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Barack Obama on Tavis Smiley

A worthwhile interview. Disclosure--I am an Obama supporter.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Men Step Up, Government Steps Off?

On Sunday, thousands of men will gather at Temple University’s Liacouras Center as part of the new “10,000 Men” initiative. The program, offered in response to Philadelphia’s rising homicide rate, will train a predominately African American group of men as “Peacemakers” who will enter “designated communities and deter unwanted and illegal behavior.”

In many ways, I am encouraged by the renewed commitment to protecting our own communities. As opposed to Mayor John Street’s “Safe Streets” initiative, which attempted to transform the ‘hood into a de facto police state, 10,000 Men wisely recognizes the benefits of community involvement. In addition to offering us a much-needed dose of responsibility, the initiative provides a tangible alternative to armchair activism and sideline complaining. After all, how can we complain about senseless violence and police incompetence if we are unwilling to come up with a reasonable alternative?

The problem is that this strategy is far from reasonable.

If we’ve learned nothing from the historic Million Man March –where African American men became the first group of people to launch a protest march against themselves– we found out that the government and mainstream Americans will never stop large numbers of Negroes from confessing their collective sins in full public view. The problem is that, instead of inspiring policymakers to support our efforts, such actions reinforce the absurd notion that violence and poverty can be eliminated by embracing a gospel of individual responsibility. In this case, by agreeing to “take back our neighborhoods” we concede the point that we lost them solely due to our own personal failings.

The last time I checked, joblessness and crack had something to do with it too.

Rather than demanding higher wages, better schools, and stricter gun laws, the current plan absolves the government of its responsibility to protect our most vulnerable citizens. For example, even if we are to accept the quixotic idea that ten thousand unarmed civilians can make peace within inner-city war zones, couldn’t we expect even greater results from ten thousand trained officers? Unfortunately, the current initiative makes no such demands from the State.

Of course, this doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition. There is no reason why African American men (and women!) cannot take control of their communities and fight for social justice at the same time. Unfortunately, I have yet to hear how breeding newschool Guardian Angels will produce political education, protest, or even voter registration. Until we focus on these and other issues, even ten million men won’t help us.

Posted by Marc Lamont Hill at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bush, Faith, and S-CHIP

President Bush fancies himself to be a man of the Christian faith. Famously, in a primary debate prior to the 2000 presidential election, the President declared that "[w]hen you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the savior, it changes your heart. It changes your life. And that's what happened to me."

In the third presidential debate in 2004, the President reiterated that "[my] principles are derived from who I am. I believe we ought to love our neighbor like we love ourself . . . . And so my principles that I make decisions on are a part of me. And religion is a part of me."

These are merely illustrations of the President's repeated invocation of faith as a seminal part of his identity and his policy-making. By his own reckoning, his Christian faith is an indelible part of who the President imagines himself to be.

So I ask: Would Jesus have vetoed the SCHIP bill?

Of the over 43 million Americans lacking health insurance, about eight million are children. Not only does this mean that millions of children are unable to access the care they need to treat debilitating illnesses, it also means they cannot obtain the preventive care and counseling that protects against sickness and promotes wellness.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program ("S-CHIP) is one effort -- albeit incomplete -- to address this problem. S-CHIP, a partnership between the federal government and the states, provides health coverage to poor families who are not covered by Medicaid but who also cannot afford private insurance. The program currently covers about 6 million people -- most of whom are children -- and is credited with having reduced by one-third the number of uninsured children.

As you know by now, Congress, with bipartisan support, passed a bill seeking not only to extend S-CHIP but to expand it. The congressional bill would have added $7 billion to the program in each of the next five years, enabling S-CHIP to cover an additional 4 million children.

This, evidently, was too much for the President to bear. He vetoed the bill, claiming that it would cover too many middle-class families, would encourage those with private coverage to switch to S-CHIP, and would represent an unjustifiable step toward government-managed health-care.

These rationales, however, are unsupportable. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 84% of new children covered by the bill would come from families eligible under current S-CHIP income guidelines -- so the argument that the bill targets well-to-do families is simply untrue. This also undermines the claim that the bill encourages families to switch from private coverage to S-CHIP: almost all of the children covered by the bill -- because they would be eligible under current S-CHIP standards -- cannot afford private coverage in the first place. These families would be going from no coverage to S-CHIP -- not private coverage to S-CHIP.

Finally, the government-managed-health-care trope is both meritless and stale. S-CHIP subsidizes private health care coverage, not a system of government-controlled care. And, in any case, the premise underlying this scare tactic -- that government-managed care would preempt private choice -- is simply inapplicable where people have no coverage to begin with. Simply put, S-CHIP provides coverage overwhelmingly to people who cannot afford it; and it is this moral imperative that drives the broad public support for this bill.

So what would Jesus do? I think the answer is clear: "Whatever you neglected to do unto one of the least of these, you neglected to do unto Me."

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 01:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Obama on Immigration

The Immigration law professors blog will post an interview with Senator Obama on Tuesday at 11am eastern time zone. They prepared a list of questions for him on a range of difficult immigration issues, including immigration reform, undocumented immigration, family immigration, deportation and immigration raids, local (anti-)immigration ordinances, integration of immigrants into U.S. society, the deaths along the U.S./Mexico border, and his vote in favor of the Secure Fence Act. They are actively seeking other 2008 Presidential candidates to answer the same immigration questions that were posed to Senator Obama.

Check it out at

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2007/09/immigrationpr-1.html

Posted by Adrien Wing at 01:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (34) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post By Professor Trina Jones of Duke Law School on Erwin Chemerinsky

[The following is a post by Professor Trina Jones of Duke Law School:]

As many of you know, my colleague, Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, http://www.law.duke.edu/fac/chemerinsky/ , was recently offered the deanship at a soon-to-be-established law school at the University of California Irvine. On Tuesday, less than a week after he signed a contract, UCI Chancellor Michael V. Drake flew to North Carolina and withdrew the offer apparently due to conservative opposition. See http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/09/12/the-oc-law-school-edition/ or http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ucilaw13sep13,0,5893599.story?coll=la-homecenter

A similar dynamic occurred last winter at Duke Law School, where Chemerinsky was one of three finalists for the deanship. As was the case nine months ago, I find myself struggling with a number of observations and questions:

First, have we kissed academic freedom goodbye? Is the ability of a professor to express ideas openly, to dissent from prevailing norms, no longer valued or desired? Are public universities now in the business of policing viewpoints, of punishing those who engage in public debate? Surely history has taught us that this is dangerous to achievement of the free and democratic society to which presumably we still aspire.

Second, how do liberal beliefs render irrelevant almost three decades of outstanding service as a gracious colleague, prolific scholar, committed advocate, generous mentor, and engaged public citizen? Why is being progressive presumptively disqualifying (especially for those with stellar credentials) while being conservative is presumptively qualifying (especially for those with mediocre track records)?

Third, where then is all the support for the ubiquitous claim that the academy is run by - and “ruined” by - left-wing radicals? Could it be that conservatism rules in an atmosphere that insists the opposite is true?

Fourth, what is the going price for a law school? a university? Is the financial cost of critical thought too expensive for a law school devoted to the public interest?

And, finally, how can any senior administrator lead a candidate, whose liberal views did not appear overnight, to the point of actually signing a contract only to “discover” that the candidate would be politically controversial, polarizing, and a lightening rod for conservatives? Does anyone believe the Chancellor was not subject to outside influence? Surely this kind of incompetence does not augur well for the future legal program at UCI. In addition to academic freedom, there is a fundamental question of integrity at issue here.

The law school at UCI was to be devoted to the public interest. Yet, Chancellor Drake rejected a candidate with a lifetime of demonstrated commitment to serving the public. It appears the Chancellor acted out of fear - a fear that the appointment of someone with Chemerinsky's record, someone with stated and expressed views, would stir up too much debate, stimulate too much dialogue, and incite too many people to action. In other words, he seems to have feared that UCI law school, from its inception, would do precisely what academic institutions are supposed to do - encourage us to think critically and to engage in robust and spirited debate.

Chemerinsky is Jewish and today is Rosh Hashanah, a time when Jews are called upon to reflect upon the recent past and to contemplate the new year. I am not Jewish, but I have engaged in my share of reflection and introspection today. And, I have come to agree with the conclusions of a fellow blogger (Neil), who wrote “UC Irvine’s position is indefensible and intellectually bankrupt. The school deserves condemnation from every person who respects academic freedom and respects the notion of free-flowing political discourse, whether they be conservative or liberal.” I invite all persons who share these viewpoints to voice their concerns to Chancellor Drake and the UC Regents, and to boycott any future efforts to build a law school at UCI.

--Professor Trina Jones, September 13, 2007

Posted by Terry Smith at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

A New School Year – A Time to Weep and a Time to Act

For those of us who live in academia land, we have all just started a new year. Many of my black professional peers continue to do the juggling act with our relatively privileged children -- figuring out shuttle schedules to music lessons, sports practices, SAT prep courses, college tours, etc. Some of us have marked recent milestones in our family life – first child entering elementary school, niece entering high school, empty nesting, college graduations, and young relatives entering grad school. Will one of mine go to law school? As we celebrate the promise of a new academic year and the various milestones in our extended families, we need to think about the children who are not where they should be. Over half of black boys drop out of high school. Black college enrollments are dropping. I am waiting to see the new statistics at the flagship University of Michigan, home of the Supreme Court case which permitted continued educational affirmative action. Due to a Proposition 209-like initiative, the state can not use affirmative action any longer. Will the University suffer the fate of the University of California after Prop 209, which now only enrolls 2% blacks? We continue to have many more black males in prison than in college. At this stage, one-third of our males will do prison time. At Howard, a recent commentator said there was a 17:1 ratio of black females to males in one class. Many black colleges have 70% or more female enrollment.How to make a difference in this long term depressing situation?? Support organizations like the educational reform Black Star Project in Chicago. It has launched Destination College in honor of the late Silas Purnell, who helped more than 55,000 black students go to college over his 34 year career. I remember every year when he would bring a group of pre-law students to Iowa from inner city Chicago. Some would enroll. He did that at many many institutions of higher learning. See http://www.blackstarproject.org/home/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1.Given it’s a political year, let’s ask all the candidates – Democrats and Republicans what they intend to do about this profound crisis in Black America – let’s at least get it on the radar. If one- third of white men were in prison, would they declare it a national emergency??

Posted by Adrien Wing at 06:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (59) | TrackBacks (0)

Oprah for Obama

The richest African American woman in the world, Oprah Winfrey, worth more than $1.5 billion according to Forbes, put her mighty reputation behind a political candidate for the first time. Barack Obama raised $3 million at Oprah’s California estate yesterday that was filled with Hollywood celebrities of all colors. This is a very significant amount. In comparison, a spring Hillary Clinton fundraiser featuring the former president raised only $2.7 million. Obama set a record and raised the most of any Democractic candidate-- $32.5 million in the second quarter of the year, and more than $58 million in total so far. What will his third quarter totals look like if Oprah admirers follow her lead and donate in full force?? The Obama campaign is blanketing Iowa where I live. As you might imagine, Obama is very popular in the college town of Iowa City. I just attended a session on his views on foreign affairs where one of his very impressive advisors Pulitzer Prize winner Harvard professor Samantha Powers spoke to a significant and very informed audience. I could not fit in a similar session the next day on women’s issues. If Obama does Not win the Democratic nomination, will Oprah back the ultimate candidate, probably Hillary Clinton, with the same enthusiasm? How about a Clinton-Obama Ticket??

Posted by Adrien Wing at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (59) | TrackBacks (0)

Some Unfortunate Rhetoric from Cory Booker

We've made several posts previously on Cory Booker (see, e.g., this ), the Mayor of my home-city, Newark, New Jersey, who's been a media phenomenon over the last few years. He received substantial media attention back in 2002, after engaging in a heated campaign with former Newark Mayor Sharpe James. During that campaign, chronicled in a Oscar-nominated documentary, Booker castigated James as corrupt and self-serving, while James critiqued Booker as a tool of White, elite interests who was not authentically connected to the values of the Black community. The media imbibed this narrative, caricaturing James as a race-baiting, uneducated bully and Booker as a race-transcendent, Ivy League-trained reformer.

As always, the truth tends to lie in between the archetypes anchoring mainstream media. But, after coming across this report, Booker seems to have given fodder to his critics. Booker, apparently, spoke recently at a ritzy fundraiser, attended principally by Whites, in which he described a recently deceased Black, female Newark activist as "portly," toothless, and profane. This, in an apparent attempt to recognize the depth of her contributions to the city. Several members of the Newark City Council sharply criticized Booker's remarks as racially insensitive and inflammatory, suggesting his rhetoric evoked the the image of a Black "mammy" -- precisely the sort of image, claimed the City Council members, that many Whites are disposed to identify with Black women.

Unfortunately for Booker, this episode reinforces the concerns of many Newarkers that he seeks to exploit some of the worst stereotypes about Black folks for political gain. He seems often to play up the most negative images of Black folk and Black communities to White audiences, in ways that feel uncomfortably like those late-night infomercials about Sudanese children who can be fed for $1 a day. His appearance last year on Oprah is another conspicuous example. Maybe this sort of messaging is the best way to engage a White majority largely disinterested in the plight of poor folk of color. But the ends don't justify the means. This approach reinforces the very racial stereotypes that Booker's politics purportedly transcends.

Maybe Sharpe James had a point.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 04:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (232) | TrackBacks (1)

Bond Must Go

Julian Bond opened the NAACP convention yesterday with a speech as banal as it was irrelevant. Once again, he focused his fire on the Bush Administration, unloading invective after tired invective on the failures of the White House to address the material needs of the Black community. He compared the federal government's inert response to Katrina to lynching ("Katrina, like lynching, not only destroyed the work of generations in a single day, but is resulting in a deliberate effort to dispossess black landholders."); he declared that the rejection of immigration reform further repudiates the Bush Presidency ("The extent of the [people's] repudiation, it was evident late last month when the immigration reform bill . . . died in the Senate."); and the coup de grace: he charged that the voluntary-integration decision alienated Black children from the law ("The Bush Court removed black children from the law's protection.") (I'm going to deal with that specific charge in a separate post). In the process, he also reminded us that his NAACP is a social-justice organization concerned with racial discrimination, not a social-services organization concerned with meeting the practical needs of Black people: "[W]e are dedicated to an aggressive campaign of social justice, fighting racial discrimination. We've done this in the past and will continue to do it in the future."

Bond seems incapable of appreciating the yawning gulf between his vision for the NAACP and the concrete needs of the masses of Black families, who struggle mightily to raise children in communities ravaged by joblessness, bad schools, gang violence, single motherhood, and perhaps most pernicious, hopelessness. He offers nothing in the sort of a strategy to pragmatically address these challenges. Instead, he offers stale bromides about the twin obsessions of Bond's NAACP: government and White folk. As Bond would have it, Black folk's capacity to generate solutions to their challenges is apparently limited to petitioning either of these external powers. And because the Bond NAACP's approach is so preoccupied with outside forces, he's left with little but the ad hominem when those forces don't share his concern for the Black community.

Sadly, the NAACP -- the grand organization founded by W.E.B. DuBois and which was indispensable to the dismantling of Jim Crow -- is now a relic. We badly need a re-imagined, reinvigorated NAACP. As long as Julian Bond is at the helm, that new reality is implausible. Bond must go.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (86) | TrackBacks (2)

Getting Out the Black Vote

A social activist friend who has been working at a national organization that promotes ideas, networks and advocacy addressing the root causes of two intertwined issues: declining civic participation and increasing economic inequality, Progressive Communicators Network, and NYPIRG, and serves on the Boards of Fannie Lou Hamer Project, NYPIRG Fund, the Independent Media Institute, and the Right to Vote Campaign, recently joined a major arm of the campaign to elect Obama which for various reasons shall remain anonymous. He shared some insider news with me Saturday night (6/23) that truly inspired me. I am excited about the possibility of Obama winning now.

The previous day some white colleagues asked me about Obama and I shared that I was cynical that he could actually win. So many African Americans share cyncisism. People from various quarters and classes don't think Obama can actually win. I likened it to the feeling I had had that Don Imus would never get fired (I was completely surprised that he was and want to be wrong again). What I am speaking to is the general cyncism and resignation among some blacks that it's too soon for a black man to seriously contend and actually win a US election.

My activist friend, currently sitting at the table with the likes of George Soros and other billiionaires supporting Obama's campaign, shared a much different reality and he has the data to back it up, he says. He said the latest poll numbers he say actually indicate that 1) Obama is likely to win the election (esp. if Hilary puts her foot in her mouth on any subject) and 2) Obama has all the money he needs for a serious election to be won. What he actually is missing is a show of support from the black community. Even hundreds to thousands of $25 donations would register the numerical support from the black community that is missing in his campaign.

ABC News ran an online piece linked under BARBERSHOP BUZZ suggesting that "Polls show many black voters torn between Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., left, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., right." Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and the Black Vote. How do we get our friends and families as well as our students and even our enemies engaged in making the possibility of black support visible from small donations and get them inspired about the possibility that it really is possible? I'd love to hear others thoughts.

My friend also shared that it is not the black vote turnout that is the real concern or heart of the matter in elections. Black turnout is actually quite strong contrary to belief, he said. He insisted that is was the white vote that actually made a difference. Only 35% of whites vote democratic, he said. And we need their turnout to be strong for Obama to actually win.

What I loved about what we shared was the emphasis on whites being accountable for their democratic and/or liberal politics and insuring the soccor moms and dads turn out to vote.

Still collecting my own data on all this and will see about specifics from my friend, but I was inspired and intend to send my $25 or so asap. The Obamas are making the rounds here in NYC this week. Keep your eyes peeled for their campaign.

Posted by Kyra Gaunt at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

The Limitless Shamelessness of Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney is one of the most shameless politicians we've seen in modern history. From his claim that the United States would be "greeted as liberators," to his declaration two years ago that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes" (almost 2000 US troops have been killed since), to his efforts in leading the charge for warrantless wiretapping and in building the false case for WMD in Iraq, the missteps of the Vice-President are epic. He and his staff offered tortured contortions of the meaning of torture (pun intended) in an effort to avoid the mandates of international law, and offered comparably strained interpretations of the Constitution to concoct presidential authority to ignore specific statutory mandates like the Foreign Intelligence Service Act.

And the man seemingly has no shame. Now the Vice-President claims that his office is not governed by a presidential order concerning the protection of classified information, and that therefore he need not produce or permit inspection of certain classified information his office possesses. The order, issued by his boss, apparently applies to all offices of the executive branch of the federal government. Cheney claims that his office is not a part of the executive branch and that therefore the order doesn't apply.

I didn't think it were possible, but the Vice-President has sunken to a new low. As is often the case, perhaps there is a narrow, technical basis for Cheney's argument. I'm not a con-law scholar, but the only duty specifically assigned to the VP by the Constitution, as I recall, is the responsibility to serve as President of the Senate. This obligation is contained in Article I of the Constitution, the legislative article, so perhaps Cheney does have a technical argument that his is not an executive-branch office.

But Cheney's contention fails miserably when one considers the role the Office of Vice-President has played in modern times -- particularly the role he has played in the Bush Administration. The contemporary office of the Vice-President is generally delegated responsibility for a broad range of executive-office functions. In the Bush Administration, of course, Cheney has handled everything from intelligence gathering to war planning to policy-setting on a wide diversity of foreign and domestic matters. On virtually all of the Bush Administration's major policy decisions, the fingerprints of the Vice-President are indelible. Given the actual role his office plays in the development and implementation of policy on unquestionably executive-office matters, the Vice-President's claim that his is not an executive office seems strained, at best.

But, of course, we shouldn't be surprised: What else would one expect from our Vice-President?

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

A Tale of Two Victims: Who Speaks for the Thousands of Innocent Non-Whites Prosecuted Wrongfully?

Anyone who has worked or participated in the American justice system can’t help but to feel utter bewilderment at the announcement of Mike Nifong’s disbarment. Defense Attorneys are constantly combating the manipulative actions of prosecutors and police officials in cases involving non-white accused. One can collect a seemingly incessant stream of narratives from defense attorneys describing the deliberate use of planted evidence or false testimonies by prosecutors against poor defendants of color. Where is the massive, rich conglomerate that will stand up against those manipulating forces and disbar those prosecutors? If we follow the equation to its logical end, the lives of three accused privilege white males will always, unapologetically, be viewed as more valuable than the lives of thousands of wrongfully prosecuted non-whites. In this whole fiasco, no one is addressing the elephant in the room; that Nifong’s fatal error was that he believed the words of a black woman over that of three privileged white men.

The Duke Rape allegations are instrumental in analyzing the role that race and gender play in the handling of rape cases. It is a great case study because it shows how catalysts like rape allegations can cause dormant racial/gender wounds to erupt to the surface in an already polarized community. The racial dichotomy and rivalry existing between North Carolina Central University (NCCU) and Duke University became apparent in the types of comments made, at the time of the investigation, by students from North Carolina Central University as compared to comments made by Duke University students. For example, during the investigation, a student from NCCU was quoted as saying: “If it was a Duke Student and it was Central’s football’s team, the situation would have been handled totally differently (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/05/national/main1476021.shtml) while a Duke University Student stated, in the same spirit, “that the allegations … put a new strain on the already delicate relationship between the school and the community in Durham” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/05/national/main1476021.shtml) Almost immediately after the rape allegations were made, it became evident from student comments submitted to the media, that for the Durham community, the rape allegations represented not just one isolated incident, but a culmination of slights and abuses of privilege that the community hoped would finally be punished. The very fact that a team of 43 young Lacrosse players considered the hiring of two African American strippers as an acceptable form of sexual entertainment corroborated this feeling of exasperation. It is also interesting that, in the midst of the mass obsession with the culpability or non-culpability of the three players, no one took the time to ask the obvious question: Why did the Duke administration offer no remonstrance against the Duke Lacrosse team for hiring black strippers at a team’s party?

Posted by Michele Alexandre at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (93) | TrackBacks (1)

Books on Condie

For those seeking more insight into the personality and impact of US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, there are two new options. Newsweek editor Marcus Mabry has produced Twice as Good: Condoleeza Rice and Her Path to Power (Rodale Press). For an excellent interview with Mabry about the book and Condie see

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18369623/site/newsweek/.

Amy Scholder has edited a collection entitled Dr. Rice in the House (Seven Stories Press). The latter includes pieces by Amiri Baraka and Jill Nelson.

Do you believe Condie accomplishments have been a “credit” to the race or to the gender or to the race/gender? Will history treat her kindly? See if these books affect your views. Perhaps one of you will be involved in a more long term assessment after her term is finished. Do you think she will write her own candid book as some others formerly affiliated with the Bush administration have done? What’s a potential next job for someone with her credentials/expertise?

Posted by Adrien Wing at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (36) | TrackBacks (0)

Is Intervention in Darfur Really, Really Worth American Blood?

My last two posts have been out our intervention in Iraq and I’m committed to continue posting this month about the war on terrorism. But, let me back up and post about possible military intervention elsewhere. Yesterday, Sen. Joe Biden (also running for President) suggested it was time to put troops in Darfur, a conflict-torn region of Sudan. (go here to see a press report: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=politics&id=5328095). Today, Jody William Mia Farrow advocated divestment as way to begin to cripple the current Sudanese government (go here to see the Farrow/Williams’ op-ed: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010112).

Many of us are against a war in Iraq. Some of us may even have been against the war from the start. Understood. Still, it’s not a (huge) stretch to see the similarities between Iraq and an argument for a military effort in Darfur. In Iraq, an oil-rich country of mostly Arabs, hundreds of thousands were killed under Saddam Hussein. We intervened militarily. In Darfur, hundreds of thousands have been killed in this oil-rich country, with a significant Arab presence also. In Iraq, we quickly toppled our adversary and in Darfur it reasons that we would likely be able to do the same. So, should we intervene militarily in Darfur? Is Darfur a better use of American might than Iraq? Is it hypocritical to be against one intervention, but not the other?

Posted by Lee Harris at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (37) | TrackBacks (0)

New Orleans: A Continuing National Disgrace

I just returned from a conference in New Orleans, and was saddened to see up-close the continuing disgrace that is this nation's response to Katrina and its aftermath. The day I arrived was the same day as a mid-sized storm -- not a tropical storm or even an especially severe storm, but simply a moderately sized, typical summer storm. The city's infrastructure simply wasn't up to the task. Streets and homes were flooded, as insufficient care has been paid to the operation of even basic water pumps. And that's probably the best of it. Roughly half of the population remains displaced, and varied government agencies -- from the perpetually inept FEMA to the formalistically by-the-book SBA -- apparently find reasons to deny claims for redevelopment grants and low-interest loans, rather than to respond meaningfully (let alone competently) to the palpable human needs of the Gulf Coast's forgotten poor.

Yet, ultimately, this should be no surprise. The Black poor of New Orleans -- like the Black underclass more generally -- were neglected by our government (and, frankly, the Black Middle Class too) before and, most evidently, during the disaster that was Katrina. Why should we expect anything different now?

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (553) | TrackBacks (0)

Perhaps Fairness Requires Everyone to Do Two Years of Military Service

A few days ago, the L.A. Times ran a brief article on the pros and cons of a draft, which brings up the point about requiring military service from everyone, at least everyone between the ages of 18 and 42. (See the L.A. Time article here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-dustup2may02,0,4441603.story?coll=la-opinion-center). I’m a Democrat. I believe the government can play a role in helping people lift themselves up. I believe in some forms of redistribution (like progressive taxation) and I am not a big fan of concentrated wealth. My problem is this: What exactly is undemocratic about a mandatory draft or universal service? As you probably know, Rep. Charlie Rangel, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, has recently proposed such a thing, though he’s received virtually no support from his colleagues. Further, it’s tough to see how being pro-universal service is also synonymous with being hawkish or war-bent. Correct me if I’m wrong, but some anti-war democrats, like John Murtha are pro-universal service. In any event, Rep. Rangel speaks for himself, in somewhat dated press-release about his proposal:

The bill would mandate military service for men and women between the ages of 18 and 42. Deferments would be allowed only for completion of high school up to the age of 20, and for reasons of health, conscience or religious belief. Recruits not needed by the military in any given year would be required to perform some national civilian service.

. . .

Congressman Rangel first proposed legislation for the draft in January 2003 before the invasion of Iraq. Since then more than 2,200 American troops have been killed and 16,000 wounded. Despite dramatic increases in military bonuses, the Army failed to meet its recruiting goal last year by 6,000 recruits. In the face of that failure, last month the Army announced that it was doubling enlistment bonuses to $40,000 for Special Forces. Enlistment bonuses for Reservists were also doubled to $20,000 from $10,000. Reenlistment bonuses for specialized active duty soldiers were also increased drastically, going from $60,000 to $90,000.

(To see the entire press release go here: http://www.house.gov/list/press/ny15_rangel/CBRStatementonDraft02142006.html)

Posted by Lee Harris at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (81) | TrackBacks (1)

A Significant Development for the Blackroots

The past couple of months have produced a significant development among Black blogs. Many are working together to challenge conventional Black leadership.

With ColorOfChange.org’s James Rucker as a catalyst, several Black blogs have opposed the Congressional Black Caucus Institute’s decision to partner with Fox News to air a Democratic Presidential Debate, which is scheduled to be held in CBC Chair’s hometown of Detroit (my hometown as well).

The CBCI has not fared well. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have dropped out of the CBC/Fox debate. The DNC has denounced the CBC/Fox debate. Several CBC Members have articulated their opposition to the debate. Tavis Smiley has announced his own presidential debates on PBS that give the presidential candidates an opportunity to address issues of importance to people of color.

This collaborative project of Black blogs may not seem big, but it is powerful for a number of reasons.

1) A Generational Shift: While the “grassroots” are romanticized, in the past couple of decades Black politics has been hierarchical and limited by orthodoxy that constrains debate. An MLK/Malcolm model has defined the leadership styles and political philosophy of Black elected officials, non-elected figures like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, organizations like the NAACP, and neo-Black Nationalist commentators and figures. Those not with the program essentially had the option of becoming Black Republicans. Older Black folks often complain about complacent black youth who don’t vote, march, or otherwise live up to their model.

Black blogs offer not only an opportunity to break from old orthodoxy, but to do so in a way that is flatter, and allows for more engagement through comments from readers (which are often more provocative than the posts). Younger people are creating their own innovative models on sites like Uppity Negro.

While the older generations purport to “teach” activism to younger generations, the Blackroots is developing its own original “Post-Soul” voice (as Prof. Eddie Glaude may say). As Superspade has noted,

“I don’t think the explicit bias of Fox News is in line with the mission of the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, which if you are wondering, ‘is to provide political education and training to the next generation of African American leadership’...”

2) Transparency that Holds Black Elected Officials More Accountable: Many Black folks know the feeling of humiliation and opportunism, and don’t like to unnecessarily embarrass other Black folks, especially in front of White folks. We’re especially suspicious of the “House Negro” mentality of some Black folks who try to opportunistically constrain other Black folks, and we don’t want to be used as tools to “knock down” a black person who has accomplished something.

At the same time, however, we need transparency, honesty, and accountability in our politics. There needs to be space for alternative voices—for someone to break the silence and say what everyone is thinking. Many of these people are our heroes—we admire them, their courage, and their personal sacrifices. We don’t mean to insult or disrespect them. But to the extent that they choose to remain in public life as black leaders, their decisions are subject to critical and good faith analysis, especially by the people they purport to represent.

This is nothing new. During the 1960s, Julian Bond and John Lewis had different opinions and approaches than established civil rights leaders. In younger generations (and I mean that not primarily in age, but in ideological mindset), the Blackroots is providing a platform for transparency and good faith analysis to occur.

Afro-Netizen and Jack & Jill Politics, for example, separately criticized Jesse Jackson for speaking out against the Fox/CBC debate, and then deferring to the CBC the next week. Jack & Jill Politics disclosed to its audience that from 2003 to 2005, Fox News gave the CBC Foundation between $47,000 and $99,000, with 2006 numbers unavailable.

The Blackroots movement on the Fox/CBC Issue has also exposed the potential of Black blogs. As Afro-Netizen noted:

"Do these folks know what the 'netroots' is? Do they think it's just made up of by young, white college-educated geeks far removed from their own congressional districts? Do they know that the vast majority of Black voters who elected them are accounted for in the much larger population of African Americans who regularly access the Internet, approximately 20 million strong? Will they come to understand that the Black netroots community is presently a slumbering giant who, it seems, only the likes of a Fox News Channel can begin to awaken?

Need we remind any indifferent CBC member that incumbency is a privilege, not a right, as the November elections should have made quite clear to all -- but especially to the arrogant, out-of-step and complacent?"

3) The Power of Collaboration: Despite the interactive and collaborative nature of the Internet, many Black blogs have remained relatively autonomous. We’ve provided links to occassional posts on other sites and included other black blog sites on our blogrolls, but our interaction has been limited, at least with regard to action. And autonomy is important—the wisdom of crowds comes not through parroting, but through autonomous decisionmaking. And we all have different interests. But the CBC/Fox Issue is an important step in the evolution of network effects—the power of a broad, flat, and well-connected blackosphere.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (53) | TrackBacks (0)

French Elections: A Day of Reflection

The French will vote tomorrow in national elections. Among the twelve candidates are a woman Segolene Royal from the Socialist party and conservative Nicholas Sarkozy, who has been known for his inflammatory statements against Muslim immigrants. While the gender aspect is interesting, I want to highlight a couple of features the US might consider. The election is held on a Sunday – a nonwork day for most people to maximize participation. Also today, the day before the election is a day of reflection where the media and the candidates desist. No opinion polls can be published and campaigning is barred. People are supposed to discuss the issues among themselves and their friends and families. See CNN’s story:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/04/21/france.election/

What do you think of these ideas in the US context? Are they possible? Feasible? Desirable?

Posted by Adrien Wing at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (161) | TrackBacks (2)

Obama Leads Grassroots Fundraising

There's been a lot of discussion about the term "Internet Fundraising." Many assume—perhaps based on past elections—that money raised on the Internet is somehow more reflective of the general public as a whole.

But the online world changes quickly, and other variables may exist. Some cost-conscious small donors may opt for an offline check to avoid online processing fees. Barack Obama has likely attracted first-time contributors from diverse backgrounds to the process, and we don't
know the extent to which these participants are giving online (indeed, the digital divide may mean that the much of the true "grassroots" giving is offline). And regardless of the vehicle of soliciting or
submitting the money, most of us would agree that flatter, retail engagement that encourages friends to give and be a part of a movement (personalized telephone calls, conversations, notes, or emails) is preferable to wholesale, generic, hierarchical solicitation from the campaign (telemarketing calls, generic form bulk snail mail or email).

I have a different test to determine "grassroots" fundraising—the funds that a candidate receives from contributors of $200 or less.

The percentage of its resources that a campaign collects from smaller contributors is important because smaller contributions are much more likely to reflect the economic diversity of America. A study from the 2000 election showed that American households earning less than $100,000 made up 86.6% of the general population. This group accounted for 66.1% of contributions of $200 or less, but for only 14.3% of the contributions over $200.

Grassroots fundraising is also an important marker because it may be reflective of: a) the amount of popular support a candidate enjoys among the electorate as a whole; and/or b) the number of people who are vested in a campaign and are willing to be active in the future (e.g., organize events, raise and contribute additional money).

Grassroots Fundraising in 1st Quarter 2007
(amount of money received from $200 or less contributions)

$5.77 M -- Obama (D)
$2.54 M -- McCain (R)
$2.27 M -- Clinton (D)
$2.04 M -- Edwards (D)
$1.23 M -- Romney (R)
$1.09 M -- Guiliani (R)
$0.92 M -- Tancredo (R)
$0.75 M -- Brownback (R)
$0.60 M -- Richardson (D)
$0.25 M -- Kucinich (D)

A few interesting notes . . .

*Of the top tier candidates, Obama raised 22% of his funds from contributors of $200 or less, McCain 19%, Edwards 15%, Clinton 9%, Guiliani 7%, and Romney 6%.

*Conventional wisdom among pundits is that the first quarter was a fundraising failure for McCain because he raised only $14.8 M total. But McCain beat all but one candidate (Obama) in the amount raised and percentage of money raised from contributors of $200 or less--people who are most likely to reflect the economic status of most Americans. In essence, pundits are suggesting that McCain's presidential campaign may be doomed (which may become a self-fulfilling prophecy) because he has not spent enough time reaching out, organizing, and appealing to wealthier, $1000+ donors.

*Many of the Republican candidates outside of the top tier received a large percentage of their funds from contributors of $200 or less: Tancredo 78%, Brownback 61%, and Paul 39%.

*Of the Democratic candidates outside of the top tier, Kucinich raised 68% of his funds from contributors at $200 or less, while Biden was only at 4% and Dodd at 2%.

*A study of the 2000 election showed that American households earning more than $100,000 made up 13.4% of the general population, but accounted for 92.6% of $1000 contributions (the maximum contribution limit was raised from $1000 to $2000 (adjusted for inflation) in 2002).

*Of the top tier candidates in the first quarter 2007, Romney raised 89% of his money from contributors of $1000 or more, Guiliani 87%, Clinton 86%, Edwards 77%, McCain 74%, and Obama 68%.

Much more detailed analysis of this data is available at the Campaign Finance Institute.

This is crossposted at techpresident.com.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

IS THIS ANY WAY FOR A REPUBLICAN TO BEHAVE?

Showing a streak of independence, if not boldness, Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, a Republican, has proposed a limited re-enfranchisement of disenfranchised felons. Because ex-felons deprived of their voting rights under the Florida constitution are disproportionately of color and poor, many Republicans fear that even a modest step towards re-enfranchisement will benefit Democrats. They therefore oppose Crist’s plan. Read about the unfolding politics around this proposal here.

Posted by Terry Smith at 03:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (40) | TrackBacks (0)

Honoring the Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thirty-nine years ago on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by a sniper outside of his hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

The movement led by Dr. King has affected all of us, especially lawyers, in the United States and abroad. A year after the March on Washington, at which Dr. King delivered his famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted. A year later, this milestone was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Dr. King not only led us in working to establish new laws that protected the rights of racial minorities in this country, but also pushed us to take on our responsibility for challenging unjust laws. On April 16, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote the following words in “Letter from Birmingham Jail”:

“One may ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ . . . . An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. . . . Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. . . . One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”

Today, on April 4, 2007, let us remember and honor the legacy of Dr. King. As lawyers and seekers of justice, we must continue to ponder the questions posed by Dr. King in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Are there still two types of laws today: just laws and unjust laws? If so, how do we distinguish between these just laws and unjust laws in our society? More so, how do we undo the damage of laws that are unjust, whether on their face or in their application, and with an expression of utmost respect for the law?

In January of 2008, the AALS Minority Section will honor the memory of Dr. King and his message in a panel entitled “In the Name of Love: What Does Martin Luther King Mean on the 40th Anniversary of his Assassination?” The panel, based on an idea from Professor Frank Rudy Cooper at Suffolk Law School, includes ten scholars of diverse races, ethnicities, genders, and backgrounds, who will examine and explain the meaning of Dr. King’s message of non-violent struggle and resistance to law, lawyers, and justice today. Half of the panelists are more senior scholars who have a personal memory of the day that Dr. King was shot and killed. These panelists include (in alphabetical order) Professor Lisa Ikemoto, University of California, Davis School of Law; Dean Beto Juárez, University of Denver, Sturm College of Law; Professor Margaret Montoya, University of New Mexico Law School ; Professor Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School; and Professor Wendy Scott, North Carolina Central University School of Law. The other half of the panelists are more junior scholars, born on, around, or within five years of Dr. King’s death. These panelists include (in alphabetical order) Professor Jennifer Chacón, University of California, Davis School of Law; Professor Frank Cooper, Suffolk Law School; Professor Emily Houh, University of Cincinnati College of Law; Professor Camille Nelson, Saint Louis University School of Law; and Professor Catherine Smith, University of Denver, Sturm College of Law.

I encourage all attendees of the annual AALS conference to come to and join in what promises to be a very rich discussion in the memory of a man who has inspired so many of us in our lives, both professionally and personally, and continues to do so today.

Posted by Angela Onwuachi at 12:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (312) | TrackBacks (4)

"MC" Karl Rove "Raps"

The two-minute video from Wednesday night's Radio and Correspondents' Association Dinner is below.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (121) | TrackBacks (1)

What She Learned From Katrina

Forget about the deaths and destruction. And never mind the bleaching of one of the blackest states in the Union. This is what retiring Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco learned from Hurricane Katrina:

“When I look back at the storms, if I had had the knowledge that I would be treated as a pariah by the national Republicans in office, I would have joined the Republican Party to save my state . . . . Then I would have been hugged and kissed and lifted, and I would have been declared the best governor in this whole country . . . . I wish I had realized that earlier. I think that was the fatal error.”

Read the full article here.

And look for Louisiana, which had been a competitive two-party state prior to Katrina, to lurch right, with scarcely any distinction between its Democrats and Republicans.

Posted by Terry Smith at 02:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (39) | TrackBacks (0)

The Case Against Black Leadership

Rev. Al Sharpton We talk a lot about the need for a great Black leader. Why are there no more leaders like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King? Is Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton the Black “leader” of today? Will the NAACP find a new leader who will revamp the organization and deploy it to lead Black America to freedom?

But a Black "leader" may be the last thing we need.

I just read The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom. The premise of the book is that there are limitations to centralized, coercive, hierarchical organizations headed by a single leader. Decentralized, open groups are often more effective. The title contrasts a spider (chop off its head and it dies) with a starfish (chop it up and it multiplies into several starfish).

Most would think that a lack of hierarchy would bring chaos and disorder. But looks can be deceiving.

For example, the centralized Spanish quickly defeated the centralized Aztecs and Incas, but could not defeat the decentralized Apache for over 200 years. Other examples of significant decentralized groups include Alcoholic Anonymous, Wikipedia, Al Qaeda, Craigslist, and filesharing (when attacked by the record labels, Napster was replaced by the even more decentralized Kazaa, Kazaa Lite, and eMule).

The problems with a centralized organization include: a) rigidity; b) it dies if you cut off its head; c) the whole organization is harmed if you take out a specialized unit; d) units are funded by the organization; and e) working groups communicate through intermediaries.

The advantages of a decentralized group include: a) flexibility; b) the organization survives if you take out a unit (in fact, when attacked the decentralized organization becomes even more open and decentralized); c) knowledge and power are distributed; d) units are self funding; and e) units close to the action have immediate information and communicate with each other directly.

Certainly, a loose group of individual “leaders” play a role in decentralized organizations. But they have little power themselves—there is no command-and-control. Instead, they are catalysts who inspire others to act through their example. Geronimo is an example of a famous Apache catalyst.

The “catalysts” are different than a traditional CEO. As Brafman and Beckstrom explain:

A CEO is The Boss. He's in charge, and he occupies the top of the hierarchy. A catalyst interacts with people as a peer. He comes across as your friend. Because CEOs are at the top of the pyramid, they lead by command-and-control. Catalysts, on the other hand, depend on trust. CEOs must be rational; their job is to create shareholder value. Catalysts depend on emotional intelligence; their job is to create personal relationships. CEOs are powerful and directive; they're at the helm. Catalysts are inspirational and collaborative; they talk about ideology and urge people to work together to make the ideology a reality. Having power puts CEOs in the limelight. Catalysts avoid attention and tend to work behind the scenes. CEOs create order and structure; catalysts thrive on ambiguity and apparent chaos (because decentralized organizations are so fluid). A CEOs job is to maximize profit. A catalyst is usually mission oriented.

While no one person enforces conventional “rules” in the decentralized group, power is instead distributed among various people, and shared norms bind the group together (which are often flexible and evolving).

The authors offer several ways of defeating a decentralized group, including: 1) shifting or changing the decentralized group’s ideology (the decentralized group is fueled by its ideology); and 2) centralizing the decentralized group by giving the “catalysts” property or political authority to allocate among their group so that they no longer lead by example but by command-and-control, which breeds infighting, hierarchy, resentment (according to the authors, the U.S. government giving cattle to the Apache eventually led to the conquering of the group).

In earlier times, people generally built decentralized movements on top of the rare pre-existing decentralized platforms that were open to the ideology—platforms like the Quakers to fight slavery, or the Black church to fight Jim Crow. The Internet has significant implications because it makes communication easier and allows individuals to build their own platform for a decentralized movement.

Perhaps we don’t need a great Black leader who professes to have all or most of the answers. Perhaps we don’t need self proclaimed “Black police” to ascertain Black authenticity based on cadence or percentage of slave lineage.

Instead, maybe we need several catalysts--acting on their own accord without the need to climb atop a pyramid--to lead by example. Rather than a centralized NAACP with a leader, perhaps we should follow the lead of Wikipedia or Craigslist and create an online community that connects people to one another, and allows volunteers to focus on the special niche that interests them.

Perhaps we need to celebrate our leaderlessness, and figure out how to make the most of it.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (89) | TrackBacks (2)

Bacardi Jackson Update: Ogletree Supports Obama

A few weeks ago, I posted this email from Bacardi Jackson in which she expressed her frustrations about shallow African American criticism of Barack Obama. Ms. Jackson posted a clarification in the comments section of that post, but to make sure that it receives proper attention, I have posted an excerpt below . . . .

Charles Ogletree . . . I am writing now primarily to apologize to Professor Ogletree, whose comments I apparently misconstrued.

Please let the record reflect that Professor Ogletree came to Obama's defense and stated that "if [Obama] made ANY mistakes at all by not being in Virginia on 2/10/07, we, as a people, must forgive him not criticize him." Professor Ogletree was an advisor to Obama during his Senate candidacy and serves as an advisor to him now.

I have spoken with Professor Ogletree, but wanted to publicly correct my misperceptions. Professor Ogletree has graciously provided me with the following link, which makes clear his support of Obama's candidacy: http://www.hlsforobama.com/blog.html

I stand by the sentiments of my letter regarding our tendency to hold aspiring and successful black people to a higher standard than we hold others (well, except when it comes to the black people who entertain us). . . . I was deeply disappointed to see people I have long admired and respected appear to follow the same old script of criticizing Obama without substance while completely ignoring that the questions being raised about him were problematic and suspect. . . .

The full clarification by Ms. Jackson is here. Cornel West's comments at the State of Black America discussion are below:

Posted by Spencer Overton at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (51) | TrackBacks (0)

CBC Considering Presidential Debate on Fox

The Congressional Black Caucus Institute is contemplating partnering with Fox News to air a presidential debate. Fox is not a model of democratic deliberation, and too often they have been unfair to African Americans. I suggest that you watch the 3 minute video to get a taste of Fox's approach to African Americans.

If you’re concerned about this, contact the CBCI at the Color of Change website here.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (40) | TrackBacks (0)

Kicking Joe Out of the Party

A political science professor of mine at Brown University used to do polling on party identification in which he would exclude from the survey question the choice of "independent." As my professor, Elmer Cornwell, explained, who would not want to describe themselves as independent? I don’t know if Professor Cornwell is still alive today, but if he is, he’s undoubtedly looking at Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democrat turned "Independent," with some bemusement. Lieberman, who caucuses with the Democrats, has recently threatened to leave the party if it goes too far in its opposition to the Iraq War, which Lieberman staunchly supports. Lieberman actually left the Democratic Party a long time ago. Democratic voters have understood this at least since 2004, when they rejected Lieberman’s bid to become the Democratic presidential nominee. Two years later, Democrats in Connecticut discerned that Lieberman was estranged and defeated him in a primary, a highly unusual fate for an incumbent. Now Lieberman’s Democratic colleagues in the Senate need to do what Democratic voters have already shown the courage to do: kick Joe out of the party.

Here’s the reality. Since 2000–and possibly longer--Lieberman has been more harmful to the Democrats than helpful. It was Lieberman who during the Florida 2000 ballot dispute defied his party and insisted that overseas military ballots be counted regardless of their non-compliance with post-mark requirements. The same leniency would not be accorded thousands of other ballots, including many from minority precincts, helping to solidify George Bush’s controversial victory. Now comes Iraq, an issue on which Lieberman is out of synch not just with Democrats but with the majority of the American public. And while he may boast that he ultimately won re-election last year, Lieberman never ran on the surge proposal that he now champions. Threatening to bolt the party because the majority of the party agrees with the majority of the American public is the height of political hubris. Lieberman thinks that he can hold the party hostage to his and President Bush’s delusional insistence that Iraq is winnable. Perhaps the most courageous thing the Democratic Party can do as a sign of its opposition to the war is to boot Lieberman–not for disagreeing with the Party, but for being so arrogant as to think that he could hold the party captive to his ill-reasoned support of the war in Iraq.

Yes, Democrats would lose their majority in the Senate if Lieberman leaves, but here again is the reality: the current Democratic majority in the Senate is too narrow to accomplish much, and anything it does accomplish is likely to be vetoed by a lame-duck but ideologically stubborn President Bush.

When southern Dixicrats like Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama left the Democratic Party to become a Republican in the 1990s, he was merely moving to the party that best fit his voting behavior. For Lieberman, the war in Iraq is a litmus test of his own making. The Party should call his bluff.

Posted by Terry Smith at 02:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)

Is South Carolina Worthy to Lead the Presidential Primary Process?

Sen. Robert Ford South Carolina State Senator Robert Ford (right), an African American, explained why he’s supporting Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama: "It's a slim possibility for him to get the nomination, but then everybody else is doomed . . . . Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose - because he's black and he's top of the ticket. We'd lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything."

Another leading African American in South Carolina reportedly endorsed Hillary Clinton after receiving a large consulting contract, and noted that John Edwards is not worthy of support because he’s had his chance.

Hillary Clinton Some New Hampshire and Iowa residents probably love this story. The two states have argued that they alone should start the presidential primary season because they have the experience to vet the candidates and deliberate issues (the suggestion being that retail politics in other states is impossible because residents of other small states are either star struck or self interested, and because large states are too massive for retail politics).

The problem, however, is that the early primary states carry significant weight in determining which candidates will be viable thoughout the entire primary season, and New Hampshire and Iowa don’t represent the ethnic or regional diversity of the nation (for example, while the nation is 12.8% African American, New Hampshire is 1.0% African American and Iowa is 2.3%). John Edwards

I served on the Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling, and I worked on the effort to ensure that a couple of new, diverse states would kick off the primary schedule along with Iowa and New Hampshire. As a result, the 2008 presidential schedule starts as follows: Iowa Caucus (Monday January 14); Nevada Caucus (Saturday January 19); New Hampshire Primary, (Tuesday, January 22); South Carolina Primary (Tuesday January 29); window opens and other states may have contests (Tuesday, February 5).

But will an African American (Obama) and a Southerner (Edwards) get fairer hearings in Iowa and New Hampshire than in South Carolina?

Barack Obama South Carolina and Nevada were not picked to line the pockets of local consultants or to give local politicians first dibs on cabinet positions. The two states were picked because they have relatively small and inexpensive media markets, and because they bring some Southern, Western, African American, Latino, and union voices to the table that don’t exist in Iowa and New Hampshire. It was assumed that people in South Carolina and Nevada were up to the task of making decisions not just for themselves, but for the entire country. Because of the importance of the early states, South Carolina and Nevada—just like Iowa and New Hampshire—stand in for all of America. They are proxies for all of us.

I am not suggesting that elected officials in the early primary and caucus states should refrain from supporting or endorsing candidates (indeed, as a matter of disclosure, I support Obama). Instead, the point is that these states should create environments that facilitate fair debates on the merits, rather than dismiss particular candidates because of their race (or gender) or trade support for dollars and connections.

To the extent that the South Carolina and Nevada contests become about self-interest, the hand is strengthened of those who believe that states other than Iowa and New Hampshire (including states with significant African American and Latino populations) lack the capacity to engage in reasoned, deliberative, retail politics.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (63) | TrackBacks (0)

Three Observations on Obama’s Announcement

A picture of Obama Speaking in Springfield, IL 1) At Saturday’s “State of the Black Union” -- the annual race-talk and idea fest hosted by Tavis Smiley -- Dr. Cornell West, offered a provocative commentary on Barack Obama’s announcement in Springfield, Illinois. West suggested that it was not a coincidence that Obama’s handlers selected the day when the long-planned State of the Black Union would be happening in Jamestown, Va. (where African slaves first arrived on the shores of North America) to have Obama announce his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois (hometown of Abraham Lincoln). The better to show white voters that Obama is not that kind of Negro? (Those are my words, not Dr. West’s). Hmmmm. I’ll admit it was a strange moment when C-Span interrupted its all day coverage of the State of the Black Union to bring us “live” the announcement of the candidacy of Obama. Initially I was kinda juiced that black folks were on C-Span “in sense-surround” so to speak, but it was strange . . . After West spoke, Tavis Smiley informed the audience that Obama had called him on Friday night to express regrets. Obama wanted to be at the State of the Black Union meeting, but well, he was already booked. Both the State of the Black Union meeting and Obama’s announcement can be found at www.c-span.org.

A picture of The Covenant book cover 2) The symbolism of Obama announcing his candidacy in Lincoln’s birthplace was lost on historian Dr. Lerone Bennett (also at the State of the Black Union meeting), whose book Forced into Glory: Abraham lincoln’s white dream (2000), critiques the idea of President Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator.” He contended that Lincoln would have been appalled at the thought of Obama or any other black man running for president.

3) And a final thought. Could you make out the song that played when Obama came to the stage in Springfield? I’m assuming that this will be his theme song, but for the life of me I didn’t recognize it, although it did sound kinda like the theme song from that 1970s anti-drug TV movie “Go Ask Alice.” O.K., so it’s not like I thought Obama would mount the stage to the tune of James Brown singing “Get Up Offa That Thing,” but I was hoping for something a little soulful, like the O’Jays’ “Love Train.” or Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready.”

Posted by Sherrilyn Ifill at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (88) | TrackBacks (0)

A Different Take On Obama's Prospects?

Earl Ofari Huthinson is a veteran black political commentator and author. Below is his rather sobering analysis of Barack Obama's presidential prospects.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0129/p09s02-coop.html

Posted by Terry Smith at 02:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (64) | TrackBacks (1)

Condie for President??

In some prior entries, I have mentioned the rainbow nature of some of the Democratic party candidates – Obama, Richardson and Clinton. We should not leave out the Republicans. For the last several years, we have heard of a draft Condoleeza Rice for president movement. I have visited one of the sites, Americans for Dr Rice http://www.4condi.com/. It stresses her foreign policy experience as compared to Democratic candidates like Hillary. Rice has apparently pooh-poohed the idea of running in the past. How many of our readers think that the Republicans will encourage Condie to get into the mix? Will I see Condie shaking hands in Iowa country kitchens? Will she be brought in to support the shaky race/gender credentials of the various Republican candidates? Will the Republicans come up with anyone other than the standard white males? Does it really matter?

Posted by Adrien Wing at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)

Race and the word “Articulate”

Presidential Candidate Joe Biden: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy . . . I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Folks are upset about this comment, which Biden may have intended as a compliment to Senator Obama. Here are a couple of reasons why.

First, the comment seems to put down past African-American presidential candidates like Shirley Chisolm, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Carol Moseley Braun. Rev. Al Sharpton

Second, the use of the word “articulate” hits a special nerve. African Americans often feel as though many Whites use the word “articulate” as acceptable code for “you don't sound ‘Black,’” or "If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine you were white!"

(Malik provided the latter hypothetical quote in his comment to this post).

Many White people may not know that their use of “articulate” sounds patronizing to African Americans, or would assume that African Americans who feel this way are hypersensitive. But a lot of African Americans feel this way--to the point that two African Americans will often make eye contact with one another if a White person in their presence refers to an African American as articulate.

Also, I am a law professor rather than an English professor, but based on the definitions below, it seems debatable as to whether “articulate” in this context is the best use of the word. For example, few would say that Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton are not “endowed with the power of speech” or that they do not express themselves in “clear and effective language.” Indeed, both of them probably conveyed their messages and important concepts more clearly, effectively, and powerfully than most of their presidential opponents.

Carol Moseley-Braun Definition of the Word “Articulate”

Merriam-Webster Dictionary---- a : divided into syllables or words meaningfully arranged : INTELLIGIBLE b : able to speak c : expressing oneself readily, clearly, or effectively <an articulate teacher>; also : expressed in this manner <an articulate argument>

American Heritage Dictionary--

Endowed with the power of speech. Composed of distinct, meaningful syllables or words, as human speech. Expressing oneself easily in clear and effective language: an articulate speaker. Characterized by the use of clear, expressive language: an articulate essay.

UPDATE: Jill Tubman provides a roundup of various blog entries on this issue, as well as a YouTube video of Joe Biden’s statement about Indian Americans and Dunkin Donuts, at Jack and Jill Politics.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (434) | TrackBacks (4)

Fox News and Joe Biden: How Do We Handle Barack Obama?

Senator Barack Obama Despite the opinions of some skeptics of color that America will never elect an African-American president, Barack Obama’s background is causing greater challenges for some in the media and presidential opponents than it is for the Senator from Illinois.

Recently, the Washington Post blog indicated that the Senator stood up to Fox News for their “reporting” of an erroneous internet story that Barack was educated at a jihadist school while growing up. The folks over at MyDD applaud Senator Obama for standing up here.

And Senator Joe Biden announced his candidacy for the White House, and had this to say about Senator Obama: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy . . . I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Senator Joe Biden Biden’s spokesperson Larry Rasky explained Senator Biden’s statement: "He's fresh and he's new and he's got great ideas. I don't see how his comments could be interpreted otherwise, but this is politics. Obviously there are people who are people trying to make something of it today, but not anybody who knows Joe."

Further discussion is in the Washington Post.

The political issue is that Americans have to feel comfortable with Barack, which is probably why he provides so much information about his background (there is a curiosity that distracts many, and quenching that curiosity allows him to move onto substantive matters). While race may cause Barack’s opponents to be a little gun shy for fear of revealing their lack of fluency across racial lines (and perhaps alienating Americans of various backgrounds), public outcry that is too uptight about mildly “inarticulate” statements could make some voters uncomfortable with Barack.

Another lesson: The Fox News example shows how easy it is to invoke stereotypes. Standing up to Fox probably helps Barack in the Democratic primary, but shoddy reporting by Fox that plays on stereotypes in the general election could move 3-5% of the voters who like Barack but just don’t feel “comfortable” enough to vote for him due to the images evoked by the erroneous reporting (perhaps something similar happened to Harold Ford with the “Harold, Call Me” ad).

All of this is a continuum, and it is difficult to draw a bright line dividing the impermissible, the unwise, and the permissible.

I have disagreed with African Americans who see Barack’s candidacy through a racial lens exclusively. I’ve argued that a significant part of his candidacy represents the future and our changing world (not just diversity, but technology, pragmatism, flattening economies, diplomacy, and moral authority), rather than past racial and political paradigms.

Nevertheless, I believe we’ll learn a number of interesting things about race and politics over the next 22 months.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (60) | TrackBacks (3)

Hillary hits Iowa

As a political junkie, one of the great things about living in Iowa for the past 20 years is the Iowa caucus. Every four years, all of the candidates descend into our state of only 3 million people. They blanket it for a year or more. I can rest assured that several of the candidates will speak at the University of Iowa College of Law where I work. All will certainly speak, more than once in Iowa City where I live. I usually meet members of their families, staff members, and politicians who support them. While it has been raised that Iowa does not reflect American demographics, it has been decided that it will keep its place at the head of the line, with other more demographically representative states having their primaries almost immediately thereafter.

Well, the 2008 Iowa caucuses are less than one year away –January 14. John Edwards spoke at the law school in the fall. I got a great shot of Barack in town as he stumped for our new governor Chet Culver right before the November elections. Interestingly, both John and Barack have been outpolling Hillary here in Iowa. Yesterday, Hillary made her first of undoubtedly many trips here, and received a royal turn out. It was cold out and a 20 minute drive so I did not see her this time. A recent Des Moines Register poll noted that 2/3 of Iowans think the country is ready for a black president, 55% for a woman president, and 40% for a Hispanic president.

I plan to occasionally report from my Iowa perch. I wish that every American had the opportunity to see all the candidates up close and personal many times –to question them unscripted and off camera – to have THEIR vote fought over. Given the high cost of the campaigns, it’s a shame such access could not be provided. Let’s see how those poll numbers change as the campaign heats up as Hillary, Barack, and Bill Richardson meet the Iowans.

Posted by Adrien Wing at 06:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBacks (0)

White Members of the Congressional Black Caucus

The full story of the following except from politico.com is here.

BLACK CAUCUS: WHITES NOT ALLOWED

Freshman Rep. Stephen I. Cohen, D-Tenn., is not joining the Congressional Black Caucus after several current and former members made it clear that a white lawmaker was not welcome. Congressman Stephen Cohen

"I think they're real happy I'm not going to join," said Cohen, who succeeded Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., in a majority-black Memphis district.

"It's their caucus and they do things their way. You don't force your way in. You need to be invited."

Cohen said he became convinced that joining the caucus would be "a social faux pas" after seeing news reports that former Rep. William Lacy Clay Sr., D-Mo., a co-founder of the caucus, had circulated a memo telling members it was "critical" that the group remain "exclusively African-American."

Other members, including the new chairwoman, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., and Clay's son, Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., agreed.

"Mr. Cohen asked for admission, and he got his answer. ... It's time to move on," the younger Clay said. "It's an unwritten rule. It's understood. It's clear."

I don’t buy most claims about “reverse racism.” For me, the typical reverse racism argument is overly simplistic, ignores history and contemporary problems, and entrenches intergenerational privilege. I also understand that people of color feel overly scrutinized by whites, and may need a “safe space” to express themselves and develop a worldview. Further, I appreciate that African Americans are underrepresented in Congress, that failure to draw meaningful boundaries might lead to a slippery slope in which the CBC is eventually dominated by people hostile to the interests of African Americans, and that Stephen Cohen may not have been the choice of a majority of African American voters from his district.

Nevertheless, I’m disturbed by the CBC/Stephen Cohen story.

Granted, I am a naïve academic rather than a political leader—and so I may be missing something. But this story as it is written makes the objections to Cohen seem very 1970ish (perhaps there is much more—the story does take a simplistic “reverse race / hypocrite” tone and fails to acknowledge points above that may be more sympathetic to the CBC). In light of the contemporary problems related to schools, criminal justice, and health care that face our nation and African Americans (challenges that are very consistent with younger generations' commitment to "doing" rather than "joining"), this situation seems to be a distraction that threatens to diminish already limited political capital.

Opponents of affirmative action might claim that the CBC situation highlights the problem with considering race, and that the better policy is to ignore race in any and all situations. But the CBC situation seems to highlight the raw, pluralistic politics of power (perhaps of some who make the political assessment that CBC membership would validate, entrench, and immunize Cohen from effective challenge in 2008), rather than the values of inclusion, enhanced deliberation, and representation that characterize many affirmative action programs that consider race.

I look forward to hearing comments from different perspectives.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (59) | TrackBacks (0)

Questioning the Candidates on Foreign Affairs

Yesterday, I wrote on the rainbow Democratic party candidates for President. One of the critical areas that all candidates will have to be knowledgeable about is foreign affairs – probably one of the most complex areas in many ways. Their positions should go beyond whether they were for or against the Iraq War. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to continue my own education on foreign affairs. It can be difficult to know where to begin on such a vast topic. In each issue, FOREIGN AFFAIRS journal lists the top-selling hardcover books on American foreign policy and international affairs. Here are a few from their list that I am considering:

1. State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, by Bob Woodward

2. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Friedman

3. In the Line of Fire, by Pervez Musharraf

8. Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, by Karen DeYoung

12. Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, by Jimmy Carter

14. 9/11 Commission Report, by National Commission on Terrorist Attacks

Due to the early Iowa caucuses, all candidates will blanket our state for the next year. I intend to raise foreign affairs issues in depth along with the important domestic questions they must confront. Many domestic priorities can not be adequately addressed until we reallocate some of the billions sunk into our international ventures.

Posted by Adrien Wing at 06:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

Rainbow Candidates for President

Today, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson announced his intention to run for President. He joins New York Senator Hillary Clinton who announced yesterday

(website http://www.votehillary.org/) and Illinois Senator Barack Obama who announced earlier (website http://www.barackobama.com/). While it is unclear where they will all end up by the election time in 2008, it is unprecedented to have a white woman, black male, and Latino male at this stage of the race. Richardson is the least well known. He has had a distinguished career in the House of Representatives, Secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration and UN ambassador as well. His website is at http://www.americaforrichardson.org/.

Other potential candidates might include: 2004 Democratic party vice presidential nominee John Edwards; former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack; Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd; Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich; Delaware Sen. Joe Biden; and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic party presidential nominee.

Blackprof.com will surely be a great forum to discuss the significance of such diverse candidates in the mix.

Posted by Adrien Wing at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (45) | TrackBacks (0)

Whiteboyism, American-Style

Stories abound in corporate America of blacks getting whiteboyed–slammed in often subtle ways by behavior whose effect, if not purpose, is racial subordination. From Ellis Cose’s The Rage of A Privileged Class to the more recent entry, Herman Malone’s Lynched By Corporate America, these tales have been propagated for mass public consumption and, at least ostensibly, for education. Predating and coinciding with Professor Richard Sander’s congenital obsession with proving black inferiority in the legal profession, similar narratives as well as supporting data have emerged about whiteboying in the practice of law. (See, for example, The Good Black. I do mean to be impious toward Professor Sander’s work, for it is curious when a white man devotes so such energy to demonstrating why an already under-represented group should be more under-represented instead of explaining the structural advantages that allow over-represented groups to remain over-represented.) And of course, the casual observer of politics witnesses whiteboying with a frequency that allows him to pull examples from the tips of his fingers. Black Republican Michael Steele, who once described President Bush as his "homeboy," was passed over by the President for the position of Republican National Committee Chairman in favor a white Cuban. Congressman Alcee Hastings, exonerated of criminal wrongdoing as a judge by a jury of his peers, was passed over as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, purportedly because his impeachment while on the bench made him unfit to serve in such a sensitive post. The catch: the impeachment was based on the same conduct for which Hastings was found innocent, occurred nearly seven years after his acquittal, and its sanction did not, as was the Senate’s prerogative, forbid Hastings from holding "any Office of honor, Trust, or Profit under the United States."

A colleague of mine at a northeastern law school recently shared with me her own brush with whiteboying. A white male faculty member of no particular institutional stature had excluded her from a meeting for which her committee duties made it appropriate that she attend. This was not done inadvertently: the white male colleague explained that because he and his black colleague did not get along, he had excluded her to present the best face possible to a job candidate for whom the meeting was scheduled. It was a real-time example of the "personality defense" that has come to be raised to explain away circumstances that are equally susceptible to a reading of discrimination. The black professor’s only "clash" with her white colleague had been to disagree with him on occasion in faculty meetings.

Continue reading "Whiteboyism, American-Style" »

Posted by Terry Smith at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (224) | TrackBacks (0)

Some thoughts on Democracy from the Middle East

I saw on the BBC news here that former US President Gerald Ford has died at the age of 93. For many of us, he did not seem to stand tall in the ranks of American presidents. Memories of him stumbling down steps are more vivid than particular governmental accomplishments in the period after the disgraceful resignation of Richard Nixon. I certainly don’t remember him as a particular friend to African-Americans. My perspective, however, is a little different as I remember him as I sit in the Middle East region. Many countries here have no tradition of democratic transition after political turmoil. They certainly do not have a level of press freedom that would have even permitted the discovery of the Watergate scandal, much less the forcing out of the President in disgrace. In the US, we did not have to fear a military coup either. Ford served out the term, and then went into retirement when Jimmy Carter won election and took office.

Whenever I travel abroad, I am grateful for the opportunities that have permitted me as a minority group female to have achieved the level of professional, financial, and personal accomplishment that I have. I am sure that this would not be the case for someone with my characteristics in most countries of the world. I always return home reinvigorated to help make our democracy live up to its bright promise for all its citizens.

Posted by Adrien Wing at 06:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (79) | TrackBacks (1)

Why Is This Woman Smiling?

Codolezza Rice Smiling During the dizzying 24 hours in which the Democrats won control of the House and Senate and the President finally fired the disastrous and unrepentant Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, I expected to see a smug and smiling Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, basking in her glory. Not because of the Democrats’ victory, of course, but because her nemesis Rummy was finally out. After all, the animosity between her and Rumsfeld was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Their “joint” appearances in Iraq over a year ago were cringe-making. All the diplomatic skills in the world couldn’t cover the contempt these two had for each other. But surprisingly, Rice was nowhere to be seen (at least not prominently), even when Bush introduced Bob Gates as the new Defense Secretary.

The appointment of Bob Gates should strengthen Rice’s hand. He’s yet another Bush I consigliere – like Baker and Scowcroft and Rice. Remember, it was Bush I who reportedly hired Rice to tutor his clueless son in foreign policy during the 2000 presidential campaign. By all accounts, teacher and student hit it off. (She acquiesced to Bush II’s refusal to read “briefing books” on foreign policy. He insisted that Dr. Rice just explain to him what was in the books). Unfortunately, Rice was a Russia expert, not a Middle-East expert, so both she and the new President were unprepared ramp up quickly and form a coherent Middle-East policy in the months after 9/11. Instead they were left playing catch-up to the neo-cons, led by Cheney and Rumsfeld, who by all accounts had spent years thinking quite a bit about how to use the Middle East for U.S. corporate and strategic purposes. The result? An illegal war, hundreds of thousands dead, a flagrant disregard for international law, unchecked war profiteering, and a country so unmoored from a sane and moral foreign policy that it will take decades to restore even a semblance of U.S. credibility on the world stage.

Continue reading "Why Is This Woman Smiling?" »

Posted by Sherrilyn Ifill at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (38) | TrackBacks (0)

Trent Lott Shall Rise Again!

The Washington Post has this story on how Senator Trent Lott, who stepped down as majority leader in the Senate a few years ago, was recently elected to the No. 2 spot in the minority (Republican) Senate infrastructure. Lott stepped down four years ago because of the statement below endorsing the segregationist politics of Strom Thurmond.

“Referring to Lott's Thurmond comments, [North Dakota Republican Senator John] Thune said that Americans believe in redemption. ‘It's one of those things that happened fairly long ago,’ he said, ‘and people have moved on.’”

Another story in the Post today reports that Congressional Black Caucus Member Alcee L. Hastings’s (D-Fla.) attempt to become chair of the Intelligence Committee is shrouded in controversy because Hastings was charged with bribery and perjury while a federal judge (he was acquitted by a jury in a criminal trial), but the House impeached him in 1989 and the Senate later removed him from the bench. Hastings later ran for and won a seat in Congress.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBacks (0)

Our Power, Our Numbers, Our Agenda

Exit polling from last week’s elections makes clear what the mainstream news media ignores in touting the role of “conservative” Democrats in that party’s victorious Tuesday: voters of color were pivotal. Democrats, for instance, would not have regained the Senate but for the overwhelming support of African Americans and, in at least one instance, the combined votes of African Americans and Latinos. Jim Webb (VA), Claire McCaskill (MO), and Ben Cardin (MD) were all victorious in their Senate bids even though each lost the white vote. Black voter support in the 74th percentile range and upwards accounted for their victories.

In tiny Rhode Island, a New England state not ordinarily thought of as racially heterogeneous, the white vote was split 50-50. But blacks delivered 85% of their votes to winning Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, while Latinos delivered 77% of their votes to the victor. Voters of color made the difference on election day 2006, and we must demand that these candidates and others make a difference for us or suffer defeat at their next election. Dare they vote for President Bush’s ultra-conservative judicial appointments? What about full congressional representation for the District of Columbia? Terrorism? We’ve had it in our neighborhoods in the form of street gangs long before 9/11. What is their plan to divert dollars from the Iraq War to U.S. taxpayers who are far more likely to fall victim to a Blood or Crit than to an Islamic extremist? Need suggestions for settling the perennial affirmative action impasse? How about requiring federal contractors working on projects in given states to hire a certain percentage of their employees from neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of unemployed individuals?

While voters of color displayed immense political solidarity and sophistication on election day, there are still sobering numbers that call for reflection. In Tennessee, Harold Ford, Jr. ran a losing Senate campaign that was widely regarded to be the best of any Democratic Senate candidate this cycle. In garnering 48% of the total vote, Ford came close to capturing the needed number of white votes–thought to be in excess of 40%. But having fallen short, he needed a disproportionate black voter turnout to offset his opponent’s white margins. Ford took 95% of the black vote, but that vote only accounted for 13% of the electorate in a state where blacks constitute roughly 16% of the population.

In Maryland, black voters gave black Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele 25% of their votes. Why? In a race where the white vote was more lopsided–Steele took only 50% of the white vote–25% could make a difference. Was this a protest against Democrats for failing to deliver for black voters? Did these votes come from Prince Georges County, the wealthiest black county in the country? If so, have black voters who are somewhat better off been seduced into thinking that better off means well off? Consider that the median family income in predominantly black Prince Georges County is $62, 467, while the median family income in neighboring predominantly white Montgomery County is $84, 035.

No less disturbing from Tuesday's elections were polling numbers that indicate a lack of solidarity across minority and political groups. Latinos and Asians were three to nearly four times more likely to vote Republican in congressional races than blacks. On the other hand, blacks themselves showed a propensity to askew coalition building of another kind when they supported Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriages in numbers roughly equal to whites–56%.

Posted by Terry Smith at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Wrong Question: Do YOU believe "Harold, call me" was racist?

Johanna Goldsmith Harold Ford lost to Bob Corker 48% to 51%. In the aftermath of the big election, Johanna Goldsmith, the blond actress who says “Call me,” claims that the ad was not racist in this news article. She explains that she has “dated all nationalities.” Outgoing GOP chair Ken Mehlman has a similar take. Others claim the ad was racist.

This is the wrong debate. The question is not whether Johanna Goldsmith or Ken Mehlman found the ad objectionable to their own personal tastes (indeed, by personally finding the ad unobjectionable they portray themselves as fair minded). Instead, there are two other important questions.

The first is an empirical political science question: Did the ad alienate 3% of the Tennessee electorate from Harold Ford because, consciously or subconsciously, they were uncomfortable with the image of a black man sexually engaged with a white woman?

The second is a normative question. In the dirty world of politics, when is the subtle use of race that pushes the buttons of a subset of the electorate inappropriate?

Democrats are not the only targets of this political strategy. In 2000, Republican Arizona Senator John McCain fell victim to a GOP presidential primary whispering campaign that he fathered a black child (in fact, McCain and his wife adopted a daughter from South Asia). And a relatively small percentage of rural white Tennessee voters are not the only ones who might be prompted to abandon Harold Ford because of the ad. The image of Harold Ford with a white woman might discourage some African American voters from going to the polls (an appreciation of the racial strategy of the ad may have also motivated a larger number of African Americans to go to the polls in support of Ford).

I have not run a study to determine the answer to the empirical question—and perhaps no study could conclusively determine the conscious and subconscious thought processes of 3% of Tennessee voters.

But my main point is this-- the question of whether a particular individual “feels” or “believes” that the anti-Harold Ford ads were racist or not racist is irrelevant. The questions are whether the ad moved the needle three percentage points, and whether it did so in a way that was out of bounds.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (1)

Why a Virginia Recount is Unlikely to Go for Allen

I’ve been thinking about things today, and I think that a number of factors suggest that there is not probable cause that a recount will produce a different outcome in the Webb/Allen U.S. Senate race.

1. The spread is too large. Florida 2000 involved an initial gap of 1,784 votes (eventually reduced to 537 after recounts) of about 6 million. Virginia 2006 involves a gap of about 7,200 votes of about 2.3 million votes cast.

2. Different voting technology. In Florida 2000, punch card ballots involved hanging chads that were open to interpretation. In 2006, Virginia uses various electronic machines, including DRE and optical scans (Diebold, Sequoia, UniLect, Advance Voting Solutions, Hart InterCivic and ES&S). It is unlikely that: 1) the error rate will be as high with these technologies (error rates on punch card ballots are about twice as high as optical scan error rates); and 2) many of the technologies do not produce a record like the punch cards that can be reviewed.

3. Correction of errors may favor Webb. Imperfections (improperly marked ballots, the need for a provisional ballots, and others) have in past elections occurred at a higher rate in lower socioeconomic areas, and it is very possible that a more searching examination of this election will increase Webb’s lead.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (52) | TrackBacks (1)

Bush v. Gore II?: Virginia Election Irregularities and Recount Procedures

If Democrats squeak by in Montana, election irregularities and suppressive voting rules in Virginia could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. With 99% of the votes tallied, Webb led by about 7,800 (of 2.3 million)—less than three-tenths of a percent.

(Of about 6 million Florida ballots cast in 2000, Bush lead Gore by 1,784 votes at the end election night, and later recounts reduced that margin to 537).

Virginians faced a variety of issues, including

*voter deception

*restrictive state voting laws

Voter Deception: State officials documented “dozens of phone calls that were made to heavily Democratic precincts in which the people who were receiving the calls were either given incorrect information about polling sites [or] misdirected about election laws.” One type of call asserted that voters were registered in another state, and thus voting in Virginia is illegal. Another type of call claimed that a voter’s polling place location changed. The FBI is investigating.

Suppressive Virginia election laws could end up determining the outcome.

For example, in Virginia, almost 300,000 Americans who have completely served their time (including probation and parole) are disenfranchised (up from 243,000 in 2000). VA is alone with FL, KY, and Armenia as the only democracies in the world that disenfranchise all categories of former felons for life, even after they have served their time (a burdensome restoration process results in voting privileges for less than 2% of these individuals). Eighty percent of Americans believe that people who have served their time should be able to vote. Virginia legislative history suggests that one purpose of the disenfranchisement law was to suppress the black vote. Fifteen percent of black Virginians are disenfranchised even though they’ve completely served their time, and African Americans overwhelmingly favored Webb. Republican Senator John Warner won his first U.S. Senate race as a result of this rule, as did the current Virginia Attorney General. (You'll remember that this rule may have also determined the 2000 election--experts predict that Gore would have won Florida by 30,000 votes but for Florida's lifetime disenfranchisement rule). Webb could be the next victim. Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner had an opportunity to restore voting rights to former offenders who had served their time, but failed to do so. Much more on Virginia disenfranchisement is here.

In Virginia, a ballot cast outside one’s precinct won’t be counted. Thus, imagine that you go to your normal polling place, you’re directed to one of several lines, you get up to the table and pollworkers tell you that you’re not on the list and direct you to cast a provisional ballot. That provisional ballot may not be counted if, unknowingly, your “proper” precinct was one of those other lines in the same polling place. The provisional ballots of thousands of legitimate Virginia voters may be discarded out as a result of this rule. According to this Election Assistance Commission document, in 2004 fewer than 16% of provisional ballots cast by Virginia voters were counted.

Misc: In Northern Virginia, Jim Webb’s last name did not appear on the summary page of some voting machines. Election Protection reports that “(Chesterfield) VA: He was a new voter. He showed his drivers license and voter registration card. He was told that was not enough ID. He showed his high school and college school IDs -- both photo IDs -- and was told that was not sufficient. He was told to produce a FEDERAL ID or he would not be permitted to vote (he was not offered the provisional ballot option). He luckily had his social security card with him, and when he showed that he was permitted to vote.”

Race: African Americans make up about 20% of the population in Virginia, but comprised only about 16% of the electorate in 2002 and about 15% in 2004.

Virginia Recount Procedures: I’ll provide more on this later. For now, go here for the code and here for Board of Election recount procedures. Also, periodically check Rick Hasen's blog and http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/ (Ohio State Univeristy Law School's election specialists) for updates.

Montana Recount Procedures are provided by Prof. Ned Foley here.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 07:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (55) | TrackBacks (0)

Virginia Recount, Absentee, and Provisional Ballot Law

The Virginia U.S. Senate race seems rather close. My research assistant pulled the following statutes in response to my questions. I'm going to look at the specific regs more closely to obtain clearer answers, but I wanted to share this initial sketch of Virginia law.

1) Is it a no-excuse absentee ballot state?
Excuse required. Source: Va. Code 24.2-700

2) Deadline for counting absentee ballots?
Before noon on the day following the election, the general registrar shall deliver all applications for absentee ballots for the election, under seal, to the clerk of the circuit court for the county or city. The clerk shall retain the sealed applications with the counted ballots. The secretary of the electoral board shall deliver all absentee ballots received after the election to the clerk of the circuit court. Source: Va. Code 24.2-710.
3) Deadline for counting provisional ballots?
The electoral board shall meet on the day following the election and determine whether each person having submitted such a provisional vote was entitled to do so as a qualified voter in the precinct in which he offered the provisional vote. If the board is unable to determine the validity of all the provisional ballots offered in the election, or has granted any voter who has offered a provisional ballot an extension to the following day as provided in subsection A, the meeting shall stand adjourned from day to day, not to exceed seven calendar days from the date of the election, until the board has determined the validity of all provisional ballots offered in the election. Source: Va. Code 24.2-654.
4) What is the state standard for determining whether a provisional ballot should be considered an eligible vote that should be counted? What is the basic procedure?
The electoral board shall meet on the day following the election and determine whether each person having submitted such a provisional vote was entitled to do so as a qualified voter in the precinct in which he offered the provisional vote. If the electoral board determines that such person was not entitled to vote as a qualified voter in the precinct in which he offered the provisional vote, or is unable to determine his right to vote, the envelope containing his ballot shall not be opened and his vote shall not be counted. Source: Virginia Code § 24.2-653(B)

5) Are provisional ballots counted if they are cast outside a voter's proper precinct?
Counted if cast in correct precinct

6) What is the recount procedure? Deadline?
See Rick Hasen's blog here.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (1)

What "Values" are Republicans Seeking to Protect With This Ad?

Speaking of shaping the vote on Election Day, consider the above Republican political ad. Yes, it's a real Republican flier, apparently being distributed by the New York Republican State committee. Looks like NY Republicans have been brushing up on Richard Wright!

Although Andrew Sullivan of Time Magazine was the first to surface the ad yesterday, I'd like to thank the conscientious reader of blackprof who brought the ad to my attention.

What are your thoughts on this "old school" Republican effort to play the "race/rape" card?

Posted by Christopher Bracey at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (503) | TrackBacks (3)

Shaping the Vote on Election Day

I’ll post links to stories here today that may shape turnout.

Pollworkers requiring photo ID, even though court blocked photo ID requirement: The polls in the U.S. Senate race in Missouri have been close for some time. Election law specialist Rick Hasen writes that “If I were a journalist interested in the potential election meltdown of 2006, I'd head to St. Louis.” And now this AP report indicates that even though a court blocked Missouri’s photo ID requirement, some pollworkers are asking for or being instructed to ask for a photo or signature ID.

Robocalls: Apparently, the Republican Party has been issuing Robocalls in the middle of the night that initially appear to come from Democrats. When you hang up, the machine keeps calling you back. You don’t find out that the call is from Republicans until you listen through the call. Some have suggested that the objective is anger potential Democratic voters so that they stay home. The New York Times and Washington Post have stories on this. Democratic lawyers indicate that the calls violate federal law because they don’t identify the source at the beginning of the calls. Republican lawyers respond that they identify themselves at the end of the call and that the calls are not misleading.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 06:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Protecting Your Right to Vote

Voter suppression and election irregularities could determine which party controls Congress. Look for problems in tight U.S. Senate and House races in Virginia, Missouri, Tennessee, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Indiana.

I predict that some voters will face a variety of barriers at the polls, including: long lines (although not nearly as long as in 2004); poll challengers; incomplete registration rolls; and faulty new electronic voting machines.

Misinformation & confusion threaten voters. Some candidates and election officials intentionally or mistakenly give misleading information to voters. For example, one-third of American voters will be voting for the first time on new voting machines, and many pollworkers are uncomfortable with these machines. One candidate sent misleading letters to Latinos telling them they cannot vote if they are immigrants (in fact, naturalized U.S. citizens can vote). Georgia state officials send out notices that photo ID is required to vote, even though voters without photo ID could vote because a court struck down the photo ID requirement.

Fear and pessimism threaten to suppress the vote. When voters succumb to this fear, they walk right into the trap of politicians who maintain power by driving down voter turnout. The best way to ensure that your vote will not count is to decide to stay home.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHT: 1) ID: Bring photo ID or several forms of non-photo identification when you go to vote (utility bills, bank statements). But go to vote even if you don’t have ID, because most states have a process for those without ID to vote. 2) Don’t use a provisional ballot unless you absolutely must, because these ballots are sometimes thrown out. 3) If you have problems, call 866-OUR-VOTE for help. 4) After you’ve voted, if you had problems please fill out the form below.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 07:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

A Thumbnail Sketch of Party Control of Congress

Election irregularities could determine a close election, and perhaps even which party controls Congress. Look for problems in tight U.S. Senate races in Virginia, Missouri, and Tennessee, as well as states with a large number of contested U.S. House seats like New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Indiana.

U.S. Senate

Dems need to pick up 6 Senate seats to take control of the U.S. Senate.

Dems will likely pick up: PA, OH

Dems could pick up: RI, MT

Real dogfights for Dems to take from Republicans: VA, MISSOURI, TN (Ford)

Republicans could pick up from Dems: NJ, MD (Steele), WA, MN

U.S. House

Dems need to pick up 15 House seats to take control of the U.S. House.

States with the Largest Number of Possible Democratic Pickups:

NY: 3, 19, 20, 24, 25, 26 (Tom Reynolds), 29

OH: 1, 2, 12, 15, 18 (Bob Ney)

PA: 4, 6, 7, 8, 10

FL: 13 (Katherine Harris), 16 (Mark Foley), 22, 24

IN: 2, 8, 9

CT: 2, 4 (Chris Shays), 5

Possible Republican Pick Ups:

GA12, IL8, IN7

Posted by Spencer Overton at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (4)

Mid-Term Congressional Elections -- Comments and Predictions Anyone?

With all the hype about mid-term elections, I'm curious to know what the BlackProf community thinks about the Congressional races. Are we likely to see a shift in control of either or both houses? Which races are pivotal in your mind? Complete the poll, and comment.

Posted by Christopher Bracey at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Cory Booker, Black Professionals, and the Future of Our Inner Cities

Cory Booker As part of her new series on the “Audacity of Hope,” Oprah Winfrey recently interviewed Newark Mayor Cory Booker. Booker, a Yale Law School graduate and Rhodes Scholar, has gained nationwide attention for his hard-won battle to lead one of the nation’s most devastated urban areas. His first campaign, an unsuccessful bid to oust entrenched boss Sharpe James, also African American, was captured in the Oscar-nominated documentary Street Fight.

Oprah spent the most time questioning Booker about his much publicized decision (made eight years ago) to live in one of Newark’s worst housing projects, Brick Towers, as a way of combating abuses against low-income tenants. “Why the hell,” she asked at one point in the interview, “are you living in the projects?” But Oprah was also interested in a more fundamental question: “Why Newark?”

The implication was, of course, that Booker, with his impressive credentials, could be mayor of any city (not to mention Senator and maybe even President) and that others might have set their sights higher than a poor, predominantly African American city with unemployment rates far higher than those at the national level. Mayor Booker, true to form, offered an inspired answer about the desire to create change and the inspirational lessons he has learned from Newark residents. But the whole exchange got me thinking. The real question is not why Booker, a New Jersey native with a growing history in the city, chose Newark, but why other African Americans of similar education and means have not.

Continue reading "Cory Booker, Black Professionals, and the Future of Our Inner Cities" »

Posted by R.A. Lenhardt at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (0)

An Overlooked Political Race

Democratic Congresswoman Julia Carson Much has been written about Democratic challengers taking over Republican incumbent seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In one Indiana congressional district, however, an African-American Republican has the opportunity to beat a African-American Democratic incumbent. Challenger Republican Eric Dickerson is up against incumbent Democrat Congresswoman Julia Carson.

Here’s why the race is interesting:

1) The Polls: In averaging the last two polls, Carson is up by only 1 point (Carson 45%, Dickerson 44%). News stories on the polls are here and here.

2) New Photo ID Law: Indiana is the one state where an absolute photo ID rule to vote was recently adopted and not blocked by the courts (the Georgia and Missouri laws were blocked, and in other states safety net exceptions like affidavits and utility bills allow people who don't bring photo ID to the polls to cast a ballot). America's most restrictive photo ID requirement is a wild card, and it could possibly hurt the turnout of Julia Carson’s base much more than Eric Dickerson’s base. Republican Challenger Eric Dickerson

3) District: The Seventh District is 30% African American, and 63% white. About 75% of the district's African-American population supports Carson. This is an interesting test case for the concept of “influence” districts.

4) Republican Dickerson is Moderate: Just as Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford is relatively conservative, Republican Dickerson is very moderate. For example, Dickerson’s website notes that “Drug treatment and job opportunities are what we need to break the cycle of crime and violence,” and “Like Colin Powell and others with a military background, I oppose the war in Iraq.”

5) Money: As of October 18 Carson had $317,857 in the bank, and as of Sept. 30 Dickerson had $21,824 in the bank. Presumably the GOP has caught on to the potential in this race, and has started to invest resources into Dickerson since the last reporting.

6) GOP Talking Point: If they suffer massive losses on November 7, Republicans will likely emphasize the positive. A victory by Dickerson is a GOP great talking point response to both Republican congressional losses and the losses of high-profile African-American candidates Blackwell Steele, and/or Swann.

A number of people I respect who have been following Carson for years tell me that she's a very safe bet, especially in such a pro-Democratic year. There are so many variables, however, such as race and the new photo ID law, that I continue to believe that this race is worth watching. More on this interesting contest is here.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (38) | TrackBacks (0)

The Poll Numbers for African-American Candidates for U.S. Senate and Governor

Patrick Election day is Tuesday, November 7. African American candidates include gubernatorial hopefuls Deval Patrick (D), Ken Blackwell (R), and Lynn Swann (R), as well as U.S. Senate contenders Michael Steele (R) and Harold Ford (D). The following numbers are based on the average of the last 5 polls according to Pollster.com.

For Governor

Massachusetts: Democrat Deval Patrick 54% v. Republican Kerry Healey 30%

Swann Ohio: Republican Ken Blackwell 35% v. Democrat Ted Strickland 57%

Pennsylvania: Republican Lynn Swann 38% v. Democrat Ed Rendell 56%

U.S. Senate

Maryland: Republican Michael Steele 43% v. Democrat Ben Cardin 49%

Ford Tennessee: Democrat Harold Ford 46% v. Republican Bob Corker 47%

Posted by Spencer Overton at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (53) | TrackBacks (0)

Southern Strategy 2006?

I tend to believe that one's true character is best discerned under pressure -- when things get desparate. The race in Tennessee between Democrat Harold Ford, Jr., and Republican Bob Corker, to replace outgoing Senator Bill Frist has reached this stage. The two candidates are in a dead heat, virtually tied according to polling data with less than two weeks left in the election. Harold Ford, if he wins, would be the first Black Senator elected from the South in United States history, and the first to serve at all since Reconstruction.

Into this pressure cooker, the Republican National Party has inserted this pathetically tawdry political advertisement, which, among other things, features a White woman, wearing a strapless dress, cheerfully announcing "I met Harold at the Playboy party." The ad ends with the same White woman suggestively stating: "Harold -- call me."

America of course has a tragic racial history -- a history predicated on the social dehumanizing of Black folk so that they had no rights Whites were bound to respect. Inseparable from this stigmatization was the stereotyping of Black, male sexuality as overwrought and uncontrollable; Black people were not fully human and, relatedly, Black men could not be trusted to harness their sexual urges. In this social environment, it was incumbent that civil society protect the sanctity of White women from denigration by Black men. From the end of the Nineteenth Century through the first half of the Twentieth Century, thousands of Black men were lynched to enforce this sexual apartheid. Even the most fanciful allegations of Black male assaults on White women triggered "shock and awe" responses designed to enforce these social mores. As Emmett Till learned, for a young Black boy even to whistle at a White woman was so disturbing to prevailing paranoias as to constitute a capital offense. (For more detail on the social and political history concerning the denigration of Black, male sexuality, see Temple Law Professor Jeremi Duru's article located here).

In this historical context, I suspect the producers of this commercial -- sanctioned and subsidized by the RNC -- purposefully and deliberately sought to exploit this racial history for political benefit. Advertisers rarely, if ever, imply inter-racial sexual relationships accidentally. If the producers sought simply to communicate that Harold Ford is something of a casanova (and some reports published prior to the airing of this commercial have suggested Mr. Ford enjoys the bachelor life), one would suspect the use of a Black, female character. But the use of a White, female character, in the context of the South's intersecting racial and sexual history, cannot credibly be deemed inadvertent. To that extent, the RNC reminds Black folk -- once again -- of why they disproportionately cast their lot with the Democrats, warts and all, than a party that would seek repeatedly to manipulate America's heartbreaking racial history for political gain.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (522) | TrackBacks (0)

Barack Obama for President

United States Senator Barack Obama is promoting his new book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. My copy arrived a couple of days ago, and I've read the early chapters. I've been struck by its honesty, humor, and ability to convey feelings. Yesterday, on Meet the Press, he announced that after the 2006 midterm elections he would contemplate whether he would run for president in 2008. Video of Senator Obama on NBC’s Today Show is below.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (41) | TrackBacks (1)

It's All About The Need For Change, Right?

It's all about "change" -- at least, that's what leading black conservatives tell us. The theme of change -- changing the way we think about politics, employment, and opportunity -- is the dominant chord twenty-first century black conservatism. Below are political ads for Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania, Michael Steele in Maryland, and Ken Blackwell in Ohio.

Lynn Swann

Michael Steele

Ken Blackwell

Each claims to be a change agent. Two questions. First, do you find their claimed status as change agents credible? Second, if so, do these change agents present a compelling alternative?

Posted by Christopher Bracey at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (45) | TrackBacks (0)

The Bid for StarStruck Black Voters

In response to Chris Bracey’s recent post about Maryland Lt. Gov and Senate candidate Michael Steele receiving endorsements from Russell Simmons, Don King and Mike Tyson, several commentators wondered whether Steele should be “given a chance” if he really has, as Russell Simmons claims, “increased state contracts for minority business by a third . . reduced recidivism among ex-offenders . . .[and] gave people drug treatment rather than prison.” I live in Maryland and Steele has done none of the things Russell Simmons claims, for the simple reason that Steele has been Lt. Gov for the past 4 years. In Maryland, this is essentially a ceremonial job. Steele has had no power or authority to award contracts or provide drug treatment. How on earth could the Lt. Gov. "give people drug treatment rather than prison?" He's not a judge. Even the Governor can’t do that.

The only substantive thing Steele was asked to do as Lt. Gov. was make proposals to the Governor, Robert Ehrlich, on the future use of the death penalty, after a widely-respected study several years ago revealed that there are strong racial disparities in the imposition of the death penalty in Maryland. Because Steele is Roman Catholic, he says he is opposed to the death penalty. He publicly stated his desire to influence the Governor (pro-death penalty) to rethink its use in Maryland. So the Governor invited Steele to review the data and make some recommendations. After 4 years in office, and after announcing his bid for the Senate, Steele finally released his recommendations. His proposal? More study.

The shameless effort by Steele to harness the star-truck black vote is a sign of desperation. I have an idea, though. Just to show he's not playing us, Steele should get Don King and Mike Tyson -- both ex-felons -- to do something substantive for the campaign. Like announce their (and Steele's) support for getting rid of Maryland's law that disenfranchises ex-felons? That way, if they lived in Maryland, King and Tyson could vote for the man they've endorsed.

To listen to a spirited debate between two African Americans (one is me) on the question of whether black voters in Maryland should support Senate candidate Steele and other Republican candidates, go to http://www.wypr.org/M_Steiner.html#OnDemand.

Posted by Sherrilyn Ifill at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (4)

The Trickle of African American Celebrities Coming Out in Support of GOP Senate Candidate Michael Steele Continues

Getting hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and founder and chairman of Radio One Cathy Hughes on board for a fundraiser over the summer was a huge accomplishment. Heck, they even had Kid Capri on the “wheels of steel” (pun intended) in support of the black Republican’s campaign.

Earlier this month, Steele’s released a radio ad featuring Simmons, which can be heard here.

Here's the script:

Russell Simmons: Yo, what’s up, y’all, it’s Russell Simmons.

Today I’m coming to you to ask you to vote for my good friend, Michael Steele to become the next Senator from Maryland. Four years ago, I came here to campaign against the Lt. Governor. Today, I come here to stand beside him.

I trust him because he’s lived up to every commitment he made to our communities. He’s increased the state contracts for minority business by more than a third. He’s reduced recidivism among ex-offenders. He went against the grain and gave people drug treatment rather than prison.

I trust the Lieutenant Governor.

Michael Steele knows the issues that affect us because he comes from our struggle. For too long, our voice has been ignored in Washington. Michael Steele could change that.

Let’s go to work now and change the game. Go to the polls and vote for Michael Steele for United States Senator. Make sure you empower yourself on Tuesday, November 7. Vote.

Michael Steele: I’m Michael Steele, candidate for the United States Senate, and I approved this message.

Now, Steele appears to be seeking a “knockout” (sorry couldn’t resist) in the election by enlisting the support of Don King and “Iron” Mike Tyson. Yes, it’s true. Don King was in Largo and Baltimore this week stumping for Steele.

And Mike Tyson, who is launching his “World” boxing exhibition tour in Youngstown, Ohio on Monday, put his weight behind Steele. During a press conference in which he proposed fighting women in exhibition matches, Tyson began stumping for Steele.

Here’s an excerpt from the Associated Press report:

At the press conference, Tyson posed for photos with fans, signed autographs and campaigned for Maryland U.S. Senate candidate Michael Steele.

Tyson, wearing a white and blue Steele for U.S. Senate T-shirt, said he used to believe black Republicans were "sellouts." But Tyson said he changed his mind after researching the Maryland lieutenant governor.

"We have to open our eyes more," Tyson said, as he pointed to his T-shirt.

So, what are we to make of all this? Is conservatism the latest fashion in black America? Is this really about empowerment and enlightment for the masses, or opportunism for the elite?

Posted by Christopher Bracey at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (39) | TrackBacks (0)

Missouri Supreme Court Invalidates Photo ID at Polls Requirement

AP story here. Court’s opinion here.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

Why Disenfranchisement Differs from Other Restrictions

Today I debated John R. Lott (right), an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar, on NPR’s Justice Talking show. The subject was whether former offenders who have completed their sentences should be able to vote. The half hour debate will air October 23.

John Lott Lott repeated an argument that he has made in earlier newspaper commentaries: “It is hardly a radical notion to penalize felons long after they have left prison or completed parole. Laws deny cons the right to hold office, to retain professional licenses (lawyers, for example, lose their ability to practice) or business licenses, to work for the government, or to serve as an officer in a publicly traded company. In some cases, felons can lose their right to inherit property, to collect pension benefits or even to get a truck-driving license. In fact, in most states, the loss of voting rights does not last as long as other prohibitions.”

Thus, Lott argues, we should see voting in the context of a whole host of restrictions on former offenders that extend beyond their incarceration, parole, and probation.

As I mentioned in response on the show, many of these other restrictions on former offenders are unnecessary and may even be counterproductive by restricting legitimate reentry options afforded by economic markets and promoting recidivism. Restrictions on voting, however, are especially troubling. Voting is different.

In many states, the purpose of felon disenfranchisement was the same as poll taxes and literacy tests—to disenfranchise African Americans. One delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention, for example, said that felony disenfranchisement laws “will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than 5 years, so that in no single county… will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.” In 2003, the chair of the Alabama Republican Party explained that his party is opposed to restoring voting rights to former felons because they don’t tend to vote Republican.

Poll taxes, literacy tests, and former felon disenfranchisement all thwart democracy for the same reason: data suggests they lower voter turnout in particular communities and prevent government of, by, and for the people. In Florida, for example, 30% of African-American men cannot vote due to a felony conviction. Unlike other restrictions that prevent former felons from obtaining certain types of employment or from owning a gun, lifetime disenfranchisement dilutes the voices of select communities and, like gerrymandering, enhances the prospects of particular politicians.

Voting is not just about individual rights and responsibilities. Voting is about democratic structure and representation of communities.

PS: Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner recently dropped out of the race for the White House because he wanted to spend more time with his family. As you’ll remember from earlier posts, Warner had an opportunity to issue an executive order restoring voting rights to almost 300,000 Virginians who had served their time but he failed to do so (Virginia, Florida, and Kentucky are alone with Armenia as the only democracies in the world that disenfranchise all citizens who commit felonies for life, even after they have served their sentences). While we had very different opinions on felon disenfranchisement, I appreciated Mark Warner’s theme of making government work more efficiently and effectively, and I wish him well.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBacks (0)

Healey Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel In Attempt to Derail Deval Patrick’s Candidacy

As some of you may be aware, Deval Patrick, former head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, is running for Governor of Massachusetts. Earlier this year, Patrick defeated two better-known and better-financed opponents to win the Democratic Primary. Should Patrick defeat his Republican opponent, Lt. Governor Kerry Healey, Patrick will become the first African American Governor in Massachusetts history (ironically, if Healey defeats Patrick, she will become the first woman Governor in state history).

So, this is an interesting race to watch for a number of reasons. In any case, back to Deval Patrick. Patrick has demonstrated remarkable appeal across a wide demographic, as the Boston Globe reported a few weeks back.

Recent polling indicates that Patrick enjoys a double-digit lead on Healey, but that lead may be narrowing.

Healey hopes to further narrow that gap by running a controversial television ad accusing Patrick of being “in bed” with convicted cop killers. The ad can be found here.

For the technically challenged, the voiceover reads as follows, although you really must see the entire ad to get the full effect:

A young Florida State Trooper, heading home, stops to help a stranded motorist.
The driver – an escaped convict, kills the trooper with five shots.
The killer is tried and convicted.
Liberal democratic Governor Bob Graham signs death sentence.
Attorney Deval Patrick is hired by convicted killer -- gets the sentenced reduced.
Now, killer is eligible for parole.
While lawyers have a right to defend admitted cop killers, do we really want one as our governor?

Politics is a rough game – we all know that. Candidates give and receive a great many blows. But is this one below the belt? I mean, does anyone really think that Deval Patrick supports cop killing as a policy matter? Compared to the Willie Horton ads of a few years back, I guess this is progress. But Healey's ad strikes me as desperate, self-degrading, and, at bottom, ineffective.

Perhaps Patrick's response should be – "While weak and desperate politicians have the right to degrade themselves and engage in unconstructive negative ad campaigns against their opponents, do we really want one of as our governor?"

Posted by Christopher Bracey at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Race and Political Opportunism in Virginia: What would Dr. King Have Thought?

Courtland Milloy wrote in today’s Washington Post about how Virginia State Senator Benjamin Lambert III came to the defense of embattled Republican candidate for US Senate George Allen. For those who haven’t been watching, the Virginia Senate race has provided remarkable theater over the past few months.

Allen, as you may recall, was the guy who, during a stump speech in rural Virginia, referred to an Indian American observer (who, incidentally, worked for Allen’s opponent) as a “macaca” or monkey. He’s also the guy who has, in the past, had a curious fascination with a range of racist symbols, including nooses and the Confederate flag.

In any case, Lambert, an African American Democrat and 28-year veteran of Virginia politics, has now weighed in, and done so in the usual fashion.

Here’s what Lambert said about George Allen, pictured here (far left) in 1996 with leaders of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor organization to the segregationist White Citizens Council, and actor/activist Charlton Heston:

"I look at it from the point of view that people are capable of change, of learning from their mistakes . . . . George has apologized. He said he understands the plight of African Americans and their sensitivities regarding the Confederate flag. He said he was going to do much better. I say, 'Let's give him a chance.'"

But Lambert is a politician – his support apparently comes with a price tag.

As Milloy points out, Lambert's "race man rescue" occurred AFTER Allen had pledged to secure nearly a half-billion dollars in federal funding for historically black colleges AND agreed Allen to support legislation to name the new federal courthouse in Richmond after two pro-civil rights figures – Judges Spottswood W. Robinson III, who was black, and Robert R. Merhige Jr., who was white.

When asked if Allen's financial commitments had influenced his decision to endorse, Lambert responded: "Let's just say I have a strategy."

Lambert later elaborated, emphasizing that both he and George Allen share a commitment to "education for African Americans" and the continued existence of historically black colleges. As for people who call him a sellout, Lambert said, "What have they done to keep a school open?"

Given this messy eposide of racial and political opportunism, I couldn’t help but wonder what Dr. King would have thought about all this. And I’m talking about the radicalized Dr. King that reaches full bloom post-1965. The Dr. King who had become increasingly cynical about the resolve of whites to treat black equally. The Dr. King who had become sensitive to the importance of wielding power in American society to improve current spiritual AND material lives of everyday people. The Dr. King that had begun the struggle to reconcile the “old school” civil rights mentality with post-modern racial opportunism.

I don’t think there are any clear answers to this question, but I leave you with a few quotes from Dr. King to ponder.

King on Political Party Loyalty:

"We must face the appalling fact that we have been betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican parties. The Democrats have betrayed us by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the southern dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed us by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing reactionary northerners. This coalition of southern Democrats and northern right-wing Republicans defeats every proposed bill on civil rights."

King on the Nature of Political Alliances:

"In addition to the development of genuinely independent and representative political leaders, we shall have to master the art of political alliances. A true alliance is based upon some self-interest of each component group and a common interest into which they merge. For an alliance to have permanence and loyal commitment from its various elements, each of the must have a goal from which it benefits and none must have an outlook in basic conflict with the others."

King on Justice and Reparations:

"Justice for black people will not flow into society merely from a court decision nor from fountains of political oratory. Nor will a few token changes quall all the tempestuous yearnings of millions of disadvantaged black people . . . . When millions of people have been cheated for centuries, restitution is a costly process. Inferior education, poor housing, unemployment, inadequate health care – each is a bitter component of the oppression that has been our heritage. Each will require billions of dollars to correct. Justice so long deferred has accumulated interest and its costs for this society will be substantial in financial as well as human terms."

In any case, what is clear is that the racial "shakedown" is alive and well in American race relations. This, of course, explains why Milloy closes his article with a sadly cynical observation: "Race relations are not always what they seem. And in a state fraught with racial contradictions, macaca may turn out to be a gift to African Americans that keeps on giving. At least if Lambert has his way."

Posted by Christopher Bracey at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)

Democrats and Education Reform

This picture of Jeb Bush flanked by Black parents and children portends danger for Democrats. The picture concerns a rally seeking support for Florida’s fledgling school-choice program, which, though it served only several hundred children in the entire state, gave poor people a bit too much autonomy for status quo interests to handle. Teachers unions sponsored a legal challenge to the program, and the Florida Supreme Court ultimately struck it down in an unprincipled decision that I previously critiqued here.

My concern in this post is with the politics of school reform. Democrats rarely support any educational policy contrary to union interests. Merit pay; tenure reform; meaningful principal autonomy: teachers unions almost reflexively oppose any institutional modification that permits principals to distinguish among teachers on the basis of performance. And Democrats do their bidding. What’s worse? Few would suggest that lockstep hiring, evaluation, compensation, and assignment rules serve the best educational interests of children. Democrats support these policies because they are politically, not educationally, expedient.

These impediments to progress, among others, fuel the passions of minority parents for meaningful education reform. At some point, Democrats must choose: politics or the people. And at some point, Black voters must decide whether Democrats continue to deserve their support despite the ongoing failure of urban public schools. There’s increasing evidence that this support is slipping. For example, more than a dozen Black politicians in South Carolina recently decided to support a Republican candidate for the state’s top education post precisely because that candidate favors institutional school reform. And these efforts are merely some of the most recent examples of a growing trend. Unless Democrats begin to more forcefully embrace institutional school reform, school politics may provide Republicans an opportunity to extract meaningful numbers of Black voters.

This will likely be more pertinent at the state and local, rather than national, levels given the extent to which local politics are less affected by the breadth of national and international concerns dominating federal politics — and upon which Republicans too often act inconsistently with Black political interests. But, even so, the loss of political influence at the state and local level is a cost in its own right; and diminished state and local power itself indirectly impedes national power given the gerrymander and the extent to which state political machinery delivers votes in national elections. The Democrats will need increasingly to revisit their support for the institutional status quo, or they will lose growing shares of the minority vote.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (0)

Katrina and Liberalism

Watching Spike Lee’s documentary on Katrina this week reignited the sense of rage, anger, and disgust that ate at me last August as I watched helplessly as my government (or, is the impersonal the government more accurate?) willfully neglected the pleas of scores of thousands of Black New Orleanians — who didn’t ask for a handout or a preference, but simply human treatment. Black folk, once again, were denied. katrina picture

Shortly after watching Spike Lee’s documentary, though, I came across this newspaper article, describing another attempt by Black folk to obtain reparations for slavery through litigation in federal courts.

Particularly with Katrina as a backdrop, the effort to obtain reparations through litigation strikes me as absurdly quixotic. Black people in New Orleans asked the government, simply, for water, food, shelter, and a ride out of harm’s way. And we could even get that. Can one rationally expect the federal government to order defendants in reparations cases to pay Black folk hundreds of millions of dollars?

For me, the abiding lesson of Katrina is that liberalism inevitably fails Black people. Liberalism, irreducibly, places authority in the hands of a government that represents a medley of far-flung interests either agnostic or hostile to the specific interests of Black folk. The notion that the very government that facilitated the institutional conditions producing Black misery would systematically dismantle those same conditions — which in many ways support status quo allocations of power and status — seems fanciful. The only means of sustainable, systemic uplift for African-Americans is the leveraging of strategies that ultimately depend on the agency of those specifically and unwaveringly committed to that cause. By this, I do not mean a methodology of racially-defined nationalism: not only does such an approach wrongfully presume — to steal from Zora Neale Hurston — that all one’s skinfolk are one’s kinfolk, but also it alienates confederates from other cultural backgrounds. Black people need radical substantive change in their quality of life; any individual or group that can support that objective is a welcomed and needed ally.

I simply suggest, like many before me, that we de-emphasize efforts focused on government-directed remedies. To be clear, I’m not suggesting we abandon completely government petition: government obviously affects the lives of Black folk in numerous ways and we need to continue to place meaningful pressure on government — if for no other reason to soften its tendency to act inconsistently with the interests of poor people generally, and poor racial minorities specifically. But I do suggest that, in setting priorities, we focus our efforts on work at the local level, with people we know and trust, to transform block-by-block the economic, social, and cultural destinies of our communities. This work is neither easy nor glamorous; it’s arduous and incremental. But, practically, I submit there’s no other way. The next time the levees break — and economic, social, and cultural levees break daily in the Black community — I’d rather have a life-vest and cooler than an empty promise from the government.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (1)

The NBRA's Bizarre Radio Ad in Support of the Black Conservative Agenda

For those who missed it, the National Black Republican Association began running a controversial radio ad last week in Maryland, where current Lt. Governor Michael Steele is running for the U.S. Senate. As mentioned in a post last week by Professor Overton, Steele, who is African American, is running as a Republican.

In any event, back to the radio ad. The ad accuses Democrats of starting the Ku Klux Klan, summarily declares that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican, and a whole lot more. What you get is a rough outline of the black conservative agenda, delivered in the form of a dialogue between "sistas."

Click here to listen to the ad.

ABC News reported on the radio ad, and noted that Steele disavowed any connection to the ad or the NBRA, which incidentally showcased Sec. Condoleezza Rice in the premiere edition of its magazine "The Black Republican."

The radio ad did not mention Steele by name nor the Maryland Senate race. Nevertheless, Steele described the ad as “insulting to Marylanders” and “not helpful to the public discourse.”

In this instance, I agree whole heartedly with Steele. Putting aside the factual inaccuracies, the ad struck me as both intellectually and culturally demeaning – and not just to Marylanders or African Americans.

Listen to the ad, and judge for yourself. Do you find the ad insulting? Do you find it helpful to the public discourse?

Posted by Christopher Bracey at 04:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Voter ID Update

Barbara Bush's Fake ID

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4844, which would require government-issued photo identification as a condition to vote in federal elections (right now, only Georgia, Indiana, and Missouri have such a requirement, and courts have blocked the Georgia and Missouri laws). H.R. 4844 grows out of a similar proposal from the Carter-Baker Commission (I served as a commissioner and dissented from that proposal).

Yesterday, I debated this issue on NPR with Carter-Baker Commissioner Sharon Priest on “Talk of the Nation.” In short, I believe we need much better empirical evidence about fraud and the impact of photo identification on voter turnout before adopting the requirement. Existing data suggests that a photo ID requirement would prevent over 1000 legitimate votes (perhaps over 10,000 legitimate votes) for every single improper vote prevented.

My full views on the subject are contained in a forthcoming academic article, "Voter Identification," that will be published in the University of Michigan Law Review.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 03:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Steele

Steele is running for U.S. Senate in Maryland on the Republican ticket. You’ll remember that in the Democratic primary, Ben Cardin beat Kweisi Mfume for the right to face Steele in November. Dems have said that a vote for Steele is a vote for George W. Bush, but he seems to be running an outsider-type campaign that attacks both parties and lobbyists. Look at this ad (click here) that appears to reach out to African Americans, who make up about 30 percent of the electorate in Maryland. Here's one response ad from Maryland Dems, claiming that despite the media campaign, Steele is close to lobbyists and Republican leadership.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

Chavez, Patriotism, and Charlie Rangel

Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, lit into President Bush this week, calling him everything from the “devil” to a “sick man,” and charging that he had an imperialist passion to dominate the world -- especially the world’s poorer and darker nations. Yesterday, he brought his critique to Harlem, in many ways the social, cultural, and political heart of Black America. From the pulpit of a Black, Harlemworld church, Chavez took things further:

[Bush] walks like this cowboy John Wayne. He doesn't have the slightest idea of politics. He got where he is because he is the son of his father. He was an alcoholic, an ex-alcoholic. He's a sick man, full of complexes, but very dangerous now because he has a lot of power.

This was too much for Congressman Charlie Rangel, Harlem’s longstanding congressional representative, to endure. Said Charlie:

You don't come into my country; you don't come into my congressional district and you don't condemn my president. If there's any criticism of President Bush, it should be restricted to Americans, whether they voted for him or not.

I’m not interested here in the substance of Chavez’s critique; I’m focused instead on Rangel’s claim that only Americans have standing to criticize President Bush. That statement is plainly absurd. Any individual with the capacity to reason has standing to critique any other. And, indeed, any reasoning person should challenge the views of others: ideologies too conceptually weak to withstand broad, analytical attack are unworthy of adherence by thoughtful people. The resort to the ad hominem is the prototypical crutch of the intellectually insecure.

I’m even more surprised that someone like Charlie Rangel would subscribe to a personality-based conception of reason. This is always dangerous for Black folk. Once one subscribes to a principle that ideas matter only when expressed by sanctioned groups, one has already sealed the intellectual fate of socially marginalized communities. This is especially so when the criteria of inclusion are nationalistic. The prejudices underlying patriotism too often are indistinguishable from those motivating racism, sexism, and the other lines of social division folks like Charlie Rangel have fought long to eradicate. The same cultural-authority claim that today unsettles Chavez’s capacity to challenge President Bush tomorrow undermines Rangel’s ability to do the same.

This is all the more troubling because Rangel apparently offered no substantive defense whatsoever of President Bush. He responded simply with the ad hominem. Whatever what one might think of Chavez's critique, Rangel’s statements may be far more dangerous -- and, ultimately, self-defeating.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 01:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (0)

The Color of the Liberal Blogosphere (or...The Future of the Democratic Party?)

From Jill Tubman at Jack and Jill Politics . . . . Also check out the interesting comments in response at MyDD.com, a well-established liberal blog.

RACIAL POLITICS THIS WEEK--A ROUNDUP

This week, a controversial photo snapped at a blogger lunch in Harlem with Bill Clinton is under much discussion in the progressive blackosphere. . . . I agree with Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft that: “There should have been a greater attempt made to include minority bloggers. But I think it was unintentional. I will bet that when there's another such event, and there will be, whether it's by President Clinton or another Democrat, there will be a greater effort to include a more diverse group of bloggers.”

There's a problem with this photo and what it implies about how the power structure is changing -- and who might get left behind. Let's not deny that and make excuses. . . . . .

Posted by Spencer Overton at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (1)

Politics, Race and Over-Ambition

Brooklyn’s 11th Congressional District, a black-majority Voting Rights Act district, retained black representation last Tuesday–but just barely. In a race that pitted three relatively well-known black candidates against a well-funded white city councilman (See “NY District 11: A Prism of Race and Politics in the U.S. ”), there was a high likelihood that a split black vote would lead to the same result that occurred in majority-black Tennessee District 9 : the election of a white candidate to represent a majority-black district. Much of the commentary on these contests, including my own, has explored their racial dimensions. But another salient factor should not elide analysis: over-ambition, both black and white.

Yvette Clark

Brooklyn councilwoman Yvette Clarke (pictured above) eked out a 5 point victory over David Yassky in New York District 11, but she and her black opponents, Chris Owens and Carl Andrews, should be summons to answer this question: why did you put your own personal ambitions ahead of the greater goal of black representation for black people? And to David Yassky, the white candidate, the question should be asked: why should black people entrust you with their vote if by your actions you suggest that none among them is more qualified than you to represent their interests? The same hard questions should be put to the thirteen black candidates and one (ultimately victorious) white candidate in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. There, State Sen. Steve Cohen prevailed with 29% of the vote.

Continue reading "Politics, Race and Over-Ambition" »

Posted by Terry Smith at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Congressional Primaries

Donna Edwards Two interesting contests . . .

Donna Edwards (right, above) challenged incumbent Al Wynn (right, below) in the Democratic primary in Maryland (Prince George’s County and Montgomery County), accusing him of voting with George W. Bush on Iraq and other issues.

Al Wynn At this point, Al Wynn is slightly ahead of challenger Donna Edwards, but provisional ballots are still being counted. Wynn’s opponents characterized him as a “Joe Lieberman” (who was defeated in the Connecticut primary by Ned Lamont).

Commentary is available in the Gazette, The Washington Post, and on MyDD.

Keith Ellison (right) won the Democratic primary in Minneapolis in a majority white district, and he could very well be the first Muslim in Congress. Details are in the Washington Post.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

"Is This America?"

When Fannie Lou Hamer and the other members of the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party were barred from seats at the Democratic National Convention in 1964, the great voting rights activist questioned, "Is this America?"

Well tonight I'm channelling Mrs. Hamer. Not that the disaster that is the Maryland Primary election is racial, per se (although the disenfranchisement of voters in Baltimore City, a majority black town, has clear racial implications). It's just that I get the feeling that if an election were held in Beirut tomorrow it might go more smoothly than the election in Baltimore City and Montgomery County, Maryland has run today. What's happening, you wonder? Well, in Montgomery County, a suburb of Washington, D.C. where the most affluent and well-educated voters in the state live, the electronic voting machines that were shoved down the throats of Maryland residents (no paper trail, remember) arrived at the polling places, missing the essential ATM-like key cards needed to enable each voter to cast a ballot. Huh? Someone forgot to pack the cards?

In Baltimore City, the problems have been, well, embarrassing. At many precincts election judges were late or simply didn't show up, so the polls couldn't open. Voters stood in line from 7am when polls were supposed to open until 8, 8:30, 9:45am, before the polls opened. Many voters had to get work and so they left. Wealth didn't insulate voters from this nightmare. In Ruxton, an upper middle class enclave where Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (former Maryland gubernatorial candidate and daughter of Robert F. Kennendy lives) voting machines did not arrive until 11am. Then no official had the keys to start the machine. Voting began at noon.

At polling places all over the City, when machines malfunctioned or didn't arrive, voters were told to vote using provisional ballots (even though those ballots won't be counted for another week, if at all). At still another location, the voters couldn't use the provisional ballots because none of the election judges had thought to bring pencils. In many locations, election judges -- mostly elderly volunteers -- expressed frustration at the training they'd received. Training had emphasized the possibility of voter fraud, rather than how to master the new machines.

It's been in a word, surreal. Fortunately the NAACP and the Maryland Democratic Party brought suit to force the Board of Elections to keep polling places open an additional hour. The decision came down at about 6pm. Montgomery County Election officials decided early in the day to keep the polls open an extra hour.

So, I don't have anything to report on the election contests themselves. I'm doing election coverage for a local TV station, and I "wanna holler and throw up both my hands." (O.K. now I'm channelling Marvin). I can only tell you that the right to vote -- the right that the Supreme Court has described as "preservative of all rights" has been severely and shamefully comprised in Maryland today. Expect lawsuits. And more voter apathy and disgust.

Posted by Sherrilyn Ifill at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (1)

Politicians Must Really Think Black Folk are Stupid

I’ve always found unsettling the degree to which politicians, of all stripes, disrespect the political intelligence of Black folk. Rarely do politicians directly engage issues of substance that matter practically to the lives of Black people. First, they rarely address us on our own turf. And, when they do (usually at church), what we get is a cynical impersonation of a Baptist preacher: overwrought “shout outs” to those representing the civil-rights generation (preferably those who marched with Dr. King); hackneyed invocations of the Exodus narrative (usually cross-referenced to banal exhortations that Black folk will overcome); and strained attempts to compare modern-day political indignities to those of a bygone era (see, e.g., Hilary Clinton's recent claim that the GOP ran the House "like a plantation").

Now, I acknowledge that politicians seek to exploit the prejudices and insecurities of all sorts of communities and that, in doing so, they often resort to visceral presentations devoid of meaningful substantive content. But I suspect that this general problem is more pronounced for Black folk. Black folk, of course, are subject to a stigma that challenges their very existential capacity. Stigma, as such, signals both that arguments on principle are largely futile and, correspondingly, that emotional appeals are likely to bear disproportionate fruit.

I think of all of this given Condoleeza Rice’s recent interview with Essence Magazine. Apparently seeking to persuade its predominately Black readers that the Iraq war is a good thing, the Secretary argued that just as people think the Iraq war is a mistake, “people . . . thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War (in this country) to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold.” She went further:

I’m sure that there were people who said, ‘why don’t we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves.’ Just because things are difficult, it doesn't mean that they are wrong or that you turn back.

She must really think Black folk are stupid. To compare the struggle in Iraq -- using any of the Administration's varied, and often contradictory, musical-chair justifications -- to the fight to rid this nation of longstanding chattel slavery borders on the unconscionable. I suppose all one needs to do is invoke slavery and/or Selma, and apparently Black folk lose all ability to think critically and rationally about substantive policy. But as oft-putting as I find these sorts of appeals, the real crime is too many Black folk fall for it. The politicians may be cynical, and condescending; but they’re not stupid.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (0)

White Media for White Candidates?

Last week, the New York Times endorsed David Yassky, a white candidate running in a majority-black congressional district in Brooklyn, New York. (For an earlier discussion of this race on blackprof, see "NY District 11: A Prism of Race and Politics in the U.S.".) Read the Times's endorsement , followed by Prof. Smith's critique of the endorsement.

Continue reading "White Media for White Candidates?" »

Posted by Terry Smith at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (2)

Congressman Al Wynn Supporters Literally Beat Down Challenger Donna Edwards Supporters?

This is from Matt Stoller over at mydd.com. The full post is here. The Washington Post story on the incident is here.

I've blogged before about Donna Edwards, who is challenging net neutrality bad guy and all around machine hack Al Wynn in Maryland's 4th district. I had thought that this district was out of reach for Edwards until 2008, but a debate last night suggests that Donna now has a real shot. She's finally put together a real campaign, and Wynn is significantly weaker than he appeared a few months ago.

Donna Edwards

I'm seeing if I can get pictures and video from the debate, which Donna won convincingly. What makes the debate interesting, though, is not that Wynn couldn't defend his record, but that the Wynn campaign is clearly in operational trouble. Prior to the debate, apparently Wynn staffers or supporters (it's not clear which) beat up a Donna Edwards volunteer in a standard scuffle over signs. .

. . During the debate, Edwards just crushed Wynn on his votes for the war, the energy bill, the bankruptcy bill, etc. Wynn is clearly a terrible Congressman, one of the biggest villains on net neutrality. What the debate proved is that he's also a terrible politician who has maintained his seat in Congress through a mixture of fear, machine politics, and voter apathy. The fact that Edwards, a first-time candidate who has had significant trouble with her campaign, is rattling Wynn, is a big deal. I initially was very excited about Donna, since she is by most accounts an extremely principled and savvy progressive with a great reputation in both Maryland and DC.

She really is one of the good guys. For a variety of reasons, including not being in the ole boys network and thus being frozen out of the electoral machinery, as well as being a first-time candidate, she couldn't get her campaign up to snuff to oust a long-time machine politician.

Over the last two months, that has changed. Edwards has a real campaign, with significant field presence and a professional set of operators hammering at Wynn. She's picking up a great deal of local media exposure, and the thousands of door-knocks are having an effect.

Continue reading "Congressman Al Wynn Supporters Literally Beat Down Challenger Donna Edwards Supporters?" »

Posted by Spencer Overton at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Did a U.S. Senator Call a South Asian American staffer a monkey?

The following excerpt is from CNN.com, and the full version is here.

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- A volunteer of Indian descent working for Democrat Jim Webb's U.S. Senate campaign said Monday he felt insulted when Sen. George Allen called him a name that sounded like "Macaca" during a rally in western Virginia.

S.R. Sidarth, 20, spent last week following Allen's "listening tour" and filming the appearances for the Webb campaign, which distributed a video clip of Friday's appearance to reporters.

"This fellow over here with the yellow shirt -- Macaca or whatever his name is -- he's with my opponent," Allen said. "He's following us around everywhere."

Macaca is a term associated with a species of monkeys. "This is not something we knew," said Allen campaign spokesman Dick Wadhams. . . .

Asked what he thought Allen meant by using the word Macaca, Sidarth said: "I took it to mean that was the first thing that came to his mind when he saw a person of color. It does have connotations in Hispanic cultures of being associated with a monkey." Sidarth, who said he had introduced himself to the senator earlier in the week, said he felt Allen "was singling me out as a person of color when the rest of the audience was Caucasian."

The video clip shows Allen telling the crowd: "Let's give a welcome to Macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia." Sidarth was born and raised in Fairfax County.

Wadhams said Allen called attention to Sidarth simply to welcome him to "a place in Virginia Webb has never been to and probably never will be to.". . . .

The words could be especially damaging when considered in the context of Allen's history of displaying the Confederate flag. . . . Allen used to keep the flag in his living room, and he wore a Confederate lapel pin for his high school yearbook photo. . . .

Posted by Spencer Overton at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Claude Allen and the Hypocrisy of the Right

Last Friday, former Bush domestic policy advisor Claude Allen pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his January arrest for refund theft. According to evidence, including surveillance tapes, Allen single-handedly bilked Maryland area department stores for nearly $5000 by stealing merchandise, producing a receipt from legally purchased items, and obtaining a cash refund.

Allen’s guilty plea and subsequent apology stood in sharp contrast to his earlier public stance. As recently as March, Allen’s attorneys defiantly asserted his innocence and promised the public that the “series of misunderstandings” would soon be cleared up. Last week, however, a suddenly remorseful Allen apologized for his misdeeds and begged for the court’s mercy.

Of course, 180-degree turns are not uncommon in the political or legal realm. Initially, an individual declares his or her innocence in order to keep all available options open. After deciding that a confession is the best option, the guilty party becomes instantly contrite and begs for mercy. This is a particularly popular strategy among elected officials. Who would be surprised, for example, if Louisiana congressman William “Ice Cold” Jefferson eventually provided a different explanation for the $90,000 that the FBI found in his freezer?

More important than his apparent mendacity, Allen’s scandal exposes the hypocrisy that often emerges from the Right when one of its own is in a precarious position. Immediately after their golden (brown) boy was arrested, conservative spin-doctors went to work.

Suddenly, the same crew that spends the bulk of its political life “getting tough” on crime through zero tolerance policies, three strikes laws, and mandatory minimums was scrambling to explain away the “shocking and disappointing” actions of one of its own. This time around, context, social conditions, and individual circumstance were offered by conservatives as indispensable factors to consider. If only they could be so sympathetic to people who steal and don’t make $161,000 a year.

(Tangent: Am I the only one that’s a little embarrassed that Allen, a former Federal Court of Appeals nominee, squandered a stellar career for $5000? At least White Republicans steal millions. I think I finally understand what Bush was saying about “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”)

Prior to his sentencing, Allen apologized for his thievery and explained that his actions were due to a lack of sleep – he was, after all, forced to work 14-hour days-- as well as high levels of stress in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Question: Would the ultra-conservative Allen have accepted that excuse from the New Orleans residents who were recently convicted for looting alchohol during the Katrina disaster? Probably not.

Fortunately, the prosecution and Montgomery County (Md.) Circuit Court Judge Eric Johnson was far more merciful than Claude Allen would have likely been. Although he was facing up to 15 years in prison for each of the 25 counts of felony theft, he was able to plead down to a single misdemeanor. Since he was sentenced to 18 months of “probation before judgment” –the three Katrina liquor looters, on the other hand, were given 15 years of Federal time-- Allen won’t end up with a criminal record nor will he lose his license to practice law.

To be clear, I believe that Claude Allen's punishment was fair and fitting. If anything, I'm bothered by the fact that such mercy isn't equally accessible to many others. Fortunately for Allen, someone took notice of the very things that he and his colleagues systematically discount.

I wonder how he feels about those crazy liberal judges now.

Posted by Marc Lamont Hill at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Mel Gibson and the Politics of Apologies

My Aunt Sarah, sitting on her front porch, would often say to me , “Liquor make you tell the truth.” Her point was that, despite people’s claims that “the alchohol made me do it,” the state of inebriation doesn’t typically force us to say things we don’t mean. Instead, the spirits simply remove the inhibitions that police our inner most thoughts and feelings.

This certainly seemed to be the case last week when an intoxicated Mel Gibson was pulled over for speeding on a Malibu highway. As the police attempted to take him into custody, Gibson went on a lengthy and vicious anti-Semitic tirade, seemingly blaming the Jews for everything from global warfare to Bobby Brown leaving New Edition.

Fully aware that such moves are a severe occupational hazard, a sobered up Gibson quickly issued a public statement in which he expressed regret and shame for his antics. More importantly, he expressed disbelief at the anti-Semitic nature of his own comments, assuring us that his drunken rant was not reflective of his true beliefs. Soon after, Jewish leaders like Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, made it clear that they were unwilling to accept his apology. Why? Because they didn’t believe him.

Good for them.

The mother wit of my Aunt Sarah aside, there are multiple reasons to believe that Gibson is less than contrite. Despite numerous attempts, Gibson has failed to unequivocally reject his father’s claims that the Holocaust never happened, instead choosing to sidestep the question with fancy rhetorical footwork. Also, The Passion of the Christ, Gibson’s record-breaking film, placed exclusive blame on the Jews for the death of Jesus at the expense of Roman accountability. Additionally, Gibson has made equally vicious public statements against other groups, such as women and the LGBT community. Surely, all of these issues weighed into the ADL’s decision to reject Gibson’s dubious apology.

My point here isn’t to jump on top of the anti-Gibson pile, although there is plenty of reason to do so. Instead, I believe that there is a lesson to be learned here for everyone, particularly Black people: Stop accepting everyone’s apologies!

Of course, I am not suggesting that there aren’t moments when people’s true feelings are contradicted by their public comments. Nor am I ignoring the idea that people have the capacity to become different and better after receiving public or private critique. Under such circumstances, it is imperative that the aggrieved party facilitate the healing process by forgiving, though never forgetting, their abuser. Unfortunately, in the current age of so-called political correctness, such instances are rare.

Far too often, public apologies are perfunctory gestures that have more to do with saving face than legitimate growth. Does anyone really think that Pat Robertson still doesn’t want Hugo Chavez assassinated? Has Rev. Willie Wilson really changed his disgusting views on gays and lesbians? Does George W. Bush really feel bad about prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib? Does Bobby Brown really regret leaving New Edition? A look at each of these men’s bodies of work certainly doesn’t inspire faith in their conversion experiences.

For Black people, the politics of apologies is particularly dangerous, as mea culpas are often used to end public discussion about complex and consistent problems. For example, what good is the Senate’s 2005 resolution to apologize for lynching if the modern day prison industrial complex is replicating the conditions of the very slave industry that enabled Black people to hang from trees? After such apologies are offered and accepted without concrete concessions (such as reparations), further public conversation is considered excessive, and persistent activists are conveniently tagged as race card players and pain pimps .

To be sure, public apologies can yield enormous symbolic and material value. It is critical, however, that we not fetishize repentant words and ignore the deeper complexities, contexts, and contradictions that informed the initial misstep.

Posted by Marc Lamont Hill at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

“She’s My Best Friend” (and Secretary of State)

Now that the knives are out and a powerful cadre of conservatives are privately slamming Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice for not being harder on Iran and North Korea, it may be time for Dr. Rice, who’s been on retainer for the Bush family for some time, to remember the old adage that “what comes around goes around.” Hawks in and out of the Administration are preparing to get her dumped just like they did her predecessor Colin Powell. Remember, she serenely stepped into Powell’s shoes assuming, I guess, that her greater “access” to the President would insulate her from the machinations of Cheney, Rumsfeld and their minions. Why would she think that she would fare better than Powell, who was enormously talented and tremendously popular both in and outside the United States? Once Powell had expended his considerable capital on the world stage by making that absurd and embarrassing presentation to the U.N. to justify going to war in Iraq, he was no longer useful for the Administration. His days as Secretary of State were numbered from the moment that performance was completed.

Some say Bush won’t dump Rice, because of their friendship and because he “respects her” too much. Really? If Bush respects Rice as his Secretary of State, then why, when all hell was breaking loose in the Middle East last Thursday, did he call for Rice to accompany him on his visit to the NAACP Convention? Did the President of the United States think they wouldn’t let him in to the convention unless he produced a black friend as a kind of racial pass card? If so, there are other blacks in the administration – Alphonso Jackson (HUD), for one – who could have come along. So why does Bush pull Rice off her post last Thursday, when she should have been feverishly making calls to Syria and Israel and Lebanon, and packing her bag to fly out to Beirut? (And more importantly, when she should have been calling for a ceasefire? Not a conditional ceasefire --just a plain, old-fashioned ceasefire). Because he respects her? How does it play to the rest of the world to see the Secretary of State sitting at the NAACP Convention listening to the President’s speech, at a time when her entire focus should have been on trying to save lives in the Middle East? But I guess that’s what friends are for. To hold your hand when you have to play an unfriendly room.

I’m betting that Rice’s days as Secretary of State are numbered, friendship or no friendship. Bush make think he’s “the decider,” but I’m betting that Cheney, Rumsfeld and their deputies will have the last say on this one. And I’m betting that Rice will even consent to stay on as some kind of “advisor” once she’s stripped of her power. And like former Secretary Powell, she’ll loyally keep her mouth shut after she’s forced out. That’s what friends are for. For more speculation on Rice’s fate read this Salon.com article.

Posted by Sherrilyn Ifill at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

The Politicization of the Civil Rights Division

Yesterday’s Boston Globe reports here on the Bush Administration’s perversion of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. One of course is not surprised by the sea change the Department has witnessed under this Administration. I posted here previously on the way the Division has been stood on its head — so-called reverse racism against Whites, rather than continued institutional prejudice against racial minorities, is the Division’s current preoccupation. The substantive realignment of priorities should be no surprise. Despite the President’s protestations to the contrary at last week’s NAACP convention, what should folks of color reasonably expect from the GOP concerning civil-rights enforcement?

That said, I must be naïve, because I’m surprised — though not shocked — by the utter shamelessness of this Administration. First, the Administration dismantled the long-standing Division practice — used by both Republican and Democratic administrations — of authorizing panels of career attorneys, rather than political appointees, to make staff-attorney hiring decisions. That was brazenly political, so the handwriting was on the wall. But now the Globe reports that almost 60% of the attorneys hired by the Division since this policy change have no experience whatsoever in civil rights. It’s one thing to pursue a conservative civil-rights agenda under at least a pretense of jurisprudential cover. It’s quite another to indecorously use law as a footstool for one’s political project.

Public respect for the rule of law depends substantially on the public perception that the law operates beyond the political. The politicization of law corrupts law itself, engendering public disrespect for its legitimacy — simultaneously demeaning the judiciary as little more than a glorified legislature. Even those who do not share a progressive vision of civil-rights enforcement, therefore, should be appalled by the Administration’s politicization of the Civil Rights Division. But, for those who do, the concern with the perversion of law is coupled with disgust for the racial indignities people of color will suffer on account of the Administration’s shameless subversion of the Civil Rights Division.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (2)

U.S. Senate Votes to Renew Voting Rights Act 98-0

The House version was passed on July 13, 2006, by a vote of 390 to 33. This is a major victory for civil rights advocates.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 05:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Transcript of President Bush's Speech to the NAACP

President Bush today addressed -- finally -- the NAACP's national convention. You can read his remarks here.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (2)

Is the NAACP Still Relevant?

NAACP's Seal

The NAACP is holding its national convention this week. George Curry reports that the organization has inflated its membership numbers over the years, and is finally coming clean. According to Curry, the organization has claimed for decades that it had somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 registered members, though in fact the number was substantially less. Bruce Gordon, the year-old President and CEO, apparently wants to bring these numbers closer to reality, recently acknowledging, without disclosing specific numbers, that the organization has fewer than 300,000 members.

But what most intrigues me in Curry’s article are his claims as to why the membership numbers are so low. According to Curry,

It is Black America, not the NAACP, that should be embarrassed that with a population of 38 million African-Americans, less than 300,000 are dues-paying members of the NAACP. Over the years, many African-Americans know that without the work of the NAACP, the official barriers of segregation and second-class citizenship would not have crumpled. And in local communities throughout the nation, when there is a police brutality case, often the victim’s first action is to contact his or her local NAACP chapter.

My reaction was the opposite of Curry’s: My first thought was whether the NAACP, in fact, is currently relevant to the core concerns driving the daily experience of Black folk. Implicit in Curry’s challenge is the presupposition that the NAACP remains meaningfully relevant to the issues of primary concern to Black folk. In support of his thesis, Curry relies primarily on the NAACP’s work in eliminating the legal barriers supporting Jim Crow. The only current manifestation of the NAACP’s relevance is Curry’s contention that victims of police brutality often call the NAACP on the first sign of misconduct.

Curry’s statement is illuminating less by what it includes than what it omits. In terms of what he says, I find neither of Curry’s premises persuasive concerning the NAACP’s contemporary relevance to the lives of Black folk. The NAACP of course has a proud, glorious history. Founded by perhaps the greatest intellectual in African-American history, W.E.B. DuBois, the NAACP was at the forefront of efforts to dismantle the legal infrastructure of American apartheid. But, as meaningful as that work was, we are now four decades removed from the dislocation of segregation’s “official barriers,” to use Curry’s standard. And, while police brutality certainly is a substantial current concern, polls generally show that it’s a much lower priority to the masses of Black folk than violent crime, public schools, jobs, health-care affordability, cultural matters, and criminal-justice concerns substantially more broad — the discriminatory exercise of prosecutorial discretion, sentencing disparities, and mandatory minimums, among them — than police brutality. None of these issues appear in Curry’s sparse predicate. That omission is telling.

I’m concerned that, on the ground, the NAACP is increasingly irrelevant to the issues Black folk face on a daily basis. The NAACP doesn’t seem to have an engaged grassroots presence on those issues vital to the daily lives of most Black folk. My team and I, for example, represent large numbers of Black folk and others seeking basic entitlements from government — principally, in our work, better schools and adequate housing. We’re heavily connected to several community organizations in this work, as we’re well aware that teams accomplish far more than individuals. But the NAACP, in large part, is nowhere to be found on these issues — and I don’t think our experience is atypical. If White folk, particularly in government, act in an arguably racist way on a particular issue, the NAACP is present. Yet when Black folk struggle on a day-to-day basis to find practical solutions to the challenges that encumber their everyday lives, the NAACP is missing in action. That, I’m afraid, may account for the diminished membership rolls. And that, I hope, may compel the NAACP to do better.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)

The President of the United States

President Bush just left the G8 summit of world leaders in St. Petersburg, Russia. Thinking his microphone had been disconnected, the President spoke candidly with Russian President Vladimir Putin and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The transcript is as follows:

Bush to Putin: I gotta leave by 2:15. They want me out of town so they can free up your security forces.

No, just going to make it up. I'm not going to talk too long like the rest of them. Some of these guys talk too long.

Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight. How about you? When are you going home? This is your neighborhood doesn't take you long to get home.

You eight hours? Me too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country. Takes him eight hours to fly home. Not Coke, diet Coke. Russia’s big and so is China.

Yo, Blair. What are you doing? Are you leaving?

Blair: No, not yet. On this trade thing…

Bush: Yeah, I told that to (inaudible). If you want me to. I just want some movement. Yesterday I didn't see much movement. The desire to move.

Blair: It may be that it’s impossible.

Bush: I'll be glad to say. Who's introducing me?

Blair: Angela

Bush: Well tell her to call on it. Well, tell her to put me on the spot.

Thanks for the sweater; it was awfully thoughtful of you. I know you picked it out yourself.

Continue reading "The President of the United States" »

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Voting Against Voting Rights

Yesterday’s final vote in the U.S. House was 390 members in favor of renewing important provisions of the Voting Rights Act, and 33 members against. Most Republicans and all Democrats voted in support of renewal. Below is the list of the 33 members who voted against renewal:

Charles Norwood (R-GA) voted against renewal. Richard Baker (R-LA), J. Gresham Barrett (R-SC), Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), Joe Barton (R-TX), Jo Bonner (R-AL), Dan Burton (R-IN), John Campbell (R-CA), Mike Conaway (R-TX), Nathan Deal (R-GA), John Doolittle (R-CA), John Duncan (R-TN), Terry Everett (R-AL), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Phil Gingrey (R-GA), Joel Hefley (R-CO), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Wally Herger (R-CA), Sam Johnson (R-TX), Steve King (R-IA), John Linder (R-GA), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Gary Miller (R-CA), Charles Norwood (R-GA), Ron Paul (R-TX), Tom Price (R-GA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Ed Royce (R-CA), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Thomas Tancredo (R-CO), William Thornberry (R-TX), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)

Posted by Spencer Overton at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Act to Renew the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act renewal was stalled, but it looks like it is moving again. The bill is supposed to come to the House floor for debate this week.

Unless they are renewed, two important provisions of the Voting Rights Act expire in 2007. One provision provides for translated election materials in areas with large numbers of citizens who are limited in their English skills. The second provision requires that certain cities, counties, and states show that changes to their election procedures are not discriminatory before the changes are adopted.

The moment is critical. The right to vote for millions of Americans hangs in the balance, and a failure to renew could also mean the loss of hundreds or even thousands of elected officials of color.

Please go here to automatically send an email to your congressperson urging renewal of the Voting Rights Act (it is very easy, it only takes two minutes).

Posted by Spencer Overton at 06:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Who Will Own the “Chocolate City at the End of the Day ”?

A picture of a house damaged by Hurricane Katrina As we near the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29th, it’s worth remembering Mayor Ray Nagin’s controversial campaign comment that “This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."

Before the storm 66% of New Orleans residents were African American. Brown University Sociologist, John Logan, published a detailed structural analysis of New Orleans and the Coast after Katrina concludes “if the post-Katrina city were limited to the population previously living in areas that were undamaged by the storm – that is, if nobody were able to return to damaged neighborhoods – New Orleans is at risk of losing more than 80% of its black population”. (full report here)

By race. Damaged areas were 45.8% black, compared to 26.4% in undamaged areas.
By housing tenure. 45.7% of homes in damaged areas were occupied by renters, compared to 30.9% in undamaged communities.
By poverty and employment status. 20.9% of households had incomes below the poverty line in damaged areas, compared to 15.3% in undamaged areas. 7.6% of persons in the labor force were unemployed in damaged areas (before the storm), compared to 6.0% in undamaged areas.”

Today, the racial composition of the city is still unsettled. However, there are three important forces that will change the composition of the economic status of ownership of the land in New Orleans, whatever the racial composition of the residents of the city may be in the future.

1. Eminent Domain. The Bring New Orleans Back Commission , plans to make aggressive use of the power of eminent domain authorized by the Kelo v. New London case which held that a city is entitled to take a privately owned residence to provide land for a private developer to advance a development plan that the elected officials deem to be for a “public purpose”.

2. The Federal Government announced that it will raze 5,000 Units of Public Housing.
The St. Bernard, C. J. Peete, B. W. Cooper and Lafitte housing developments where the demolition will take place represent more than 60 percent of the conventional public housing in the city. This destruction of housing for poor residents prompted one former resident of the projects to say “they are trying to steal New Orleans from us”

3. Market Forces. The New York Times reports today that the prices of housing, even badly damaged housing, all over the city have increased in value above what the prices were before the storm. “. Speculators, and bargain hunters have stimulated demand for housing, driving up prices, touching off a Post Katrina gold rush, in which “flooded houses in the city are being bought as well, often at deep discounts of as much as $50 a square foot less than they would have sold for before the hurricane”

The combination of the three factors listed above will create virtually irresistable forces to displace the poorest former residents, including renters and many owners of homes in the Ninth Ward, the area of the city most devasted by flooding from the breached levees.

In a series of posts this week I will explore the potential impact of the convergence of federal and local property ownership policies with market forces that will realign the distribution of ownership of private residential land in New Orleans after the storm.

Posted by Emma Coleman Jordan at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (1)

Who's Standing in the Schoolhouse Door, Now?

In a stinging blow for urban school reform, the Democratically-controlled New York State Assembly, prodded by the teachers' unions, rejected an attempt by the administration of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to raise to 150 the current 100-school statewide cap on charter schools. This modest increase would have been a drop in the bucket, considering that New York State has several thousand public elementary and secondary schools. But apparently even this negligible quantity of choice was too much for Democrats to bear.

Charter schools have become a beacon of hope for thousands of New York City families, particularly families of color whose children have been locked in a bureaucratic, monolithic system of regular public schools that have demonstrably failed for decades. Not only have the children attending charter schools out-performed their counterparts in the city schools, but also there is evidence that the competitive pressures charter schools place on regular schools have compelled traditional systems to soften many of the bureaucratic constraints - rigid tenure rules; fixed compensation practices; inflexible teacher-assignment policies; and unyielding curricular and pedagogical practices - that precipitate urban-district under-performance. Charter schools thus facilitate the improvement of regular public schools, as the accountability engendered by competition cannot be replicated in a model premised solely on political accountability.

It is well beyond time for people of color to challenge vehemently the educational policies of the Democratic leadership that have failed our children for decades. Too many Democrats would prefer to deny poor folk the opportunity to make educational decisions for themselves - notwithstanding these Democrats wouldn't permit their own children to be educated in city schools. At the same time, Democrats, by and large, continue to lord over urban school systems that have consigned generation after generation of children of color to an educational genocide that threatens the very survival of the Black community.

As I consider those families who could have chosen a different future for their children had New York's Democrats not pandered to narrow interest groups, I can't escape a burning question: Who's standing in the schoolhouse door, now?

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Supporting Inclusion Through Bilingual Ballots

Sometimes black folk jump on the scapegoating bandwagon (opponents of inclusion sometimes locate these black folk, and put them up front as spokespeople to justify exclusion). Thus, in a series of posts, I'm explaining why all Americans should support translated election materials.

Opponents of translated election materials argue that since naturalized citizens are required to know English as a condition for naturalization in the United States, bilingual ballots are unnecessary. This is inaccurate for several reasons, as noted in Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression (pp. 135-142):

1) Over 70% of people who use translated election materials were born in the United States (e.g., some who live on American Indian tribal lands, some people educated in segregated Texas schools in the 1960s and 70s that did not teach English, and others).

2) Many people who use translated election materials are functional in English, but feel much more comfortable voting in another language. While naturalization requires a basic understanding of English, voting requires a higher level of proficiency because it involves technical referenda language and other terms like "elector" and "comptroller."

3) Millions of Americans benefit from language assistance in voting.

4) Voter turnout among Latino and Asian American citizens trails black and white citizen turnout by 15-20 percentage points. This gap will likely widen without language assistance.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 11:17 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Responding to the Slippery Slope

LaLinda responded to my assertion that bilingual ballots advance integration rather than cultural separatism by asking the following series of questions:

"Bilingual in which language? Spanish? Chinese? Korean? Vietnamese and all their 45 dialects? Russian? Italian? Portuguese? Farsi? Tagalog? Arabic? Hebrew? Romanian? Which???"

Opponents of bilingual ballots often raise these questions to suggest that we're headed toward a "Tower of Babel" slippery slope with hundreds of languages and mass confusion at the polling place (I don't purport to know LaLinda's motivation).

Section 203 the Voting Rights Act responds to this by requiring language assistance only where it is most needed. Generally, the law requires that a county provide language assistance only if it has more than 10,000 voting-age citizens or 5 percent of voting-age citizens who speak a single foreign language.

Further, covered counties can target their translated election materials, concentrating bilingual poll workers and bilingual ballots in precincts that need them, and not offering them in areas where they won't be used (see pp. 138-139 of Stealing Democracy).

In a future post I'll discuss the other issue implicated in the question above: Why does Section 203 apply only to language groups (Spanish and Asian, American Indian, and Alaska Native languages) that have faced significant discrimination at the polls as determined by Congress?

Posted by Spencer Overton at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Why Black Folk Should Support Bilingual Ballots

Two important parts of the Voting Rights Act expire in 2007 unless renewed. Section 5 requires that certain states and localities show that their election changes are not discriminatory before they adopt them, and Section 203 provides for language assistance at the polls for Americans with limited English proficiency.

Some African Americans either largely ignore Section 203, and I've heard a couple assert that voting should only be in English (the old, "we've worked hard for our rights, and now others are cashing in on our hard work while we continue to suffer").

Over the next few days I will post a number of reasons that all Americans should support bilingual ballots.

Chapter 5 of Stealing Democracy, La Sociedad Abierta, addresses translated election materials.

Some argue that translated election materials breed balkanization. I disagree. Bilingual ballots advance citizen engagement and integration rather than cultural separatism. Prior to language assistance, many citizens with limited English skills went unregistered because they could not read registration applications or ballots or talk with poll workers. Rather than reach out to citizens who spoke another language, candidates and political parties excluded them and ignored their political interests. Rather than fix real community problems, politicians often scapegoated communities that spoke a language other than English to maintain political power, creating a false and destructive us/them divide.

Bilingual ballots gave politicians, political parties, and others greater incentives to reach out and form coalitions with language groups. Because language communities had the power of the vote, they could hold politicians accountable. Suddenly there was much less political gain in scapegoating, and much more in listening and responding to the concerns and priorities of all Americans.

Posted by Spencer Overton at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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Who will control the U.S. Congress after the mid-term elections?
	Democrats will control both the House and Senate.
	Democrats will control the House – Republicans will retain control of the Senate.
	Democrats will control the Senate – Republicans will retain control of the House.
	Republicans will retain control of both the House and Senate.

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About

Guest Contributors

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Blogroll

October 20, 2007

Barack Obama on Tavis Smiley

October 19, 2007

Men Step Up, Government Steps Off?

October 11, 2007

Bush, Faith, and S-CHIP

September 23, 2007

Obama on Immigration

September 13, 2007

Guest Post By Professor Trina Jones of Duke Law School on Erwin Chemerinsky

September 10, 2007

A New School Year – A Time to Weep and a Time to Act

September 09, 2007

Oprah for Obama

August 15, 2007

Recommended Reading

August 02, 2007

Some Unfortunate Rhetoric from Cory Booker

July 09, 2007

Bond Must Go

June 25, 2007

Getting Out the Black Vote

June 22, 2007

The Limitless Shamelessness of Dick Cheney

June 16, 2007

A Tale of Two Victims: Who Speaks for the Thousands of Innocent Non-Whites Prosecuted Wrongfully?

June 03, 2007

Books on Condie

May 23, 2007

Is Intervention in Darfur Really, Really Worth American Blood?

May 15, 2007

New Orleans: A Continuing National Disgrace

May 07, 2007

Perhaps Fairness Requires Everyone to Do Two Years of Military Service

May 01, 2007

A Significant Development for the Blackroots

April 21, 2007

French Elections: A Day of Reflection

April 17, 2007

Obama Leads Grassroots Fundraising

April 05, 2007

IS THIS ANY WAY FOR A REPUBLICAN TO BEHAVE?

April 04, 2007

Honoring the Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

March 30, 2007

"MC" Karl Rove "Raps"

What She Learned From Katrina

March 28, 2007

The Case Against Black Leadership

March 23, 2007

Bacardi Jackson Update: Ogletree Supports Obama

March 15, 2007

CBC Considering Presidential Debate on Fox

March 02, 2007

Kicking Joe Out of the Party

February 21, 2007

Is South Carolina Worthy to Lead the Presidential Primary Process?

February 13, 2007

Three Observations on Obama’s Announcement

February 07, 2007

A Different Take On Obama's Prospects?

February 05, 2007

Condie for President??

February 01, 2007

Race and the word “Articulate”

January 31, 2007

Fox News and Joe Biden: How Do We Handle Barack Obama?

January 28, 2007

Hillary hits Iowa

January 24, 2007

White Members of the Congressional Black Caucus

January 22, 2007

Questioning the Candidates on Foreign Affairs