After an intense week of public reproval for making racist remarks.  1962 Nobel Prize winner, James D. Watson was suspended from his position as Chancellor and board member of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a censure for his remarks.  The 79 year old Nobel winning scientist resigned today in ignominy.

The NYT contains this story with the separate statements made by Cold Springs Harbor and Watson.  The NYT reports that: "He also referred to his Scots and Irish forebears, saying their lives were guided by faith in reason and social justice, 'especially the need for those on top to help care for the less fortunate.' ”

 Today's NYT contains a story about the bargains that opportunity-seeking small investors are finding at the auction of foreclosed homes.  For those of us who specialize in the banking and commercial transactions field, the auction is a standard fixture of bad debt resolution procedures.  For me, however, as I described below in an earlier post, Race and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, there is racial a disparity in foreclosures,  The four major conclusions of the ACORN study were as follows:

"For refinance loans, our findings show that in 2006:

1. High-cost loans made up a significant proportion of the home refinance loans made to

minorities.

2. Minority homeowners were more likely than white homeowners to receive a high-cost loan when

refinancing.

3. Racial disparities persisted even among homeowners of the same income level.

4. Minorities received a greater proportion of high-cost loans than they received of prime loans.

5. Lower-income homeowners of all races were more likely to receive a high-cost loan than upperincome

borrowers

" In 2006, 52.0% or one out of two, home refinance loans made to African-Americans were
high-cost loans and, 38.7%, or more than one out of every three, home refinance loans made to Latinos
were high-cost loans. In contrast, only 26.7%, or one out of four, home refinance loans made to whites
were high-cost loans."

The racial disparity in the distribution of these bad loans will lead to a racial disparity in the ownership of foreclosed properties .  I encourage Blackprof readers to watch the headlines as the foreclosures accelerate.  This will be a silent wealth crisis, that has the potential to further exacerbate the preexisting wealth disparities between blacks, latinos and whites.  

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.

Dr. James Watson, who received the Nobel Prize, in 1962, for being the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, has become embroiled in a nasty racial controversy because of remarks he made.  The British Broadcasting Network, BBC, reports that Watson told the London Sunday Times  that  "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".  He went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".

The British Science Museum has cancelled a speech that Watson was scheduled to deliver there on Friday, October, 19th.  The Museum spokesperson explained the cancellation by noting that "It is a shame that a man with a record of scientific distinction should see his work overshadowed by his own irrational prejudices...We know that eminent scientists can sometimes say things that cause controversy and the Science Museum does not shy away from debating controversial topics. However, we feel Dr Watson has gone beyond the point of acceptable debate and we are, as a result, cancelling his talk."

“I’m part Native American.” 

“My grandmother...”

“Cherokee Indian…”

"Princess…”

It is quite interesting to hear declarations of Indian blood without any indication of identity or affiliation. Like my late colleague Vine Deloria, Jr., I wonder too, why is the indigenous forbear always female (safe choice), Cherokee (quite popular) and royal (not a commoner)?  And why must people share this with me as if we are Native Blood Brothers?   Most of the people who divulge with information are about as Indian as Heidi.

Many states retained laws that allowed persons to claim remote amounts of Indian blood, but still classify themselves as white.  Similar amounts of black blood would render a person’s claim to whiteness as moot.  In Virginia, a statute existed that defined “white” as “one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and hav[ing] no other non-Caucasic blood.”  This allowance permitted Indian blood to override the doctrine of hypodescent — its presence alongside European ancestry did not automatically prevent one from being white.

In its accommodation of one-sixteenth Indian blood, the 1924 Racial Integrity Act venerated the “Pocahontas Exception.” Acknowledging the interracial marriage of Pocahontas, the famous “Indian Princess” and the Englishman John Rolfe, the Pocahontas Exception ensured that their descendants could be legally white. The “First Families of Virginia ” who demanded this accommodation wanted to celebrate their ancestral and historic ties to colonial America.  For elite Virginians to demand this accommodation demonstrates a shifting concept of racial purity. Instead of tainting one’s civic and legal liberty as a white person, strains of Indian blood assume a different, more exotic and arguably desirable meaning.

Virginia’s statutory conception of “white” codifies what I call miscegenistic exceptionalism, where the intent of white racial purity exempts and protects certain nonwhite ancestries from the threat of taint.  In this case, the exception is Indian blood, and this is codified by law.  Racial groups normally considered nonwhite may receive honorary status as “white,” underscoring the argument of race as a social construct rather than a biological truth.

Why is there an exception for Pocahontas, or other Indian Princesses? What prevents a similar loophole for Irish Nell , George Washington’s Venus or Sally Hemings ? What enduring legacy of American collective memory categorically resists the embracement of a “Slave Grandmother Complex?” With increasing numbers of Americans freely and lately claiming Native ancestry, we may ask why such affirmations do not meet the triumvirate of resistance, shame, and secrecy that regularly accompanies findings of partial African ancestry. In other words, what is the exceptional legal and social status of the Indian Grandmother that allows her to escape the reach of antimiscegenation law?

For a longer answer to this question, see, Kevin Noble Maillard, The Pocahontas Exception: American Indians and Exceptionalism in Antimiscegenation Law

Brown gets all the attention.  Loving v. Virginia does not.  In fact, most Americans do not even know the legal history of interracial marriage.  But everyone certainly has seen or heard of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of Loving.  In this decision, the court rendered all laws forbidding marriage between persons of different races unconstitutional.  This ruling allowed Mildred Loving, a woman of mixed African, European, and Native descent, to marry Richard Loving, a white race car driver, and live peacefully in their home state of Virginia. 

In the lower court, the state judge opined that “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents…he did not intend for the races to mix.”  In the appeal, the court decided that such separation infringed upon a fundamental right to marry.  Prohibiting interracial marriage became illegal.

How far have we come in 40 years?  Have we moved on up since Helen and Tom Willis?  One may even read interracial intimacy as fashionable.  While Asian children still claim the highest numbers in international adoption, sub-Saharan African children have become “the new black.” Novelist Danzy Senna (who is black, white, and Jewish) proclaims that “America loves us in all our half-caste glory.”  And, of course, the interracial Messiah, that “skinny kid with a funny name” sends us all into paroxysms of miscegenous glee.

And statistics may support a claim of racial freedom in marriage.  In a recent Gallup poll, white approval of interracial marriage increased from 4% in 1958 to 75% in 2007. Without a doubt, the total number of interracial marriages increased (depending on your source) as a result of Loving, from approximately 150,000 in 1960 to 1.46 million in 2000.

Yet, interracial sex is always the trump card for social offence.  Black male athletes dating or marrying white women continues to generate ire and criticism.  Political mud-slinging harps on the interracial dating record of Representative Harold Ford, Jr.  And in 1999, Sen. Bob Bennett predicted no presidential nomination problems for George Bush unless he “step[ped] in front of a bus” or “some black woman comes forward with an illegitimate child.”

Interracial sex, when posed as a threat, when completely illegal, testifies to its enduring taboo. Despite progressive posturing and harmonic celebration, mixed marriages only account for about 4% of all marriages in the United States.  Of this percentage, the of these marriages occurred between Asians and whites.

The largest growth in interracial intimacy occurs in our minds and in art. Undeniably, multiracial families, persons, and partnerships exist, yet the explosion of beige has yet to infiltrate all sectors of American society and culture. Until then, we are all guests at Hepburn and Poiter’s very, very long, long dinner.

In 1991, when Anita Hill testified in Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings, the country had never seen a high stakes confrontation between a black man and a black woman over illegal workplace sexual misconduct.  Now, sixteen years later, its fair to ask whether anything has changed in the climate for women of color in the workplace. 

Now, in the Knicks lawsuit we have a different set of allegations from a poised, well-educated black woman, Anucha Browne Sanders, a Princeton graduate and former Northwestern basketball star who told a Manhattan jury that Isiah Thomas, the coach for the Knicks basketball team, called her a "bitch" and a "ho" and other  profanities.  Browne Sanders, the Senior Vice President for Marketing for the Knicks, also charged that she was fired in retaliation for her complaints to management.  She testified that Thomas's  abusive language then turned to ardor, including unwanted "kissing" and invitations to "go off-site" with him.

Both women were greeted with character attacks and retaliation.  Browne Sanders was fired. Anita Hill was vilified first by Senators on the Judiciary Committee and then by conservative writer, David Brock in his book "The Real Anita Hill", filled with personal attacks, that he later recanted. 

 Some things have changed and some have not. One thing that has surely changed is that ordinary citizens, members of a Manhattan jury are prepared to sort through the "he said", "she said", the smiles, the dimples, or the righteous indignation about high-tech lynching, to award, not just compensatory damages, but a jaw-dropping amount of punitive damages. 

The trial testimony and verdict for punitive damages against the Knicks shows that some powerful black men still choose to concoct a toxic brew of sexually degrading images of black women in the workplace. Anita Hill testified about Thomas's references to a series of the pornographic movies featuring black women with oversized breasts. 

 Browne Sanders testified that she was called a "bitch" and a "ho" and hugged without her consent.  One witness, himself an employment discrimination lawyer, told the jury that he saw Thomas drape his arm over Browne Sander shoulder and say that it was distracting to work next to someone "so easy on the eyes", but that when she recoiled from him Thomas said,  "can't I get any love today" . It took Anita Hill almost ten years to come forth, reluctantly, to tell about her experiences.  Browne Sanders filed, well within the statute of limitations. 

 As Professor Tanya Hernandez has written here on Blackprof and in law review articles, her empirical research shows that black women are "overrepresented" among those who file sexual harassment claims with the EEOC.  Does this mean that black women are more often the target of sexual harassment, or are they just less willing to rely on internal company procedures to protect their rights?

In the lawsuit against the Knicks we see that some white men can also foster a hostile workplace for black women. Selena Roberts opinion piece for the NYT today identifies James L. Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, as a person who cultivated an atmosphere of sexual hostility and male power trips. The Garden Needs a Warning Label .

Is there a cultural defense to sexual harassment by black men against black women?  In 1991, immediately after the hearings ended, Distinguished Harvard Sociologist, Orlando Patterson argued in a NYT op-ed that even if Thomas had said what he was accused of saying, it would have been harmless "down home style of courting" that southern black men used to woo black women, and that Hill would have been very well acquainted with this style.  To be fair, Patterson retreated from this untenable position in a book of essays that Professor Hill and I co-edited: Race, Gender and Power in America, and in his book Rituals of Blood. 

 The Knicks trial featured an embarrassing video deposition in which Isiah Thomas says that it would violate his code of conduct for a white male Knicks executive to call a black woman a "bitch", but that it would be o.k. for a black man to use the same word in talking to a black woman.

Trashing the accuser's professional competence continues to be a favored defense.  Although ironically, both Thomases initially praised their accusers.  Thomas told the Senate Judiciary committee under oath:  "Senator, ...she repeatedly received promotions, as scheduled...In fact she may have been promoted on an accelerated basis.  Her assignments, for her age and experience at that time, I think were fairly aggressive".   Yet, sixteen years later in his new book, My Grandfather's Son and in a Sixty Minutes interview last Sunday, he referred to Professor Hill as a "mediocre employee".

Isiah Thomas and the Knicks, reading from the same playbook, gave Browne Sanders bonuses that totaled $217,500 between 2002 and 2005, before she accused them of sexual harassment and retaliatory firing.  Once the law suit was filed, they told a Manhattan jury that she was fired for flagging competence.

This morning I chatted with Michel McQueen Martin, on her terrific new show on NPR, Tell Me More about what had changed and what remained the same in the sixteen years since Charles Ogletree, and I were on the legal team that represented Professor Hill during her testimony in the Thomas confirmation hearings.

I want to hear from BlackProf readers. What has changed in sixteen years, and what has not?  Is the Isiah Thomas verdict a wake up call?  Or, can all women, but especially black women, expect more of the same sexual harassment and hostility in the workplace from some of the powerful men and organizations for whom they work?

What do you think?

The United States Supreme Court held in June that school districts were prohibited from voluntarily pursuing racially integrated schools except in the most cramped of circumstances.  Many civil-rights leaders loudly criticized the decision as a wholesale denial of the educational needs of black children. The reaction of Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP, is typical: He claims that all-black schools represent the racial and economic disfranchisement of black children.

This sentiment not only obscures the true significance of integrated schools, but it also disrespects the academic capacity of black children.

Racially integrated schools are vital if our nation is to viably move beyond its tragic racial history. Our culture is one that remains riven by race, and our difficulty in extricating ourselves from our racial legacy is largely a byproduct of the fact that Americans simply do not know one another across racial lines.  We don't live with one another; we don't socialize with one another; and rarely do we work with one another in collegial settings. Instead, media defines our cross-racial perceptions of one another.  I'm rarely mistaken for a law professor, and often taken for a basketball player, because most Americans -- of all racial backgrounds -- come to know black men on the basis of associations disseminated through media. And those signals -- to say the very least -- do not correlate with academia.

Integrated schools are indispensable to combating this problem -- the problem of alienation: the fact that Americans simply do not know one another, let alone understand one another, across racial lines. This is a challenge to the very character of our democracy, as it challenges the shared sense of identity and experience that makes a nation out of a hodgepodge of diverse peoples.

But this purpose is entirely distinct from the one suggested by many traditional organizations concerning the demise of school integration.

Many advocates imply that integrated schools are a precondition for black-student achievement. While learning, particularly at the upper levels, is certainly richer and deeper in diverse classrooms, integrated schools are not necessary for black children (any more than it is for White children) to learn to read, write, reason, compute math, and analyze scientific questions at a high level.

In fact, the very suggestion of such is reflective of a stigmatized conception of the competence of black children: the same sort of depressed perception of black capacity stimulating many to question whether black children can learn at all.

Black students, ultimately, need what every other child needs: good teachers; challenging curricula; adequate resources; and demanding expectations. Diversity is good too, and we should strive for it for democratic reasons. But it is by no means essential to black-student achievement, and we should be more careful to ensure that our rhetoric doesn't suggest as much. 

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

As I review my 6 year-old niece’s school supply list and syllabus for the semester, I’m reminded that it has been five years since President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act  into law. The Act sparked numerous debates concerning the use of standardized testing as an accurate gauge of student success. However, long before NCLB there were voices questioning our reliance on standardized testing and whether our schools adequately prepare students for success in the classroom and beyond. Dr. Asa G. Hilliard, III was one such voice. In a 1991 article Hilliard wrote:

 The risk for our children in school is not a risk associated with their intelligence. Our failures have nothing to do with poverty, nothing to do with race, nothing to do with language, nothing to do with style, nothing to do with the need to discover new pedagogy, nothing to do with the development of unique and differentiated special pedagogues, nothing to do with the children's families. All of these are red herrings. The study of them may ultimately lead to some greater insight into the instructional process; but at present they serve to distract attention from the fundamental problem facing us today. We have one and only one problem: Do we truly will to see each and every child in this nation develop to the peak of his or her capacities? If our destination is excellence on a massive scale, not only must we change from the slow lane into the fast lane; we literally must change highways. Perhaps we need to abandon the highways altogether and take flight, because the highest goals that we can imagine are well within reach for those who have the will to excellence.

 Hilliard, who served as the Fuller E. Calloway Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University, dedicated his professional career to promoting the academic success of disadvantaged students with a particular emphasis on poor children and students of color. He promoted the concept of cultural pluralism as a means of helping each child realize his full potential. As author of over 200 articles and books on education and child development Hilliard encouraged parents and educators to reject mediocrity and promote a more demanding learning environment that encouraged a positive self-identity. As a founding member of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, Professor Hilliard believed that an awareness and appreciation of African history was a meaningful way of promoting student achievement. Hilliard died in Egypt on Sunday, August 12, just two days before the start of classes at Georgia State.

Hilliard’s views were controversial and often elicited criticism from his contemporaries who blamed the achievement gap on student apathy and poor parental guidance. Yet Hilliard believed that even the most “at-risk” students could succeed if presented with the right school conditions. Hilliard defended his position by stating, “children, no matter what their racial or ethnic background, should be presented with pictures of the real world. That is how we can support accurate perception. In addition, this is how we assure that children from every group will find themselves at the center of materials that they study. Motivation and self-esteem are deeply affected by the topics that we choose to present and by the coverage we choose to give those topics from a pluralistic perspective. As it is true that there are many models of teaching that result in excellence in student achievement, there are also many models of excellence in pluralistic curriculum. However, as with pedagogical success, curricular success tends to be out of the awareness of the majority of our educators.”

Here’s to student success this school year and beyond.

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.