and rhetoric. The writer contended that the Founding Fathers were basically saying, 'We don't want to be, don't deserve to be, treated like that.' I'm reminded as well of a middle-aged white guy in Tampa I met who once stunningly complained, "Everyone's treating me like I'm their nigger." I'm guessing that's the sense Dale Robertson was going for with his sign – and also guessing that he'd protest, of course it isn't racist.

He might also protest that his sign's not misspelled - that's just how the word is said in a Southern drawl.

First They Came For the Racists...

It's been an interesting couple of weeks for racism. Let's take a look, shall we?

Most of the World Consists of White Conservatives

As noted by Sadly, No and many other blogs, after Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, Erick Erickson of Red State said:

I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota for it, but that is the only thing I can think of for this news. There is no way Barack Obama earned it in the nominations period.

Erickson doesn't seem to consider that the voting might have occurred after the nominations were submitted, say, fairly recently? (I don't think Obama deserves it myself, but it's hardly his fault he was named.) Erickson also seems unaware that many recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize have not been white. In fact, probably the most famous American recipient was not white. Were they all "affirmative action" picks? The far right Erickson adores Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, claims that liberals hate America and love terrorists, and hates unions so much he tried to abolish his local police force. Erickson just doesn't seem to get that most people on the planet – certainly not Europeans – do not view the world the same way as he does. They do not make decisions with much consideration of the bitter, spiteful, juvenile, narcissistic grievances of American movement conservatives.

But Your Children Will Have to Deal with Bigots Like Me

This story has become pretty infamous now (I first read it via Digby).

Civil rights advocates in eastern Louisiana are calling for a justice of the peace of Tangipahoa Parish to resign after he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple.

“He’s an elected public official and one of his duties is to marry people, he doesn’t have the right to say he doesn’t believe in it,” said Patricia Morris, president of the NAACP branch of Tangipahoa Parish, located near the Mississippi line. “If he doesn’t do what his position call for him to do, he should resign from that position.”

The demands for Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward, to step down came after he wouldn’t issue a marriage license to Beth Humphrey, 30, and her boyfriend, Terence McKay, 32, both of Hammond.

Bardwell and the couple didn’t immediately return calls from CNN Thursday. However, Bardwell told the Hammond’s Daily Star that he was concerned for the children who may be born of the relationship and that, in his experience, most interracial marriages don’t last.

“I’m not a racist,” Bardwell told the newspaper. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.”

My first reaction was - Wow. In 2009?

Even if he were sincere - which I don't think it is - why the fuck does he not get that he does not get to make this decision for other people? It's not just racist, it's staggeringly arrogant.

C&L has the video of an interview with the man. He doesn't get what the fuss is about. As despicable as this incident was, some of the quips, from sources including the White House (hmm, who's successful and biracial there?), have been pretty satisfying.

Infringing on My Constitutional Right to Own an NFL Team

Rush Limbaugh's partners have dropped him from their group vying to buy the St. Louis Rams because of widespread opposition by NFL players and some NFL owners. Some early stories (and more recent pieces) soft-pedaled Limbaugh's racism. I remember reading this ESPN piece and thinking, Howard Kurtz and the MSM will pretend Limbaugh isn't racist, but NFL players know and aren't afraid to say so. It also reminded me of a sharp observation from commenter gorgias to an old post:

You are absolutely correct to contrast the quality of sports journalism with the quality of political journalism. Rush Limbaugh lasted all of three months as a sportscaster before getting tossed for his comments about Donavan McNabb. He must have been completely shocked because his comments about McNabb were the equivalent of the fact-free nonsense he spews about anyone else he doesn't like. Yet he got canned not just because the comments were "politically incorrect" but because they were factually incorrect and demonstrably stupid. In his political world where he is so successful, demonstrable stupidity is not only acceptable, it's considered a virtue.

This is exactly right. Most football fans didn't need to be told that Limbaugh's comments on McNabb were full of crap. Similarly, Keith Olbermann has pointed out that (good) sports journalists expect to be spun by coaches and flacks, and don't settle for it. It's a bit sad in a way, but sports fans demand a higher standard from sports reporters and coaches than most citizens do from political reporters and policitians.

However, let's not ignore that Limbaugh is racist, and that's been obvious for a long time to pretty much anyone who's listened to him over the years. Media Matters has compiled a superb list, and Adam Serwer has an excellent post on that, and the GOP's relationship with minorities.

Limbaugh wrote an op-ed about the experience in friendly territory, the Wall Street Journal. As several people noted, it was ironic to hear Limbaugh whine about being persecuted because the free market system he champions spoke out against – Rush Limbaugh. The NFL didn't ban Limbaugh; his partners chose to drop him, and wisely so. Skippy has a pretty good overview of the op-ed, and TBogg highlights a key omission.

Oh, and true to form, supposedly objective right-wing shill Howard Kurtz ignored Limbaugh's racism and tried to turn things on critics of the right-wing, as he so often does.

Racism Analogy Fail

TBogg also catches this classic from Star Parker:

DeMaurice Smith, NFL Players Association chief, urged the league to nix Rush Limbaugh’s participation in a consortium to buy the St Louis Rams.

Buying Al Sharpton’s hype that Limbaugh is a racist, Smith whined that football is at its best “when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred.”

But who are the discriminators and haters here?

Sharpton blocked Limbaugh like Governor Orval Faubus tried to block black children from entering Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.

Wow. As TBogg quips:

Yes. Keeping Rush Limbaugh from joining a bunch of rich white men attempting to buy their way into a fairly exclusive club made up of other rich white men is just like calling out the National Guard to keep black children from going to school with white children.

I'd Stab You Again, but It's Nothing Personal

Another favorite of mine comes via Thers, who passes on this gem from conservative Rick Moran:

No, Limbaugh is no racist... He’s a racial provocateur.

How is this any better? It reminds me of the people who claim Reagan wasn't personally racist, or that George W. Bush during his presidency wasn't personally homophobic. On the one hand, who the hell cares? If they pushed policies that were discriminatory or bigoted, does their motivation really matter?

On the other hand, doesn't their "personal" lack of bigotry make things even worse? That means they were cynically stoking hatred and fear for political gain. Reportedly, Karl Rove's stepfather, who raised him and with whom he was quite close, was gay, but this did not prevent Rove from exploiting homophobia in the 2004 election. If he, Reagan and Bush all knew better in their fear-mongering, I don't see how this exonerates them. That only makes sense in the shallow, jaded Beltway morality, where screwing over the rubes is always fine but pursuing members of the higher classes is unthinkable. Shockingly, many other moral codes hold that deliberately inflicting harm on others for personal gain is evil.

Opposing Racism Makes You Just Like the Nazis

Still, my favorite of all the Limbaugh defenses is this instant classic from Red State, linked at Balloon Juice and many other places (keep back-tracking through the Balloon Juice links for other fine examples). This one actually made me laugh out loud. For posterity:

Tonight… We Are All Rush Limbaugh
Posted by tsquare

Earlier this evening, as most of you now know, one of our own, Rush Hudson Limbaugh, while taking withering fire, crashed and burned.

Tonight, Rush is no longer ‘just’ a radio personality.

Tonight, Rush is no longer ‘just’ a NFL owner denied

Tonight, Rush is us. And we are him.

Tonight Rush became the metaphor for all of us… every man woman and child in this great nation of ours.

The enemy of this great nation, the enemy of you and me, Rush’s enemy… those on the left, inside and outside of this nation abhor success… and when faced with it will destroy it… by any and all means possible.

We all have our dreams in life… such as they might be. Rush dreamed of being an owner in the NFL.

Tonight the left proved that they will stop at nothing to end our dreams. Our dreams of success and happiness devastate their need to dominate and control you and me… and well everything and everyone.

Chrysler bondholders

GM dealers

Bankers and stockbrokers

Small business owners

Medical Doctors

Oppressed people wanting freedom around the world

The left can not and will not allow anyone to realize their dreams

Tonight a light went out… a dream died… it died from political correctness

Tonight we are under withering fire, we on the right those in the middle,

Tonight our values are under withering fire, those thoughts ideas and dreams that made this great nation are under withering fire

Will your light of your dreams be next?

Will my dreams be next?

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;_Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;_Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;_Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;_Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

- Pastor Martin Niemöller

Tonight… We Are All Rush Limbaugh

This is even better than Star Parker's hilariously ironic and inept analogy. Seriously, the Onion could not have done it better. Limbaugh is a racist. He has a right to speak his opinions, but NFL players and owners, the free market, and Limbaugh's partners also have a right to speak, and they did. Limbaugh is a vile man, not a Nazi. But he sure as hell ain't persecuted or a victim, either. Invoking Niemöller's warning about hateful, authoritarian bigots - in defense of a hateful, authoritarian bigot - is a keeper for the ages.

First they came for the racists...

The Gates Incident

The Gates incident, where Professor Henry Gates was arrested at his own home, has been well covered by now, but it remains troubling. President Obama held a follow-up press conference and Gates, Police Sergeant Crowley and Obama will be meeting for a beer. Obama wasn't inaccurate saying "stupidly," but it was impolitic and kicked up another furor rather than damping things down. Here's hoping Gates, Crowley and Obama at least can come to some settlement.

Obama's response on Gates also derailed discussion of health care. We have a press corps that will say: "Honest question: Is there a point when the president knows too much about an issue?" Most of them hate policy, and they will frame things from a conservative or at least establishmentarian perspective. Given their shallowness, it's dangerous to give them any opening to veer off substance (The Daily Show captures this very well).

You can read the police report on Gates here, and Gates' lawyer, Charles Ogletree, has given his account:



The basic narrative is fairly clear, but there are some discrepancies. Crooked Timber had a police captain offer his perspective on the incident and the broader principles, but his timeline appears to be off on a crucial point or two. Lowry Heussler provides a careful analysis of the police report and concludes "Sgt. Crowley's report almost certainly contains intentional falsehoods, but even accepting his account at face value, the report tells us all we need to conclude that Crowley was in the wrong here, and by a large factor." If the charges were dropped, how can the police department insist that it was right to arrest Gates in the first place? I can fully believe it's standard operating procedure for a cop to arrest someone who annoys him, but that doesn't make it legal or right. The police were doing their job responding, and asking Gates for ID, but after his identity was established and it was clear he was in his own house, everything should have ended. Whether Gates got heated or not, it seems pretty clear that Crowley took things personally and abused his power. It's not that Gates was a danger – except to Crowley's pride.

Roy Edroso covers conservative reaction in "Why Libertarianism is Basically a White Thing," and I'd be surprised if his wingnut roundup tomorrow doesn't cover more of this. I shouldn't be surprised by conservative inconsistency/ hypocrisy/ authoritarianism on the incident, but I'm still disappointed. In the comment thread, Aimai, who lives in the area, makes some good observations about class dynamics of the region, although she still thinks race and civil liberties are key.

Bob Somerby covers class issues in the coverage, and Phantom Negro and Pam Spaulding cover class in relation to Gates' reaction. While these three pieces offer some good observations, I do think they miss the bigger picture. While race and gender are important issues (although often discussed obtusely by the mainstream media), class and power are frequently more important, but not as often discussed in America. I'm glad to see any pieces discussing class. But in this case, Gates may have belonged to a higher "class," but Crowley had the power. And apparently he abused it.

There are good cops (even here in Los Angeles), and it can be a dangerous job. But you have to be pretty cloistered to believe that cops never abuse their power. Sure, the wisest course of action for Gates was to be as polite as possible. However, none of that changes that Crowley abused his position. And it doesn't change that, given a worse cop in the same situation, Gates being polite in the same situation wouldn't have made a difference. As it is, apparently Crowley didn't follow the law. More importantly, the stakes aren't remotely equivalent. The cop in this situation, after Gates' identity and residency are established, risks a bruised ego. With a really bad cop, Gates could have wound up tasered, beaten or dead.

I remain troubled by acceptance of authoritarianism in some reactions to the Gates incident. I'm glad some others see it the same way. Matt Yglesias put it well:

Meanwhile, note that racial motivations or there absence have really nothing to do with the nature of Officer Crowley’s misconduct. What happened basically is that Crowley accused Gates, whether for good reason or not, of breaking into his own home. Gates, pissed off, offended Crowley. At which point Crowley, even though he was now perfectly aware that Gates was not guilty of anything, decided to exact revenge by manipulating the situation to create a trumped-up disorderly conduct charge. That’s not professional policing, and it’s not a good use of the City of Cambridge’s law enforcement resources. That’s why the charges were dropped, and that’s why it’s fair to say that Crowley was acting stupidly racial issues aside.*

Meanwhile, we see here yet another instance of one of my favorite themes on this blog. The conservative movement, which never ever ever dedicates any time or energy to the problem of racial discrimination suffered by non-whites, thinks it’s very important to draw attention to the social crisis of white people burdened by accusations of racism.

* To consider a race-free instance, I was actually treated extremely rudely by an MPDC officer yesterday. I, wisely, just decided to not worry about it and move on. But suppose I’d decided to respond to him being rude by overreacting and blowing up at him. And then he decided to respond to me being rude by finding some pretext on which to arrest me. Neither the fact that the cop’s not a racist nor the fact that I had overreacted would make retaliating with a trumped-up charge the right way for the cop to respond.

DDay:

The cop baited the guy into leaving the house so he could arrest him for making a cop feel bad.

I appreciate the work of law enforcement. But regardless of race, too many cops have the belief that if they get insulted, they have the right to turn that into an arresting offense. That's not the law whatsoever, nor should it be. It creates a chilling effect among the public not to call out bad behavior in law enforcement or raise your voice in any way. I know we're all supposed to believe that cops are saintly, but I live in LA. Police misconduct happens all the time, and we should be vigilant when it does.

Instead, the media takes the soccer ball and chases it into the corner, without any semblance of factual records or perspective. It becomes an emotional argument instead of a factual record of misconduct. We pay cops with tax money. We should not risk arrest when arguing with them.

A Talking Points Memo reader who's a lawyer writes:

We all know (maybe not Prof. Gates) not to anger a police officer. I had so many cases in which someone cursed at an officer or made a gesture to an officer and ended up spending the night in jail. Prof. Gates spent four hours in jail. Even though his charge was dropped, I'm sure that time in jail for a law-abiding citizen was utterly horrendous. There simply is no reason to arrest someone for hurting your feelings or making an ugly gesture at you. It is not against the law in most contexts. In addition, I can assure you that most people who walk into a court room in a case in which it is the officer's word against him or her (a law-abiding citizen) is at a superior disadvantage. An overwhelming majority of judges simply will not believe the law-abiding citizen over the police officer. So, along with the rightful adoration we reserve for our police officers, our society needs to acknowledge that their power is awesome and must be wielded in a cautious and prudent manner. Not only can a police officer throw you in jail or hold a judge's trust on the witness stand, he or she can use deadly force. It is an awesome power that is almost unparalleled in our society. It is important that this kind of power have a check and balance. This discussion is important. As for Obama digging in on his statement, he worded it better the second time. Cooler heads should've prevailed indeed.

Josh Marshall comments:

Race can't be separated from what happened in Cambridge. But even taking race out of the equation, there are cops out there, and I fear sometimes that it's crept into the culture of policing in some jurisdictions, who think that a citizen treating them in a disrespectful way amounts to a crime.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, after Obama's follow-up:

It's worth watching Obama's statement. I really can't begrudge him--his priority is health-care. Me, on the other hand, I'm pretty exhausted. What follows is the raw. Not much logic. Just some thoughts on how it feels...

The rest of us are left with a country where, by all appearances, officers are well within their rights to arrest you for sassing them. Which is where we started. I can't explain why, but this is the sort of thing that makes you reflect on your own precarious citizenship. I mean, the end of all of this scares the hell out of me...

When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it. And then finally it's even scarier to understand that no president can change that. It's not why he's there. He is there to pass health-reform--not make us post-racist, or post-police power, or post-whatever. Only the people can do that. And they don't seem particularly inclined. Here is what the election of Barack Obama says about race--white people, in general, are willing to hire a black guy for the ultimate job. That's a big step. But it isn't any more than what it says.

Digby:

...This situation actually has far broader implications about all citizens' relationship to the police and the way we are expected to respond to authority, regardless of race. I've watched too many taser videos over the past few years featuring people of all races and both genders being put to the ground screaming in pain, not because they were dangerous or threatening and not because they were so out of control there was no other way to deal with them, but because they were arguing with police and the officer perceived a lack of respect for the badge.

I have discovered that my hackles automatically going up at such authoritarian behavior is not necessarily the common reaction among my fellow Americans, not even my fellow liberals...

The police are supposed to be the good guys who follow the rules and the law and don't expect innocent citizens to bow to their brute power the same way that a street gang would do. The police are not supposed wield what is essentially brute force on the entire population.

And yet, that's what we are told we are supposed to accept. Not only can they arrest us merely for being argumentative as they did with Gates, they are now allowed to shoot us full of electricity to make us comply with their demands to submit...

It is very rude of citizens to do that, to be sure. But it is not a crime. The idea that people should not get angry, should not pull rank, should be rude to others is an issue for sociologists and Miss Manners, not the cops. Humans often behave badly, but that doesn't make it illegal. For people with such tremendous power as police officers to be coddled into thinking that these are behaviors that allow them to arrest people (or worse) seems to be to far more dangerous than allowing a foolish person or two to set a bad example in the public square...

At this point we are seeing a tipping in the other direction. Police are emboldened when they repeatedly get away with using bullying, abusive tactics against average citizens who have not been convicted of any crimes...

And I would suggest that it is just that attitude that led to people in this country recently endorsing unilateral illegal invasions, torture of prisoners and the rest. You remember the line --- "the constitution isn't a suicide pact." To which many of us replied with the old Benjamin Franklin quote: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

The principles here are the same. Sure, we should treat the cops with respect and society shouldn't encourage people to be reflexively hostile to police. They have a tough job, and we should all be properly respectful of people who are doing a dangerous and necessary job for the community. But when a citizen doesn't behave well, if not illegally, as will happen in a free society, it is incumbent upon the police, the ones with the tasers and the handcuffs and the guns, to exercise discretion wisely and professionally. And when they don't, we shouldn't make excuses for them. It's far more corrosive to society to allow authority figures to abuse their power than the other way around.

As usual, read the whole thing, especially for Digby's examples.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald connects these attitudes with the Cheney gang's efforts to deploy military personnel domestically, in clear violation of the law. I'll try to get to those stories sometime later this week, but I agree it's on a continuum, and if you've read Angler or were paying attention during the Bush administration, it won't be a surprise. One can argue about the best term for these people - authoritarians, monarchists, para-fascists or something else - but they have been, and remain, extremely dangerous.

Gates and Crowley may both be decent people who had bad days and made bad calls. I hope that's the case, and that their meeting will be helpful. However, I'm still troubled by widespread acceptance of authoritarianism. There have to be checks on those forces. In addition to the law itself as a warning, we need enforcement of it: systems of oversight and accountability, investigations where warranted, and prosecutions where necessary. However, the most important check may remain societal attitudes toward the abuse of power – and I think there's room for plenty of more soul-searching and reflection there.

Update 7/28/09: I have a followup post, of sorts.

Not the Fitter "Species"

Fox and Friends' Brian Kilmeade has never been mistaken for a bright guy, but even for him, this is bad - on several levels:



I'll be charitable and assume that Brian Kilmeade's stupidity outstrips his zeal for eugenics - but this is Fox News we're talking about.

For some reason, it made me think of this scene from In Bruges (NSFW and not politically correct).

Actually, apart from the two Irish guys, that scene is not far off from Fox News, huh?

(Cross-posted at Blue Herald)

Color

Check out this astounding ad from India for "Fair and Lovely":



You don't need to understand the language to get the odious message. Thanks to Natasha Chart at MyDD who posted this one, and also linked Loryn Wilson's reaction to it.

This reminded me of a recent piece by Vanessa Williams: at The Root:

It’s true: A lot of black women fell for Barack Obama the moment they saw his wife.

If a black president represents change, a dark-skinned first lady is straight-up revolutionary.

I won’t apologize for taking note of Michelle Obama’s physical appearance. Plenty has already been said about how she, with her double Ivy degrees, six-figure salaries and two adorable daughters, is crushing the image of the struggling black single mother. She is a real life Clair Huxtable! But the true breakthrough here is that sisters who look like Michelle Obama seldom become cultural icons, aesthetic trendsetters—a proxy for the all-American woman.

And don’t roll your eyes and ask why we have to go there; we haven’t completely gotten over our prejudices about skin tone and hair texture. Despite years of scholarly, literary and popular debate—from Dr. Kenneth Clark’s baby-doll tests, to Toni Morrison’s tragic characters in The Bluest Eye, to the showdown between jiggaboos and wannabes in Spike Lee’s School Daze—too many of us continue to accept a standard of beauty that does not favor ebony-hued skin, woolly hair and full lips (and not those surgically enhanced smackers, either).

I know from first-hand experience. I remember being taunted and shunned by some people who didn’t believe that old saying about the blacker the berry. Back when we were Negroes, the word “black” was used to describe the dark-skinned among us, usually not with affection. My mama assured me that I was a pretty black girl, but it was the brothers on the streets, cooing such compliments as dark ‘n lovely, chocolate drop, brown sugar, who convinced me.

Now that we’re all black—folks aren’t quite as open with their intraracial biases, but those old beliefs still haunt us. The lingering effects of racism and sexism, coupled with a beauty industrial complex that constantly assaults our senses with images of female beauty that trend toward the lighter end of the racial color wheel, has rendered dark-skinned women nearly invisible in mainstream media.

Skin color is its own specific issue, but this also goes beyond color alone. One of the things I love about America is its multiculturalism. Race and ethnicity have been a major factor throughout our history, and many of our greatest shames are related to it – slavery, treatment of Native Americans, the internment of Japanese-Americans, Jim Crow laws, miscegenation laws, and the bigotry in too many contemporary discussions of immigration reform and the Middle East. As Paul Krugman covers in The Conscience of a Liberal, the push for universal health care failed under Truman in part because of racism – there was anxiety in the South about white doctors and nurses being forced to attend to black patients. Rick Perlstein's Nixonland chronicles (among many other things) how central race was to 60s politics. Reagan of course pitched his fictional welfare queens, Lee Atwater exploited similar resentments, and our most recent presidential election certainly featured issues of race (if sometimes discussed obtusely).

However, for all its problems, for all the road left to go, America as a whole has also dealt with issues of race and ethnicity more than many other nations. America has long been an immigrant nation, but resentment over that among some Americans can't compete with the pride felt by many others. Given our history as a 'melting pot,' (or whatever metaphor you prefer), the people who claim to be "real Americans" as opposed to newer arrivals have always been awfully silly. As Will Rogers, part Cherokee, quipped, "My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet the boat." I remember having to do ancestry projects many a time in elementary school and again in junior high (the best one had an oral history requirement). Even among the "European-American" crowd, most kids traced their roots back to several different countries. Meanwhile, it's even more common today to know people who are of mixed race or multicultural (or however they might wish to self-identify). In contrast, when you visit small towns in other countries (less so in big cities, of course) it's striking how almost everyone has ancestry that's French, Hungarian, Russian... It's just different from the "I'm a quarter Irish and quarter German on my dad's side and half Japanese on my mom's side" dynamic so common in America. Reading of the former British Empire and its notions of cultural and racial superiority, I always thought the attitude was pretty laughable, given how many times Britain had been conquered and how much intermingling there had been historically (and I suppose you could say the same of many peoples if you go back far enough).

This brings us back to color – because even if you define yourself one way, other people might try to define you another. Mustapha Matura, a playwright from Trinidad living in London, once wrote that in America, he was considered white, but if he got on a plane and went to England, he was considered black. However, this was back in the 90s, and I've met one multicultural Brit who felt that race was a bigger issue in America than in Britain, at least for her growing up. One person's experience may be very different from another's. And there is progress. For America, hell, just look at our Olympic teams for how commonplace multiculturalism is for us. And not long ago, Barack Obama described himself as a "mutt." (Some people found it endearing; others found it offensive. I fall in the first camp.) While race is still an important issue in America, for each subsequent generation, being multicultural is increasingly an accepted norm.

Almost ever year, the National Review, a magazine that denounced Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was alive, will try to claim that MLK was actually conservative or that conservatives actually honor MLK's legacy more than liberals. As Sadly No's Leonard Pierce pointed out last year, this silliness generally rests on the notion that MLK believed in being color-blind and "was only interested in a unified world where everyone behaved exactly like white people," when of course that wasn't the case. Being "color-blind" for the NR crew means, in some combination, pretending that race and racism don't exist, that everyone in America has an equal opportunity to succeed, that if someone's poor it's due to a lack of character rather than a stacked deck, and so on. It means, also, that the NR crowd bears absolutely no obligation to make our society more fair in terms of class, race, power and wealth. An "end to racism" for Rush Limbaugh, Jonah Goldberg, Brit Hume and the gang means, "no one will accuse me of racism."

Martin Luther King, Jr meant something far different when he said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." That's a dream of a meritocracy, of basic decency, not for entrenched and callous existing power structures – and King certainly fought a tough battle for equal opportunity. The goal is not to ignore color, but instead to stop its use as a tool of discrimination. Being literally "blind" to color is only a positive if color itself is seen as a negative (and typically, that the norm is to be "white"). Why can't diversity in color, and culture, instead be positive things and accepted norms? Rather than pretending they don't exist, aren't there times we should recognize and celebrate them? Cruel standards of beauty may take time to change, and the same is true when it comes to superficiality in general. But to help that along, in our own time, why not appreciate all the different ancestries and cultures, from music to food to dance to literature and language to actual human beings? Why not use culture as a means of learning something new, and bringing people together?

On that note, here's Newark mayor Cory Booker on deliciousness:



And if MLK's words don't inspire you, there's always Redd Foxx's take:



(This Redd Foxx civil rights story is quite touching, too.)

(Cross-posted at Blue Herald)

MLK Day 2009: I Am A Man

When Martin Luther King, Jr. went down to Memphis in 1968, it was to assist with a garbage worker's strike. Two workers had been slowly crushed to death in a garbage truck, an utterly horrible way to go. The workers moved to form a union, pushing for better wages but also some sort of safety or warning mechanism so no such accident could happen again. The mayor and other forces were, shall we say, less than accommodating.

The workers' strike is the subject of OyamO's play I Am A Man. Some background on OyamO and the play can be read here. Tavis Smiley's discussions with Memphis minister Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles and former sanitation worker Taylor Rogers also give important background (Kyles describes being there during King's last night).

The play was finished in 1992, and I saw one of the earlier major productions of it, an excellent one at Arena Stage in D.C. in 1995. King is a frequent presence in the play, but almost entirely as a voice coming over speakers, only briefly seen crossing the stage near the end (at least in the production I saw). The key figure is instead the head of the garbage workers, T.O. Jones, rivetingly played in the D.C . version (I'm afraid I currently can't confirm that actor's name). Despite the often serious subject matter, the play's full of humorous moments as well. I found it particularly fascinating to see all the infighting and resolutions between different groups, since, for instance, some parties wanted a more militant approach while others wanted no demonstrations at all. I saw it with a friend my age, and since we were too young to remember the actual events, it was very educational. However, this was not an 'eat-your-broccoli' piece - it was great theater, with some powerful moments.

OyamO describes Jones as:

40s, speaks with vocal, gestural and emotional ebullience. Beefy, but average height, very friendly, but also bullheaded about some things. Somewhat vulnerable, a bit fearful and not well educated, quit Memphis Public School in the 8th grade. But he's naturally intelligent – common street sense, a cajoling wit, a generous nature, a lot of heart.

The play script is written in dialect. Jones' wit and passion comes out in a confrontation at the city council, where to make a point, he points to the Memphis city seal (only low-res copies seem available, alas):

COUNCILMAN: Unacceptable! The city does not recognize that union and therefore will not entertain the showboat rantings of some so-called representative.

BLUESMAN: Rantin'! You wanna hear some rantin'? Let me tell you 'bout that city seal you got hanging over yo' head.

JONES: See dat steamboat? It brings slaves up and downriver for trading. The cotton boll? Dat's what da slaves pick ta make a few peepas rich. That oak leaf is where day tied the slave to beat him or where they hanged him. Used ta whip ya wit dem oak sticks too. Dat piece a machinery? Dat's the wheel of progress dat grine the slave up. Da Civil War ova, but we still fighting against slavery. Chop cotton for three dollas a dat or tote garbage for one dolla and sixty cents a hour. Da union come here ta finally stop slavery.

My favorite exchange is this one between Jones and Joshua Solomon, a white labor negotiator from New York:

SOLOMON: The press has got to be spoonfed. You can't ignore them when you're conducting a public strike. They'll nail you to the wall. Look, one question I have to ask. Why the hell did ya call a strike in February when garbage don't stink?

JONES: Garbage stink all the time, when you got ta carry it on yo' head.

Still, what's stuck with me the most years later is the following monologue. It was a stunner. The Arena's main stage is just that, an arena set-up, with the audience on all four sides. Throughout the play, a bluesman plays sort of a Greek chorus, making comments and playing music. Here, Jones has just gotten bad news. He's at his lowest point, even while the stakes are the highest. He's trying to rescue some scrap of dignity in the face of continual, crushing degradation. As you read through this speech, imagine it being delivered with great weight, each few sentences a separate point, with Jones slowly walking around all four sides, looking at the audience, almost imploring. The lights are low except for a spotlight on Jones. Imagine the bluesman wailing away on his harmonica in the background.

(The BLUESMAN strums a low, funky blues as the Lights and Images swift to a Beale St. Bar which he enters. JONES shortly stumbles in, now drunk. He, bottle in hand, stands swaying before the BLUESMAN. He begins dancing, slowly, dancing out of sorrow. The song's refrain goes as follows:]

BLUESMAN: THE GRAVEDIGGER IS YO' VERY BEST FRIEND
THE GRAVEDIGGER IS YO' VERY BEST FRIEND
HE ONLY LET YOU DOWN ONCE NO MATTER WHAT YOU BEEN

[JONES stops dancing, angrily hurls the bottle which breaks offstage. He speaks to no one in particular the following over the background instrumental accompaniment of the BLUESMAN:]

JONES: When I was toting garbage, I knowed every alcoholic in town, da ones live in da shacks and da ones what living high in the big houses. I knowed who was creepin' 'round some back doe on day husband or wife. I knowed who was taking high price drugstore drugs and street drugs. I run to the back of da house ta git da garbage and I seed all kinda womens in the window. Naked! Not a stitch on! Justa lookin' down at ole stinkin', black, empty-face me, and smilin' real big. I seed big impo'tent men in dis town beating on soft, little white womens in da back bedrooms. I heard dem womens scream and beg for mercy. I once seed a father touchin' his near 'bout growed up daughter, touchin' her where no fatha 'sposed to touch his daughter. One time I pulled a dead baby from the garbage, a little white baby, blood still fresh. Somebody throwed it in the garbage behine a fine mansion. And peepas treat me like I stink. Nothin' stinks worse den the da garbage dat da garbage man leave behine everyday.

[Jones staggers out.]

I'm sorry my description can't do it justice, but if you had seen this one performed, it'd have stuck with you years afterward, too. Jones has a later, bitter monologue after King is killed, remarking that all they got was an eight cent raise, "eight shiny pennies" and "not even thirty pieces of silver" for King. He finally puts on a brave face and urges the striking men to go back to work. When I think about I Am A Man, or King, I think about the importance of human dignity, and the cruel things we sometimes do to each other. It's a good day to remember how fostering simple kindness and connection isn't just essential — it's sometimes the most revolutionary act in the world.

(Cross-posted at Blue Herald)

Campaign Workers and Racism

(The vandalized Obama campaign office in Vincennes, Indiana. Photo by Ray McCormick.)

Last week, NPR ran a segment I found pretty despicable. It wasn't the story itself, although the subject matter was appalling; what I found despicable was one of the listener e-mails responding to the story.

Let me back up. NPR had a good story on the racism faced by some young Obama campaign workers. After running audio of some pretty racist white voters, Michele Noris interviewed Kevin Merida about his front page article for The Washington Post on the subject. You can read Merida's article here and his online discussion on it here. Oh, and John Cole posted some pretty disturbing videos of some racist white voters here, and also explained how party identification in West Virginia can be highly misleading. All of it's worth checking out, but here's a sample from Merida's piece:

In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

It's not a pretty picture. Sadly, it's not that surprising, but for many of the young workers involved, this was their first experience with racism that direct, raw, hateful and unapologetic. A confrontation like that is unsettling, often stunning, and typically lingers long afterwards.

As NPR often does, they ran some reader e-mails on a following day. Their description on their site reads (emphasis mine):

Noah Adams reads listeners' responses to yesterday's program. We have received hundreds of messages about our coverage from southwest China, where Monday's earthquake is believed to have killed tens of thousands of people. There's also mixed reaction to our interview on the racism experienced by people working for the Barack Obama campaign.

You can listen to the short segment here. I'd suggest just listening to it, but I've transcribed the key portion:

"I dare you to read my letter," writes Henry Spencer of Margate, Florida. I am sitting here seething with anger, hatred and disgust for white America. I have just heard a bunch of white people from West Virginia say they would never vote for a black man for president. I am married to a white woman that I love so much. We are raising our daughter to believe that she can be anything she sets her mind to in this country. But we now feel that is a lie.

Here's a different response from listener Thomas Martin, who writes, "I was concerned by your conversation with a Washington Post reporter. The subtext was that there are a lot of scary, racist white people out there. Is it possible that some John McCain campaign workers have been given less than hospitable receptions in predominately African-American neighborhoods?"

We welcome comments from all neighborhoods, all points of view. Write to us at NPR dot org, Contact.

What's your reaction?

Here's mine. NPR said they received many responses on that story. I don't know the tone of all of them. I don't envy them trying to sort through them all, those emails were probably trimmed down somewhat, and issues of race with a large audience often require treading carefully. But I still think this is a classic example of a major media outlet creating a false equivalency in (to use Kathy G's words) "a misguided attempt to be "fair."" I trust most listeners can hear the anguish of Henry Spencer, and can decide for themselves whether Thomas Martin's email is as obnoxious as I find it.

Here's why. The story was about racism. Actual racism, experienced by real people, young people who were idealistic and doing something special and wonderful, working on a political campaign for little to no pay. No one said all white people are racists. No one said that all rural white people are racists, or the citizens of the states in question are all racists. No one said you're a racist if you don't support Obama, for that matter. Yet still, Martin felt defensive and wrote about that sort of "subtext." His response to actual, documented racism was to offer a hypothetical about racism that McCain workers could possibly have encountered. He doesn't know that they have, and provided no examples whatsoever. That's ridiculous, and I find it pretty irritating.

I don't blame NPR too much. And if you read through all the pieces linked above, you'll also see that Kevin Merida fielded a similar question in his online chat, which he handled pretty diplomatically. But there are several implicit false assertions in Martin's response. One is that hypothetical racism is the same as actual racism, that they are equivalent offenses or somehow balance each other out. Another is that if McCain campaign workers met a frosty reception in predominately black neighborhoods, it must have been due to racism. Yet another is the suggestion that NPR was somehow wrong or imbalanced in their original story, or that it's not a big deal or worthy of coverage. There's also a denial of the power dynamics at play.

McCain has campaigned in some black neighborhoods, but not that many, certainly not compared to the Democrats, for whom African-Americans have long been a core constituency. One of the reasons McCain's campaign workers might get a frosty reception is because they're Republicans. Their party has prominent factions who demonize blacks and other minorities, try to disenfranchise their votes, oppose progressive economic policies including raising the minimum wage, for years practiced the racist "Southern strategy" and have been pulling some of the same crap this year. It would be ridiculous to say that all Republicans or conservatives are racists, but it's not exactly a secret that if you're a racist, you probably vote Republican and feel more comfortable with that crowd. McCain himself consistently voted against MLK Day. McCain's policies will be bad for most Americans, actually, but there's nothing there for the poor, the lower middle class and middle class to celebrate.

There's also the small issues of power and class. Racism is racism, but when someone rich and in a position of power acts in a racist fashion against someone who's poor and with very little power, it's more despicable than if the positions are reversed. And going back to our story, when there are credible reports about John McCain's campaign workers being met with racial slurs, his offices being vandalized with racially-tinged graffiti and his campaign receiving bomb threats, then we'll talk, and sure, we can condemn that, too. But that hasn't happened, not that we know of, certainly not on the scale that has in fact, in reality, occurred against Obama's campaign . Let's also not pretend that McCain's policies are as beneficial as Democratic ones. And yeah, it's ironic that some working class whites opposes the party that would do more for them economically because of socially conservative issues. But Obama was never going to get the racist vote. Some rural white voters certainly have or would favor Clinton or McCain for reasons other than race. But Martin sought to minimize the fact that a significant number of citizens, rather than responding politely, felt comfortable or even entitled to hurl racial slurs at complete strangers who were doing their part for American democracy. I find that troubling. And I find it troubling that Martin, or others, don't find that troubling. The Washington Post and NPR were right to run the story, and they both did a good job of it. If such stories irritate the Thomas Martins of the world, somehow I think I can live with that.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

An Obama Rumor Litmus Test

Take the following Sadly, No! post:

Another reason to elect Hussein Obama X as Supreme Leader of Crackerland

Posted at 3:12 by Brad

So he IS a stealth Muslim candidate after all! Kickin’.


Hussein X’s first act in office should be to free Mumia and appoint him as the first official Secretary of the Kill Whitey Department.

If you read this S,N! post and laughed, you're probably a liberal.

If you read this post and crapped your pants or said "he is too a Muslim!" you're probably a conservative.

If you read this post, tut-tutted and said, "I don't see how such language helps at all," you're probably Richard Cohen or another Beltway "centrist" pundit.

(S,N! follow-ups: "All part of Hussein X’s master plan, my friend" and "Uh-oh! They’re onto us!" Although I'll add I'm more a Luke Cage guy, myself.)


(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

That Damned Liberal Racism

With the recent arrival of MLK Day, it's time once again for doctrinaire conservatives to pretend that liberals are racists and if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he'd be a conservative. Think I'm kidding? Check out this year's assessment of such rhetoric by Mister Leonard Pierce of Sadly, No! Meanwhile, Rick Perlstein provides some welcome historical perspective on past opposition and this attempted appropriation. (Roy has a slightly different take.)

Of course, if conservative pundits had any integrity, they'd also have called out Jonah Goldberg for his noxious piece of disingenuous, revisionist crap, Liberal Fascism, weeks ago, and Goldberg himself would have actually responded to the "serious" criticism he claims he welcomes. Not content to level the ludicrous accusation that progressives are the real descendents of fascists, Goldberg recently accused them of being the real racists, as well. It's all the more striking given that Goldberg works for the National Review, which had a long history of supporting segregation (and check out the vintage Goldberg Roy linked in the post linked above).

Still, "let's pretend" is the essence of the wingnut welfare system of conservative think tank "scholars." Thus, for them, liberals can be denounced with a straight face as both fascists and racists. It's their accepted gospel that the poor are poor due to a lack of character, or the poor actually have it very good, and anyway, the worst evil possible is to help them, as that Jesus guy once said. But then, we're talking about a system that offered to pay a scientist $10,000 to deny global warming. Merit, integrity and empirical truth don't exactly play an active role.

The big problem with bad-faith, conservative "let's pretend" games is that the mainstream media happily plays along, granting such conservatives undeserved legitimacy. And the media doesn't just play along with conservatives — it often spread the same crap. Liberals are of course not completely free from all prejudices, and certainly not all conservatives are racists, but it ranges from silly to appalling to accuse the Democratic Party of being the party of racism. It's not as if the massive shift in party alignment among southern white males in the 60s due to the Civil Rights Movement is some big secret. That movement belongs largely to the Democrats, and MLK, LBJ, and the Kennedys certainly do, while the Republicans own the Southern Strategy of Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes.

To be fair to the media on its recent obsession with race and gender issues, supporters of the Obama and Clinton campaigns, or the campaigns themselves, raised said issues in the form of attacks (check out Bob Johnson and Jesse Jackson, Jr., for two examples). But the media certainly hasn't elevated the discourse since, and the campaigns have wisely agreed to bury the hatchet — albeit only on those lines. (Notice, too, how Edwards is pushed out of the race in most press narratives, and also in most of Hillary Clinton's rhetoric, and to a lesser degree Obama's).

The truth is, America could use much more good discussion on race, gender and, even more importantly, class and power. The problem is, our national public discourse is still managed by shallow pundits, and on even the most important of subjects, they insist on having their shallow way. The current hackdom commemorating MLK Day is a feature, not a bug. Looking over the past couple of weeks, two patterns emerge. One, conservatives have ramped up their habitual attacks on Democrats using race and gender. Two, the mainstream media has done the same, and ignored that pattern number one is happening.

When Russerts Attack

If you missed the hoopla over Hillary Clinton's statements about Martin Luther King and President Johnson, and how they were extremely poorly reported, out of context, read Greg Sargent's "New York Times Keeps Running Truncated Version Of Hillary's Quote About Martin Luther King" (follow-ups here and here). A similar distortion occurred when Bill Clinton referred to Barack Obama's representation of his stance on invading Iraq as a "fairy tale." Although Bill Clinton's statement can be fairly challenged as inaccurate, he was clearly talking about Obama's views on war with Iraq back in 2002, not on Obama's entire campaign, as numerous reporters and pundits chose to misrepresent it. In other words, Clinton's words were challenged, but on the wrong grounds. The media — shockingly! — choose to sell a sensationalistic, bogus, gossipy storyline, which not incidentally obscured the far more serious issue of the illegitimacy and folly of pre-emptive war.

Bill Moyers, a fine journalist and former press secretary to President Johnson, provided a valuable perspective on MLK and LBJ and the “tempest in a teapot" over Hillary Clinton's comments.

In contrast, Tim Russert, a shameless hack, conducted a hatchet job on Hillary Clinton from the get-go on Meet the Press on 1/13/08. (Just to be clear, I'd like to see all the candidates grilled, but on substance.) This show may be a new low even for Russert, a powerful media figure the Republicans know can be counted on to help them "control [the] message." Most blatant of all was Russert saying "This is exactly what President Clinton said in Dartmouth," and then running a deliberately truncated clip obscuring context. (Did he think no viewers would notice?) Russert continued to attack Hillary Clinton, citing the reactions of "neutral" black political figures to Bill Clinton's statement. Russert ignored that they were all responding to a misrepresentation of Bill Clinton's statement, whether their own, or more likely, the mispresentation spread by Russert and many of his colleagues in the mainstream media. Hillary Clinton had already set the record straight quite well, but Russert had his "gotcha" assault all lined up, and there was no way in hell he was going to abandon his manufactured scandal. ( I was happy to see Media Matters pick up the same thing.)

Russert quoting Bill Clinton out of context was pretty blatant, but Russert was even more shameless during the same stretch. By proxy (quoting someone else is how this game is played), he accused Hillary Clinton of "taking cheap shots at, of all people, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." and cited a particularly loathsome op-ed, saying:

A writer in the Washington Post today, a black woman said it's as if you are minimizing "I Have a Dream." That you're saying it's a nice sentiment, but it took a white president to get blacks to the mountaintop.

If you think any of this is any of this behavior is unusual from Russert, and that he really didn't know better, I have an unnecessary war with Iran to sell you. Russert's record is pretty damning (this recent Daily Howler post just touches on some of it; Bob Somerby promises more is to follow, but there's plenty of good past critiques from DH and elsewhere). But you don't even need to do that. Let's see what the first few questions were from Tim Russert and Brian Williams at the Democratic Debate in Nevada on 1/15/08 (you can read the transcript here or watch most of the debate thanks to this YouTube user).

Here's question #1 of the debate:

Williams: As we sit here, this, as many of you may know, is the Reverend Martin Luther King's birthday. Race was one of the issues we expected to discuss here tonight. Our sponsors expected it of us. No one, however, expected it to be quite so prominent in this race as it has been over the last 10 days.

We needn't go back over all that has happened, except to say that this discussion, before it was over, involved Dr. King, President Johnson, even Sidney Poitier, several members of Congress, and a prominent African-American businessman supporting Senator Clinton, who made what seemed to be a reference to a party of Senator Obama's teenage past that the Senator himself has written about in his autobiography.

The question to begin with here tonight, Senator Clinton, is: How did we get here?

To be fair, as Williams noted, some of the debate time was designed to address issues of race. However, I suspect "shallow campaign gossip masquerading as a discussion on race" wasn't what the co-sponsors had in mind. Here's question #2:

Tim Russert: In terms of accountability, Senator Obama, Senator Clinton on Sunday told me that the Obama campaign had been pushing this storyline. And, true enough, your press secretary in South Carolina -- four pages of alleged comments made by the Clinton people about the issue of race.

In hindsight, do you regret pushing this story?

Here's Russert's two follow-ups to Obama:

Russert: Do you believe this is a deliberate attempt to marginalize you as the black candidate?

[...]

Russert: In New Hampshire, your polling was much higher than the actual vote result. Do you believe, in the privacy of the voting booth, people used race as an issue?

Question #3 (re-capping part of question #1) and its follow-up:

Russert: Senator Clinton, in terms of accountability, you told me on Sunday morning, "Any time anyone has said anything that I thought was out of bounds, they're gone. I've gotten rid of them."

Shortly thereafter, that same afternoon, Robert Johnson, at your event, said, quote, "When Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood, that I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book," widely viewed as a reference to Senator Obama's book,"Dreams From My Father" from 1995, where he talked about his drug use as a teenager.

Will you now not allow Robert Johnson to participate in any of your campaign events because of that conduct?

Russert: Were his comments out of bounds?

Question #4 was finally addressed to mystery candidate John Edwards. How nice to get the over-inflated Clinton-Obama feud settled, and superficial questions about important issues behind us. But wait!

Natalie Morales: Thank you, Brian.

And this is a question for Senator Edwards. It comes to us from Margaret Wells from San Diego, California.

Senator, she's asking, "The policy differences among the remaining candidates is so slight that we appear to be choosing on the basis of personality and life story. That being said, why should I, as a progressive woman, not resent being forced to choose between the first viable female candidate and the first viable African American candidate?"

Morales: Senator Edwards, as a follow-up to Margaret Wells' question, what is a white male to do running against these historic candidacies?

Well, surely we'll be done with shallow issues by question #5:

Williams: Question for Senator Obama. You won the women's vote in Iowa, but Senator Clinton won the women's vote in New Hampshire, and there probably isn't an American alive today who hasn't heard the post-game analysis of New Hampshire, all the reasons the analysts give for Senator Clinton's victory. Senator Clinton had a moment where she became briefly emotional at a campaign appearance.

But another given was at the last televised debate, when you, in a comment directed to Senator Clinton, looked down and said, "You're likable enough, Hillary."

That caused Frank Rich to write, on the op-ed page of the New York Times, that it was "your most inhuman moment, to date." And it clearly was a factor and added up.

Senator Obama, do you regret the comment, and comments like that, today?

Maybe they were just having a bad start to the night! (I mean, it's not like they write these questions down beforehand or anything.) Let's try question #6:

Williams: And one more question about that last televised debate, Senator Edwards. Afterwards, Senator Clinton said it was as if you and Senator Obama had formed a buddy system against her. Senator Clinton put out an Internet ad that was entitled "Piling On."

Looking back on it, the campaign for New Hampshire in total, do you admit that it might have looked that way?

Need I tell you that the vast majority of questions were as lousy and superficial as these? Race returned, but mostly in shallow ways:

Russert: Senator Clinton, one of your pollsters was quoted in The New Yorker magazine as saying this: "The Hispanic voter has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."

Does that represent the view of your campaign?

[...]

Russert: Let me ask Senator Obama. Do you believe there's a history of a decision, where Latino voters will not vote for a black candidate?

Oooh, stir up a fight if you can! There was one more question on race, notably from one of the co-sponsors versus the NBC savants:

Morales: This one is to Senator Obama. This comes to us from one of our co-sponsors of tonight's debate, the 100 Black Men of America.

They ask, "To what do you attribute the disproportionately high dropout of black males at every level in our educational process, and what would you do to stem the tide of black men exiting the educational system?"

This last one was easily the most serious, if not the only serious question on race in the entire debate. Very few questions dealt with policy, and nearly all of those started as a "gotcha" about some vote. I didn't even include Russert's lame, attempted gotcha questions about withdrawing troops and ROTC programs (fodder for another post, perhaps). The candidates actually offered some thoughtful responses at times, but that was largely despite the questions, not because of them. (NBC does get credit, though, for refuting the "Obama is a Muslim" rumor and tailoring a question to let Obama address it.)

While a campaign spat provided the excuse, Russert and Williams were off to the races with this one, pressing Democrats on their racism and sexism. Perhaps I just missed it, but I don't remember them or any debate moderators pressing the Republican candidates on the implicit and sometimes explicit racism and bigotry of many of the GOP campaigns when it comes to immigration or the Middle East. Thompson, Giuliani and McCain have all claimed that America has the best health care in the world, and that universal health care would lower the quality of American health care, but I don't remember the media fact-checking them, pointing out that those claims are highly questionable if not outright false (more in a later post). I don't remember McCain, Romney and the rest being challenged on their ludicrous claim that cutting taxes always raises revenues. That, too, is highly deceptive at best, but essentially false, yet apparently voters don't need to know that, either. The list could go on, but the press as a whole consistently apply a different, harsher standard to Democrats. But then, as the Democratic candidates themselves show, theirs is the party of racism, sexism and classism, so it's only fair.

(As an aside, when the MSNBC announcer said the debate was co-sponsored by "one hundred black men," I had to laugh. The "announcer voice" delivery made it funny, and it sounded like it was actually one hundred black men versus the organization, "100 Black Men of America." Mainly, though, I laughed because I imagined "one hundred black men" being intoned at a GOP debate, and the number of conservatives who would crap their pants.)

A Roundup of Claptrap on Race (and Gender)

Race predominates over gender in this collection, but lest one think any of Russert's shtick is isolated, glance over the following.

"Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam" (1/7/08): Yes, you thought this silly rumor was long ago slain, but you reckoned without the awesome, err, reasoning of Daniel Pipes, whose discovery was hailed by many right-wing bloggers. Let me turn it over to Sadly, No!, who in turn linked Dum Pendebat Filius' debunk, and let's throw in Media Matters' "Daniel Pipes relied on disputed LA Times article to revive Obama-Muslim falsehood" for good measure. Never let the truth get in the way of a good smear, I always say!

Here's the key element to watch: Pipes claims Obama was raised Muslim (a lie), even though he's now Christian, but further argues that because Obama was raised Muslim, the Muslim world will view him as an apostate and try to assassinate him should he become president. (Presumably, he'd be even less popular with the Middle East than George Bush, I guess.) It's really a pretty compact job of hackery, smears and projection, wrapping up all sorts of bigotry and calumny in one little disingenuous article. I guess that's what a doctorate can do. Several right-wingers have spread Pipes' crap since, and it just keeps going and growing.

"Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses" (1/5/08): Glenn Greenwald takes on the racially-tinged concern trolling of two right-wing stalwarts.

"They Blinded Me With Violence" (1/7/08): Sadly, No! adds some snark and examines the fears of Canadian blogger Adam Yoshida over a "negro and Islamic homo uprising." (I bet it'd make a great movie.)

"Great (American) Expectations: Barack Obama shows why foreigners consider us naive" (1/8/08): Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal basically argues that Obama's success in Iowa proves that we don't need to celebrate that success. I was tempted to dissect the multi-layered hackdom of this one paragraph by paragraph, but Roy and Digby already skewered it in wittier and pithier fashion.

"The Clintons' One-Two Punch" (1/10/08): Robert Novak attacks the Clintons, as well as those dopey women who were "naïve" enough to be taken in by Hillary Clinton pretending to cry (she didn't cry). He also spreads the lie that Bill Clinton denounced Obama's entire campaign as a "fairy tale." (I do wonder if anyone takes Novak seriously.)

"Karl Rove sends out the Dogs of Racism with his WSJ op-ed on Obama": John Amato of Crooks and Liars examines Karl Rove's 1/10/08 WSJ op-ed attacking Obama.

"Of Hope and Politics" (1/12/08): In The New York Times, Bob Herbert runs with the misrepresentation of Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" comment, and accuses Hillary Clinton of "taking cheap shots at, of all people, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." (This is the first of the two op-eds Russert quoted.)

"Will They Play the Race Card?" (1/13/08) In a Washington Post op-ed, Marjorie Valbrun argues that because it's possible, "the mean Clinton machine" will attack Obama along racial lines. She also talks about how "scary" Bill Clinton was in a speech and how Hillary insulted MLK. (This is the second piece Russert quoted.)

The Daily Howler of 1/14/08 critiques both the Herbert and Valbrun columns nicely. Somerby also links a good Josh Marshall piece on Bob Johnson's smear against Obama and Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" comment.

"Could Race Destroy the Democrats?" asks Michael Duffy of Time magazine on 1/14/08. (Bet you can't wait to find out his answer! Hint: it has nothing to do with racist conservatives!)

"Sexism, Racism: Which Is More Taboo?" asks David Crary of the AP on 1/14/08. (Via Melissa McEwan.)

"Columnist Prelutsky: Obama "sort of reminds me of David Duke"": Media Matters looks at a 1/14/08 column appearing at Townhall.com and WorldNetDaily.

"Obama's Farrakhan Test" (1/15/08): Taking bigotry in another direction, Richard Cohen discovers that the newsmagazine of Obama's church honored Louis Farrakhan, notes that Obama doesn't seem to be anti-Semitic at all, and also notes that Obama's campaign says he disagrees with his minister about Farrakhan. Cohen then proceeds to insist, at length, that Obama needs to denounce Farrakhan more vehemently. Many in the liberal blogosphere took Cohen to task on this, and Jewish leaders have taken a more general stance against such nonsense. In an online chat, Eugene Robinson also offered a good response. (Cohen's attacked Obama over trivial nonsense before.)

"A Hand the Clintons Aren't Showing" (1/15/08): Eugene Robinson takes on the race issue as well. Notably, he correctly notes the context of Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" remark, but questions an aspect of his Sister Souljah remark back in 1992. (I generally find Robinson very insightful on race, and think this is a more substantial piece than the others, but judge for yourself.)

"A Race About Race" (1/15/08): Howard Kurtz samples comments chiding the Democrats, including pieces accusing the Democrats of exploiting race. He quotes Valbrun's loathsome piece, as well as Joe Klein citing Shelby Steele. He even lowers below his usual Malkin standard to include Riehl World View and Bull Dog Pundit. But not to fear, Malkin herself weighs in here, too, attacking Democratic "race-hustlers"! Ouch. That's some fine 'journalmalism.'

The Daily Howler dissects a NYT article from 1/15/08 about the spectre of assassination over Obama.

The Daily Howler dissects a NYT column from 1/16/08 about the spectre of assassination over Obama. (I'm sensing a trend here.)

"Shelby Steele on Michelle Obama's 60 Minutes comments: She was "facilitating her race's manipulation of the American mainstream"" (1/16/08): Media Matters examines a distortion by Steele in his latest book. (Funny, it's a distortion similar to those used in those two NYT pieces!)

"Investor's Business Daily: "Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?"" (1/16/08): Media Matters dissects a particularly noxious op-ed, which incidentally cites the earlier Pipes piece.

"Clinton's 'Vetting' Attack" (1/17/08): Robert Novak attacks both Hillary Clinton and Obama, mainly on race.

"Misstep in a Liberal Minefield" (1/17/08): George Will notes that Hillary Clinton's MLK comments were misconstrued, but he's gonna pile on anyway, because it serves liberals right for rubbing his face in race and gender issues for all those years.

Mickey Kaus is a polydolt, that is, an ignorant, poorly-reasoning ass on a wide variety of subjects, so pointing out that he's said something asinine and/or counterintuitive on race is a bit like complaining, oh, that Pauly Shore or Dane Cook told an unfunny joke. Still, dnA at Too Sense takes on some recent idiocy by Kaus. Then there's this 2007 Too Sense post, with an update relating Kaus saying, "I don't quite understand why it's offensive to call Sen. Obama a "halfrican."" Umm, we know you don't, Mickey. Or there's this 2007 Kaus post where he complains, "I'd certainly be more comfortable with a presidential nominee whose main spiritual man… in general wasn't so obsessed with race…" (Kaus' emphasis, and that is but item 4 of 4). Funny, I'd be more "comfortable" if Kaus wouldn't blather on about race.

"Conservatives Can't Stop Fantasizing About Obama Assasination" (1/17/08): dnA at Too Sense recaps some of the trends.

"What's Gotten Into Bill?" (1/18/08): Eugene Robinson takes a more sustained shot at Bill Clinton. (I like Robinson most of the time, but have to agree with Bob Somerby's critique on this one).

"Black Dreams, White Liberals" (1/18/08): Charles Krauthammer builds on his reflexive sneers against Democrats to accuse white liberals such as the Clintons of keeping the black man down (and liberals have it coming too, for calling him a racist in the past!).

" Are Democrats over 45 Racists?" (1/20/08): Digby examines the silliness of a CBS story.

"Clinton, Obama crossfire continues" (1/22/08): Beth Fouhy of the AP continues the MSM narrative! Not only does this keep everything nice and superficial, this piece mostly shuts John Edwards out of the race. (Of course, all that "rebuttal" time at the debates does a nice job of that, too.)

"Breaking: Obama Says He's Not A Muslim! " (1/24/08): Greg Sargent takes a look at conservative site NewsMax.com's creative re-titling of an AP story. (Funny, isn't this how we started?)

I'm sure there's much more out there. But hey, now might also be a good time to revisit Fox News' progressive attitudes on race!

Keeping our Eyes on the Hardball

It's important for liberals to recognize the game being played. As Digby wrote in relationship to a certain infamous MSNBC program and its host:

The takeaway "insight" from this Hardball was that the Democratic race is now a battle between the racist old bitches and the sexist African Americans. Fabulous. (White men like Chris, you'll notice, are the only ones voting purely on the merits in this little scenario.)

As Digby's since noted, "Don't listen, campaigns. They only want to hurt the ball club." She also links Jane Hamsher's "Is The Press Out to Destroy the Democrats?" Like Jane, I have to say, um, yup. The "liberal media" is largely a myth, but in addition to any partisanship or double standard, there's the commercial motivation and personal vapidity. Attacking the Democrats makes good copy and good theater for them.

I'll say it again: America could use much more good discussion on race, gender and, even more importantly, class and power. The problem is, our national public discourse is still managed by shallow pundits. When it comes to presidential races, they always try to play kingmaker, and their judgment is unfailingly disastrous (Bush not once, but twice?!?). It's a mistake to put too much trust in any politician, and think that he or she will do the right thing without getting kicked in the ass consistently by the citizens he or she supposedly represents. Politicians and citizens often have different true interests. It's likewise dangerous to trust that that press, supposedly the citizen's advocate, have the general public's best interests in mind. As Mitt Romney, who saw his father march with Martin Luther King, might say: don't believe the hype.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)