The Liberal Politics & Current Events Book Club discussion
Reality-Based Chat. Speak!
Mary wrote: "Gail, I don't see a problem with those of us who are not elected officials focusing on one issue more than (or even to the exclusion of) others. For obvious reasons, I'm more focused on race than ..."Mary, I apologize for not being more clear! The point I was trying to make was that within a special interest "group" (yours is race, mine is the environment) we need to begin thinking about the intersections and synergies between them. For example, more environmental organizations (especially those with large younger members) are highly attuned to social justice issues and very deliberate in pointing out to older members that you can't talk "climate" without addressing the social justice implications. The Executive Director of Sierra Club wrote a lengthy blog entry in support of "Black Lives Matter". Some older members were not happy, seeing that as separate from environmental concerns and none of our business (as an advocacy group focused on the environment). He was very articulate in explaining how mistaken those critics were and pushing for collaboration with and support for those working on social justice issues. All our issues and concerns are being, in part, sabotaged by the same culture and mindsets.
Within a movement (regardless of the specific issue) I'm sure there are people who take a very narrow view of things, seeing what I'll call "progressive" issues in isolation. More and more, some are pointing out that we are all suffering from some common sources of oppression (the word youth have hooked on to) even though we also suffer from singular sources that may be unique to us. I'm just trying to advocate for finding more unifying/singular sources to unite around. I do NOT mean to imply that putting your energy into a single, specific issue that matters to you is a poor choice. As you noted: "these issues don't conflict: nonwhites, women, immigrants, and working class people usually aren't against green issues ..." What I'm trying to do is help people think about the underlying causes that perpetuate inequality and sabotage efforts to combat climate change.
My personal complaint about the environmental movement is that within it, there are advocates for different, often narrow issues (wildlife, rivers, birds, parks, clean energy ... on and on it goes), who cannot seem to see that the real enemy now is climate change INaction. I can't get a simple coalition of local environmental groups to unite around a climate change agenda in addition to their specific one because it isn't their mission. I find this disheartening. I'm sure there are similar examples in groups that advocate on behalf of people of color.
The power thing really is a problem. Where we might disagree is that I think the vote alone isn't going to get us where we need to be. Change might happen at the margins, but we need deeper, more systemic change. With gerrymandered districts, loaded courts, and billionaire oligarchs, I'm not sure what leverage voting has anymore. Even when candidates appear to support our causes, then quickly change their tune once elected. Obama is a good example of that. Money trumps citizens.
Not only am I trying to get my non-fiction book published, I also am trying to get a novel, The Blue Girl Murders,published. That novel is set in Baltimore in 1966. One of the major events that summer was the convention of the Congress of Racial Equality in Baltimore. I covered it for UPI. That was convention when CORE endorsed "Black Power," as its slogan. Stokely Carmichael was the leading exponent and he spoke at the convention. He basically told whites to get out of the movement. He said it was time for blacks to take charge. And that happened. I had some white friends in CORE who left and went to the anti-war movement. Now, looking back, I think the anti-war movement increased in size and effectiveness because so many white activists left the civil rights movement to join it.(A side note, it was not long after that convention that the use of the word "Negro" began to vanish. It fact it vanished pretty quickly).
I think what happened after 1966 is illustrative of the point Gail is making. Even though MLK opposed the use of the term "Black Power" (and decided at the last minute not to attend the CORE convention), the effect of Carmichael was to diminish the role whites had in the civil rights movement, to make it mostly a black movement. I think that was the point when overall public support for civil rights began to wane. It was a very gradual decline - I'm not counting the racists and Southern whites who never supported it - and it wasn't so much that whites turned against it. They just stopped paying attention. It has taken some horrific killings recently to reignite the consciences of many.
The fact is that no progressive/liberal movement by itself can attract a large enough public following to cause major change. There has to be an umbrella over all the important movements - civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, privacy, environment, economic justice, etc. That umbrella is the progressive movement. There has to be a new Progressive Democratic Movement that emraces all these other causes and movements and presents practical solutions. And it has to be built from the ground up. State legislature have to be won to change the gerrymandering of Congress. Then Congress can be changed. City councils and mayors must be elected so that police departments are brought under control. The White House has to be controlled by progressives so that Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and the plutocrats are shut out.
It can be done, but not in one election, or even a couple. The Civil Rights Movement did not achieve its successes overnight. It took a long time and a lot of heroic people. That's what it is going to take now to solve our political crisis.
Gail, I thought of you when one of my Facebook friends said that the phrase "climate change" is being banned from textbooks in Florida. She was responding to my comment that her son and his sixth grade classmates would be less likely to become climate change deniers as adults because of what they were learning in their science classes. There are many advantages to living in a blue state, and having better educated, or at least more progressively educated, youth is one of them.Of course, education is another powerful tool, along with the vote. Educated people are more likely to look past the phony commercials bought by Wall Street money, the corporate media spin, and the politicians' doublespeak and find the truth, so they are smarter voters. But that vote is the essential first step. The Republicans realize that, which is why they are working so hard to make it harder for people to vote. The reason the gerrymandering happened is because one smart Republican strategist, recently featured on Rachel Maddow's show, figured out that the key to Republican domination was taking as many state houses as possible in 2010 just in time to gerrymander until 2020. If the Democrats had realized that and been able to get out the vote, we would have the House right now, and some of those red states would be blue. The deep systemic changes come primarily through the courts, Congress, and (to a lesser extent) the President. The President's powers to make those changes alone are actually fairly limited. He can sign or veto bills and sign some executive orders that might be challenged in the courts. But we need all of the branches to work together to bring about change. It's interesting how quickly the gay marriage thing has changed, for example, and Obama's comment (pushed by that delightful loose cannon, Vice President Biden) helped. But the courts are where that change has and will come, and of course the President (and at the state level, governors) picks the judges with some help (or obstruction) from the Senate. We don't vote for Supreme Court justices, but we do vote for the President and Congress. The Koch brothers and all of the Wall Street types always vote; our folks have to learn to vote as well and not just for President as if he (or maybe she this time) is the only person who matters.
I think we should stop being disappointed in our leaders and be disappointed in ourselves for electing such sorry leaders and expecting so much of them. I'm not disappointed in Obama, mainly because I didn't expect that much from him. I've pointed out earlier that he wasn't my original candidate in 2008. I preferred Edwards, mainly because I thought he could win and didn't really notice how little political experience he had. But I also actually liked Edwards' persona more than I did Obama's. I liked that he spent a whole day working in a hospital with a caretaker instead of the couple of hours that Obama and Clinton spent. I liked his emphasis on the poor and what he said about healthcare and the insurance companies. I thought Obama was a tad too arrogant and idealistic, and I didn't think he was a good debater. In fact, only Dodd and that weird old guy from Alaska were consistently weaker debaters than Obama in 2008.
When he was elected, I cried and fist bumped every liberal I saw, not because of what I thought it said about him (he was just a symbol) but what I thought it said about us. I thought we had overcome, reached that mountain top that Martin Luther King said we would reach when he was no longer here. So I'm disappointed in the country for the way it has responded to him and in myself for not realizing that there would be a backlash to the election of a half-black President. I should have known my history and recognized that there is always a backlash to progress (and we're seeing some of that with the gay marriage issue today).
Interestingly, I'm much more of an Obama fan now than I was when he was running for President. I think he has done a magnificent job, considering what he's had to deal with, including the unprecedented obstruction by racists in Congress and inheriting two wars and a recession. And I love it when he takes the time to educate the public (and the media) as I saw him do in an interview with Chris Matthews (I saw it on Rachel's show) last night, subtly reminding people essentially that there have been wars in the Middle East since before he was born. He also recently reminded people about the Soviet Union and how much more dangerous that country was during the Cold War than Iran is now. I love how cool he is, much cooler than I am about the attempted "high-tech" castration of the man who had the balls to send those Seals into Pakistan (our so-called ally) to get Osama. But to be fair, at least he's not a war veteran, like both George H.W. Bush and John Kerry, who have been accused of being wimps, while Bush Junior was treated like G.I. Joe as he pranced around in his fake military outfit and (to borrow a line from Bill Maher) was applauded for never having a second thought about any of his decisions because (said Bill) he never had a first thought. I like the thoughtful foreign policy that has made us the most popular country around the world and that has made McCain admit that Republicans shouldn't travel outside the U.S. because people in other countries don't like them. Hmmm. I wonder why.
Still, I'm not one of those Obama fans who think he walks on water and can do no wrong. I also noticed during that interview that he and Elizabeth Warren are on opposite sides on a trade issue. I'm with Elizabeth because one of the biggest lies about Obama is that he is a socialist. He might not be as cozy with the Wall Street folks as the Republicans or even the Clintons are, but not only did he take money from them during his campaigns, some of his top advisers are from Wall Street. That's why he's the President, and Bernie Sanders will never be.
Finally, Gail, your problems with the climate change coalition reminds me why I like to work alone. I'm like Obama with his executive orders. If I can do it myself, it will happen. If I have to work with other people, most of the time I end up frustrated and angry while nothing gets done.
Anybody else really disturbed by the uranium mining story in the Clinton campaign? Maybe we don't know all the details yet, but what has been said so far is very disturbing.
From what I understand, Hillary had nothing to do with the uranium deal.
I think that's an interesting interpretation of what happened in the Civil Rights Movement, Dan. My interpretation is that all people, including King, saw the job of the Civil Rights Movement as primarily done once Johnson signed that bill. That's why King started focusing on other areas, like poverty and even the Vietnam War. Of course, the anti-affirmative action movements of the eighties reminded us that there was more work to do. But when Obama was elected, that "mission accomplished" feeling happened again. Someone on another site claimed that Obama was the first one to use the term "post-racial." If he did, he was obviously wrong, but quite a few people believed that his election meant the end of racism, except among ignorant kooks.The Black Power Movement was, of course, the younger black generation's rejection of integration just as integration was younger blacks' rejection of Booker T. Washington's philosophy of accommodation ("cast down your buckets where you are"). The young blacks of the late sixties also rejected King's nonviolent movement as did some other liberal groups. During the late sixties and early seventies, the liberal extremists (or radicals) were the violent ones, and some conservatives like Ann Coulter will never let us forget that fact.
During my last few years of teaching, I told my students in black literature that I believed we baby boomers were the last blacks who were more militant and angry than our parents. That might be changing because of the way Obama and black men in general have been treated recently.
Beverly, I don't have the energy to be disturbed by the latest Clinton scandal--fake or real. I liked the satirical comment I saw somewhere about the hatred of Hillary Clinton peaking too soon.
Mary, the civil rights legislation passed by Congress did not negate Baltimore's ordinance that permitted certain kinds of bars to discriminate against blacks. CORE's demonstrations in 1966 in Baltimore also failed to end the practice.It wasn't until 1967 that the practice was ended. The Baltimore City Council - all Democrats - refused liberal Republican Mayor Theodore McKeldin's repeated efforts to end the discrimination. So he ordered the liquor board to revoke liquor licenses for any bar that discriminated.
McKeldin is one my all-time favorite politicans. He was most famous for his rousing nomination speech for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. He was the only Republican to serve two terms as Governor during the 20th Century. During the 1968 "riot" following MLK's killing, McKeldin, who no longer was mayor (Nancy Pelosi's father then was mayor), showed up at a confrontation between a large crowd of blacks and the national guard. He got out of his limo and walked by himself into the crowd of blacks, shaking hands, hugging people. It ended the confrontation.
By coincidence, in 1968 when I got my diploma from Johns Hopkins, McKeldin, who I had just interviewed a few days earlier (I then was working for UPI) was the graduation speaker and when he saw me handed the diploma he stood up and shook my hand. Somewhere I have a photo of that.
Shirley Chisholm was the commencement speaker when I graduated from Northwestern in 1971, Dan. But I didn't get anywhere near her. She was introduced by the president of the student body, a black classmate named Eva Jefferson, who had become famous during the 1970 protests after the Kent State murders. She even debated a Republican politician, I think Spiro Agnew, on a talk show (maybe the Mike Douglas show).Of course, the civil rights work was far from over after Johnson signed that bill in 1965. I was commenting on the perception back then, not the reality. It's understandable that after working so hard and so long to end segregation, the civil rights activists would want to rest and let others take over--the feminists, the peace activists, the mostly Latino migrant workers.
By the way, the discussion of the liberal whites' place in the movement did not begin (or end) with that CORE meeting that you described. The play that I regularly taught in black literature was James Baldwin's BLUES FOR MISTER CHARLIE, which was published in 1964. I don't know if you are familiar with that play, but it's loosely based on the murder of Emmett Till and on the civil rights movement. Through the character of Parnell (interestingly, the liberal editor of a newspaper), Baldwin addresses the place of the liberal (Southern) white in the movement at the end of the play. Here are the last two speeches: Parnell: "Can I join you on the march, Juanita? Can I walk with you?" Juanita: "Well, we can walk in the same direction, Parnell. Come. Don't look like that. Let's go on." I appreciated that Baldwin gave the last line to a black woman since (with the notable exception of Rosa Parks) their roles in the movement were often minimized, but he's saying that the blacks and whites can work on the same changes but in different ways and maybe even in different movements. Blacks needed to run their movement so that they could take the credit and the blame for what happened. Because of the history of the two races, whites tend to believe that their roles are more important than ours, even in our own movements. Even when they should be following, they want to believe they are leading.
This is a horrible thought especially considering the Supreme Court, and I don't really think it, but still...sometimes it crosses my mind that if we lose in 2016, at least there will be an opposition voice to corporate power. I'm not so sure that will be true if we win...Shelley
http://dustbowlstory.wordpress.com
Yes, I know the Baldwin play, and I agree that it wasn't something sudden, or new in 1966, but it was sort of a watershed. My white friends who were in CORE were pretty much devastated by Carmichael's speech and they quit CORE a short time later, as did many other whites. CORE was about 50% white until then. I didn't really think of the impact of this until I was reworking my unpublished novel, The Blue Girl Murders, which is set in Baltimore in 1966 with all of this as background. I reread the excerpts of Carmichael's speech that I had in my file, along with other materials I had saved. I have a copy of a news release put out by McKissick a few days before the convention saying MLK was going to be there. He didn't go because of the black power thing. The Black Muslims were allowed to hand out their newspaper and attend the session, something that never had been permitted before. I have a copy of the paper, Muhammed Speaks, that they passed out.
One of the minor characters my novel is Stan Scott, who was UPI's first black reporter and had a national beat to cover civil rights. He was in the front row when Malcolm X was killed and was personally friendly with all the leaders, including MLK and McKissick. I made up some stuff he says in the novel, and I am interested in what you think of it. Here is an excerpt. This is a scene between one of the two main characters of the novel, Nick Prescott, the UPI bureau manager, and Scott, after they have completed covering the CORE convention. There was an incident when a photographer banged into Scott and he punched the guy. The photographer was a UPI stringer from the Baltimore Sun. This actually happened, so I put it in the novel.
"Scott wrote the national stories and won the national logs by a large margin. Nick supplemented his stories for the state broadcast wire. He also got to know a couple of the local black newsmen who worked for black radio stations in Baltimore.
Scott and Nick had breakfast together at the Hilton Hotel on Sunday morning. Scott was in a philosophical mood.
"Do you know what this slogan 'Black Power' really means?" he said.
Nick wasn't sure what he meant by the question, and given that he responded, "I'm not sure I know what you mean. Doesn't it speak for itself?"
"No, really it is sort of an unfortunate choice, but it's done and there's nothing we can do about it," he said.
"What this really is about are rights that everyone has, rights that are not limited by skin color, sex, race, etc. but are possessed by all human beings, those inalienable rights that are in the Declaration of Independence. These are rights that no one gets to vote on. No one gets to grant, or deny them. No one can give them up. We all have them. At least, we all should have them."
Scott sat forward in his chair and looked right at Nick.
"But black people have not had them," he said. "We were enslaved. The Jim Crow laws discriminated against us. All kinds of laws still discriminate against us. I can't walk into a bar in Baltimore and be sure I will be served. That's wrong. You know it's wrong."
"Of course," Nick said. "But it's ending, the times really are changing."
"Things are changing, but they are changing according to the will of white people," Scott said, "according to how fast they are willing to change.
"Think about that for a minute," he said. "We are the only people in America whose inalienable rights have been alienated. Now that we are demanding the right to exercise the rights that everyone else has, we have to wait for white people to adjust to the idea. They don't have the right to control our rights. No one does. We are not going to wait any longer for the white man to give us our rights. This is what 'Black Power' is all about. We are now asserting our rights, demanding our rights, and saying that white people no longer are in control of our rights. Does that make sense to you?"
"It does," Nick said. "I understand, but practically speaking, things just don't change overnight. You are asking for people to change their attitudes very suddenly. That's not human nature."
"True, it isn't," Scott said, "and we know things are not going to change suddenly. There's a long struggle ahead, but it is time for us to stand on our own and to prove ourselves. That's what Stokely was saying, and I think he speaks for his generation, and for many others."
"You, too?"
"I think I took that step a while ago," Scott said. "I made myself a free man. I compete in the white man's world, and I do it reasonably well, but I'm my own man. I'm doing it on my terms. I'm just the beginning. Millions are going to follow, maybe not right away, but in your lifetime I think you will see it happen. And I didn't punch that photographer because he was white. I have a temper. Sometimes I can be an asshole like anyone else. Every man has that right. I'll punch anyone who interferes with my body, or my rights. Race has nothing to do with it. That is the fundamental principle."
Dan wrote: "From what I understand, Hillary had nothing to do with the uranium deal."That's good. I only saw 1 CNN report so I wasn't sure. Thanks.
I liked that last paragraph, Dan. Sometimes race has nothing to do with it; it's just a man against a man or a woman against a woman or man. The dialogue sounds realistic enough to me. Nick (who I assume is younger than Scott) sounds something like William Faulkner, who was clearly less racist than most whites (Southern or Northern) of his time but advised blacks to go slowly so that they wouldn't upset the whites who had to adjust to the change.Scott was wrong about the millions. There are more blacks in the news business now (Lester Holt might soon be the first lone black, or I guess half-black, news anchor of one of the top three broadcast stations; Max Robinson was one of three on ABC years ago) and in other high positions, especially in entertainment, but we have not made the economic progress that many of our leaders hoped we would have made by now.
I think the meaning of "millions" applies to all walks of life and in that sense he was right. There has been enormous progress for educated blacks as well as for entertainers and athletes. Not so much for those without education (however that also is the case for whites and Hispanics), and the enormous increase in the cost of education now is limiting future opportunities for all young people, not just blacks.I think at that time the whites who were supportive of the civil rights movement but cautioned patience were very aware of the deep-seated fear and hatred of many other whites and were honestly concerned about violence. There were active white rights organizations causing violence. That summer in Baltimore there was a white riot instigated by the National States Rights Party. Unlike what is going on now, the local public officials had no tolerance for this behavior and they prosecuted the principal local leader, who reminded me of a young Hitler, for inciting to riot and sent him to prison.
There has been a huge influx of blacks into the media. It especially is noticeable on local newscasts. However, notice how many are on MSNBC. Stan Scott was first black reporter for UPI. I hired the first ones in Baltimore and in Washington. I also hired the first woman to work in the Baltimore bureau. It wasn't just the blacks who were pressing for opportunities! There's definitely been a huge change in the media since then both in front of the cameras and behind them.
Mary wrote: "I think that's an interesting interpretation of what happened in the Civil Rights Movement, Dan. My interpretation is that all people, including King, saw the job of the Civil Rights Movement as p..."I don't think Dr. King found the civil rights movement over at that point. I always thought that he branched out because of the powerful interface of poverty and other issues of economic injustice on race relations. In 2010, my husband and I visited the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta. We saw many quotes from Dr. King in which he pretty much confirmed that. He viewed the Vietnam War as sapping funds from the War On Poverty which he said "was hardly even a skirmish on poverty."
In addition, the way that the draft was unfairly administered, minorities and all poor people were disproportionately going to Vietnam and getting killed.
As we all know, the Civil Rights issues have never been fully resolved. It seems to me that the ones we're left with are the more intractable ones that have their basis in class and economic inequality. As Dr. King himself acknowledged, it didn't cost the government anything to pass a law requiring black people to be served at lunch counters or seated at the front of the bus. That was the relatively easy part.
Lisa, I agree that integrating lunch counters, etc. was easier than changing racist attitudes and eliminating the socio-economic gap that continues to hold blacks back. But it certainly wasn't easy to end segregation; it took close to 100 years to end Jim Crow, and as Dan pointed out, old Jim still lived in some states. That's why I said that King felt the work was mostly done. Ending segregation was a job blacks (with help from whites) had been working on since the end of Reconstruction. At the beginning of the 20th Century, for instance, prominent blacks wanted to try a so-called Talented Tenth approach. People like James W. Johnson and W.E.B. Du Bois argued that the top blacks should be integrated while the others rode in the back of the trains and buses. So obviously the signing of that bill marked the end of the most important (or at least the most visible) work of the civil rights movement. King knew he hadn't reached the mountain top, but he thought we were near enough to see it.After the Civil Rights bill passed, King stopped focusing just on black issues and looked at issues that affected us but also had broader implications. Once we could stay in hotels and eat in restaurants, he knew we needed to be able to afford them.
Dan, I recognized that the "millions" didn't refer just to the news media. I'm not sure about journalists, but I think we may be overrepresented in entertainment, which is why I found the complaints about the Oscars silly. But while we are doing better than other nonwhites in sports, entertainment, and maybe even the news media, we still need to catch up in business and academia. That was my point.
I'm not saying it was easy for the people advocating for it to get lunch counters and buses and other accommodations integrated. Just that for the government, it could be done at low cost. It was certainly less expensive to pass the Civil Rights Law than to fund Medicaid - for example. I still think that the Civil Rights Movement isn't over. We're left with issues that are lot more difficult to resolve because they involve issues of poverty, class, and race.
I agree, Lisa, the work of the civil rights movement won't be really done until unarmed black men are no more likely to be shot in the street than unarmed white men are, and I'm no more likely to be followed in a store by security than you are. That may not happen in our lifetimes. I thought we older boomers were going to be the last generation scarred by Jim Crow. But while our children (my nieces and nephew) are less scarred by racism than we are, their children might be more scarred by the backlash to the election of Obama than they are.Still, it was natural for the civil rights activists to broaden their interests after fighting so long (the roll back of Reconstruction started in the late 1870's, and the Supreme Court legalized segregation in 1896) for integration. I predict (and we know my predictions have been wrong; remember 11/14) we will see a similar response from the gay rights movement if the Supreme Court makes gay marriage legal in all states. There will still be plenty of problems for gays to try to solve, but the primary goal will have been reached. The federal government will have declared their love equal to heterosexual love, and many of them will move on to other issues.
Isn't the backlash to Obama's re-election fueled by racism? I can't think of any other reason for it.
Lisa, of course it is. Many of them don't even disguise their racism. I think there is more overt racism by more people now than in any time since the early 60s. The key word there is "overt."
I agree, Lisa and Dan. And I find both the overt and covert racism disgusting. I may be repeating myself here, but I liked Jon Stewart's comment that if people are tired of hearing about racism, how do they think the people who have been living with it feel. Speaking for myself and some close friends and family members with whom I've discussed the issue, I can answer, "We are sick and tired of dealing with racism."But since racism is like cancer and termites in that we can't get rid of it unless we find it, one of the benefits of electing Obama is that his election revealed how much racism there still is in our country and how deeply engrained it is. When we see the contrast between Obama and Bush and realize that there are people (including the obviously insane, as well as corrupt, Cheney) who believe that Obama is the worst President ever or in their lifetime, that he is ignorant, weak, and a thug (Bush was the one with a police record and who most of us believe stole an election), we know that racism against blacks is deeply rooted in America. These bigots don't even see the irony of the first black President ever just coincidentally being the worst ever in their opinion.
The problem with racism too is it's harder to spot in ourselves than in others. I can't imagine a liberal comparing Obama to a monkey or suggesting that he's not really American. But they (and I've heard this) will say that they don't like his voice or the way he walks. One of my so-called liberal friends (who is still a friend despite my discovering and pointing out her racism) actually said she wasn't going to vote for President in 2008. She's a life-long Democrat who votes in every election and voted in 2008. Earlier in the year, she and I had both worried that Obama and Clinton wouldn't be elected if one of them was our nominee because of racism and sexism, but I, of course, was going to vote for whichever Democratic candidate was nominated. When it was Obama, I was delighted and just prayed he wouldn't be assassinated. This woman has an overtly racist boyfriend, and I guess she was influenced by him, but that's how deep the racism is. This moderate to liberal Democrat, who has a Ph.D. in English and a very close black friend (although I'm her only nonwhite friend), probably did not vote for Obama in either 2008 or 2012, although she pretended that she did after I was ready to end our thirty-six year friendship and let her know how racist I thought she was. She and I have been friends so long and are so similar in many ways that she probably momentarily forgot (we were on the telephone and seldom see each other) that I was black when she proudly declared that she wasn't going to cast a vote for President in 2008. I'm sure all of her white friends applauded her decision.
Clearly, we are much farther from that mountaintop than King thought we were in the late sixties and than I (despite my racist friend) thought we were in November, 2008. We may not get there in my lifetime.
Hi, Jeff Koob here for the first time, and I agree with y'all (I'm a progressive living in regressive South Carolina)that racism is at the root of the backlash over Obama's re-election. It's the only explanation I can see for the vicious attacks on our president's character and motivations.I'm a retired psychologist and the author of two books I'll mention in a later post. I grew up, mostly in the South, as an Army brat and was used to having black schoolmates long before most southern schools were racially integrated. I lived in Vienna 1958-62 and had black teachers at the international school I attended, as well as schoolmates from 22 countries. Then my father was stationed at Fort Benning GA and the high school I attended didn't integrate until my junior year.
I was more aware of racism than most of my peers in high school and at The Citadel, where I graduated with a BA in English and a commission in the army. In the second year of my tour in Germany I was one of four junior officers selected to attend the pilot class of the Defense Race Relations Institute (Patrick Air Force Base, FL) and return as a Race Relations Education Officer. I'd thought I was pretty knowledgeable about racism, but at the DRRI the scales fell from my eyes and I saw what had previously been invisible to me as a son of privilege. Not only did I read Malcolm X and Franz Fanon and Eldridge Cleaver, I participated in late night discussions in the barracks with black and Chicano soldiers and sailors. I'd never had an opportunity for this kind of dialogue, where nothing was held back. I came to realize that people who are visually-identifiable as African American or as belonging to another minority group live in a different America than the one white folk inhabit. I came to realize that if I wasn't part of the solution, I'd be part of the problem.
My six weeks at the DRRI and my subsequent year leading race relations seminars at Army bases in Germany changed my outlook on the "land of the free" and changed the direction my life. There were three "modules" to the seminars: personal racism, institutional racism, and inter-racial communication. I learned that most racists (of whatever race)don't know that they're racists, and that many of them are resistant to change. I also learned that there are two kinds of racists, the haters and those whose education taught them to believe racial stereotypes and treat people from other races/ethnic groups differently. (Think of the song from SOUTH PACIFIC, "You've got to be carefully taught.") This latter kind can learn and change.
The "regressive" right-wing pundits and propagandists were recently pushing the notion that we now live in a post-racial society; but recent events have forced them to sit down and shut up. Racism - especially institutional racism - is still invisible to a lot of white folks, and the recent events in Fergison and Baltimore and N. Charleston, etc. have focused the spotlight on institutional racism as it takes form in law enforcement.
Clearly the motivations for the attacks that have been unleashed on our president's character by the right wing propaganda machine are rooted in racism. Anyone who believes that we're living in a post-racial era is either a racist - conscious or unconscious - or a cockeyed optimist, a political Pollyanna. "If I don't see it, it's not there."
We are about to see the biggest tsunami of political propaganda EVER. My advice to Hillary and her team is to -to the extent possible - take the high road, stick to the message of reviving the middle class, and minimize resorting to propaganda techniques to sell their message. Then she and her team can point to the propaganda being used against her, commenting on their tactics. Is this naïve? Is this like going to a gunfight with a knife?
Hi, Jeff, I'm happy to meet another English major. On the Clinton strategy: I think the Clintons are just natural street fighters, which is both good and bad. I sometimes like to see Bill wag his finger and go after the corporate media, and I love that Hillary is a strong woman. But I'm sick of all of the mud-slinging, and that's what we will get with the Clintons in the mix. I wrote a post on Google+ that said Clinton should cry more, that she should cry all the way to the White House because that's how she won New Hampshire the last time, by getting teary-eyed. I pointed out that she's more popular when she's seen as weak, but I published my comments on a Progressives site, and only one person who responded supported Hillary. One guy accused me of being a troll because I was supporting Hillary instead of Elizabeth Warren. Anyone who has seen my posts knows that I'm more an anybody-but-Hillary Democrat. But if she's our nominee, I want her to win, and I think crying and showing her soft side will help. She needs to wear pink and shamelessly exploit her little granddaughter.Your comments on race confirm a point I made earlier: The white people most comfortable discussing race are those who dealt with blacks at an early age. It works both ways; I'm probably more comfortable with whites than blacks who went to segregated high schools and colleges because I entered the white world as a seventh grader. I even lived briefly with whites (as a mother's helper) when I was fourteen and fifteen.
I agree with everything you said about race with one exception, Jeff. I argue that we do have to treat people of different races or ethnic groups differently. We sometimes need to discriminate. Not only must we remember that not everyone celebrates Easter, Christmas, or the Fourth of July (some of us were not free in 1776, although I am American, and I guess my white ancestors were happy to be liberated), but we also must remember that the connotations of words are different for different races. Let's take that recently controversial word "thug," for instance. I criticized Obama the writer, who should be more language-sensitive, for using that word, giving the news media license to use it. Whites might see the word as just defining the people who were looting and burning instead of peacefully protesting, but blacks saw it as a racist-code word like "welfare mothers" and "Food Stamps President." Obama forgot that he has been called a thug and lawless by Republicans and conservatives in the media.
Sometimes failing to discriminate can lead to unnecessary problems--unintended hurt feelings and resentment. Last year I received a letter from our property manager after I had visited with a board member to discuss what I thought then were just foolish and learned later were corrupt activities of the board. In the letter, the property manager used the phrase "Do not approach a board member" because that's the corporate language she has used I'm sure whenever a board member complains about a resident "approaching" him or her. I was livid. The woman I talked to was supposedly a friend, and I read that corporate language the way other black people who have been treated like thugs might read it, especially in this period when unarmed blacks are being killed in the street because armed men (most of them officers of the law) feel threatened. I told this woman that kind of language should be used with a stalker or rapist.
People who don't understand why Bush can be compared to a monkey and Obama can't aren't discriminating when they should. I'm, in fact, less suspicious of people who acknowledge my race and discuss it than of those who pretend that race doesn't matter. It does matter in America, it always has, and it matters more now than it did before Obama was elected.
Hi, Mary. I could have been clearer. I meant racists who treat people differently, along the lines of the racist stereotypes they've been taught. While I was in Germany I saw that many Germans had stereotyped Turkish "guest-workers," with some of the same racial stereotypes that white racists applied to black folk in American culture: they were lazy and dirty, couldn't be trusted with the silverware, and the men all wanted to sleep with white women. I'm all for discriminating in regard to treating individuals differently, according to their cultural values and preferences.
I see what you're saying, Jeff. It's interesting how the same negative stereotypes are used by oppressors in different countries and cultures. William Faulkner attacked the black-folks-are-lazy stereotype in his novel SOUND AND FURY, but lately I've been attacking the poor-folks-are-lazy stereotype, pointing out that even if poor people are on welfare and not working, they have to take out their own garbage and make their own beds because they can't hire someone else to do it the way the born-rich people who don't work can. The black-folks-are-savages stereotype is the one that most needs attacking now because it's behind the beating and killing of unarmed black men. That tall Robocop from Missouri described how scary-looking the slightly taller and heavier, unarmed young man he killed was. If we're so savage, I wonder, why aren't there pictures of us burning white people alive and cutting off their body parts while we sing black power songs and hold up our children so that they can enjoy the spectacle? If we're so savage, why didn't we have white slaves whom we beat, raped, and killed? I also think it's common for oppressors to project their own savagery into their victims. They are the rapists, the perverts.
Jeff wrote: "Hi, Mary. I could have been clearer. I meant racists who treat people differently, along the lines of the racist stereotypes they've been taught. While I was in Germany I saw that many Germans had ..."European attitudes can be shocking to Americans. In Germany, you have to pass cultural and language tests to become a citizen if you are not "ethnic German." In Britain, if you have a foreign last name, you are not regarded as really British. They are cultural purists and resent the presence of any other race or culture within their borders.
Bernie Sanders came to Columbia (SC)week before last, and my wife and I were in the audience. He said then that he wouldn't run unless he really thought he could win. He'd be my number one choice to be president because of his platform, but I can't see it happening. I think he has about as much chance of winning the Democratic nomination, over Hillary, as Ted Cruz has of winning the Republican nomination. If he'd declared as an Independent, I could take his assertion at face value; but even if he's only in the race to influence the Democratic platform, I'm glad he's running. And I'd love to see Elizabeth Warren in the White House. . . someday.I made it to Zuccotti Park during the Occupation, and tasted of the holy sacrament of free Ben & Jerry's ice cream, served by Ben himself. Ben's latest thing is the Stamp Stampede to get Big Money out of politics, where you can buy pre-inked stampers with messages like "Corporations are not People," and stamp all your paper money. It's perfectly legal and makes shopping a political act. Every stamped bill will go through dozens of hands, and recipients will see beneath the main message: StampStampede.org, where they can join the stampede.
We were discussing the need to have stamps with liberal messages a few months ago, Jeff. I also have mentioned several times that I wish the Occupy people had been as good at getting politicians elected as the Tea Party fools have been.I agree that Sanders won't win, but we need some people to force Hillary to compete for the job. I saw a cartoon that showed the elephant looking at a menu with all of the Republicans running or pretending that they might run (Donald Trump) and then a donkey looking at Hillary in a plate. She was marked "Leftovers." I think that is a big problem for us. The Republicans might look like losers, but they also have all of the excitement on their side. Who is going to watch those six scheduled Democratic debates if we don't have some interesting candidates running? Sanders, who makes Hillary look young, is at least interesting.
Mary, I also wish that the Occupy people were good at electing people. I understand, however, why they can't. I spent a few hours with Occupy Chicago and talked with several people there. While I sympathized with their sentiments, they had not translated any of those sentiments into concrete demands. It was a lot easier to protest against the War in Iraq or Vietnam or to demand the 1964 Civil Rights Bill be enacted than to say you're upset about income disparity. It IS a big problem, but it needs to be translated into some concrete proposals. The people whom I met at Occupy Chicago were all over the place in terms of what they were angry about and what they wanted the government or anyone else to do about it.
That's a good point, Lisa. In addition to learning the importance of voting, even during local and midterm elections, liberals need to learn how to turn complaints into focused demands and then bills that they can lobby their Senators and legislators to pass. I saw a brief interview with Halle Berry the other day, and she was talking about how much better her life and her children's lives are since she and Jennifer Garner (Ben Affleck's wife) convinced our state legislature to pass a bill that prevented the so-called paparazzi from hounding women and their children. Some of the liberal celebrities have been active in movements like Occupy, so maybe they should lead the way in getting bills to Congress.
That would be good. Maybe they can articulate the discontent of the Occupy people into a more coherent agenda.
That was the problem with the Occupy movement: All protest and no pragmatism. The former is useless without the latter, especially in our system.As it is, progressives have a great economic platform, one that is very popular with broad swaths of the public. Even better, the two most vocal and public candidates for the Democratic Party nomination, Clinton and Sanders, are long-time supporters of this platform.
[I know this sounds weird to say, but Ezra Klein unearthed this quote from Hillary's 2008 campaign to point out that she's been banging the inequality drum since well before anyone had ever heard of Elizabeth Warren:
"Over the 12-month period that just ended in July, the slow growth in wages actually accounted for more than two-thirds of the increase in corporate profits. What does that mean? Well, the profits go up, but unlike every other time in our history, the CEOs and the boards of these companies are not sharing the wealth. So companies are actually profiting off of keeping workers' wages stagnant ... In 2005, the last year I could find the numbers for, all income gains went to the top 10 percent of households, while the bottom 90 percent saw their incomes decline. That is not the America that I grew up in."]
I do think the Occupy movement had some positive long-term effects in refocusing the Democratic Party on its strengths and away from trying to out-austerity the Republicans. But the 2014 elections were much worse than they needed to be, in large part because the energy of the Occupy movement dissipated once critiquing the system required actually participating in and reforming it.
Compare what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The protesters seemed to believe they could get the government to resign en masse and institute democracy. I remember Zhao Ziyang begging them to return home and work at a local level to bring about change. Instead, they began yet another hunger strike before the massacre happened. And Zhao was removed from office. For me, it's all about participation, compromise, and understanding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Ziyang
I agree, Jimmy. And participation is very important. It looks like the Warren/Brown wing of the Democratic Party won a victory on that trade agreement. According to an e-mail I received, they've at least stopped the agreement from being fast tracked.
I'm not totally convinced the progressives have stopped the fast track of the TPP. A number of the Democrats who voted against it are very much on the fence. They really want to support it but they have begun to realize how toxic it might be if some safeguards are not added. Those are the controversial amendments the progressives are insisting be passed together with the fast-track. They include tightened regulation of currency manipulation. This is a major issue because lowering tariffs doesn't help us if our competitors are able to manipulate their currencies to keep them worth less than the dollar. That way their products are less expensive than our competing products. This is one of the factors missing from other trade agreements that has contributed to the loss of American jobs because of American companies being unable to compete.
If the Republicans cave on these amendments, the fast track will pass. And there are other provisions in the TPP that are pretty nasty that aren't being discussed much - except by progressives. They include different legal processes that can supercede or sidestep existing U.S. and state laws, including environmental protections. That is very dangerous.
As a result I remain totally opposed to the TPP, as does Sherrod Brown and the other true progressives. However, there is a contingent of Democrats who might change their votes if some compromises are made. The powerful corporate interests behind the TPP may persuade their minions in Congress to get it passed with the amendments.
Occupy was a social experiment that I'm glad to have witnessed first-hand. After attending a Jean Houston "Mystery School" in upstate NY, my wife and I visited The City for a few days, and went to Zuccotti Park to catch the vibe for ourselves. Occupy couldn't "fail," because it didn't have a single stated goal, and it brought attention to the greed and the misdeeds of the "1 percent." It was like tribal democracy, with the "human microphone" and the pantomime voting system. I agree with Paul about the positive long term effects. We returned home and joined the local Occupiers, some of whom got arrested for refusing to leave the (SC)state house grounds. They later sued, and won a settlement.
Occupy was the brainchild of Kalle Lasn, author of CULTURE JAM and editor/publisher of "Adbusters." My new book, AD NAUSEAM: HOW ADVERTISING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS CHANGED EVERYTHING is co-dedicated to my wife and to him. I borrow his phrase "infotoxins in the mental environment" and make the case that we're living in a "propaganda society." The book explores the role of advertising and PR in corporate social engineering and in radically changing the US political process. Kalle Lasn was my muse. The Occupy Movement may have unraveled, but Kalle has called for SOMETHING to happen in Decemmber, in Paris. I don't think I'll make it, but I expect something big to transpire.
I just published a short article on the TPP: "The Trojan Horse in the TPP that Should Make All Americans Oppose it." http://t.co/PIkCSRWNUv
Why in Paris, Jeff? Why not Washington, D.C.? New York? Chicago? Detroit?
The occupy movement still is active here in Portland. There also is a lot of environmental activity, with some successes such as stopping coal trains from coming through Oregon. Oil trains still are coming through, however.Unfortunately, the Portland occupy facebook page is dominated by a troll who seems to hate everything. Not very helpful.
David Simon has said the occupy movement had a good first act, but doesn't seem to have a second act. Calling attention to an issue and to all the abuses was a noble undertaking. But then something has to be done to fix things. That has to mean political action and so far the occupy movement has not been interested in that. It needs to be. That energy is desperately needed to propel progressive change in government.
Just wanted to mention that the May 4 New Yorker has a long article on Elizabeth Warren.I think she has a plan: I just don't know what it is. Whatever it is, I'm on board.
Shelley
http://dustbowlstory.wordpress.com
Yes, I read that profile, Shelley. The most surprising information I found was that Warren was once a Republican and in her early years didn't seem especially interested in race and gender issues. I'm a bit suspicious of that second point. It might mean that she was too busy trying to be an effective professor and take care of her child to attend meetings focused on those issues, or maybe she was like me and refused to teach some of the courses that dealt with those issues. I taught a course (created by a couple of my white female colleagues) called Race and Gender in Modern Literature only a couple of times before I refused to teach it, pointing out that I discussed those issues in all of my literature classes and that I was not the right person to teach the class because I didn't want students to think that only nonwhite women should teach that course or that I was only interested in those issues. I didn't want to be ghettoized.Dan, you live in arguably the bluest state in the nation. I love your new governor. At the height of the Occupy Movement even Claremont had a few people camped outside City Hall, but I didn't recognize any of them, and I have been living here since 1986. After staying in tents for a couple of months, they were given a few days to vacate, and they left quietly, with nothing accomplished as far as I could determine.
At this point, we all know what the problems are. Even the Republicans are talking about the income gap, and most people hate Wall Street. But as long as Wall Street continues to finance the political campaigns of both parties, and progressives continue to sit out important elections, nothing will change. During a discussion of who would be running for Barbara Boxer's Senate seat, the point was made almost casually that the House would not change hands until 2022 because of what happened in 2010. This political commentator acted as if nothing could be done about those gerrymandered districts. Really? Even when the Republicans are clearly so wrong on the issues, we can't convert some of those voters in those red districts into Democrats? I think those kinds of comments are more likely to discourage our side; we give up and think we can't do anything except sit, march, sing, and be arrested.
Shelley wrote: "Just wanted to mention that the May 4 New Yorker has a long article on Elizabeth Warren.I think she has a plan: I just don't know what it is. Whatever it is, I'm on board.
Shelley
http://dustbow..."
I just got her book from the library. I hope to finish it in the next couple of weeks.
Mary, I can't speak for Kalle Lasn in response to your question, "Why Paris?" He's a Canadian and seems to me to have a global perspective in regard to the pernicious effects corporate social engineering. I see Paris as symbolic in the same way Wall Street is emblematic of the plutocrats in the US, in that it was the site of the Situationalist protests in the sixties, calling attention to manufactured situations that lull the mass of people into complacency. The Occupy Movement that Kalle Lasn inspired is linked to a larger international network of activists who show up at international economic summits to protest the domination of the corporate state. Dan's comment that the Occupy Movement still has some wind in it's sails in Portland encourages my notion that it hasn't gone away, but still has a latent potential to galvanize folks who believe that economic democracy is essential to democracy. I say Paris, New York, Portland, Washington - bring it on!
I would like to see the Occupy Movement focus on cooperatives as the best way of breaking the income disparity barrier. Now, I understand that most people think cooperatives are small and hippyish. They should visit Mandragal (not sure of the spelling) in Spain. It is a cooperative enterprise with 80,000 worker/owners. This can be done here with the will to do it. I hope people will look into this and have an honest debate about it.
I don't have a problem with a global Occupy Movement, Jeff. I just think we need a great deal of help in the USA.
I just finished reading "A Fighting Chance" by Elizabeth Warren. It was surprisingly accessible and I enjoyed reading it. It goes without saying that I agreed with all her political views. How I wish that she could run for President although I know that she would never win a general election. She really gives us an insider's view of the shenanigans of Wall Street and the big banks.
I read her book, also, and I like her a lot. As much as I would like to see her become President, I don't think this is the right time. She has very limited experience and most of it has been narrowly-focused. Hillary is much better qualified to be President, actually one of the most qualified candidates we have had in a long time. Having watched Obama make so many mistakes, I think we have to look for stronger qualifications and greater experience. If you look at the Presidents we have had since 1900 who turned out to be really good, nearly all had substantial experience beforehand.
Since Hillary is the only Democrat who seems to be running, I just hope that she can win a general election given all the baggage that she has.
Lisa wrote: "Since Hillary is the only Democrat who seems to be running, I just hope that she can win a general election given all the baggage that she has."Clinton isn't the only Democrat running--Bernie Sanders is too. He has just as much, if not more, experience as Clinton, has an impressive 12-step plan for the United States, and doesn't have any of the Wall Street ties that she does. The only thing I would complain about with Sanders is his disgusting pro-Israel stance, but Clinton's pro-Israel as well, so...
What do you have against their pro-Israel stance? As a Jew, I am very disheartened at some of the anti-Semitism that has emerged in the United States of late. I always felt very safe here but sometimes I don't any more.About Bernie Sanders, I like him, too. Nevertheless, I think he's too far to the left to win a general election.
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But I agree with your point about power. Democrats have to learn the power of the ballot. We have to vote and not just march and give great speeches. Obama used to make that point during his speeches when he said, "Don't boo; vote." I keep saying, "Where are the Occupy Wall Street candidates?" We see the Tea Party people in Congress and even running for President. They may be crazy, but they are also smart because they have power.