Black and Progressive Sociologists for Obama

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:35:00 +0000

Romney is being exposed by the Obama campaign. Romney needs to be exposed. Right now he's running on whiteness not substance. He will not show his tax returns. He has a lot to hide...And much of it revolves around Bain. Bain and Romney are being exposed for their warfare against the working class. His tax returns showing there were years in which he "legally" paid NO taxes, even though he made millions. the interesting thing here is that it is Forbes that has posed the 35 questions he must answer. RGN

35 Questions Mitt Romney Must Answer About Bain Capital Before The Issue Can Go Away

TJ Walker , Subscriber
thanks for correcting.

Mitt Romney conducted numerous TV and other media interviews yesterday in order to minimize the damage his campaign has received regarding discrepancies surrounding his tenure at Bain

During times of crisis it is often a smart strategy to give virtually unlimited access to the media in order to push out your message aggressively and satisfy reporter curiosity so that the issue can be pushed off the front burner. John McCain famously did this well earlier in his career when dealing with his own Keating Five controversies.

Unfortunately for the Romney Campaign, the slew of TV interviews did little to satisfy the media. In times of crisis, a strong candidate will come up with answers that satisfy the basic questions surrounding the controversy and will make people want to move on to another subject. Romney, however, could not seem to come up with basic messages that resolved the controversies. Many of his answers seemed evasive or overly legalistic. The biggest problem for Romney is that all of his interviews have only increased the questions that political observers, voters and the media have regarding the subject of Bain Capital.

Specifically, Romney is going to have to answer the following 35 questions before this issue subsides:

1. Are you contending that an individual can simultaneously be the CEO, president, managing director of a company, and its sole stockholder and somehow be “disassociated” from the company or accurately classified as someone not having “any” formal involvement with a company?

2. You have stated that in “Feb. 1999 I left Bain capital and all management responsibility” and “I had no ongoing activity or involvement.” It depends on what the definition of “involvement” is, doesn’t it? Clearly you were involved with Bain to the extent that you owned it. Are you defining “involvement” in a uniquely specific way that only means “full-time, active, 60-hours-a-week, hands-on manager?”

3. How exactly are you defining “involvement?”

For the other questions and full article.

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 15:37:00 +0000

The main tool being used by Romney, Republicans, Faux News, and right wing talk radio is the LIE!!!! To lie is the raison d'etre for Rush Limbaugh, the head of the Republican party. Because this faction cannot tolerate having a black man as President, there is an urgency that he be replaced to restore the hegemony of white nationalism. With its adherents having mainly a Southern base, the legacy of white supremacy remains a salient force. The National Rifle Association provides a cloak for the most hyperbolic and violent of this faction. To facilitate this agenda, this extreme agenda, conservatives must lie.

The Obama presidency represents an attempt at fairness. Fairness is a fundamental American value. White nationalism is not about fairness. White nationalism is about maintaining white domination. Having a black man as president represents a challenge to white nationalist hegemony. Gaining back a white leader must be done by any means necessary, including lying. Like Limbaugh, to turn reality on its head, requires a lie. Reason is not likely to be sufficient. Rationality does not inspire passion, racist lies do!

Unfortunately, the issue on lying about Obama is not just about Romney, the person. The Republican right wing has been on this white nationalist campaign against Obama throughout his presidency. From Joe Wilson's "you lie" to Mitch McConnell's vow to make Obama a one term President, lying about Obama has been central to their narrative. The article below by Michael Cohen spells out Romney's use of the lie in his bid to defeat President Barack Obama. RGN

Romney's Bid to Become Liar-in-Chief

By Michael Cohen, Guardian UK

22 June 12

our years ago, when I was writing about the 2008 presidential campaign, I wrote with dismay and surprise at the spate of falsehoods coming out of John McCain's campaign for president. McCain had falsely accused his opponent Barack Obama of supporting "comprehensive sex education" for children, and of wanting to raise taxes on the middle class, while his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, took credit for opposing the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere", which she had actually supported.

At the time, such false and misleading claims from a presidential candidate seemed shocking: they crossed an unstated line in American politics – going from the usual garden-variety campaign exaggeration to wilful lying.

Ah, those were the days … after watching Mitt Romney run for president the past few months, he makes John McCain look like George Washington (of "I Can't Tell A Lie" fame).

Granted, presidential candidates are no strangers to disingenuous or overstated claims; it's pretty much endemic to the business. But Romney is doing something very different and far more pernicious. Quite simply, the United States has never been witness to a presidential candidate, in modern American history, who lies as frequently, as flagrantly and as brazenly as Mitt Romney.

Now, in general, those of us in the pundit class are really not supposed to accuse politicians of lying – they mislead, they embellish, they mischaracterize, etc. Indeed, there is natural tendency for nominally objective reporters, in particular, to stay away from loaded terms such as lying. Which is precisely why Romney's repeated lies are so effective. In fact, lying is really the only appropriate word to use here, because, well, Romney lies a lot. But that's a criticism you're only likely to hear from partisans.

My personal favorite in Romney's cavalcade of untruths is his repeated assertion that President Obama has apologized for America. In his book, appropriately titled "No Apologies", Romney argues the following:

"Never before in American history has its president gone before so many foreign audiences to apologize for so many American misdeeds, both real and imagined. It is his way of signaling to foreign countries and foreign leaders that their dislike for America is something he understands and that is, at least in part, understandable."

Nothing about this sentence is true.

President Obama never went around the world and apologized for America – and yet, even after multiple news organizations have pointed out this is a "pants on fire" lie, Romney keeps making it. Indeed, the "Obama apology tour", along with the president bowing down to the King of Saudi Arabia, are practically the lodestars of the GOP's criticism of Obama's foreign policy performance (the Saudi thing isn't true either).

But foreign policy is a relatively light area of mistruth for the GOP standard-bearer. The economy is really where the truth takes its greatest vacation in Romney world. First, there is Romney's claim that the 2009 stimulus passed by Congress and signed by President Obama "didn't work". According to Romney, "that stimulus didn't put more private-sector people to work." While one can quibble over whether the stimulus went far enough, the idea that it didn't create private-sector jobs has no relationship to reality. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus bill created more than 3m jobs – a view shared by 80% of economists polled by the Chicago Booth School of Business (only 4% disagree).

The full article

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:22:00 +0000

America's white nationalist tendencies run deep. If we only had Ron Walters here expound on his specialty, America's white nationalism. Since the 1960s and even before, except in the Jim Crow South, blatant racism outside the bounds of polite society. There came a time when the white supremacist caricatures were no longer appropriate, much less for common display. With Barack Obama as America's 44th President those caricatures are back in full display. In 2010, Barack Obama is pictured as a witch doctor with bone through his nose. In terms of a blatant despicable racism, the white supremacy re dux. It's hard to be more racist.

Moreover, the depths of this racism is shown when they degrade the office of the presidency. The honor that is to be bestowed to that office does not apply when the occupant is black. In other words, blackness trumps the prestige of the office with Barack Obama as its incumbent.

The sign at this restaurant says it all. Kanye West had to apologize for his comment that "President Bush does not like black people." Ted Nugent referred to the President as vile. He did get a visit from the Secret Service but there has been no sanction. The President is called the most vile insult that cam be hurled at a black person. No sanction. RGN

Sign Uses Racial Slur to Refer to President

Updated: Monday, 23 Apr 2012, 8:18 PM EDT
Published : Monday, 23 Apr 2012, 5:44 PM ED

Julia Reynolds

PAULDING COUNTY, Ga. - Residents are upset about a sign in Paulding County that uses a racial slur to refer to President Barack Obama. The sign, in front of the Georgia Peach Oyster Bar on Highway 113, uses the n-word to refer to President Obama. “This world is supposed to be a peaceful world, not a world with hatred. This shouldn't be here today,” said Carl Norman.

The full article

Trayvon Martin: The President Weighs In

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 04:05:00 +0000

The tragedy of Trayvon Martin is the outrage that incensed Black America. The killing of a black teenager, in which the killer is not even questioned, is such an indignity that a movement has been born. This is the Emmett Till case in the time of social media. In addition to the social media, there are now black voices in mainstream media who can articulate the pain of what it means to be Trayvon Martin. As said: "We are Trayvon Martin!" With Reverend Al at the forefront of this struggle as activist/journalist, he challenges and reports. There are other voices, as well: Melissa Harris-Perry; Michael Eric Dyson; Mark Thompson, Joe Madison, Charles Blow, Karen Finney, Jonathon Capehart, and many other blacks who provide an inner voice on the meaning of Trayvon Martin. It took the President to say: If I had a son he would have looked like Trayvon.

The President's Remarks

The Koch Right Wing Conspiracy!!!

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:13:00 +0000

Bill Press has a new book The Obama Hate Machine: The Lies, Distortions and Personal Attacks on the President -- and Who's Behind Them. Press finds that at the root of most of these attacks are the Koch Brothers of Wichita, Kansas. Since they are fellow Wichitans, there is a special embarrassment. That said, Bill in his new book exposes them as the main force that is funding the anti-Obama propaganda machine. RGN

Koch brothers driving anti-Obama hate machine

Written on February 7, 2012

By Bill Press
Tribune Media Services

“If not now, when?” It’s one of the most famous maxims of history, attributed to the great Rabbi Hillel, who’s also credited with a down-to-earth version of the Golden Rule: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary.”

Now, here’s your trivia question for the day: Who in our time revived that call to action with the challenge: “If not us, who? If not now, when?” Michael Moore? Barack Obama? Leaders of Occupy Wall Street?

No, not even close. Hillel’s urgent plea “If not now, when?” was appropriated by oil billionaires Charles and David Koch in a letter of invitation summoning CEOs to a fundraising summit in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in January 2011. It was imperative that they join forces, explained Charles Koch, “…to combat what is now the greatest threat to American freedom and prosperity in our lifetimes” — the administration of Barack Obama.

This was not the first such meeting called by the Koch Brothers. They’d been holding semi-annual gatherings of corporate barons since 2003, sprinkled with right-wing journalists, politicians, and Supreme Court justices. Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas sat in. So did Jim DeMint, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie and Rick Perry. Conservative pundits Charles Krauthammer, Michael Barone and Glenn Beck shed any pretense of objectivity to attend and wow the crowd of executives representing many of America’s biggest corporations: the Bechtel Group, the Fluor Corporation, Georgia-Pacific, Home Depot, Wells Fargo, the Blackstone Group, Circuit City, and Laredo Petroleum, among others.

Nor was this, as Charles Koch described it, just an innocent gathering of “some of America’s greatest philanthropists and job creators.” No, this was a meeting to line up corporate opposition to President Obama’s re-election — and a very successful one. Corporations attending the Rancho Mirage summit pledged $49 million for the 2012 anti-Obama campaign. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what the Koch brothers have raised and pumped into politics over the last 20 years.

For the full article

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:14:00 +0000

Ron Paul's racism exposed. The Libertarian views of Ron Paul that were published in his newsletter reveal his views about blacks. Particularly repugnant were his views about blacks and welfare in the '90s following the Los Angeles rebellion and his assertion that all District of Columbia black males are criminals, or at least prone to be. RGN.

Newsmax

Ron Paul Dogged by Racism Charges

Thursday, December 22, 2011 03:08 PM

By: Martin Gould
Ron Paul may be flying high in the Iowa polls, but his newsletters from the early 1990s continue to haunt him.

On Wednesday, the Republican presidential candidate stormed out of an interview with CNN when chief political analyst Gloria Borger pressed him on claims that he made disparaging comments about blacks and Jews, among other incendiary remarks found in the letters.

Though the newsletters were published under several names — including “Ron Paul’s Freedom Report,” “The Ron Paul Political Report,” “The Ron Paul Survival Report” and “The Ron Paul Investment Letter”— the Texas congressman has insisted that he knew nothing about the offensive remarks made in the newsletters.

“I didn’t write them, I didn’t read them at the time, and I disavow them,” he said before unclipping his microphone.

Paul did admit to making money from the newsletters that bore his name but he suggested that he didn’t pay any attention to what was written under his name on the newsletter masthead.

“I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written, and it’s been going on 20 years that people have pestered me about this. CNN does it every single time. When are you going to wear yourself out?” he said.

And when Borger insisted, “These things are pretty incendiary,” Paul belittled their importance, saying: “Only because of people like you.”

The full article:
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Paul-newsletters-racism-CNN/2011/12/22/id/421916

Labor and Progressives Join Occupy Wall Street

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:50:00 +0000

The most important event today is the Occupy Wall Street Movement. This movement is going to change politics in America. With the union movement joining this spontaneous movement there is a chance that this will be a counter to the right wing hegemony. This movement will provide the President with the momentum to become that transformational presidency he promised. We need to thank the young people for changing the course of this nation. RGN

Labor and Progressive Groups Join Occupy Wall Street in Solidarity March

By Josh Eidelson, AlterNet
Posted on October 5, 2011, Printed on October 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152619/labor_and_progressive_groups_join_occupy_wall_street_in_solidarity_march

The increasing labor and left support for the Occupy Wall Street movement will be on full display this evening, as members of unions and long-time community groups march from New York City Hall to meet the occupation activists in Zuccotti Park, AKA Liberty Plaza. The march arrives as the two-week-old occupation is capturing national media attention, receiving ugly police pushback, and spawning dozens of actions across the United States.

While union members have been part of Occupy Wall Street from the beginning, the past week has been marked by increasingly broad and public union support. Friday AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka described the action as "a valid tactic," and "being in the streets" as "sometimes the only recourse you have." Sunday the AFL-CIO distributed a statement passed by delegates at its Young Workers Summit declaring solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. Trumka yesterday told Mike Elk of In These Times that the AFL-CIO will vote on an official endorsement today. Occupy Wall Street this week drew the official support of large international unions including the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the United Steel Workers (USW), and the nation's largest public sector union, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Workers (AFSCME).

Meanwhile, several major New York unions and community groups last week announced today's march, which leaves City Hall at 4:30 PM. "In this case," says Dan Cantor, Executive Director of the labor-backed Working Families Party (WFP), "labor is following the youth of America."

Mary Clinton, an Occupy Wall Street activist, led a training on encampment activism at the AFL-CIO's national Young Workers Summit in Minneapolis and proposed the solidarity resolution passed there. Clinton says she was encouraged by the broad support among the summit's 800 participants, and sees supporting Occupy Wall Street as a chance for unions "to participate in a broader struggle which I think will be necessary in order to make the gains we want to see and will benefit their members." Clinton, a former organizing intern with the Writer's Guild of America, is now a graduate student in labor studies at the City University of New York (CUNY). She describes linking arms with Occupy Wall Street and community allies as a better way forward for labor unions. Too many, she argues, approached the New York City budget debate by "trying to cut backdoor deals." "In order to see a budget that doesn't have cuts in social services and lay off teachers," Clinton says, "we need to see a stronger movement," working more closely with other allies.

The full article

From TruthDig: "The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Recalls Obama’s Fall From Grace"

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:24:00 +0000

This piece by Chris Hedges is an important contribution to our understanding of President Barack Obama. In his interview with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, many of the President's basic instincts, his fundamental values, are revealed. Yet, Hedges paints a picture of the President as one who sold out his pastor. It was Hedges who provided us with Cornel West's demeaning characterization of the President. Hedges is to be applauded for his principled progressive ideas when it comes to "the system." On the other hand, it must be recognized that the ideas he promotes, in their unadulterated form, are not compatible with pragmatic politics.

Obama did not sellout Reverend Wright. When Fox News went on its campaign to discredit Obama's candidacy, in an endless loop of video clippings, Fox displayed Wright with his rant to "goddamn America" as Obama's pastor and close confidant. In response to Fox's determined and racist efforts to derail his candidacy, Obama was so committed to maintaining his relationship with Reverend Wright, he gave what was considered to be a historic speech on race. In essence, that speech was in defense of Wright, whose relationship he in some ways maintained to be as important as that of his grandmother.

On Sunday April 28, 2008, I attended Detroit's NAACP Freedom Fund dinner at which Wright was still a hero in the Black community. Later that week, he appeared on the Bill Moyers show in which Moyers allowed Wright to show is allegiance to America by presenting the record of his military service and an opportunity to explain to the nation the precepts on black liberation theology. But then Wright made a mockery of himself at the National Press Club on that following Monday, leaving Obama no choice but to distance himself from Wright. Obama did not sellout Wright. Wright's behavior was an embarrassment. He discredited himself and his theology at that press conference.

What is revealed in this interview is Obama's integrity and commitment to the American people and the black community. The Hedges, West/Smiley and Wright criticisms of the President have more to do with America's economics and politics than Obama's personal commitment, or lack thereof. Wright discusses an Obama who did not want to run for the Illinois senate if Carol Mosely Brawn was going to run. Wright also pointed out the Obama being brought to tears when he came to understand the limitations of the Congressional Black Caucus. Wright pointed out as well, Obama's commitment to the poor as exemplified by his community organizing to combat poverty in Algelt Housing Projects. Wright pointed out this essence of Barack Obama, a person of compassion, integrity, and fairness.

Yet Hedges uses Wright and West criticisms as examples of Obama having "squandered ...[his] soul" through "cowardice and moral bankruptcy." These personal attacks are disgraceful because they lie about the man. It was his decency that got him elected. The attacks ignore the fact that Obama must perform the role of president in a hostile white nationalist America and obstructionist Republican party. He is not a dictator. Obama was elected to the "institution of the AMERICAN presidency." Any major deviation from his "responsibility" as president in protecting "American values" would lead to his being discredited and delegitimized. As Obama said on the night of his election, he was elected to be the president of "even those people who did not vote for me." To not recognize that is naive at best or nihilist, at worst. These attacks make it hard to hard to distinguish which is which. RGN

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Recalls Obama’s Fall From Grace

Barack Obama’s politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In that moment, playing the part of Judas, he surrendered the last shreds of his integrity. He became nothing more than a pawn of power, or as Cornel West says, “a black mascot for Wall Street.” Obama, once the glitter of power fades, will have to grapple with the fact that he was a traitor not only to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized his children and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself. Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered—his soul.

The health of a nation is measured by how it treats its prophets. When these prophets are ignored and reviled, when they become figures of ridicule, when they are labeled by the chattering classes and power elite as fools, then there is no check left on moral decay and the degeneration of the state. Wright, who spent 36 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side, since the 2008 presidential campaign has endured slander and calumny and weathered character assassination, misinterpretation and abuse, and yet he doggedly continues Sunday after Sunday to thunder the word of God from pulpits across the country.

Fascism's American Expression in Century 21: Tea Party Reveals Itself to the World

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:58:00 +0000

Paul Krugman

The Tea Party has revealed itself for the fascist movement that it is. The NAACP provided ample research that the movement was racist. Among other things, the Nazis were racists. But their racism was just one indicator of their backward misanthropic beliefs. They don't just hate people of color. They don't like people who are not " just like" them. They have no humanitarian compassion. They are selfish. But more importantly, they believe that might is right. An essential characteristic of white supremacy is its "iron fist" fascist tendencies. How else could lynching and Jim Crow be explained? Being intolerant is not limited to the issue of race. At the CNN-Tea Party debate this past week, the audience cheered at all of the wrong times. They cheered when Governor Rick Perry defended the 235 executions that have taken place during his tenure as Governor. Even more, they cheered when Congressman Ron Paul, in response to a question about what should be the fate of a young (white) male in a coma but no health insurance? Should there not be a safety net, provided by the government? Should he be just left to die??? Congressman Paul said the young man had made his choice and that the government had no role in providing him support. To the amazement of host Wolf Blitzer, the cheers from the audience were in enthusiastic support for the notion that he was "free to die!!!" Columnist Paul Krugman explores the real meaning of Ron Paul's and the Tea Parties' stance on Americans being "Free to Die." RGN

Free to Die

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Back in 1980, just as America was making its political turn to the right, Milton Friedman lent his voice to the change with the famous TV series “Free to Choose.” In episode after episode, the genial economist identified laissez-faire economics with personal choice and empowerment, an upbeat vision that would be echoed and amplified by Ronald Reagan.

But that was then. Today, “free to choose” has become “free to die.”

I’m referring, as you might guess, to what happened during Monday’s G.O.P. presidential debate. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Representative Ron Paul what we should do if a 30-year-old man who chose not to purchase health insurance suddenly found himself in need of six months of intensive care. Mr. Paul replied, “That’s what freedom is all about — taking your own risks.” Mr. Blitzer pressed him again, asking whether “society should just let him die.”

And the crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of “Yeah!”

The incident highlighted something that I don’t think most political commentators have fully absorbed: at this point, American politics is fundamentally about different moral visions.

Now, there are two things you should know about the Blitzer-Paul exchange. The first is that after the crowd weighed in, Mr. Paul basically tried to evade the question, asserting that warm-hearted doctors and charitable individuals would always make sure that people received the care they needed — or at least they would if they hadn’t been corrupted by the welfare state. Sorry, but that’s a fantasy. People who can’t afford essential medical care often fail to get it, and always have — and sometimes they die as a result.

The second is that very few of those who die from lack of medical care look like Mr. Blitzer’s hypothetical individual who could and should have bought insurance. In reality, most uninsured Americans either have low incomes and cannot afford insurance, or are rejected by insurers because they have chronic conditions.

The full column

The Attacks on Obama are Wrong Headed: Right and Left

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:28:00 +0000

The racist Tea Party has been on a constant vicious attack since the summer of 2009 beginning with their town hall attacks on the health care legislation. Mitch McConnell, following Rush Limbaugh's declaration that he wanted Obama to fail, stated his commitment to make the President a one-term president. McConnell and his Republican legislators oppose everything Obama proposes for two reasons: 1) he's a Democrat and 2) he's black. More recently, this chorus has been joined by members of the left. Unlike the Republicans, the attacks on the left are that the President is not black enough or not committed to helping black people. This is the position of Cornel West and Tavis Smiley. Likewise, Clarence Lang, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education has been very critical of the Obama for not addressing the major economic disparities facing the black community.

Like his right wing counterparts, Cornel West has called for the President's defeat. His was a plea for Senator Bernie Sanders to challenge the President in the primary elections would, like Ted Kennedy's challenge of President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 campaign lead to his defeat in the general election.

In his analysis Jonathan Chait (below) provides an analysis of why the left is wrong and short-sighted in its attack on the President. What the left does not realize is that the President is up against a racist right wing opposition that is committed to his defeat and secondly he is not a dictator that can command his every policy desire. Consequently, Chait argues that the highly partisan right and its polar opposite the highly partisan left are both wrong headed in their attacks on the President. RGN

What the Left Doesn’t Understand About Obama
By JONATHAN CHAIT
Published: September 2, 2011

This has been the summer that liberal discontent with Obama has finally crystallized. The frustration has been simmering for a while — through centrist appointments, bank bailouts and the defeat of the public option, to name a few examples. But it has taken the debt-ceiling standoff and the threat of a double-dip recession to create a leftist critique of the president that stuck.

Obama’s image as a weakling and sellout on domestic issues now centers on his alleged resistance, from the very first days of his presidency, to do whatever was necessary to heal the economy. “The truly decisive move that broke the arc of history,” wrote the Emory professor Drew Westen in this newspaper, “was his handling of the stimulus.” Just as the conservative repudiation of George W. Bush boiled down to “he spent too much,” the liberal repudiation of Obama has settled on “he didn’t spend enough.”

There’s truth in that. President Obama underestimated the depth of the crisis in 2009 and left himself with bad options in the event the economy failed to recover as quickly as he hoped. And yet the wave of criticism from the left over the stimulus is fundamentally flawed: it ignores the real choices Obama faced (and the progressive decisions he made) and wishes away any constraints upon his power.

The most common hallmark of the left’s magical thinking is a failure to recognize that Congress is a separate, coequal branch of government consisting of members whose goals may differ from the president’s. Congressional Republicans pursued a strategy of denying Obama support for any major element of his agenda, on the correct assumption that this would make it less popular and help the party win the 2010 elections. Only for roughly four months during Obama’s term did Democrats have the 60 Senate votes they needed to overcome a filibuster. Moreover, Republican opposition has proved immune even to persistent and successful attempts by Obama to mobilize public opinion. Americans overwhelmingly favor deficit reduction that includes both spending and taxes and favor higher taxes on the rich in particular. Obama even made a series of crusading speeches on this theme. The result? Nada.

That kind of analysis, however, just feels wrong to liberals, who remember Bush steamrolling his agenda through Congress with no such complaints about obstructionism. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently invoked “the panoply of domestic legislation — including Bush tax cuts, No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Part D prescription drug entitlement — that Bush pushed through Congress in his first term.”

Yes, Bush passed his tax cuts — by using a method called reconciliation, which can avoid a filibuster but can be used only on budget issues. On No Child Left Behind and Medicare, he cut deals expanding government, which the right-wing equivalents of Greenwald denounced as a massive sellout. Bush did have one episode where he tried to force through a major domestic reform against a Senate filibuster: his crusade to privatize Social Security. Just as liberals urge Obama to do today, Bush barnstormed the country, pounding his message and pressuring Democrats, whom he cast as obstructionists. The result? Nada, beyond the collapse of Bush’s popularity.

Perhaps the oddest feature of the liberal indictment of Obama is its conclusion that Obama should have focused all his political capital on economic recovery. “He could likely have passed many small follow-up stimulative laws in 2009,” Jon Walker of the popular blog Firedoglake wrote last month. “Instead, he pivoted away from the economic crisis because he wrongly ignored those who warned the crisis was going to get worse.”

It’s worth recalling that several weeks before Obama proposed an $800 billion stimulus, House Democrats had floated a $500 billion stimulus. (Oddly, this never resulted in liberals portraying Nancy Pelosi as a congenitally timid right-wing enabler.) At the time, Obama’s $800 billion stimulus was seen by Congress, pundits and business leaders — that is to say, just about everybody who mattered — as mind-bogglingly large. News reports invariably described it as “huge,” “massive” or other terms suggesting it was unrealistically large, even kind of pornographic. The favored cliché used to describe the reaction in Congress was “sticker shock.”

Compounding the problem, Obama proposed his stimulus shortly after the Congressional Budget Office predicted deficits topping a trillion dollars. Even before Obama took office, and for months afterward, “everybody who mattered” insisted that the crisis required Obama to scale back the domestic initiatives he campaigned on, especially health care reform, but also cap-and-trade, financial regulation and so on. Colin Powell, a reliable barometer of elite opinion, warned in July of 2009: “I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president — and I’ve talked to some of his people about this — is that you can’t have so many things on the table that you can’t absorb it all. And we can’t pay for it all.”

Rather than deploy every ounce of his leverage to force moderate Republicans, whose votes he needed, to swallow a larger stimulus than they wanted, Obama clearly husbanded some of his political capital. Why? Because in the position of choosing between the agenda he came into office hoping to enact and the short-term imperative of economic rescue, he picked the former. At the time, this was the course liberals wanted and centrists opposed.

The full article

Michelle Bachmann's Crazy Ideas About Black Farmers

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:21:00 +0000

A Short History of Black-Owned Land in America

Michelle Bachmann's Crazy Ideas About Black Farmers

By HEATHER GRAY

A few months ago I was asked to speak at Georgia State University about Black-owned land issues and the plight of Black farmers. This was a presentation before professors and students in urban Atlanta. I realized as I spoke that my audience was not informed about rural issues and ongoing racism in the deep South. Social change is a painstakingly slow process and when you are in the city it's hard to conceive what happens in rural areas - often isolated rural areas. This is why I was asked to speak, of course, but still it was a revealing experience. They also wanted me to refer to the second phase of the Black farmer lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture.

I began the presentation at Georgia State University with a delineation of historical dates of the rather constrained opportunities for Black land ownership in America. Invariably the policies in America resulted in some kind of betrayal followed by Black resistance. I started with the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. Then Congress creates the Department of Agriculture in 1862. Then also in 1862 was the Homestead Act – here's a description:

Congress passes the Homestead Act to open western lands to independent farmers rather than slave owners. This land was available also for freed slaves but there were few as slavery was still the law of the land. The parcels were 160 acres. Eventually 1.6 million homesteads were granted and 270,000,000 acres of federal land was privatized. It also dispossessed Native Americans of land and wealth. This was land reform largely for whites the likes of which was never offered to freed slaves after the Civil War or at any time in history.

Clearly, the Homestead Act, as well as the creation of the Department of Agriculture, was partly a response by the federal government to the South and its southern plantation owners. The South had successfully seceded from the Union, was engaged in war, and had wanted to extend the slaveocracy to the western territories.

A little known fact is that prior to the south seceding from the Union in the 1860's, in the May 1844 edition of "The Liberator" the renowned abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called for the north to secede from the government for precisely the opposite reason. The reason being that the Constitution of the United States adopted after the Revolutionary War was "at the expense of the colored population of the country." With the three-fifths clause allowing the enslaved individuals to be counted as three-fifths of a person – albeit a non-voting person - the South controlled Congress and the nation. Garrison said it was time "to set the captive free by the potency of truth."

By January 1865 Congress adopted the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery. Also in January1865, while in Savannah after his famous trek through Georgia, General William T. Sherman issues Field Order 15– here's a description:

After meeting with freed slaves in Savannah, Georgia - in what became known as the Savannah Colloquy - General William T. Sherman responded to their pleas for land. In January, he issued his famous Field Order 15, which set aside a huge swath of abandoned land along the Georgia and South Carolina coast for black families to have forty acres plots. He also said that army mules no longer in use would be offered to Black farmers. This is likely where the "Forty Acres and a Mule" legend began. Sherman never stated whether this was to be a permanent or temporary land acquisition.

With hopes being raised by many in the Black community, Sherman's Field Order was ultimately the beginning of betrayal by the federal government on land distribution. Here's more:

• 1865 (March) Congress establishes the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau) providing for the allocation of 'unoccupied land' to freedmen (not to exceed 40 acres). Rather than 40 acres as requested, Congress allowed the Freedmen's Bureau to sell only 5 to 10 acre tracts of land to freed slaves.

• 1865 (April 9) Civil War ends.

• 1865 (April 14 ) Republican President Abraham Lincoln assassinated and succeeded by Vice President Andrew Johnson (former U.S. Senator from Tennessee).

• 1865 (May) President Johnson announces his Reconstruction Plan. The plan calls for the Southern States to abolish slavery but does not offer a role for Blacks in Reconstruction. The southern states are to determine the role for Blacks without a federal mandate.

• 1865 (June) Some 40,000 freed slaves were settled on what was referred to as "Sherman's Land" on some 400,000 acres of land in Georgia and South Carolina. Much of this land was for rice cultivation. The Freedmen begin to create their own government; white access to the area was denied; and they begin to cultivate their land.

• 1865 (Summer) President Johnson reverses Sherman's Field Order 15 by ordering that virtually all plantation lands given to freed slaves be returned to the original plantation owners.

The history, of course, moves into the 20th century with the struggles of Jim Crow in the South. The important point to be made, however, is that there has always been resistance and action by the Black community to the constraints on their achieving freedom and justice. By the early 1900's, for example, Blacks owned some 15 million acres of land – this was an enormous achievement.

Fast forward to 1946 when the USDA's Farmers Home Administration was created to provide credit to farmers – it was known as the "lending institution of last resort". But Blacks have rarely been able to access adequate credit from USDA offices across the South. These county offices have invariably been headed by whites that clearly wanted to make sure that the monies were going to the white community and to white farmers. This is the legacy of actions, for example, of white planters in the Mississippi delta who made sure that New Deal agriculture policies of the 1930's, such as the Agriculture Adjustment Act (AAA), benefited them and not Black farmers.

Ultimately, in the 1990's, Blacks sued the government and settled what is now the Pigford v Vilsack lawsuit.

A colleague of mine from Tuskegee University once said that the closer you get to farmers the harder it is for policies to be implemented. This is true. The Secretary of Agriculture might give directives from his office in Washington DC; the directives will then be given to the state directors of the USDA; and then the state directors will send policy information to the various counties in the state and this is where the rubber hits the road as it were. This is where the policies should impact farmers and be offered to farmers but it is also where the entrenched social prejudices and cultural alienation are most keenly felt. Black farmers have always received abysmally poor treatment in these county offices and comparatively relatively little capital in loans for their farm operations or farm ownership opportunities have been provided – thus the lawsuit.

Nevertheless, Obama's Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has been attempting to change the system starting with civil rights directives in the department when he was first appointed; engaging in a study of civil rights abuses; developing a "strike force" in the South to ensure fair treatment for all in the implementation of farm programs, etc. We are also witnessing some changes at the local level thanks to his initiatives and the result of the Black farmer lawsuit.

Regarding the Pigford lawsuit, Blacks led the way yet again in seeking justice. By the time Vilsack became Obama's Secretary there were lawsuits pending from women, Native American and Latino farmers thanks to the leadership of Black farmers in the rural south who's lawsuit provided opportunities for others who were also being marginalized by USDA offices.

Suffice it to say, Representative Michelle Bachman (R-MN) decries the Black lawsuit against the USDA as reparations. I wish the lawsuit was, in fact, reparations for centuries of abuse of Blacks by white supremacists in America. Alas, it is not. Word has it that Bachman is also enamored about a book by Robert E. Lee that purports the benefits of slavery. Perhaps Bachman should first be a slave and see how she benefits. At the very least, Bachman and her co-hort, Representative Stephen King (R-IA), provide the opportunity for us to share more information about the Pigford lawsuit. (See the October 6, 2010 response "Pigford advocates respond to congressional critics")

The full article

Eugene Robinson: The straw poll winner -- Barack Obama

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:54:00 +0000

Even though President Obama's approval rating has dropped below 40%, Eugene Robinson believes that with Michelle Bachman winning the Iowa straw poll, saneness in the person of Obama will win out. Surely, White Christian Nationalism will not become the ruling politics because it is so extreme. Recall, Michelle Bachman was among those who opposed raising of the debt ceiling. Eugene Robinson assures us America is not that crazy. RGN

The straw poll winner: Barack Obama

By Eugene Robinson, Published: August 15

AMES, Iowa

Strolling through the pageant of unhealthful food and unsound ideology that is the Iowa straw poll, amid the good-natured Republicans who swept Michele Bachmann to an impressive victory, I couldn’t help but reflect that this quadrennial exercise is one crazy way to pick a major-party candidate for president.

You’ll note that I used the words “Michele Bachmann” and “president” in the same sentence. That someone with views as extreme as Bachmann’s could win — and that Ron Paul, who seems to inhabit his own little reality, could finish second — would seem to rob the straw poll of all but comic value, making it analogous to the opening joke a speaker might tell to warm up a stone-faced audience. But the ritual is serious business, as poor Tim Pawlenty found out. Less than 24 hours after he finished a distant third in the straw poll, “former candidate” became his new honorific.

Long before the results were tallied, it seemed clear that Pawlenty was in trouble. Like the other candidates who participated Saturday, he had a big tent on the grounds of the Iowa State University coliseum where voters could enjoy free food and entertainment. People were happy to line up for the Famous Dave’s barbecue that Pawlenty was serving, but they didn’t stay long — and when they walked away, they weren’t wearing the green Pawlenty T-shirts that signaled support. By mid-afternoon, volunteers were glum.

The full article

Lessons from Iowa: White Christian Nationalism the New Face of Fascism

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:30:00 +0000

A major force in Republican and conservative politics has been white Christian nationalism. What's not clearly articulated is that what we call the evangelicals are really white Christian nationalists. Under the guise of religion, white Christian nationalism is a political force. Their religion is used to promote white nationalism. At this point in the winnowing of Republicans presidential candidates, two white evangelicals are in the lead, Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry. These candidates are idolized by a large segment of the electorate. It is not likely to be Bachman, because she has made several flawed assertions. She is not likely to stand the scrutiny of campaign. Rick Perry, the Govenor of Texas since Bush's ascendancy to the White House, seems the ideal candidate. Perry's closest affiliations certainly lump him among some of the nation's foremost white Christian nationalists. This strain of American politics under girds the promotion of intolerance. The historic Bob Jones case of racist policies relative interracial dating is one of the best known cases, but Jerry Falwel and the so-called religious right are largely, though not exclusively southern, in its base. Mix this white religious fervor with an electoral majority is a very dangerous contradiction. A "rightness of whiteness" cloaked in the flag and the Bible will be nothing less than American fascism. Its enemies will be: people of color, the poor, sexual orientations they don't like, women who want the right to choose, and others wanting to protect the democratic rights all. Knowing the possibility of this outcome, we need to make sure that these forces, including Rick Perry, are defeated in our next election and our future as a diverse democratic America. The article below by Michelle Goldberg raised the essential question what of "A Christian Plot for Domination?" RGN

A Christian Plot for Domination?

Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry aren't just devout—both have deep ties to a fringe fundamentalist movement known as Dominionism, which says Christians should rule the world.

by Michelle Goldberg | August 14, 2011 10:51 PM EDT

With Tim Pawlenty out of the presidential race, it is now fairly clear that the GOP candidate will either be Mitt Romney or someone who makes George W. Bush look like Tom Paine. Of the three most plausible candidates for the Republican nomination, two are deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism known as Dominionism. If you want to understand Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, understanding Dominionism isn’t optional.

Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, it’s long had an influence on religious-right education and political organizing. But because it seems so outré, getting ordinary people to take it seriously can be difficult. Most writers, myself included, who explore it have been called paranoid. In a contemptuous 2006 First Things review of several books, including Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, and my own Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote, “the fear of theocracy has become a defining panic of the Bush era.”

Now, however, we have the most theocratic Republican field in American history, and suddenly, the concept of Dominionism is reaching mainstream audiences. Writing about Bachmann in The New Yorker this month, Ryan Lizza spent several paragraphs explaining how the premise fit into the Minnesota congresswoman’s intellectual and theological development. And a recent Texas Observer cover story on Rick Perry examined his relationship with the New Apostolic Reformation, a Dominionist variant of Pentecostalism that coalesced about a decade ago. “[W]hat makes the New Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing fascination with infiltrating politics and government,” wrote Forrest Wilder. Its members “believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take ‘dominion’ over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the ‘Seven Mountains’ of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world.”

The full article

West/Smiley "Refudiated" in Detroit

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 05:02:00 +0000

West & Smiley's poverty tour hits a bump in Detroit. Their attacks on the President are rejected. RGN

DETROIT (WXYZ) - Award winning public television host Tavis Smiley along with former Harvard professor Dr. Cornell West drove their poverty bus tour into Detroit Monday.
The town hall meeting was held in the auditorium at city hall and was packed with people supporting President Obama.
They had heard Smiley and West would be bashing the president for failing to make the plight of the poor an issue.
There was some rowdiness and rudeness that made it tough for Smiley to make some of his points but not enough to disrupt the meeting.
Earlier, Smiley told Action News "this is not an anti-Obama tour." However he also said the debt ceiling deal the President struck with Congress "does not extend unemployment benefits, close corporate loopholes or raise one cent for the poor."
The tour will travel to about two dozen cities.

See the video

Cornel: The President is Dissing Me!

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 04:46:00 +0000

Cornel West suffers from delusion. His notion of his self importance is bizarre. It is interesting that Larry Summers informed him that he was an embarrassment to Harvard. RGN

Cornel West Flunks the President

By ANDREW GOLDMAN

What’s with the black suit, white shirt, black tie outfit you always wear? Do you have anything else in your closet?
I’ve got four black suits that I circulate, and they are my cemetery clothes — my uniform that keeps me ready for battle.

Your cemetery clothes?
It’s ready to die, brother. If I drop dead, I am coffin-ready. I got my tie, my white shirt, everything. Just fix my Afro nice in the coffin.

So let me ask you: in 2007, you introduced Barack Obama as your “brother, companion and comrade.” But in May, you referred to him as “the black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs” and the “head of the American killing machine.” What in the world happened?
It was a cry from the heart. What happened was that greed at the top has squeezed so much of the juices of the body politic. Poor people and working people have not been a fundamental focus of the Obama administration. That for me is not just a disappointment but a kind of betrayal.

But you have also acknowledged that this is more than just political — you’ve said that after campaigning for him at 65 events, you were miffed that he didn’t return your phone calls or say thank you.
I think he had to keep me at a distance. There’s no doubt that he didn’t want to be identified with a black leftist. But we’re talking about one phone call, man. That’s all. One private phone call.

He was running a successful candidacy for president. He might have been busy.
So many of the pundits assume that it’s just egoism: “Who does Cornel West think he is? The president is busy.” But there’s such a thing as decency in human relations.

O.K., but did you also have to say that Obama “feels most comfortable with upper-middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart”?
It’s in no way an attempt to devalue white or Jewish brothers. It’s an objective fact. In his administration, he’s got a significant number of very smart white brothers and very smart Jewish brothers. You think that’s unimportant?

When Larry Summers was president of Harvard, he told you your rap album was an “embarrassment” to the university, and you quit soon after. He was one of Obama’s first appointments. Did that strike a particular feeling in your heart?
I couldn’t help it. I’m a human being, indeed. Given the disrespect he showed me? Oh, my God. Again, it’s political much more than it’s personal. Summers was in captivity to Wall Street interests. But it’s personal too.

You have 30 seconds of private time with the president — what do you say to him?
I would say: “Look at that bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Oval Office and recognize that tears are flowing when you let Geithner and others shape your economic policy, when you refuse to focus on poor and working people or when you drop the drone bombs that kill innocent civilians. Tim Geithner does not represent the legacy of Martin King.”

See the full interview

The Obama Presidency: Racism Run Amok

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 21:17:00 +0000

It's a Great Time to Be Racist

By: Nsenga Burton

Posted: August 12, 2011 at 12:57 AM

Let's face it: There's only one explanation for some of the attacks on President Obama.

Racists have officially lost their minds. In recent weeks, the venom spewed at President Barack Obama would leave one to believe that we are in the midst of a racist renaissance. "A dick," "jackass," "tar baby, "your boy" -- you name it and the president has been called it. For some reason, some people are so enraged by how this country is purportedly being run that they cannot separate a real critique of the president's decisions from mean-spirited name-calling related to his race.

Yes, the country that likes to pretend that it is far removed from its racist past has engaged in the verbal equivalent of a throwback jersey. Some people have reached far back into that Reconstruction-era closet, pulled out that dingy jersey adorned with racial slurs, shaken it out and put it on proudly. Elected officials have reduced themselves to behaving like petulant children, storming in and out of meetings and running to the media to lob personal attacks at the president, then offering lame apologies shortly afterward.

Is this the postracial era that so many people theorized about following the election of the nation's first black president? Try post-Reconstruction, because the harmful slurs and images being tossed around the Internet and in public spaces hark back more to a racist past than to a racially ambiguous future.

It's not surprising that President Obama is being received in such a way.

Trouble From the Start
We got a peek at what was to come just seven months into President Obama's tenure. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted, "You lie!" during the president's speech about health care reform. Clearly Wilson had a flashback to legalized segregation, when folks publicly bullied, threatened and heckled blacks to remind them of who was "in charge."

Wilson subsequently issued an apology, saying his actions were "regrettable" and he'd let his emotions take over. He was just the first of a series of elected officials acting like fools and then offering weak apologies as a remedy for said actions.

To be clear, "You lie!" is not a racist exclamation. Yet and still, it is insulting and in recent memory has not been used against any other president, even when he may have been lying about one thing or another. President George W. Bush and the weapons of mass destruction, for example, or President Bill Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal could have triggered such a response.

The full article

Black Women Historians on "The Help"

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:46:00 +0000

An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help:

On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.

During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalities limited black women's employment opportunities. Up to 90 per cent of working black women in the South labored as domestic servants in white homes. The Help’s representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families. Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them. The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.

Both versions of The Help also misrepresent African American speech and culture. Set in the South, the appropriate regional accent gives way to a child-like, over-exaggerated “black” dialect. In the film, for example, the primary character, Aibileen, reassures a young white child that, “You is smat, you is kind, you is important.” In the book, black women refer to the Lord as the “Law,” an irreverent depiction of black vernacular. For centuries, black women and men have drawn strength from their community institutions. The black family, in particular provided support and the validation of personhood necessary to stand against adversity. We do not recognize the black community described in The Help where most of the black male characters are depicted as drunkards, abusive, or absent. Such distorted images are misleading and do not represent the historical realities of black masculinity and manhood.

Furthermore, African American domestic workers often suffered sexual harassment as well as physical and verbal abuse in the homes of white employers. For example, a recently discovered letter written by Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks indicates that she, like many black domestic workers, lived under the threat and sometimes reality of sexual assault. The film, on the other hand, makes light of black women’s fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comic relief.

Similarly, the film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based field secretary of the NAACP, gets some attention. However, Evers’ assassination sends Jackson’s black community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusion—a far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight. Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.

We respect the stellar performances of the African American actresses in this film. Indeed, this statement is in no way a criticism of their talent. It is, however, an attempt to provide context for this popular rendition of black life in the Jim Crow South. In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.

Ida E. Jones is National Director of ABWH and Assistant Curator at Howard University. Daina Ramey Berry, Tiffany M. Gill, and Kali Nicole Gross are Lifetime Members of ABWH and Associate Professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Janice Sumler-Edmond is a Lifetime Member of ABWH and is a Professor at Huston-Tillotson University.

Word Count: 766

Suggested Reading:

Fiction:

Like one of the Family: Conversations from A Domestic’s Life, Alice Childress

The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James

Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neeley

The Street by Ann Petry

A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight

Non-Fiction:

Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph

To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors by Tera Hunter

Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Any questions, comments, or interview requests can be sent to:

ABWHTheHelp@gmail.com

Progressives not recognizing racism in their criticism of Obama

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:42:00 +0000

Below is a great piece. I made this very argument to a couple of our colleagues just yesterday. I just heard a Rep Himes-NY remind his progressive friends of all that Obama has accomplished in 3 yrs!!! Racism is at the base of this opposition to Obama is on the right and the left. The Republicans and other white nationalists that have poisoned our politics. On the other hand, these lefties blame Obama for OUR weakness. We have lost EVERY battle: Van Jones, Acorn, Sherrod, etc. And we would not have lost Sherrod were it not for the weakness of the NAACP. If Barney Frank says the use of the 14^th Amendment would have been an impeachable offense, Obama’s decision to make a deal was not a sign of weakness.

It is reminiscent as the author says of the Smiley/West politics of the personal. "Obama’s not black enough" (read: weak, not radical enough). He's not Martin and He's not Malcolm. Even though his accomplishments have been historic, he "compromises too much." Where is the sense of politics, of governance? He is operating in context in a racially hostile environment, an environment in which mainstream reporters on mainstream or what Ismael Reed calls the "Jim Crow media." RGN

Progressives don't see Obama clearly because of our racial blind spots.

The predominately white progressive intelligentsia don't see Obama clearly because of our racial blind spot. We don't see the role of race in how he seems to understand himself and how other perceive him.

The complete article

Krugman: The President Surrenders!!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:11:00 +0000

Progressives are dismayed and disappointed that President Obama capitulated on the "the deal" that permitted the debt ceiling to be raised. Raising the debt ceiling has ALWAYS been essential and routine. But in their goal to make President Obama a "failure" and a "one term president," the right wing in the Congress extracted spending cuts without any enhanced revenues (taxes) to address the deficit and the debt. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman says the President surrendered to his opposition. See Krugman below. RGN

July 31, 2011

The President Surrenders

By PAUL KRUGMAN

A deal to raise the federal debt ceiling is in the works. If it goes through, many commentators will declare that disaster was avoided. But they will be wrong.

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.

Start with the economics. We currently have a deeply depressed economy. We will almost certainly continue to have a depressed economy all through next year. And we will probably have a depressed economy through 2013 as well, if not beyond.

The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending, since that will depress the economy even further. Pay no attention to those who invoke the confidence fairy, claiming that tough action on the budget will reassure businesses and consumers, leading them to spend more. It doesn’t work that way, a fact confirmed by many studies of the historical record.

Indeed, slashing spending while the economy is depressed won’t even help the budget situation much, and might well make it worse. On one side, interest rates on federal borrowing are currently very low, so spending cuts now will do little to reduce future interest costs. On the other side, making the economy weaker now will also hurt its long-run prospects, which will in turn reduce future revenue. So those demanding spending cuts now are like medieval doctors who treated the sick by bleeding them, and thereby made them even sicker.

The full article.

The Nation on Frances Fox Piven

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 23:18:00 +0000

The danger of the Glenn Beck attacks on Frances Fox Piven cannot be overstated. With the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, we can see the dangerous climate that has been promoted by America's white nationalist politics. Besides Bill O'Rielly and Rush Limbaugh, the Pied Piper for this movement is Glenn Beck. Among his targets is Frances Fox Piven. The Editors of The Nation provide an excellent analysis of Beck and the climate to which he contributes. RGN

Glenn Beck Targets Frances Fox Piven

The Editors
The Nation
January 20, 2011

On the afternoon of January 6, Frances Fox Piven, a distinguished professor, legendary activist, writer and longtime contributor to this magazine, received an e-mail from an unknown correspondent. There was no text, just a subject line that read: DIE YOU CUNT. It was not the first piece of hateful e-mail Piven had gotten, nor would it be the last. One writer told her to "go back to Canada you dumb bitch"; another ended with this wish: "may cancer find you soon."

Piven was unnerved but not surprised. These are not pretty e-mails, but they appear positively decorous compared with what has been written about her by commentators on Glenn Beck's website, The Blaze, where she's been the target of a relentless campaign to demonize her—and worse. There, under cover of anonymous handles, scores of people have called for Piven's murder, even volunteering to do the job with their own hands. "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas [sic] ready and I'll give My life to take Our freedom back," wrote superwrench4. "ONE SHOT...ONE KILL!" proclaimed Jst1425. "The only redistribution I am interested in is that of a precious metal.... LEAD," declared Patriot1952. Posts like these are interwoven with ripples of misogyny, outbursts of bizarre anti-Semitism and crude insults about Piven's looks (she's actually a noted beauty) and age (she's 78).

This fusillade was evidently set off by Piven's recent Nation editorial calling for a mass movement of the unemployed ["Mobilizing the Jobless [1]," January 10/17]. But Beck has had Piven in his cross-hairs for some time. In the past few years he's featured Piven, along with her late husband, Richard Cloward, in at least twenty-eight broadcasts, all of which paint them as masterminds of an overarching left-wing plot called "the Cloward-Piven strategy," which supposedly engineered the financial crisis of 2008, healthcare reform, Obama's election and massive voter fraud, among other world-historical events (see Richard Kim, "The Mad Tea Party [2]," April 12, 2010). Cloward and Piven, Beck once argued, are "fundamentally responsible for the unsustainability and possible collapse of our economic system." In his most recent diatribe against Piven (January 17) he repeatedly called her "the enemy of the Constitution." In Beck's telling, because Piven and her comrades on the left support civil disobedience in some circumstances, it is they—not the heavily armed militias of the radical right—who threaten Americans' safety.

It's tempting not to dignify such ludicrous distortions with a response. But in brief: Piven, throughout her career as an activist and academic, has embodied the best of American democracy. It has been her life's work to amplify the voices of the disenfranchised through voter registration drives, grassroots organization and, when necessary, street protest. The way economic injustice warps and erodes our democracy has been a central preoccupation. But passive lament has never been her game. Recognizing the leverage that oppressed groups have—and working with them to use it—is her special genius.

It's perhaps not surprising, then, that the pseudo-populist right finds her so threatening. The highly personalized and concerted campaign against Piven, already unsettling, takes on added gravity in the context of the recent shootings of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, federal judge John Roll and eighteen other people in Arizona. But while commentators debate whether the killer in that case—the mentally disturbed Jared Loughner—was inspired by the ravings of right-wing demagogues, the forgotten story of Byron Williams provides a straightforward example of the way hateful rhetoric fuels violence.

In July, Williams, a convicted bank robber, put on a suit of body armor and got in a car with a 9-mm handgun, a shotgun and a .308 caliber rifle equipped with armor-piercing bullets and set off for San Francisco. His destination was the Tides Foundation, which had been mentioned at that point in at least twenty-nine episodes of the Glenn Beck show, sometimes along with Piven. His goal, as he later told police, was to kill "people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU" in order to "start a revolution." Williams's mother said that he had been watching TV news and was upset at "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing-agenda items." Or, as Williams himself put it, "I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind." California Highway Patrol officers pulled Williams over for driving erratically and, after a firefight, subdued and arrested him before he could blow anyone else's mind away.

For a responsible journalist and a responsible media outlet, such an incident would have spurred a process of intense self-scrutiny. But this is Glenn Beck and Fox, and as is evident from the campaign against Piven, nothing of the sort occurred. In the hundreds of posts about Piven on The Blaze, there is not one admonition to tone down the violent rhetoric, not one clear instance in which an editor intervened to moderate the thread. In fact, commenters seem at liberty to egg one another on: one poster pointedly noted that Piven lives in New York City and teaches at CUNY; another then linked to a website that listed Piven's home address and phone number. "Why is this woman still alive?" asked capnjack. "Mainly because you haven't killed her, I imagine. See, someone that really cares and has the courage of their conviction must actually DO SOMETHING," responded Diamondback. And the calls for assassination are not limited to Piven. As Civilunrestnow put it in a post that perfectly captures the tenor of right-wing eliminationist fantasy, "I say bring it. 90 million legal gun owners with over 220 million legal firearms, MOST in the hands of people who claim to be center RIGHT. I think it's time to reduce the surplus population of leeches, lay abouts, left wing nut jobs, the main stream media, liberal politicians and MOST defense attorneys."

Of course, crazed right-wingers enjoy the protection of the First Amendment, too. But the overwhelming and transparent calls for murder on Beck's website, among other right-wing hot spots, can't be casually dismissed as "just talk." At one time it was all just talk for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Dr. George Tiller's assassin, Scott Roeder, too. We were lucky that police happened to pull over Byron Williams before he reached the Tides Foundation's door. In a sense Glenn Beck was lucky too. How long will this luck hold out?

Need to Fight Back in Defense of a Colleague: Frances Fox Piven

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 22:51:00 +0000

Glenn Beck is certifiable. Yet, his outrage continues. Over the course of his machinations, he has concocted that one of our most honored colleagues is the reason for American ruin. Beck has singled out Frances Fox Piven to construct his grand conspiracy to destroy America. Fox News with its dedication to white nationalism has placed Beck as its evangelist. It is time to fight back. Media matters is a good place to start. RGN

Dear Friend:

Over the past year, Glenn Beck has launched numerous false attacks against renowned Sociologist and progressive civil rights chamption Frances Fox Piven.

As a result of Beck's accusations that Piven promotes violence and is an "enemy of the constitution," numerous violent threats to Piven have been posted on Beck's website.

It is absolutely irresponsible -- and dangerous -- to let Beck continue his rhetoric and false attacks against Piven.

Tell Fox News President Roger Ailes it is his responsibility to stop

Beck's attacks now:

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/stop_piven_attacks/?r_by=-3608226-CKtjMYx&rc=mailto2

Tea Party White Nationalism and "Social Engineering"

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:55:00 +0000

It is needless to say that the Tea Party movement is a white nationalist movement. Conservatives or the right wing are in their heydey with the victories of the Tea Party movement. Their economic policies of tax cuts for the rich are winning the day due to the widespread Tea Party victories in the 2010 elections. As opposed to its racist reputation, there is an attempt to make the case that the Tea Party movement is an economic formation. While to SOME degree that may be accurate, the driving force of the Tea Party is white nationalism. They were formed to oppose America's first African American president. Arizona's white nationalist laws, including those that would permit a Jared Loughner to purchase his gun and clips, are a prime example of Tea Party governance. The story below by Stephanie McCrummen of the Washington Post on a North Carolina Republican school board is about the district's integration policy of longstanding being overturned by its Tea Party members. RGN

Republican school board in N.C. backed by tea party abolishes integration policy

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 12, 2011; 12:38 PM

RALEIGH, N.C. - The sprawling Wake County School District has long been a rarity. Some of its best, most diverse schools are in the poorest sections of this capital city. And its suburban schools, rather than being exclusive enclaves, include children whose parents cannot afford a house in the neighborhood.

But over the past year, a new majority-Republican school board backed by national tea party conservatives has set the district on a strikingly different course. Pledging to "say no to the social engineers!" it has abolished the policy behind one of the nation's most celebrated integration efforts.

And as the board moves toward a system in which students attend neighborhood schools, some members are embracing the provocative idea that concentrating poor children, who are usually minorities, in a few schools could have merits - logic that critics are blasting as a 21st-century case for segregation.

The situation unfolding here in some ways represents a first foray of tea party conservatives into the business of shaping a public school system, and it has made Wake County the center of a fierce debate over the principle first enshrined in the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education: that diversity and quality education go hand in hand.

The new school board has won applause from parents who blame the old policy - which sought to avoid high-poverty, racially isolated schools - for an array of problems in the district and who say that promoting diversity is no longer a proper or necessary goal for public schools.

"This is Raleigh in 2010, not Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s - my life is integrated," said John Tedesco, a new board member. "We need new paradigms."

But critics accuse the new board of pursuing an ideological agenda aimed at nothing less than sounding the official death knell of government-sponsored integration in one of the last places to promote it. Without a diversity policy in place, they say, the county will inevitably slip into the pattern that defines most districts across the country, where schools in well-off neighborhoods are decent and those in poor, usually minority neighborhoods struggle.

The NAACP has filed a civil rights complaint arguing that 700 initial student transfers the new board approved have already increased racial segregation, violating laws that prohibit the use of federal funding for discriminatory purposes. In recent weeks, federal education officials visited the county, the first step toward a possible investigation.

"So far, all the chatter we heard from tea partyers has not manifested in actually putting in place retrograde policies. But this is one place where they have literally attempted to turn back the clock," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the NAACP.

School Board Chairman Ron Margiotta referred questions on the matter to the district's attorney, who declined to comment. Tedesco, who has emerged as the most vocal among the new majority on the nine-member board, said he and his colleagues are only seeking a simpler system in which children attend the schools closest to them. If the result is a handful of high-poverty schools, he said, perhaps that will better serve the most challenged students.

"If we had a school that was, like, 80 percent high-poverty, the public would see the challenges, the need to make it successful," he said. "Right now, we have diluted the problem, so we can ignore it."

So far, the board shows few signs of shifting course. Last month, it announced that Anthony J. Tata, former chief operating officer of the D.C. schools, will replace a superintendent who resigned to protest the new board's intentions. Tata, a retired general, names conservative commentator Glenn Beck and the Tea Party Patriots among his "likes" on his Facebook page.

Tata did not return calls seeking comment, but he said in a recent news conference in Raleigh that he supports the direction the new board is taking, and cited the District as an example of a place where neighborhood schools are "working."

Beyond 'your little world'

The story unfolding here is striking because of the school district's unusual history. It sprawls 800 square miles and includes public housing in Raleigh, wealthy enclaves near town, and the booming suburbs beyond, home to newcomers that include many new school board members. The county is about 72 percent white, 20 percent black and 9 percent Latino. About 10 percent live in poverty.

Usually, such large territory is divided into smaller districts with students assigned to the nearest schools. And because neighborhoods are still mostly defined by race and socioeconomic status, poor and minority kids wind up in high-poverty schools that struggle with problems such as retaining the best teachers.

Officials in Raleigh tried to head off that scenario. As white flight hit in the 1970s, civic leaders merged the city and county into a single district. And in 2000, they shifted from racial to economic integration, adopting a goal that no school should have more than 40 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, the proxy for poverty.

The district tried to strike this balance through student assignments and choice, establishing magnet programs in poor areas to draw middle-class kids. Although most students here ride buses to school, officials said fewer than 10 percent are bused to a school to maintain diversity, and most bus rides are less than five miles.

"We knew that over time, high-poverty schools tend to lose high-quality teachers, leadership, key students - you see an erosion," said Bill McNeal, a former superintendent who instituted the goal as part of a broad academic plan. "But we never expected economic diversity to solve all our problems."

Over the years, both Republican and Democratic school boards supported the system. A study of 2007 graduation rates by EdWeek magazine ranked Wake County 17th among the nation's 50 largest districts, with a rate of 64 percent, just below Virginia's Prince William County. While most students posted gains in state reading and math tests last year - more than three-quarters passed - the stubborn achievement gap that separates minority students from their white peers has persisted, though it has narrowed by some measures. And many parents see benefits beyond test scores.

"I want these kids to be culturally diverse," said Clarence McClain, who is African American and the guardian of a niece and nephew who are doing well in county schools. "If they're with kids who are all the same way, to break out of that is impossible. You've got to step outside your little world."

'Constant shuffling'

But as the county has boomed in recent years - adding as many as 6,000 students a year - poverty levels at some schools have exceeded 70 percent. And many suburban parents have complained that their children are being reassigned from one school to the next. Officials blame this on the unprecedented growth, but parents blame the diversity goal.

"Basically, all the problems have roots in the diversity policy," said Kathleen Brennan, who formed a parent group to challenge the system. "There was just this constant shuffling every year." She added: "These people are patting themselves on the back and only 54 percent of [poor] kids are graduating. And I'm being painted a racist. But isn't it racist to have low expectations?"

As she and others have delved deeper, they've found that qualified minority students are underenrolled in advanced math classes, for instance, a problem that school officials said they've known about for years, but that strikes many parents as revelatory. Some have even come to see the diversity policy as a kind of profiling that assumes poor kids are more likely to struggle.

"I don't want us to go back to racially isolated schools," said Shila Nordone, who is biracial and has two children in county schools. "But right now, it's as if the best we can do is dilute these kids out so they don't cause problems. It sickens me."

In their quest to end the diversity policy, the frustrated parents have found some influential partners, among them retail magnate and Republican operative Art Pope.

Following his guidance, the GOP fielded the victorious bloc of school board candidates who railed against "forced busing." The nation's largest tea party organizers, Americans for Prosperity - on whose national board Pope sits - cast the old school board members as arrogant "leftists." Two libertarian think tanks, which Pope funds almost exclusively, have deployed experts on TV and radio.

"We are losing sight of the educational mission of schools to make them into some socially acceptable melting pot," said Terry Stoops, a researcher at the libertarian John Locke Foundation. "Those who support these policies are imposing their vision on everyone else."

'Disastrous' results

Things have not gone smoothly as the new school board has attempted to define its vision for raising student achievement. A preliminary map of new school assignments did not please some of the new majority's own constituents. And critics expressed alarm that the plan would create a handful of high-poverty, racially isolated schools, a scenario that the new majority has begun embracing.

Pope, who is a former state legislator, said he would back extra funding for such schools.

"If we end up with a concentration of students underperforming academically, it may be easier to reach out to them," he said. "Hypothetically, we should consider that as well."

The NAACP and others have criticized that as separate-but-equal logic.

"It's not as if this is a new idea, 'Let's experiment and see what happens when poor kids are put together in one school,' " said Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a think tank that advocates for economic integration. "We know. The results are almost always disastrous."

Many local leaders see another irony in the possible balkanization of the county's schools at a time when society is becoming more interconnected than ever.

"People want schools that mirror their neighborhood, but the bigger picture is my kid in the suburbs is connected to kids in Raleigh," said the Rev. Earl Johnson, pastor of Martin Street Baptist Church in downtown Raleigh. "We're trying to connect to the world but we're separating locally? There is something wrong."

Karenga on the Tea Party, the Constitution, and Black America.

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:26:00 +0000

In this Tea Party era there is a lot of talk about the Constitution by right wing Tea Partiers who lack understanding of the document. There is a "faith" endorsement. Like they love the Bible they love the Constitution, even when they have no idea what it says. Representative Michelle Bachman recently stated that the Founding Fathers, including John QUINCY Adams, wrung slavery right out of the Constitution. Dr. Maulana Karenga puts this white nationalist offensive in perspective. RGN

Quoting the Constitution in Public: Whistlin’ Dixie in the Dark

Dr. Maulana Karenga

It is a sign of the rough and jagged edges of the times in which we
live, this surreal juncture of history where we encounter and are
cultivated to accept, with minimum and often misguided response, various
forms of fear-and-hate mongering, lies, illusions and political
lap-dancing – all deceptive by nature, diversionary by design, and
ultimately unfulfilling. Passed off as a time and arrival of a new
politics, it is a time and context in which hype and hypocrisy are
packaged and peddled as patriotism; the reform and reality of universal
health care is portrayed as something akin to sin; and corporate funding
and manipulation of anti-government sentiment is camouflaged as
constitutional concern and love of country.

For all this flag-draped drama and related talk of constitutional tests
and of turning the country back over to the American people, hides the
continued strengthening of corporate power, evident in the increased
funding of candidates, including Tea Party members; proposed
deregulation; rampant privatization; an ever-growing military budget and
prison-industrial complex; tax preference for the rich and continuing
foreign aid to friendly dictators and brutal allies in open and
unannounced wars and occupations around the world.

It is a time and context in which gun-totin’ and gun talk of “targeting
and taking out” opponents serve as both appetizers and main meal on the
menu of rightwing radio, and their political discourse and campaigns,
and where such vicious rhetoric and social craziness mix and merge with
personal anger and insanity to provoke and produce tragic results as
recently witnessed in Tucson. For in spite of denials, such a context
gives company and confirmation to the mentally disturbed and violent who
put in practice the right wing’s irresponsible and provocative call for
“Second Amendment remedies”.

Last week, the new colonists came to Washington town, Constitution in
hand, corporate interests in mind and chaos in their announced
intentions. Indeed, they came wildly dedicated and determined to
disrupt, reverse, repeal and otherwise neutralize the laws, legislative
initiatives and any and all efforts of President Obama to successfully
govern – a concentrated hostility which, in spite of ritual denial,
suggests racial implications. Thus, it is seriously suspected that they
quote the Constitution in public and whistle Dixie in the dark. Like the
original colonists, whom they seek to model and mirror in their confused
and fantasized conceptions of history, they are in acute and constant
denial concerning the contradictions in their beliefs, behavior and
exalted claims. And likewise, they are woefully unwilling to concede the
destructive and divisive nature of their self-righteous and exclusionist
ideas and activities, which foster and fuel racist and nativist hatred
and violence.

They began their public show, lining up like elementary school children
to read the Constitution on the House floor in deference to their doting
Tea Party foster parents. It was for the true believers a religious
ritual, the reading of a sacred text with related claims of the
brilliance and anointment of the Framers. But to hold to the myths, they
had to call for an amended version of the Constitution. For the original
version of the Constitution, like the men who wrote it, was too flawed
to justify the flowery claims made for it. It, like its writers, needed
to be remade into a more acceptable image, free of the racism, sexism
and classism that stained it. Indeed, the original version sanctioned
African enslavement, denied the wholeness of African humanity, setting
it as 3/5 of a person and rejecting our right of freedom even thru
escape. It also denied women the right to vote, favored property owners
and set aside the Senate for the more noble White men among them. It is
these inconvenient and uncomfortable facts in the Constitution’s
original construction that the new colonists sought to erase and not
reveal by reading a revised and sanitized version of it with its
corrective reconsiderations called amendments.

Such immature and uncritical conceptions of the document and attempts to
talk about it as a holy writ, unchanged and unchangeable, and to force
others to accept it is both self-deceptive and dangerous. It calls for a
paper patriotism devoid of real people with real problems and real
struggles to solve them. In other words, such an approach to the
Constitution denies its original flaws and the flaws of its Framers;
denies the changes made to correct these flaws; denies the history and
the life-and-death struggles required for the changes; and denies the
ongoing need to constantly reinterpret and change the document in light
of deeper and more ethical understandings of how we ought to live
together and relate.

The late and renowned Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, in his
1987 Bicentennial Speech, urged us to move beyond such mindless and
uncritical celebration of Constitution and country. He noted that such a
celebration cultivates a tendency “to oversimplify and overlook the many
other events that have been instrumental to our achievements as a
nation.” Moreover, it “invites a complacent belief that the vision of
those who debated and compromised in Philadelphia yielded the ‘more
perfect union’ it is said we enjoy now.” For Justice Marshall, the
Constitution was not “forever fixed” at Philadelphia. And he noted, he
did not “find the wisdom, foresight and sense of justice exhibited by
the Framers particularly profound.”

Indeed, he states “To the contrary, the government they devised was
defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and
momentous societal transformation to attain the system of constitutional
government and its respect for individual freedoms and human rights we
hold fundamental today.” Thus, in recognizing the progressive changes
made from enslavement and exclusion to our unfinished struggles for
freedom and inclusion, “the credit does not belong to the Framers. It
belongs to those who refused to acquiesce to outdated notions of
‘liberty’, ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ and who strived to better them.” He
concluded that a rightful reading and a “sensitive understanding of the
Constitution’s inherent defects” will let us “see that the true miracle
was not the birth of the Constitution, but its life, a life nurtured
through two turbulent centuries of our own making.”

Justice Marshall argued that this history requires more than
“festivities with flag-waving fervor.” Rather, it calls for
commemoration of “the suffering, struggle and sacrifice that has
triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document.” And
it deserves our viewing the document and its history “with hopes not
realized and promises not fulfilled” and therefore, with a commitment to
ongoing and increased struggles to achieve the hopes and promise, and
open up new horizons of human life and history.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor of Africana Studies, California State
University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural
Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of
Family, Community and Culture and Introduction to Black Studies, 4th

Edition, www.MaulanaKarenga.org.

Cunnigen: On Haley Barbour on Race and Racism in Mississippi (Revised)

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 19:47:00 +0000

Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, has made absurd assertions that in his experience racism was no longer an issue. Professor Donald Cunnigen sets the record straight. He challenges Barbour's recollection of the times. RGN

The White Citizens Councils and Haley Barbour

The White Citizens Councils and Haley Barbour

As Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson has stated accurately, the White Citizens Councils members were no more than Klansmen in business suits. Unlike Joe Scarborough who attended schools in Mississippi from 1969-1974 and was oblivious to the existence of the White Citizens Councils, I grew up in Mississippi during the heyday of the White Citizens Councils from the late 1950’s through my high school years in 1970’s Mississippi. It was a powerful group that had a strong impact on the lives of African-Americans and whites in Mississippi.

When I conducted research for my dissertation on white southern liberals in Mississippi, I discovered the impact of the White Citizens Council. One of my research subjects was a racially progressive Jewish businessman. His business was boycotted by the efforts of the White Citizens Council. The boycott was a result of his decision not to fire African American workers in his dry cleaning establishment who planned to enroll their children in the newly proposed integrated Jackson (Mississippi) Public Schools. The boycott was so effective that he lost his business. As a man of conviction and integrity, he felt it was not his role to dictate to his workers the appropriate racial position regarding the education of their children. In his mind, American citizens had a right to provide the best education available for their children.

In the case of African-Americans, the White Citizens Council sympathizers published the names of African-American students who opted to participate in the integration of public schools via the new “Freedom of Choice” program. It was a program designed to prevent the massive integration of schools by allowing only a limited number of students to enroll in the local white schools, i. e., those students and their parents signed a consent form. The forms provided the names of the students and parents to local authorities who often used the information in nefarious ways. Consequently, their families were harassed and many parents lost their jobs. Personally, this activity had a direct impact on my own attempt to enroll in the local white high school. After I covertly submitted a form to enroll in the white high school, my mother’s fears for my physical safety and my father’s fear of job loss as a public school teacher resulted in their insistence that I remain in the African-American high school. My father personally contacted the school district to inform the authorities that I would remain in my present all-African American school rather than join a small group of students who integrated our local white high school. The White Citizens Councils were not viewed by my parents as a mild-mannered group of whites who were adverse to destroying the lives and livelihoods of African-Americans.

Mississippi tax payers, African-American and white, witnessed the White Citizens Councils take a pseudo-state sponsored role in the governmental affairs of Mississippi. The White Citizens Councils had an office located in close proximity to the state Capitol. The organization produced slick television presentations to support their segregationist point of view. In addition, it created a network of segregationist academies to thwart school integration. There was no doubt in the minds of any African-American of the period that the White Citizens Councils were more than benign middle-class whites who provided “segregationist leadership” in the period. The White Citizens Councils represented a powerful force in the arsenal of the segregationists throughout the South.

The impact of the White Citizens Councils continues to have an impact on the state because many of the old segregation academies have become critical elements in the state’s educational system. As a result, many communities have poorly funded segregated public school systems due to the middle-class white exodus from the systems. The grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren of the old White Citizens Council stalwarts are now the students in those academies. While the old racist rhetoric and ideology which was the basis for the formation of the schools may not be obviously present, the underpinnings of a racist history may still linger in other ways. On the national scene, “racial events” in southern states do not capture the attention of the media; for example, many African-Americans in Mississippi were well aware that former Senator Trent Lott spoke at a White Citizens Council event long before the infamous Strom Thurmond incident.

While the South has made tremendous strides in race relations, it is unfortunate that some individuals have chosen for political expediency to “whitewash” reality by creating a false racial narrative that does not vaguely resemble the life experiences of many African-Americans, especially in Mississippi. Progress can be made in American race relations when all parties acknowledge and appreciate the complex racial history that has made our nation great.

Donald Cunnigen, Ph.D.

Ishmael Reed on the President and the "Professional Left"

noreply@blogger.com (RGN) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:46:00 +0000

The President is being hammered by Progressives for his compromise with the Republicans. Some have even suggested that he should be challenged in a primary. What world are these people living in? Their naivete will guarantee Karl Rove's permanent Republican majority to become a permanent reality. Things are bad enough as they are. With Obama we have a chance to overturn the "Reagan Revolution" to build on the 2008 victory, as opposed to the governance of the "Atlas Shrug" and Tea Party crowds. The Tea Party success in the last election should have served as a "call to arms," figuratively speaking, to prepare for 2012. Instead, the President is being vilified not just from the Tea Party but from his own base.

When in response to a question in which a reporter from the Wall Street Journal who raised the issue about his base accusing him having no spine, the President was clear that being "purist" is not amenable to governing. As he said, holding such a position would mean "nothing would get done." It is distasteful that the Bush tax cuts for America's richest were extended. That was a bad decision on the President's part. What would have been a worse decision on his part would have been to allow the Republicans in the Senate to block all legislation. To turn an extension of unemployment benefits to the next Congress would be irresponsible. To have allowed everyone's taxes to go up on January 1 would be calamitous. Not only would every American be angry at the tax hike, they would blame it on the President. He has to govern. He is confronted by Republicans who are using every tactic in their power to defeat the President.   Moreover, a tax hike that is not agreed to, is likely to destabilize an already bad economy. Simply for these intransigent Republicans, the worse things are the better for their politics.

A major part of the problem is that the progressive mentality is a movement mentality -- an ideological orientation -- that is not always conducive to governing. The President is in a different position. He has to govern. As the nation's leading politician, he must be a pragmatist. He is not a dictator.   Nor are Democrats committed to "a line."

As evidenced by the health care reform debate, many Democrats are very conservative. The Republicans on the other hand, are either ideologues or irrelevant.   Republicans who are not hardliners have been either marginalized in the Congress or defeated by Tea Party challengers. This is the context in which the President make his judgments and run the government.

Ishmael Reed challenges the understanding of Progressives when it comes to having a Black man negotiating the political terrain. RGN

What Progressives Don’t Understand About Obama

By ISHMAEL REED

Oakland, Calif.

NOT all of my white teachers viewed me as a discipline problem. To the annoyance of my fellow students, one teacher selected me regularly to lead assembly programs. A high school teacher insisted that I learn about the theater. She was an America-firster who supplied me with right-wing pamphlets and magazines that I’d read at breakfast and she didn’t seem bothered by my returning them with some of the pages stuck together with syrup.

But most of them did see me as an annoyance, and gave me the grades to prove it.

I’ve been thinking recently of all those D’s for deportment on my report cards. I thought of them, for instance, when I read a response to an essay I had written about Mark Twain that appeared in “A New Literary History of America.” One of the country’s leading critics, who writes for a prominent progressive blog, called the essay “rowdy,” which I interpreted to mean “lack of deportment.” Perhaps this was because I cited “Huckleberry Finn” to show that some white women managed household slaves, a departure from the revisionist theory that sees Scarlett O’Hara as some kind of feminist martyr.

I thought of them when I pointed out to a leading progressive that the Tea Party included neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers — and he called me a “bully.” He believes that the Tea Party is a grass-roots uprising against Wall Street, a curious reading since the movement gained its impetus from a rant against the president delivered by a television personality on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The full article