Continuing Adventures in Racial Politics

Some good articles have appeared recently dealing with racial politics in the U.S. Check 'em out...

• The Defender has a nice piece on the Black Power Conference that took place in March.

• An excellent analysis of youth and the "post-racial society." Be sure to read the (scary) comments, too!

• A new study shows that college-educated African Americans lose more jobs than their peers across the racial line.

• Here is an AWESOME 1972 interview with Miraim Makeba by Nikki Giovanni.

• This is an important critical piece on Obama's back-peddling on justice for thousands of black farmers who were systematically screwed over by the feds for several decades.

• Colorlines has a nice article focusing on the business class and conservative pundits' attempts to scapegoat policies that are aimed at helping minority communities get access to credit as the supposed cause of the banking crisis.

It's About Time!

This is the dude I voted for...

Click ahead to the 3:30 mark...


The crucial quote:

But what I have also said is - don't come to table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped create this crisis.

We're not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that in eight short years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. We can't embrace the losing formula that offers more tax cuts as the only answer to every problem we face, while ignoring critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, the soaring cost of health care, failing schools and crumbling bridges, roads and levees. I don't care whether you're driving a hybrid or an SUV - if you're headed for a cliff, you have to change direction.

Amen!

Any thoughts?

Jay Smooth on the Racial Politics of the Inauguration

Glory, Hallelujah!

Ding Dong the Witch is dead! Our long national nightmare is over!

Glory, hallelujah! A new era has begun in America!! Give thanks and praises for our new president! May he govern with wisdom and vision, with a sense of justice and human rights as his guide!

We've got a brand new funky president!! Here is to Barack Hussein Obama, OUR PRESIDENT!!!! Celebrate the moment:

A song for those who have come before us, particularly the many thousands gone, who struggled mightily against injustice, so that we might experience this day. This is their victory, too:

"Oh Freedom," unknown artist:

Oh Freedom - Negro Spirituals

A song for the millions of people captivated and inspired by the new President's vision of a better America and a better world:

"Power to the People," Curtis Mayfield:

Power To The People - Curtis Mayfield

And a final song for the Man himself, our 44th President, whose time has come:

"Funky President," James Brown:

Funky President - James Brown

Amen. Glory, hallelujah!

MLK Day, 2009

Here is a smattering of worthwhile articles, essays and other stuff in honor of Martin Luther King Day 2009:

• First, a song of honor, Mahalia Jackson singing "Precious Lord Take My Hand"...


• The BBC has unearthed footage of Dr. King discussing the prospect of the "first black president." Well worth a look...

•  United for a Fair Economy has published an important report, "State of the Dream 2009:  The Silent Depression"

• NPR aired "a musical tour of MLK's Home."

• Slate has a slideshow of fantastic images of King and the Movement, more generally.

• Amazingly, the Meridian Star in Mississippi published an editorial apology for that newspaper's complicity in white supremacy during the Movement era.

• Michael Eric Dyson has penned a piece explaining "how the prophet (MLK) paved the way for the politician (Obama)."

• Michael Honey argues that Obama must fulfill King's dream of economic justice, human dignity and peace.

• The Washington Post has a nice piece on the Caldwell Family's "long civil rights journey" from the specter of slavery to the unbounded possibility of the Obama era.

• The post has a few other good pieces, as well: "President-Elect Sees His Race as An Opportunity"; "High Hopes for Obama in Mississippi Delta"; an opinion piece by MLK III; Michael Eric Dyson on the roots of King's words in Afro-Christianity

• Danny Schecter asks, "Will the Obama Generation Merge With the Protest Culture of MLK or Strike Its Own Path?"

• ABC News has a piece on civil rights activists' reflections on Obama's ascendance.

• A South Carolina newspaper reflects on the generations view the racial divide.

• The Washington Post has published some polling data on America's racial perceptions.

• One California teacher asks whether Obama's victory means we need to change our racial reading list.

• Finally, make your own Shephard Fairey-inspired image here.

Getting the Best Out of Obama

Here is a nice article from The Progressive about how progressives can push Obama progressive-way.

The bottom line:

It is reasonable for progressives to assume that Barack Obama agrees with them on many funda-mental issues. He has said as much. It is equally reasonable for progressives to assume that Barack Obama wants to do the right thing. But it is necessary for progressives to understand that, as with Roosevelt, they will have to make Obama do it.

Check it out. There are lots of good insights. What do you think?

"This Man is God-Sent," says Betty Shavers

As a black woman who lived through the Civil Rights struggle in Danville, Va. -- a former tobacco and cotton town best known as the “Last Capitol of the Confederacy” -- Betty Shavers never imagined she’d see an African American be elected president of the United States. Danville, which is located on the North Carolina border, in the reddest part of the state, had a 72 percent voter turnout; 59 percent of those voters supported Barack Obama. The city has a 45.6 percent black population. She shared her thoughts on the election and the coming inauguration with her niece, New American Media contributor Teresa Moore. Word From the Wise is a regular column of elder perspectives from the New America Media ethnic elder news beat.

You can read Betty Shavers's essay here.

Has Obama Changed the Politics of Race?

According to a recent "News Analysis" piece in the L.A. Times by Peter Wallsten, Obama's election is "changing the politics of race." Wallsten contends: "Many black leaders are rejecting the old tactics of protest and the rhetoric of inequality. 'You can't use 50-year-old ideas in a new political era,' one pastor says."

I am ambivelent about these kinds of arguments. On one hand, it is true that 2008 is not 1958 or 1968, so we need to craft a political vision and political rhetoric that speaks to our own historical reality. No doubt about that. Yet, I'm not as comfortable "rejecting the rhetoric of inequality," when racial inequality is so readily apparent and persistent throughout American society. Heck, in my own city - Omaha - 60% of all African American children live in poverty. 60%!! If 60% of all white kids lived in poverty, the city and state would literally stop and make herculean efforts to deal with it, including pouring zillions of dollars into various programs to help white kids and their families out. Or, recently the Omaha World Herald ran two articles in the same week, one on an affluent white school in West Omaha where the public school is buying each kid a laptop (talk about the rich getting richer!) and the other on a school in the poorer and blacker North Side where parents are being charged an extra $5 just to provide basic materials to their kids, like paper. The inequalities are glaring and shameful. And we just went through an election, right? So surely the various political candidates all blustered on about the massive inequality in North Omaha (the third poorest black community in the United States)? Wrong. Not one candidate said a peep about black children or North Omaha, or economic or racial inequality. Nothing. Nada.

In a way, this effort to move away from the politics of grievance seems, in part, to reflect the class position of some leaders who themselves have made it to the middle-class or above, but more significantly, it appears to me to be an accommodation to the fact that most Americans are clueless about the reality not only of our racial past, but also of our racial present. Most have no clue what race is, how it works and persists, what is different from the civil rights era and what remains to be done. And, I fear this kind of political positioning, while strategically smart on some levels, might also reinforce the idea among many white folks that we are "beyond race" and that black people and other aggrieved groups simply play the "victim card" all the time in some unjustified way. A HUGE part of the remaining solution to racial inequality is a new consciousness among enough white people, a consciousness that is not mired in white guilt, but looks honestly at racial inequality in America, that places that inequality in its proper historical context and which owns up to the fact that we ALL are responsible for this mess and for cleaning it up!

What do you think?

Clarity on Obama

Is Obama the end all be all? Or, is he the same old, same old? Jay Smooth, at illdoctrine.com, has a nice reply...

What do you think?

King, Obama and the Politics of Hope

This is an interesting essay, written by Michael Honey, who recently published an excellent book on King's involvement with the Memphis garbage strike in 1968. Honey argues, "After experiencing the limitations of local organizing, [Obama] went on to law and politics to find greater leverage. He also tapped into Martin Luther King’s politics of hope. That combination has opened up the country to the possibility of new politics, and new goals." Check out the whole thing...

... is hope a transformative political concept?

Obama Election Spurs "Hundreds" of Racist Incidents Around Country

Cross-burnings, threats, racial epithets, assault, a church burned down. These are just a few of the racist incidents that have occurred across the country since Obama's historic victory two weeks ago. Here are some specific examples that give a sense of the scope of this outbreak of racist hate:

* At the Standish, Maine, Oak Hill General Store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin.Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."

* In Idaho, the Secret Service is investigating a "public hanging" sign erected by a man upset with the election outcome, the Bonner County Daily Bee reported Thursday. A handmade sign posted on a tree reads "FREE PUBLIC HANGING" written in large letters beneath a noose fashioned from nylon rope. The most prominent name on the sign is "OBAMA," according to the Bee. "That's a political statement. They can call it whatever they want, a threat or whatever," the creator of the sign, Ken Germana, told the Bee.

* A popular white supremacist Web sites got more than 2,000 new members the day after the election, compared with 91 new members on Election Day. The site, stormfront.org, was temporarily off-line on Nov. 5 because of the overwhelming amount of activity it received. One poster, identified as Dalderian Germanicus, of North Las Vegas, said, "I want the SOB laid out in a box to see how 'messiahs' come to rest."

* From the Orange County (Ca.) Register: "Two gang members pleaded not guilty Thursday to hate crime and attempted robbery charges in connection with the beating of a black man who was trying to buy cigarettes at a Fullerton liquor store." The two men shouted racial and anti-Obama epithets in the attack.

* From today's New York Times: "Two white Staten Island men face hate crimes charges after they were arrested on Friday in the beating of a black teenager on the night that Barack Obama was elected president, the police said on Saturday. The teenager, Alie Kamara, 17, was walking home on Pine Place in the Staten Island neighborhood of Stapleton when several men hit him on the head with a baseball bat and yelled 'Obama,' said Aliya Latif, the civil rights director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who was in contact with Alie's family since the attack and spoke to his mother on Saturday after the arrests were announced."

* In Mississippi alone, the American Civil Liberties Union has received more than 10 calls since the staff first reported anti-Obama incidents last Friday, according to the Jackson (Miss.) Free Press.

* In Midland, Mich., a man dressed in full Ku Klux Klan regalia walked around toting a handgun and waving an American flag. Initially denying it, the man eventually admitted to police that the display was a reaction to the Obama victory. "[The man] had a concealed weapon permit and was walking up and down the sidewalk in front of a vehicle dealership while some motorists shouted obscenities at him and others shouted accolades," police told The Saginaw News.

* Parents in Rexburg, Idaho, contacted school officials this week after they learned that 2nd and 3rd graders on a school bus were chanting, "Assasssinate Obama!"

* At the University of Texas in Austin, a racist post on Facebook has cost one student his place on the university football team, according to the Houston Chronicle. Buck Burnette, a sophomore offensive lineman for the fourth-ranked Texas Longhorns, was dismissed from the team on Nov. 5 after posting a racist remark about President-elect Obama as his "status" on the social networking Web site. Burnette posted: "All the hunters gather up, we have a [slur] in the White House," the Chronicle reported.

* AP reports: "While the world watched a Grant Park celebration heralding the election of the first black U.S. president, some white Chicago police officers committed hate crimes against black residents cheering Barack Obama's victory elsewhere in the city, attorneys alleged Thursday." Lawsuits have been filed.

* At Appalachian State University, the administration has expressed disappointment at the numerous times black students have expressed being harassed in residence halls since the election. The Appalachian, a student newspaper serving the university, also reported conversations suggesting Obama may not be alive in 2009 and a t-shirt seen around campus that reads "Obama '08, Biden '09."

* Mentioned in the same article, racist comments were discovered at North Carolina State University last week. Spray-painted in university's free expression tunnel after the election were the phrases, "Kill that nigger," "Let's shoot that nigger in the head" and "Shoot Obama," the Appalachian reported. The NAACP has called for the expulsion of the four students accused of the graffitti, the Associated Press reported Thursday. Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.

* The Associated Press revealed on Wednesday, "Police on eastern Long Island are investigating reports that more than a dozen cars were spray painted with racist graffiti, reportedly including a message targeting President-elect Barack Obama. The graffiti included racist slurs and sexually graphic references. At least one resident in the quiet Mastic neighborhood told Newsday her son's car was scribbled with a message threatening to kill Obama."

* Employees at Hampel's Key and Lockshop in Traverse City, Michigan, flew an American flag upside down last Wednesday protesting of the new president-elect, the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported. One worker used a racial slur during an interview with the Record-Eagle: "(The inverted flag is) an international signal for distress and we feel our country is in distress because the n----- got in," said Hampel's employee Rod Nyland, who later apologized for the comment, according to the Record-Eagle.

* Authorities in Temecula, Calif., found spray-painted graffiti on a city sidewalk containing a swastika and anti-Obama slogan. And from the Los Angeles Times: "Vandals spray-painted swastikas and racial slurs on a house and several cars in Torrance that displayed campaign signs or bumper stickers for President-elect Barack Obama, authorities said Tuesday. The incidents occurred Saturday night in the Hollywood Riviera section of the city, said Sgt. Bernard Anderson. Four separate incidents were reported the next day, he said. No arrests have been made."

* And from Maine: "More than 75 people rallied Sunday against an incident last week in which black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island the day after Barack Obama won the presidential election," according to the Bangor Daily News.

* Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

* Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.

* University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.

* Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.

* Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.

* A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'

* In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."

This website is keeping track of incidents.

And there is other evidence that hate-crimes are on the rise in NY, not just against African Americans, but also against Latino immigrants. Here is one particularly appalling example:


Well, this isn't all that surprising, given our nation's tragic racial past, the long history of white backlash following moments of racial progress, and the way Obama's opponents exploited racial divisions in a series of desperate last-ditch efforts to save their campaigns. Even so, we must call this stuff out when it occurs and stand together publicly to condemn it.

What has been your experience, post election?

The "Magical Negro in Chief"?

Bijan Bayne, over at The Root, asks whether Barack Obama is the "magical Negro in Chief." A "magical Negro" is a character in a novel or film, who is possessed of an inner wisdom and who ultimately helps the white lead character get out of trouble. Back in 2003, Rita Kempley wrote an article for Black Commentator on this subject. Here are a few oft-cited examples of "Magical Negroes":

• Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) in the film The Defiant Ones (1958)
• Dick Haloran (Scatman Crothers) in the Stephen King novel The Shining (1977), later a 1980 film
• Willie Brown (Joe Seneca) in the film Crossroads (1986)
• John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) in the serialized Stephen King novel The Green Mile (1996), later a 1999 film
• Albert Lewis (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) in the film What Dreams May Come (1998)
• Cash (Don Cheadle) in the film The Family Man (2000)
• Bagger Vance (Will Smith) in the film The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)
• An angel (Gabriel Casseus) in Bedazzled (2000)
• God (Morgan Freeman) in the film Bruce Almighty (2003)
• The blind handcar-pumper (Lee Weaver) in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
• The old woman seer in the Stephen King novel The Stand
• The barkeeper Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation
• The Oracle in The Matrix Reloaded
• Gabriel (voice of Delroy Lindo) in The Simpsons episode "Brawl in the Family" (DABF01, 2002) (a deliberate parody of the archetype)

Almost as soon as Obama began to have success in the presidential primary, debate about his status as a "magical Negro" took off. Steven Rosenfeld, over at Alternet, explored the "Magic" behind Obama's success as did Anne Applebaum, at The Washington Post, who posted a column suggesting Obama's blackness provided some advantagous "magic" in the election. Even conservative blow-hard Rush Limbaugh got into the act with a racially derisive song he played on his show. On the flip side, Gary Kamiya, over at Salon, saw Obama's magical status in a more positive light, raving that "the fact that it is a black man who is serving as America's philosopher's stone, turning the base metal of bitterness into the gold of forgiveness, is extraordinarily moving." But, as recently as March, a writer for the L.A. Times argued that Obama was, in fact, a "magical Negro."

The underlying question is: What does the Obama victory win mean for white liberal/progressive voters? Is the meaning confined to this "magical" paternalistic realm? Does Obama's win liberate white liberals from their racial guilt? If so, is that a bad thing? Or, is there something more substantive and concrete there? Does this view of Obama as "magical Negro" diminish his accomplishment and dismiss the very real and positive inter-racial work being done in this campaign?

Check it out. What do you think?

Current TV: Interview w/ Shepard Fairey

"Obama inspired his art, and his art is inspiring supporters. Street artist and DJ, Shepard Fairey talks about the positive shift in his work from tagging to political campaigns, and the correlation of his two careers."

Election Over, Bill Ayers Speaks

Now that the election has concluded, Bill Ayers has penned an essay - "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been" - for In These Times ruminating on the way his life became "a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled" by the McCain/Palin campaign. It is an interesting and more complex inside look at the mind and experience of the man who might have upset Obama's run for the White House, but didn't. Ayers discusses the campaign, but also the significance of the 1960s today. Check it out.

What do you think?

"Obama's Win Has Roots in Mississippi"

The Sun-Herald, which serves the Biloxi, Gulfport and southern Mississippi area, published two interesting articles about Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) veterans and their role, 40+ years ago paving the way for an Obama presidency. The first article focuses on 1963, when Aaron Henry, a black civil rights activist, teamed up with Rev. Ed King, a white Methodist minister, to run for Governor and Lt. Governor in Mississippi. The second brief article focuses on Unita Blackwell and Hollis Watkins, both Movement vets. Check 'em out...

BREAKING: Obama Gets NE District 2 (Omaha-land) Electoral Vote!

Great news! It has just been announced here in Nebraska that Obama earned the District 2 electoral college vote in Nebraska. District 2 is made up of Omaha-land, essentially. This is the first time in 40-odd years that a Democrat has won an electoral vote in the state and the first time ever that the electoral votes of Nebraska have been split. It is a HUGE victory for us locally and a nice thank-you for all the hard-work so many local people did around here to make this a reality.

Selma, Lord, Selma!

(Ms. Bland is to the right of Barack Obama as you look at the above photo!)

Selma, AL, is sacred ground in the civil rights movement. It was there, in '65, during the historic voting right campaign, at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, that thousands of people made a stand for racial justice that reverberated across the country and around the world. Those activists and local people took their lumps, but their efforts resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Ms. Joanne Bland was there, as a little girl, and has spent the rest of her life in Selma, carrying on the struggle for full equality. I've had the great fortune to get to know Ms. Bland, first as a grad student at the U. of Wisconsin, and more recently when I brought her to Lincoln as a part of "From Selma to Washington: A 40th Anniversary Celebration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act," a conference I organized in 2005.

This New York Times video features Ms. Bland and other local people in Selma, as they vote and await the results of election '08 on Tuesday. In case you are unclear about the deep meaning of Barack Obama's historic victory, please watch this moving video... but be prepared to shed some tears.

I love you Ms. Bland! Thank you for everything you and all the other local people in Selma have done for our nation, for our democracy! This one is for you and for all the other foot-soldiers of the Movement. We are a better nation because of your sacrifices...

The Racial Implications of Obama's Historic Win

We are starting to see a trail of articles and programs focusing on the racial implications of Obama's historic win on Tuesday. Here are a few for your consideration:

• Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of "America in the King Years," Taylor Branch, cautions not to exaggerate the racial progress represented in Obama's victory.

• The NYTimes had a nice piece, "A Time to Reap for Foot Soldiers of Civil Rights"

• Civil Rights icons react to Obama's victory.

•In, "In Our Lifetime," Harvard African American Studies guru, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., argues that "from toiling as White House slaves to President-elect Barack Obama, we have crossed the ultimate color line."

• Famed literary figure, Alice Walker, penned "An Open Letter to Barack Obama."

• John Nichols suggests this is "America's Mandela Moment."

• Post-election, The Root suggests what black folks shouldn't do and what white folks shouldn't do.

• Obama's victory a "non-violent revolution"? Many think so.

• The sister of one of the girls killed in the 1963 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham speaks out about an Obama victory.

• And what about the so-called Bradley Effect? A lot of folks are thinking and writing about it. Ann Applebaum suggests race helped Obama win, not hurt him.

What do you think? Have you seen other interesting stories on the racial dynamics of Obama's win? Post a link in the comments section...

Progress, Hope, Unity, Change

... glory, hallelujah!