President Obama's Impact on Racism

In many ways that picture captures how the presidency of Barack Obama has changed the country. Young black boys growing up in this era have a different perception of what is possible in their lives. And every day children of other races and genders are presented with an alternative to the image of the "angry black man" that has been so embedded in our culture. We should never underestimate the power of that shift.

But what about the rest of us? A lot of pundits suggest that the presidency of Barack Obama has polarized the racial divide in this country. And there's some truth to that. At no point in my adult life has race been more front and center as an issue than its been over the last 6 years. And so the question becomes whether this President has moved us forward or backwards when it comes to the racial divide in this country.

From the 1970's through the early 2000's, most white people could simply ignore the question of racism. There were times it came out of the woodwork and surprised us - like the reaction to the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trail and the Rodney King beating, verdict and riots. But the former was more of a curiosity and the latter didn't really affect our lives. If we were successfully able to segregate ourselves from the every day lives of black/brown people, we could reach the conclusion that the Civil Rights Movement had tackled that problem and it was time to move on. When it came to politics, that included both white conservatives and liberals.

Then we elected our first black president. The reaction to that has led someone like Ezra Klein to write about Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Obama Derangement Syndrome is different. It isn't so much paranoia about President Obama's policies as it is paranoia about the man himself — that he is, in some fundamental way, different, foreign, untrustworthy, even traitorous. What's odd is that it is attached to a president whose presidency has been, in almost every respect, conventionally liberal.

You can almost hear the wheels turning in Klein's head asking, "WTH is going on here?!" He can only come to one conclusion.

But then, that's why Obama Derangement Syndrome is different than Bush Derangement Syndrome: it's not really about Obama's presidency. It's about Obama himself. It's about his blackness, his father's foreignness, his strange name, his radical pastor. Obama's presidency is in many ways ordinary, but the feelings it evokes are not. There is something about seeing Obama in the White House that deeply unsettles his critics. Obama Derangement Syndrome rationalizes those feelings.

Now, I don't know that much about Klein's personal life other than that he's young, smart, liberal and wonky. So I don't want to make this all about him. But for the cohort he represents, it's obviously pretty difficult to continue to ignore the reality of racism in this country as we watch the reaction to this President.

And so I am reminded once again of what Derrick Jensen wrote in The Culture of Make Believe.

Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state—where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised—to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized.

Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remains underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

The presidency of Barack Obama has threatened the normalization of racism that allowed too many white people in this country to ignore it for the last 40 years. It's now out in the open and it's time for us to reckon with it. Aside from any other policies this President has implemented, that is the legacy he offers to us.

A Note to Future Black Presidents

Dear Future Black Presidents,

First of all...congratulations! You are following in some mighty impressive footsteps.

But I wanted to write to you in order to let you know that there are some unwritten rules that apply to you. This might be a bit confusing because they haven't applied to the white guys who preceded you. So I just wanted to give you a heads up. Here ya go...

1. You are not allowed to go on vacations.

2. You are not allowed to play golf.

3. You must always wear your suit coat when working in the Oval Office.

4. You must never, under any circumstances, wear a tan suit.

5. When giving a State of the Union speech, do not use the words "I," "me," or "mine."


Remember...just because President Reagan used those words about 55 times in a 35 minute speech (by my rough count), the rules change for you. Obeying them demonstrates your respect for white supremacy those who came before you.

Good luck with all that,

Nancy

< snark off >

Hidden Trauma

A lot of black academics criticized President Obama for engaging in "respectability politics" when he did things like launch the My Brother's Keeper initiative. But when the President met with the young people involved in the Becoming a Man program in Chicago and during his visit to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Nation, he likely heard stories like the ones in this article by Sam P.K. Collins titled: The Hidden Trauma Plaguing American Kids.

While conversations about PTSD often focus on soldiers returning from combat zones, research in recent years has shown the development of symptoms in children who live in violent environments...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies symptoms of PTSD as flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety and loss of trust in people. For children of color still reeling from the effects of crime, poverty, limited health care, and poor schools in their low-income neighborhoods, the mental disorder can take a toll on the mind...

One in three young urban dwellers who experience mild to severe forms of PTSD say that people may doubt the severity of what they see, especially if they live in high-crime, high-poverty areas. But D.C.-based psychotherapist Lanada Williams argues that constant exposure to even the smallest incidences of violence — whether it’s physical, sexual, or verbal — can spur the development of mental ailments in children, especially in cases where school officials misinterpret cries for help as acts of delinquency.

Via the research Collins referred to, we are beginning to develop an understanding of the effects chronic (or complex) trauma has on child development and the behaviors that result. As he notes, failure to acknowledge it is part of the vicious cycle that feeds suspensions/expulsions from school and ultimately the school-to-prison pipeline.

“When children of color act up, we don’t try to get to the meat of what’s affecting that child. Instead, we adjudicate them and move them through the system,” Williams, also CEO of Alliance Family Solutions, a private counseling practice, told ThinkProgress.

Children of color (especially black boys) who suffer from chronic trauma are the ones who are also being robbed of their childhood innocence when they "act up."

Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime, according to new research.

President Obama touched on this in his interview with Jeff Johnson on BET.


At about 17:00:

Part of what I think is so heartbreaking and frustrating for a lot of folks when they watch this is a recognition that - simply by virtue of color - you've got less margin for error - that's particularly true for black boys...And so its not simply that we want to make sure that the perfect young man is treated OK. We also want a boy - who's a boy, or a young man who's maybe a little confused, maybe makes a mistake - we want them to be given the same benefit of the doubt as any other boy would be given.

This has nothing to do with respectability politics. It has to do with getting real about the challenges that too many children face as a result of the cycles created by racism. It also has a lot to do with not allowing the suffering of "hidden" trauma by these children to go unnoticed any longer.

Why Now?

On Wednesday, after the announcement that NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo would not be indicted for killing Eric Garner, the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund Twitter posted a series of tweets naming 76 men and women who were killed in police custody since the 1999 death of Amadou Diallo in New York.

This is the point many activists are trying to make. It is NOT just the deaths of Michael Brown, or Eric Garner, or Tamir Rice that have fueled the reaction we're seeing. It is a very long history of this kind of abuse that has led to this moment.

So the question that spurs for me is "Why now?" As a white woman, I'm not the one to answer that. But I will share a couple of my observations.

First of all, I think back to something I wrote last spring: Who are the optimists these days? Here's a quote about that from Ellis Cose:

African-Americans, long accustomed to frustration in their pursuit of opportunity and respect, are amazingly upbeat, consistently astounding pollsters with their hopefulness.

And here's a quote I posted recently from the book The Healing by Jonathan Odell:

'Mark my words," I said, 'when a man's not afraid, then he's hoping. And that's when all hell breaks loose.'"

Offered for your consideration. What say you?

What is the trajectory of the moral arc of the universe?

One of the things President Obama said is necessary for us to solve our current challenges is that we have to recognize that we've made progress - because it gives us hope that we can make more. But there is a strain of liberalism that - either due to psychological or strategic preference - seems to be wedded to the idea that things are getting worse. Exhibit A: Chris Hayes.


At about 1:45:

"Equal Justice Under Law," as it reads above the Supreme Court. And I've gotta say that for a long time I believed the U.S. is such a place. Sure, its flawed and sure, there are places where justice is miscarried. But fundamentally I have long thought that the U.S. really is a nation of laws. I have to say...it is getting harder and harder to hold on to that faith.

When I saw Hayes tweet a link with that video, I had a question for him.

@chrislhayes Are you saying that US is less a nation of laws than it was 50 or 100 yrs ago? Or are you simply waking up to the inequalities?
— Nancy LeTourneau (@Smartypants60) December 10, 2014

I haven't heard back from him. But the only way a statement like that makes any sense is if he was commenting on his own growing awareness of white male privilege, which has shielded him from seeing our history as a country.

As Bryan Stevenson often says, we have a justice system that "treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. Wealth - not culpability - shapes outcomes."

But does anyone else remember that there were days when black people were lynched instead of tried in a court of law - while public officials either participated or simply looked the other way? Or how about the days when neither women nor people of color were allowed to sit on juries? Better yet...where is the accountability for slavery...or Native American genocide? And when have any public officials been held accountable for torture?

The most generous take on what Hayes had to say is that he is awakening to his own sense of privilege. Because the only other alternative is to see it as a narcissistic statement devoid of any historical awareness.

I am reminded of why President Obama focused his 2008 speech about race in America on the opening statement in our constitution: "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union..."

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution — a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part — through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk — to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

It is the sacrifice of those "Americans in successive generations" to perfect our union that is negated by those who cannot/will not see the progress that has been made. Honoring them in no way diminishes the difficult challenges we still face. But it does allow us to see that the trajectory of the moral arc of the universe is long, but its bending towards justice. And that's where hope comes from.

The Color Blind Lie

I grew up mostly in East Texas. To give you an idea of the politics of the area, I lived in the district that is currently represented by Louie Gohmert. During that time, I knew all of two black people - my grandmothers' maids.

When I was about 10 years old, a group of black men in Jonesboro, LA (less than 150 miles from where I lived) organized the Deacons for Defense and Justice - eventually sparking a showdown with the KKK that resulted in federal intervention on behalf of local African Americans. I never heard a word about it until I watched the movie - Deacons for Defense - a few years ago.

That's how I was trained to literally be color blind.

I thought of that when I read this interaction Molly Ball had with former Louisiana Governor Mike Foster about why southern whites are leaving the Democratic Party.

"I don't think it's racial," Mike Foster, the Republican former two-term governor of Louisiana, now 84 and retired, tells me, without my having asked..."You know, the races have gotten along down here for years. Look at what's happening in Ferguson right now. We don't have a bunch of people running out in the street hollering about that."

"I think what has changed it is that this is a hardworking state. People work hard, and they really don't take to people who are on the dole," he continued. "You'd better not be supporting people who are sitting on their front porch while I'm trying to work! You drive around these small communities, you see a lot of able-bodied people sitting around, when you know there's work to be had .... That's the only thing I can figure. This part of the country, people have been raised by families who worked very, very hard. But now we've got a president who loves to sit down every day and see how much he can give away of what they make."

Those sentiments aren't new. We heard pretty much the same thing from Duck Dynasty's Phil Roberts about the Jim Crow era in Louisiana.

I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field .... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word! ... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

If I had the patience to do the research, I'm sure I could find quotes from plantation master's who also claimed their slaves were "happy slaves." Its all part of the same lie white racists have been telling themselves for centuries.

And it leads right into the lie that - while those black people were happy when they were slaves/terrorized by Jim Crow - now they're all just sitting on their porches collecting goodies from the black guy in the White House while the rest of us white folks work hard (could Lee Atwater have summed up the Southern Strategy any better?)

Nope, nothing racial about that.

But these are the people pundits all over the spectrum are suggesting that Democrats need to reach out to. Someone please fill me in on what non-racist message would do the trick?

Thank You AG Holder!!!

For years now one of the things that has frustrated me about the "what have you done for me lately" Blackacademics has been their insistence that the Obama administration hasn't done anything for the African American community. That's why - back in 2011 - I started writing about DOJ's investigations into police brutality.

Today we learned that the investigation into Cleveland's Police Department has resulted in a finding that they have engaged in a pattern and practice of using excessive force. It is horribly sad that this finding comes too late to save the life of Tamir Rice. But perhaps we can take some small amount of comfort in the probability that previous investigations have saved the lives of others. And hopefully this one will be part of finding justice for Tamir's death.

P.S. For those of you who - like me - are going to miss having Eric Holder as our Attorney General, this article about what he plans to do in the future is hopeful. And in 2 years, he's likely to have some company :-)

But, I have to say; these are the kinds of issues that I’ve talked about with the President since his first days here in Washington, DC. I met him before he had been sworn in as a senator. We bonded over these criminal justice reform concerns and views of racial matters. We share a worldview... 

Pundits: Please start paying attention to white people again!

The success of the Southern Strategy for Republicans can be chronicled by the narrative that developed in the 1980's which suggested that the only way for Democrats to win the White House was for them to nominate a Southern governor (i.e., appeal to southern white people). Then along came Barack Hussein Obama - a black man who came from Illinois and Hawaii. All of the sudden, everyone was talking about the Obama coalition and the way the country's changing demographics benefited Democrats.

And so its been interesting to watch pundits try to change the narrative that developed after the 2008 election based on the 2014 midterms - in which we saw the lowest voter turnout in 40 years. What I hear when I listen to people like Charlie Cook and NBC's First Read is: "Please start paying attention to white people again!"

It probably shouldn't surprise us that Cook (who recently wrote that passing Obamacare was a horrific choice) feels vindicated by Sen. Schumer's recent comments. But what IS amazing is that he can go on to talk about how - in the Obama era - Democrats have lost support among white working class voters without ever once mentioning the impact racism has had on that reality. Given the constant challenges to this President's legitimacy coming from the backers of the confederate insurgency, any rational discussion simply has to put that one in the mix. The failure of Cook to do so is a classic example of white privilege.

And, of course, the white folks who write NBC's First Read picked right up where Cook left off.

Earlier this week, our friend Charlie Cook made a great point: While Republicans are struggling with minority voters, Democrats have a problem with working-class whites. In the 2014 midterms, they made up 36% of all voters, and they broke Republican, 64%-34%. Yes, long-term demographic trends are in the Democrats' favor -- the minority population in this country is growing and growing. But ask yourself what is more likely in the immediate future: Republicans winning Minnesota and Wisconsin in presidential contests, or Democrats winning Arizona and Georgia. You've got to go with the former, right? In 20 years, with the country's growing Latino population, the presidential map appears tilted toward the Democrats. But in the short term, the Democrats could find problems in states with lots of white voters.

That one prompts me to make a "new rule:" Any pundit who even suggests that the 2014 midterms can be used to predict what is going to happen during a presidential election has just declared themselves an idiot.

But what those authors also fail to mention is that - while "the minority population in this country is growing" - the group of people they think is so determinative, working-class whites, is on the decline. One way demographers define "working-class" is to track those who do not have a college education. In 1940, only 5% of the population had a four-year degree. That number has grown steadily over the years and by 2007, it was 29%. Those with some college (but not a degree) added an additional 25%.

Given all these trends, its not like we are going to wake up 20 years from now and all of the sudden notice that the political landscape has changed. It is in the process of changing right now! But the good-ole-white-boys that populate so much of our media just can't/won't see it.

A nugget of hope from Chris Rock

In a less quoted portion of Chris Rock's interview with Frank Rich, I think he nailed what is driving the confederate insurgency absolutely bonkers.

...my kids grew up not only with a black president but with a black secretary of State, a black joint chief of staff, a black attorney general. My children are going to be the first black children in the history of America to actually have the benefit of the doubt of just being moral, intelligent people.

President Obama has said that he's not interested in leading a national conversation on race. He's busy having a different kind of conversation that's going right over the heads of most pundits who are whining about leadership.

Where anger and fear have brought us

Darren Wilson made if very plain in his testimony before the grand jury that he was afraid of 16 year-old Michael Brown. As a matter of fact, his entire case is based on whether or not people believe that to be true. We also know that the officers who shot and killed 12 year-old Tamir Rice assumed he was about 20 years old.

This is all part of a pattern that was recently the subject of research published by the American Psychological Association.

Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime, according to new research. “Children in most societies are considered to be in a distinct group with characteristics such as innocence and the need for protection. Our research found that black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent,” said the lead author.

Beyond the Michael Brown's and Tamir Rice's, those assumptions also lead to this:

Fourteen states have no minimum age for trying children as adults. Children as young as eight have been prosecuted as adults. Some states set the minimum age at 10, 12, or 13. EJI believes that the adult prosecution of any child under age 14 for any crime should be banned.

Some 10,000 children are housed in adult jails and prisons on any given day in America. Children are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted in adult prisons than in juvenile facilities and face increased risk of suicide. EJI believes confinement of children with adults in jails and prisons is indefensible, cruel, and unusual, and it should be banned.

Whether they are being shot on the street, tried as adults, or locked up in adult prisons, Jonathan Capehart is right.

In America, black children are just that, children. It’s a damned shame people’s fears and prejudices blinds them to that fact. It’s a crying shame black kids must suffer because of it.

A lot of people are thinking that the one area where bipartisanship is possible in the next Congress is on criminal justice reform. But anything meaningful in that arena has to include the premise that children are children - no matter their race or ethnicity. A system that fails to treat them as such can never all itself "just."

The other day I suggested that one of the people we need to be listening to about this is Bryan Stevenson. He brings it all together for me when he says that these kinds of policies are the result of "a political vision that is fueled by fear and sustained by anger." In the end, he sounds an awful lot like President Obama when he says that we have to find a "voice of hopefulness to turn these things around."

"That's when all hell breaks loose"

From The Healing by Jonathan Odell. The setting is a Mississippi plantation. Silas, who has been the Master's right hand man since he was a boy says:

"I did my best to teach the master about slaves. Told him a hundred times when he was a boy that it wasn't a black skin that made a man a slave. It's the other skin, the one that grows on the outside, that second hide made of fear and obedience. What a good master does is every once in a while, prick that skin to remind folks that it's still there and always will be. I told him that if a slave was to molt that outside skin, you no longer have a slave. 'Mark my words," I said, 'when a man's not afraid, then he's hoping. And that's when all hell breaks loose.'"

Chris Rock: "There are no race relations" in America

Really great comedians are keen observers. They don't simply go for the easy laugh line. Instead they tend to see things that are true, but haven't been captured by conventional wisdom, and make us laugh by pointing them out. Such was the case when Stephen Colbert gave us the word truthiness to define the politics of the Bush/Cheney era.

Chris Rock has always struck me as a great comedian for just that reason. He is a keen observer of race in America and has developed some wisdom about that issue that is often miles ahead of those who intellectualize about it.

With his movie Take Five about to premier, Chris was interviewed by Frank Rich and mentioned that he'd love to be a 60 Minutes reporter. As such, he'd be in Ferguson right now doing a special on race...with no black people.

When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before...

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

You see what he did there? He put both the pathology of racism and the responsibility for change right where it belongs. Even suggesting that black people have made "progress" when it comes to race relations implies that they were the problem to begin with.

I'm sure there are those who would challenge what Chris said about white people not being as crazy as they used to be when it comes to race - especially in light of the reaction to Ferguson. They'd have a point. In many ways the crazy never went away, it just got harder to see and/or name over the last 40 years. But lately the confederate insurgency has re-surfaced with a vengeance. If we're going to move forward this time, white people are going to have to decide whether or not we want to stay crazy.

Something deep persists

Obviously the Civil Rights Movement brought about some important changes. But something deep persists.

Then...

And now...

Unless we change it for the future...

Someone we should all be listening to: Bryan Stevenson

Today I was in my car running some pre-Thanksgiving errands and listening to Minnesota Public Radio between stops. I was absolutely blown away by a speech they were airing and kept wondering "who IS this guy?" It wasn't until the end that I heard it was Bryan Stevenson, founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Once I got home, I located the speech on MPR and listened to the whole thing uninterrupted.

I know you are all going to be busy with family and loved ones over the next few days. But if you have an hour to spare, I can't imagine a better way to spend it that listening to this one. Here's a link where you can do that.

Bryan tackles all the difficult issues we face in this country around race and the law enforcement/criminal justice system. But he doesn't just bring facts and he doesn't simply fuel our rage. He inspires with his heart and his own stories. In a most meaningful way, he tells us what we can all do to make a difference. Prepare yourself...these are no easy, quick-fix answers (there's a reason we call it "the struggle"). But I promise that you will not regret a single minute you spend listening to what he has to say.

I first became aware of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) years ago when I was appalled by the fact that we live in the only country in the world that sentences children/youth to die in prison.  EJI has been on the forefront of raising awareness about this and fighting it in our courts. These are the kinds of things to which Bryan has dedicated his life and work. Perhaps that's why he doesn't spend as much of his time pontificating in front of a camera. He's been in the trenches and brings that kind of perspective to us.

I suspect there are people like Bryan Stevenson working in the trenches all over this country. That's what brings me hope.

News from the insurgency

A few days ago it crossed my mind to think about what the 2015 State of the Union speech will be like. Given the results of the recent midterms and the way the GOP rhetoric has been ramped up in response to President Obama's action on immigration, it occurred to me that the disrespectful "You lie!" from Rep. Joe Wilson during the 2009 SOTU speech might be child's play.

But honestly, I never even contemplated this possibility.

“Yes, there’s a risk to overreacting, but there’s a risk to underreacting as well,” said Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review. “And I fear that’s the way the congressional leadership is leaning.”

Mr. Lowry suggested one way Congress could react. “If I were John Boehner,” he said, referring to the House speaker, “I’d say to the president: ‘Send us your State of the Union in writing. You’re not welcome in our chamber.’”

Apparently, this is becoming "a thing" within the tea party confederate insurgency. What better way to cast the President of the United States as illegitimate than to deny him the opportunity that has been accorded to all modern presidents to address Congress at this historic event?

I keep going back and forth with myself saying, "the GOP leadership will squash that idea." And then wondering, "will they?" Worse yet, "can they?"

President Obama talking about race

CNN has put together this video with snapshots of the many times President Obama has talked about race.


Its a helpful reminder - even though the clips really can't give you the depth of what he said on those occasions. But make no mistake, President Obama has been clear about his views on racism and how we can move forward as a country. This might be a good time to go back and listen again to his speech on the topic during the 2008 primaries.


I'd like to highlight one part of that speech where he got specific in terms of recommendations.

But I have asserted a firm conviction — a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people — that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives — by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny...

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds — by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

The other thing that most of the great religions teach us is that engaging in the struggle is redemptive. In the Christian tradition, the gospels tell us that "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." God is therefore not one to keep his distance. The life and death of Jesus chronicle the story of his willingness to "walk in our shoes"... to suffer the pain of isolation and rejection.

And so, it should come as no surprise to us that President Obama had a special message for the young black men at Morehouse.

As Morehouse Men, many of you know what it’s like to be an outsider; know what it’s like to be marginalized; know what it’s like to feel the sting of discrimination. And that’s an experience that a lot of Americans share...

So your experiences give you special insight that today’s leaders need. If you tap into that experience, it should endow you with empathy -- the understanding of what it’s like to walk in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, to know what it’s like when you're not born on 3rd base, thinking you hit a triple. It should give you the ability to connect. It should give you a sense of compassion and what it means to overcome barriers...

So it’s up to you to widen your circle of concern -- to care about justice for everybody, white, black and brown. Everybody. Not just in your own community, but also across this country and around the world. To make sure everyone has a voice, and everybody gets a seat at the table.

The path of hope and change does not come from nursing our grievances. No matter our ethnic heritage, it comes from acknowledging the pain and letting it open us up to gain some understanding of the pain of others. That's not just a spiritual imperative...its a political one as well. As David Simon said, we are on the verge of "the death of normal."

America will soon belong to the men and women — white and black and Latino and Asian, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist, gay and straight — who can walk into a room and accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions. The America in which it was otherwise is dying, thank god, and those who relied on entitlement and division to command power will either be obliged to accept the changes, or retreat to the gated communities from which they wish to wax nostalgic and brood on political irrelevance.

"The most intense, aggressive face I've ever seen" (i.e., black)

From Darren Wilson's testimony, after the altercation in the car was over and Michael Brown had started to run away, he says this:

When he stopped, he turned, looked at me, made like a grunting noise and had the most intense, aggressive face I've ever seen on a person. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon. That's how angry he looked.

According to Wilson's testimony, that's when he started shooting.

It sounds an awful lot like South Carolina State Trooper Sean Groubert's initial testimony about why he started shooting at Levar Jones after pulling him over for a seat belt violation.

Before I could even get out of my car he jumped out, stared at me, and as I jumped out of my car and identified myself, as I approached him, he jumped head-first back into his car … he jumped out of the car. I saw something black in his hands.

The only problem for Groubert is that in that case, that there was an actual video of what happened.


In the case of the murder of Jordan Davis, Michael Dunn's basic defense was pretty much the same: Davis made him fear for his life. At least there was a jury trial on that one and Dunn was convicted of first degree murder (even though it took them two tries to do it).

In discussing the Groubert shooting, Leonard Pitts sums up what's going on in all three of these situations...at minimum.

So let us accord him the benefit of the doubt because in situations like this, people always want to make it a question of character. And the shooter’s friends always feel obliged to defend him with the same tired words: “He is not a racist.”

He probably isn’t, at least not in the way they understand the term.

But what he is, is a citizen of a country where the fear of black men is downright viral. That doesn’t mean he burns crosses on the weekend. It means he’s watched television, seen a movie, used a computer, read a newspaper or magazine. It means he is alive and aware in a nation where one is taught from birth that thug equals black, suspect equals black, danger equals black...

The Groubert video offers an unusually stark image of that fear in action. Viewing it, it seems clear the trooper is not reacting to anything Jones does. In a very real sense, he doesn’t even see him. No, he is reacting to a primal fear of what Jones is, to outsized expectations of what Jones might do, to terrors buried so deep in his breast, he probably doesn’t even know they’re there.

When I read Darren Wilson's words, it seemed obvious to me that he was also reacting to that primal fear buried deep in his breast. That's what most racism looks like these days. And that's why so many unarmed black boys are dying.

Just SAY IT, Charles Blow

In many ways, Charles Blow nailed it it his column titled: Bigger Than Immigration.

Don’t let yourself get lost in the weeds. Don’t allow yourself to believe that opposition to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration is only about that issue, the president’s tactics, or his lack of obsequiousness to his detractors.

This hostility and animosity toward this president is, in fact, larger than this president. This is about systems of power and the power of symbols. Particularly, it is about preserving traditional power and destroying emerging symbols that threaten that power. This president is simply the embodiment of the threat, as far as his detractors are concerned, whether they are willing or able to articulate it as such.

But does anyone else get the feeling like he's trying to say something while walking on egg shells? His message is basically the same one I talked about in: Understanding the Threat of a Confederate Insurgency. But he hides behind words like "systems of power" and "power of symbols" and never gets around to saying anything about what those systems and symbols represent: racism.

Perhaps there's a method to his madness because everyone knows what kind of reaction the use of the "r" word gets these days. But lets be real...we all know exactly what he's talking about.

Understanding the threat of a confederate insurgency

Rev. William Barber captured the moment we are living in by talking about a Third Reconstruction.


Doug Muder expanded on that idea with an article titled: Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party. Muder's point is that in order to understand the Tea Party today, we have to realize that  - unlike what our school history books told us - the south didn't really lose the Civil War. Much like George W. Bush preemptively declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, the Civil War didn't end when Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

After the U.S. forces won on the battlefield in 1865 and shattered the organized Confederate military, the veterans of that shattered army formed a terrorist insurgency that carried on a campaign of fire and assassination throughout the South until President Hayes agreed to withdraw the occupying U. S. troops in 1877. Before and after 1877, the insurgents used lynchings and occasional pitched battles to terrorize those portions of the electorate still loyal to the United States. In this way they took charge of the machinery of state government, and then rewrote the state constitutions to reverse the postwar changes and restore the supremacy of the class that led the Confederate states into war in the first place.

By the time it was all over, the planter aristocrats were back in control, and the three constitutional amendments that supposedly had codified the U.S.A’s victory over the C.S.A.– the 13th, 14th, and 15th — had been effectively nullified in every Confederate state. The Civil Rights Acts had been gutted by the Supreme Court, and were all but forgotten by the time similar proposals resurfaced in the 1960s. Blacks were once again forced into hard labor for subsistence wages, denied the right to vote, and denied the equal protection of the laws. Tens of thousands of them were still physically shackled and subject to being whipped, a story historian Douglas Blackmon told in his Pulitzer-winning Slavery By Another Name.

So Lincoln and Grant may have had their mission-accomplished moment, but ultimately the Confederates won. The real Civil War — the one that stretched from 1861 to 1877 — was the first war the United States lost.

Let that one sink in for a moment, white folks. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it all. That's what happens when it turns out that a story you've been told all your life doesn't really capture what happened. All the links to meaning that have been created by believing the story have to be re-examined as well. That is the path each of us must take if we're ever going to be successful at "undoing racism" in our own lives.

Muder goes on the make the connection between the mindset of the insurgent confederates and today's tea party.

The essence of the Confederate worldview is that the democratic process cannot legitimately change the established social order, and so all forms of legal and illegal resistance are justified when it tries...

The Confederate sees a divinely ordained way things are supposed to be, and defends it at all costs. No process, no matter how orderly or democratic, can justify fundamental change.

That is the sentiment we hear when both citizens and political leaders talk about "second amendment remedies" and rally round things like this:

I believe that - due to this country's changing demographics - this confederate insurgency would have eventually surfaced even if we hadn't elected our first African American president. But having done so, it has been released with a vengeance.

The basic right wing message we've heard for the last six years has been to challenge this President's legitimacy. We've seen that in everything from the birther movement and charges that he's somehow "un-American" to criticisms of Barack Obama that have never been leveled against a United States President (i.e., how much golf he plays, the fact that he takes vacations and that he signs executive orders).

Call me naive, but I don't believe that all white Republicans buy into this insurgency. But their leadership has used this message of illegitimacy to undermine President Obama and convinced too many people that he is somehow a threat to the country. To the extent that they (and the media) have bought into the lies, they have given credence to a movement that is dangerous to our democracy.

I am reminded once again of something Derrick Jensen wrote in his book The Culture of Make Believe.

From the perspective of those who are entitled, the problems begin when those they despise do not go along with—and have the power and wherewithal to not go along with—the perceived entitlement...

Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state—where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised—to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized.

Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remains underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

Change to our "social order" is coming, whether we like it or not. The traditions, economics, religion that mask our entitlement are being stripped away and the hate is becoming more perceptible. As a result, the confederate insurgency is threatening to explode.

Black people are noticing. But too many white people are in denial about what's really going on (including a lot of Democrats/liberals). We need to wake the f*ck up!!! I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to support President Obama's policies. But what I am saying is that we all need to recognize the threat posed by this confederate insurgency...and take on the task of ushering in a third reconstruction.

Republicans comparing 2014 midterms to 1966...think about that

Yesterday I was taken back a bit when I saw this tweet from conservative pundit Robert Costa.

Ran into Rumsfeld on 15th NW. He's upbeat about GOP gains, said they remind him a bit of 1966.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) November 10, 2014

To get an idea of what Rumsfeld is celebrating here, lets take a look at some of the history leading up to the 1966 midterms.

The Civil Rights Movement in this country began with the death of Emmett Till in 1955 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott that was launched that same year. It all culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Along the way, thousands of black people were killed and/or injured. Most well-known are the Montgomery Church bombing in 1963, the assassination of Medgar Evers the same year, the killing of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner in 1964, the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. Events like Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama took place in 1965.

Those are the events that formed the lead-up to the election Rumsfeld is referring to. Certainly protests of the Vietnam War were occurring as well. But they didn't reach their peak until the late 60's/early 70's.

It has been reported that when President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he told an advisor that the Democrats had lost the south for a generation. It was the midterm elections of 1966 that began that process. Republicans gained 3 Senate seats and 47 House seats. The next presidential election in 1968 looked like this (yellow states went for George Wallace).

To sum it all up - the midterm election of 1966 was the beginning of the end of the Second Reconstruction. The backlash against Civil Rights gains was the fodder for what Republicans eventually launched as a Southern Strategy. 

That Rumsfeld sees a similarity with the midterm results of 2014 is telling. Just so you know, he's not the only one.