Marching for Change in "North O"

In case you are not aware, the African American community in Omaha, concentrated mainly in "North Omaha," is the third poorest black community in the nation and the poorest for black children. A full 59% of all African American kids grow up in poverty in Omaha. And, of course, this situation leads to all kinds of other social problems associated with poverty, discrimination and segregation. It is shameful, to say the least. But, some folks are trying to do something about it...

The cover story of the most recent Reader, Omaha's alternative weekly, highlights a recent march/rally in North Omaha. I was on the Steering Committee for this demonstration. The article, titled, "How a diverse group of concerned residents put on a march for change in North Omaha," is worth taking a look at.

The Larger Meaning of Obama's Nomination...

Before we all jump into the deep end of the general election swimming pool, I think Barack Obama's historic victory in the Democratic Party primary begs for some deeper historical meditation. Whether or not Obama wins the White House, his nomination is already a triumph over an incredibly racist past inside the Democratic Party. Yes, that is right. We need to remind ourselves that until fairly recently, the Democratic Party was the party of white supremacy.

During slavery days, the Democratic Party was the great defender of that tragic institution. In one particularly murderous incident, Democratic Representative Preston Brooks, a South Carolina slave-owning white supremacist, bludgeoned nearly to death Senator Charles Sumner, a Radical Republican (the "liberals" of their day) from Massachusetts, after he gave a speech denouncing slavery in 1856.

Two years later, in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Illinois Democratic Senator, Stephen Douglas stated,

"For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. I believe this government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon Negroes, Indians and other inferior races."

Yet, Douglas was too moderate on race to become his party's presidential nominee in 1860. The Democrats instead nominated a more hard-line slaver, John C. Breckinridge.

After the collapse of slavery and the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, it was the Democratic Party which undermined and then destroyed the "experiment in inter-racial democracy" we call Reconstruction. It was the Democratic Party that "redeemed" white supremacy by sweeping aside the multi-racial governments of the Reconstruction era and establishing a new system of white supremacy, the Jim Crow system, with its hundreds of laws segregating the races, with its various mechanisms to disenfranchise black voters, and with its horrific system of debt peonage, otherwise known as sharecropping. Of course, this new system of white supremacy, while backed up by laws, court decisions, tradition and custom, was ultimately backed by unspeakable violence. Black people were killed in large numbers for asserting their political, economic and social rights. And, the Democrats were the political party that countenanced this violence, stoked the passions of racial hatred and encouraged other southerners to become murderous mobs. The Ku Klux Klan was, in essence, an extension of the Democratic Party. Democrats brought back chain gangs to force black labor back to the land in the most submissive and unjust way. And, Democrats passed the first gun control laws to keep victimized African Americans defenseless in the face of this violence.

During the so-called "progressive era," it was Democratic President Woodrow Wilson who extended formal segregation throughout the federal bureaucracy and named a number of open white supremacists to his cabinet. It was Wilson, who earlier as President of Princeton, refused to admit African Americans to that school. As Governor of New Jersey, Wilson refused to grant black workers patronage even though African American votes were the margin of his victory. And, in 1915, it was President Wilson who watched a private viewing of "The Birth of a Nation," one of the most racist films of all time, and approvingly called it "History written with lightening."

Throughout his presidency, Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt, consistently accommodated southern white racism in order to get other legislation passed. This meant nominating a lifetime KKK member from Alabama to the Supreme Court and replacing his Vice President, a true supporter of racial justice, Henry Wallace, with another racist and former KKK member, Harry Truman. This meant opposing federal anti-lynching legislation and thereby tolerating the torture and murder of African American citizens. It meant signing into law a Social Security Act that purposefully left out farm workers and domestic laborers, the two biggest employment categories for black people.

It was the southern Democratic Party that, until the mid-1940s, conducted "all white primaries" to block black electoral power and assure the perpetuation of white supremacy. And, because the South was a one-party region (there was no Republican Party after the collapse of Reconstruction in the 1870s) whoever won the Democratic nomination, won the general election!

In 1948, as some in the party began to get hip to the increasing power of black voting rights in the North, southern Democrats bolted the party and formed the racist Dixecrat, or "States Rights," Party, with South Carolina's Strom Thurmond as its standard bearer.

In 1964, it was racist Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, another KKK member, who filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 14 hours. Throughout the civil rights era, it was Democratic representatives at the local, state and federal level who provided the primary institutional bulwark against racial change.

It was the Democratic Party that produced George Wallace, the segregationist Governor of Alabama who pointed the way toward modern racist politicking when he figured out that racially-coded language could animate the underlying racist antagonisms of whites and win lots of votes, North and South, East and West.

And on and on and on...

But, you say, the Democrats are now the party of "special interests," one of those Wallace-inspired code-words for the party of black people, and brown people, and poor people and women and gays and lesbians, and anyone else who is disenfracnhised. Today, it is the Republican Party that rules the South and which is home to the most racist sentiments in our politics. Today, it is the Democratic Party that is the party of civil rights! And, this is true, to a large extent. During the 1950s and 1960s, the combination of thousands of people engaged in one of the most inspiring social movements in our nation's history and the increasingly embarrassing gap between U.S. leaders' Cold War rhetoric of "liberty," "democracy" and "self-determination" and the domestic reality of rampant and violent white supremacy, compelled liberal Democrats to embrace civil rights and, in the process, alienate southern white racists. In turn, those former Southern white racist Dems jumped ship and became Republicans. Similarly, it was those divisive racial appeals that I mentioned above which also brought over to the Republicans thousands of disgruntled working class white voters looking for a scapegoat for their own increasing economic misery due to deindustrialization and conservative social and political policies in the 1970s and 1980s. So, YES, the Democrats did ultimately make the change and embrace civil rights, not mainly because it was the moral or just thing to do, but because they were shoved by external forces (the civil rights movement and the logic of the Cold War). But, even so, that window was a brief one. As a reinvigorated and reactionary new conservative politic rose from the late-1960s through the present, Democrats found themselves increasing on the defensive. In order to try to regain political power, Democrats have moved rightward, largely abandoning the civil rights agenda of the 1960s and early-1970s. Recall that the only two Democratic presidents since the civil rights era have been conservative southern white guys. Recall, Bill Clinton picking a fight with Sister Souljah to prove he could be tough on "those people." It was Bill Clinton who saved his campaign in 1992 by going home to Arkansas to publicly preside over the state murder of a mentally deficient black man, Ricky Ray Rector, again to prove to reactionary white voters he could be "tough on crime." (note the association of crime with blackness) It was Bill Clinton who pandered to the racist smears against social welfare programs by signing into law the Welfare "Reform" Act of 1996... And on and on. He did all of this to pander to the racist sentiments still so powerful in our society so that he could win political power.

Now, let me be clear. I am a registered Democrat and an ardent Barack Obama supporter. I am not writing this to uplift Republicans and beat down the Dems. The Republicans have a pile full of their own racist sins to atone for and they don't seem to be showing any signs of change anytime soon. Rather, I merely hope to set what is happening through the Obama campaign within a much longer trajectory of racist politics in our country. White supremacy has always been a foundational set of values and ideas in our society and politics. It has historically been the NORM, not the exception to the rule. In this context, Obama's victory is H-U-G-E and inspiring on a grander scale.

So, today, as we reflect on the meaning of Barack Obama's nomination for President on the Democratic Party ticket, let us be conscious of this long and terrible racial history. Let us be aware of the truly seismic triumph over a horrible past that this represents within the party. Let us be clear of the magnitude of what has already happened in this election, regardless of what is to come in the general election. Let us give thanks and praises to the most high for this historic turn of events...

Viewed through the lens of racial justice and history, Barack Obama's triumph in the Democratic Primary is deep and resonant and somewhat mind-blowing. Let us all take a few moments before we jump into the general election fight to reflect on this deeper meaning. Let us all be proud of what Obama's candidacy means...

Juan Crow?

I think this article provides an important paradigm shift on the immigration issue. I hope you will take the time to give it a read:

Juan Crow: The Deep South's New Second-Class Citizens, by By Roberto Lovato, The Nation.

Here is the heart of the matter:

...younger children of the mostly immigrant Latinos in Georgia are learning and internalizing that they are different from white -- and black -- children not just because they have the wrong skin color but also because many of their parents lack the right papers. They are growing up in a racial and political climate in which Latinos' subordinate status in Georgia and in the Deep South bears more than a passing resemblance to that of African-Americans who were living under Jim Crow. Call it Juan Crow: the matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems enabling the physical and psychic isolation needed to control and exploit undocumented immigrants.

When we come at the immigration issue from a divisive and reactionary place, we dehumanize immigrants and, in the process, denigrate not only them but ourselves, too.

In Nebraska, we have had a number of recent examples. For instance, the Unicameral tried to pass legislation blocking in-state tuition for children of undocumented immigrants, a purely mean and punitive move designed to take away one of the key ladders to independence and self-determination. Or, our bone-headed Attorney General, John Bruning, has refused to enforce federal fair housing legislation because a couple of the cases involved undocumented immigrants, even though federal law is clear that immigration status does not justify discrimination. In both instances (and others), conservative politicians and their followers have forgotten the humanity of immigrants, instead opting to exploit them as symbolic pawns in an increasingly desperate political game.

People! Let us wake up to the humanity of others: Immigrants - documented or not - are PEOPLE, HUMAN BEINGS, and as such, deserve to be treated with compassion and justice, regardless of their status.

What does all this reaction say about us? What does it reveal about the soul of our nation?

The Missed Opportunity Debate

Following the Cleveland debate the other night, the media bobble-heads are a-twitter about the Farrakhan question, Hillary's blame game, Russert's inane hypotheticals, health care mandates, etc. I would submit that these stories miss the real tragedy of that final debate. Here is the deal:

I grew up in Cleveland and am a proud Clevelander. Cleveland is in my blood. That written, Cleveland is one of the poorest cities in the country. A full one-third of the population lives in poverty. The sub-prime loan crisis has hit Cleveland's poor communities and communities of color harder than any other city in the nation. In fact, Cleveland has a a proud and distinguished black middle class community... but it has been ravaged by predatory corporate lenders who purposefully targeted communities of color and working-class communities for quick profits. Foreclosures in Cleveland have sky-rocketed. The American dream has turned into a nightmare for thousands of good, decent, hardworking residents. In short, what I am saying is that the debate in Cleveland could have been, and should have been, a show-case discussion of the ongoing urban crisis in America. Cleveland is ground zero for that crisis and it is the dirty little secret no one wants to talk about. We get distracted in cities like Cleveland, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere, by new ballparks and flashy downtown condos and restaurants, and forget that massive inequalities remain in each of those places. Instead of the same old questions that have been hashed and rehashed at 20 (yes, 20!) debates, instead of stupid gotcha questions, why not actually raise some vital and substantive new issues that speak to one of the biggest crises facing the nation? Why not ask the candidates to address the predatory subprime crisis? Why not ask them what they will do to revitalize communities like Cleveland where industry has left and one-third of the population is poor? Why not ask them what they will do about a public education system that is segregated? Why not ask what they might do to address police brutality in poor communities of color? Why not ask them ANYTHING about this crisis!!!???!!!??

This is, I think, the great failing of the debate the other night. More than Hillary's shrill tone. More than Russert's ridiculous hypotheticals. More than Obama's "Farrakhan problem." Shame on all of them for not speaking up while sitting at the epicenter of urban decay. This reveals something terrible about ourselves and our society... that we are willing to tolerate this urban crisis and the wide-spread human destruction that is its product.

This makes my heart very heavy... I love Cleveland, but it is dying.

Underwriting Whiteness: The Legacy of "Red-Lining"

Ever wonder why most American suburbs are more white and affluent while central cities are more black, brown and poor? Part of the reason is found in this 1936 Home Owners Loan Corporation map of Philadelphia. (click on the map to see a larger, more readable image)

During the New Deal era, the federal government instituted a revolutionary change that put homeownership within reach for millions of Americans for the first time. The feds decided to back up, or insure, loans made for the purchase of a home. This new social welfare policy meant that instead of putting down, say 50% or more of the cost of the home as a down-payment and paying the loan back over a short term at a high rate of interest, individuals could now put only 10-20% down and repay the loan over a long term, often 30 years, at a much lower rate of interest. This federal subsidy of homeownership was critical to the growth of a white middle class in the United States following WWII. This remains the basic outline of the lending system today...

In 1935, the Home Owners Loan Corporation began making maps of more than 200 U.S. cities that indicated the “level of security” for real estate investments in each area surveyed (see map). The darker dotted line encircles the major housing inventory in the city. The grey area underneath the two large “A”s is the main industrial zone for the city. Federal assessors ranked areas of the city based on a four-color scale. The neighborhoods that received the highest, or best rating (and were thus most likely to receive federally subsidized loans), were colored blue (called “desirable” or “best”). These areas were racially homogenous (meaning “white”), usually more affluent, and often newer developments on the edges of the city. Neighborhoods that were in transition, particularly racial transition (so were mixed), were colored yellow (called “declining”), which made it more difficult to get a loan there. Poorer and older urban neighborhoods that were less affluent and were predominately black or brown were colored red (“hazardous”) and received very few loans. This process came to be known as “red-lining.”

These maps, along with Federal Housing Authority underwriting manuals, which similarly categorized neighborhoods along lines of race and class, and real estate practices, like “block-busting,” promoted racial and economic segregation. The maps became the basis for lending decisions, not just by the federal government, but also by private financial institutions, which used the HOLC maps and FHA underwriting manuals as their own guides. In short, “red-lining” funneled billions of tax dollars toward newer, affluent, white suburban neighborhoods and away from poorer, or more integrated, urban neighborhoods. It shifted public wealth toward one group in one area over another in other areas and, in the process, reified racial inequality. In fact, between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion of home loans… more than 98% went to white homebuyers! Talk about massive redistribution of wealth!

This policy made possible the segregated, all-white suburbs that sprang up all across the country after WWII. Further government subsidies to municipal services in these areas only increased their values even more, which in turn fueled commercial investment there. So, not only were affluent white suburbanites able to access federally subsidized loans to buy homes, the value of that property steadily rose over time as a result of these other public supports. And, as public policy subsidized "white flight," business and other economic development followed to the fringes from downtowns.

Conversely, African Americans and Latinos remained confined to older and poorer urban neighborhoods where property values continued to decline as a direct result of these public policy decisions. Urban renewal plans and highways construction plans during the 1950s and 1960s exacerbated these problems by destroying housing stock in central cities and displacing poor residents. As these areas became associated with racialized poverty, welfare policies increasingly dumped poorer residents in them, adding to the woes already there. Denied home loans, inner-city residents were unable to purchase new homes, upkeep existing houses (which were often older stock, and, as a result, in need of repair), and thus were not able to accumulate wealth through home equity as whites were doing. And, in reality, this situation meant that most brown and black people didn't own homes at all, but rented property from white slum landlords who lived outside the community.

The result of all of this has been that American society has systematically subsidized the wealth creation of white families and undermined the wealth creation of families of color. Even today, when the more egregious dynamics of this system are outlawed, the results of past discrimination persist and grow as wealth (or lack of it) accumulates from one generation to the next. As sociologist Dalton Conley points out in the excellent 3-part documentary, “Race: The Power of an Illusion,” a family's net worth is not simply the finish line. It's also the starting point for the next generation. Those with wealth pass their assets on to their children - financing a college education, lending a helping hand during hard times, or assisting with the down payment for a new home. It also provides financial security in retirement. Not surprisingly, the racial wealth gap - and the head start enjoyed by white families - appears to have grown since the gains of the Civil Rights Movement.

Because it is hidden in institutions and public policies, these processes are largely invisible to the average white person, who does not realize she/he is participating in such a racist and unequal system. After all, they simply walk into a bank and apply for a loan. Consequently, because they don't see the racial advantage they are receiving, they don't view their position in society as the result of discriminatory social welfare policies, but rather the result of hard work and merit. In turn, they often look at poor urban neighborhoods and associate the conditions they see with the character of the people living there rather than with a rigged system. Black people (or brown people) themselves become associated with poverty and its symptoms. Black people (and brown people) become, in many white minds, synonymous with poverty, urban blight, run-down neighborhoods, delapidated housing, failed public schools, crime, violence, drug use, etc.

This is one reason it is very important to shine light on the system as it actually works, not as people believe it works, or wish it worked. By rendering the invisible visible, perhaps we are better able to think constructively about truly egalitarian and just solutions to the ongoing inequalities in our society.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 were aimed at the most egregious aspects of this system. "Red-lining" is technically illegal now in the United States. But, lest we think this is all ancient history, a recent study by ACORN (2005) found, "when buying or refinancing a home, borrowers of color, and African-Americans in particular, receive mortgages with much less favorable terms than whites receive. African-Americans have been segregated into the subprime market where they receive loans with higher interest rates, larger fees, and onerous features such as prepayment penalties." The cycle continues...

For the full study, see:
ACORN report on predatory lending practices at Wells Fargo

So, again, why are those suburbs mainly white and affluent and those urban neighborhoods disproportionately poor and black or brown?

More resources can be found here:
Resources on "red-lining" today
Insurance Red-Lining: Still Fact, Not Fiction"
Documentary website: "Race: The Power of an Illusion"

Take action in your community:
ACORN campaign to stop predatory lending practices
Consumer Action Guide: "Stop Housing Discrimination in Your Community"