The point is simple – clichéd, even.  But this simple point is so often denied in the United States of 2009.  The point is that race matters.  More specifically, race matters in how we interpret the Constitution of the United States.  Debates over the constitution, especially at the Supreme Court, often willfully ignore or obscure the living and continued significance of race and racism.  The racial category you belong to plays a significant part in your life, if you’re an American, but American legal doctrine over the last several decades has refused to accept this fact.

Much as they did during the 1800s, today’s American courts allow entrenched racial discrimination to continue.  Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, the courts used openly racist thinking to enforce policies like slavery, segregation, and whites-only citizenship.  Today, the courts use colorblindness to brush aside the reality of race and racism.  They overturn and restrict race-conscious policies designed to help alleviate racism faced exclusively by people who are identified as racial and ethnic minorities.  The courts can and should consider the impact of race when it deals with cases like voting rights, sentencing for drug use, law enforcement strategies that roundup random Muslim and Middle Eastern Americans, and the legality of practices and policies that drove nonwhite families into needlessly expensive “subprime” mortgages.  But instead, legal scholars (including a majority of the Supreme Court Justices) regularly disagree with the need even to recognize the mere existence of socially constructed race.

It’s not a coincidence that Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court has already become contentious on the issue of race.  Sotomayor’s views on race and racism are becoming an object of public debate, thanks to coverage by national media (and thanks to well-publicized and ridiculous accusations that Sotomayor is herself “racist”).  Sotomayor’s rulings during her illustrious career show that while she’s hardly a radical, she does favor a reality-based judiciary that understands and considers the impact of race and racism.  Because of this (and in part because she is Latina), she has already faced more questions about race than any other nominee to sit on the Supreme Court than anyone else in quite a long time.  And she hasn’t even sat for confirmation hearings yet.

Before Judge Sotomayor arrives on Capitol Hill for confirmation hearings, I’d like to take a moment to consider why legal scholars argue against recognizing the existence of race in America.  And then let’s consider how the next decade in legal thought might be influenced, thanks to Sotomayor’s presence on the Court.

The legal argument for denying reality – for denying the existence of race – is rooted in the colorblindness doctrine.  My understanding is that the basic idea behind colorblindness is: only by ignoring race can we truly transcend it.  You see, if we keep talking about race, if we acknowledge it, then we allow the race concept to persist.  So, what we should do is pretend that race isn’t there.  If we adjust our thinking to a colorblind world, then in time, reality will catch up with our thinking.  This kind of thinking has been proven wrong again and again, most thoroughly by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.

The colorblindness perspective didn’t come out of nowhere.  In legal circles, it gained traction in the 1970s, during the reaction to the Civil Rights Movement.  The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in abolishing race conscious polices that were used to inflict “separate but equal” – but racial segregation of course was anything but equal.  The claim of the “integrationists,” as the bus boycotters the sit-in protestors are called by many legal scholars, was essentially to end separate but equal by asserting the right to be treated like everyone else.  The protestors asked for a removal of race from the laws, they asked for colorblindness, so that anyone who boarded the bus could have a seat in the front.  But after the Civil Rights Movement, this colorblind concept was twisted to support the legal basis for ignoring racist inequality.

Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote, in 1952, “…I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed.”  Plessy (1896) was the decision which created the “separate but equal” doctrine.  The logical foundation of Plessy held that there was no inherent or automatic difference in quality of public service just because of racial segregation.  Segregation therefore wasn’t ruled to be a problem under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal treatment to each citizen regardless of race.  In other words, Plessy said that because we can imagine a world where white and nonwhite students have separate and equal educations, there is no reason to say that segregation is unconstitutional.  The actual lived reality of the students, in the court’s mind, was irrelevant.  Any inequality in reality could be dealt with in time, without the need to resort to overruling segregationist policies.  Plessy allowed the Jim Crow era to proceed, with its obviously and disastrously harmful inequality in everything from education to health to transportation for nonwhite Americans.  It’s important to note that in Plessy, the court was in denial of reality – the court refused to accept the existence of a class of people (nonwhites) that were experiencing inherently discriminatory treatment.

To move past the denials of Plessy, the court would have to be convinced to stop talking about abstract legal theory and start talking about reality.  It wasn’t until 1954 and Brown v. Board of Education that the colorblind logic of Rehnquist and his allies on the right were rejected by the Supreme Court.  This time, the court acknowledged the obvious reality that nonwhite students were not receiving an equal education in the segregated schools across the South.  The court’s opinion held that there were unrecognized consequences of racist segregation so demonstrably harmful (the court referenced a study where black children preferred white dolls to play with) that the court could not just rely on abstract theory as it did in Plessy.  In this way, Brown was groundbreaking not just because it ordered the racial integration of schools.  Brown was extraordinary because the decision said that the reality of racism could not be ignored, even if there is a theoretical, imaginary world where segregation could be equal.  The reality was that segregation was not equal.  Hence, the court now decided, there was a violation of the 14th Amendment.

With that basic realization – that race exists as a social force and causes real harms to groups of people – the state was able to craft responses that could deal with the reality of racism.  This new legal foundation allowed for the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, making discrimination in the workplace and in housing illegal.  It allowed passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which represented the first effective law that allowed many black southerners to vote.  Brown’s recognition of reality allowed the establishment of a wide range of policies that take racial understandings into account, from hate crimes laws and equal housing regulations to affirmative action in schools and the private sector.  All of these effective (albeit imperfect and insufficient) policies would have been impossible had the Supreme Court refused to take the existence of socially defined race into account.

So, this vast array of practices and policies were put in place to operate in the new, reality-based legal paradigm set up by Brown, but by the 1970s the Supreme Court changed dramatically.  Richard Nixon replaced retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren, the architect of the Brown decision, with the far more conservative (“strict constructionist”) Warren E. Burger.  Later, Nixon successfully appointed three more justices (including Plessy supporter William Rehnquist) – for a total of four Nixon justices – meaning that before he resigned in disgrace, Nixon was able to fundamentally reshape the Supreme Court for a generation.  Right away, the new court began to walk back some of the reasoning seen in Brown and similar cases.

By the late 1970s, the court had almost completely returned to the Plessy v. Ferguson colorblindness logic to deny reality and allow racial segregation to continue.  In Milliken v. Bradley (1979), the court decided that the reality of segregation in Detroit-area public schools was irrelevant.  Suburban Detroit public schools were mostly white, while Detroit city public schools were nearly all black.  Suburban schools also offered a better quality of education because of the additional resources available to them.  The district and appeals courts held that the state could institute a bussing solution that bussed students between the city and the suburbs to achieve a greater degree of equality and to combat the obvious racial segregation in and around Detroit.  The Supreme Court overturned the bussing policy, stating that in the colorblind eyes of the law, there was no way the Michigan policymakers could be race conscious.  And furthermore, “local control” of schools was the more important consideration as opposed to maintaining equality of education for all Americans, regardless of race.  Thus, the Supreme Court effectively affirmed and legitimated the practice of “white flight,” where whites left the nation’s largest cities to build suburbs for their own exclusive use, using pressure tactics and violence to deny non-whites entry.  The Milliken case definitively marked the end of the Brown era.  The return to the denial of reality – colorblindness – meant that one by one, the policies and practices that fought against racial segregation and institutional racism were struck down or significantly weakened in the 1980s and 1990s.

Over the past several years and into the present day, the Supreme Court has continued to side with colorblind reasoning very frequently.  All hope for a reality-based approach at the court is not lost, however.  Many decisions on cases involving race have been decided by thin, 5-4 margins.  Already, in 2009, the Supreme Court struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a vote of 5-4.  It may still remove the most important part of that landmark legislation in a decision due very shortly.

Indeed, in the voting rights case currently before the court, the issue is very clearly whether the law should take reality into account or instead pursue a colorblind philosophy.  The question in this case is basically whether election officials working in areas of the United States with a demonstrated history of racism should have to get federal pre-approval before making any changes to their election procedures.  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires these historically racist electoral districts to “pre-clear” election procedures, to help prevent trickery (like secretly moving polling places) that would depress turnout among nonwhite voters.  The court has to decide whether race matters in elections enough to warrant this race conscious policy.  During the debate on this case, Chief Justice John Roberts emerged as a critic of the Voting Rights Act, while the retiring Justice David H. Souter defended the Act’s reality based-approach, saying, “I don’t understand how you can maintain that things have radically changed. That seems to deny the empirical reality.”

And this is the Supreme Court to which President Barack Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor, to replace Justice Souter.  Already, conservatives in Congress have made plans to attack Sotomayor for her reality-based views on race.  Fortunately, the strong Democratic majority in the Senate makes blocking Sotomayor’s confirmation unlikely (although Democratic support for Sotomayor does not imply support for a reality-based worldview).  But the issue of race appears to be the issue on which conservatives will stake their claims for rejecting Sotomayor’s nomination.  The right does not want Souter’s successor to have a similar reality-based disposition.  Conservatives would prefer someone who was willing to follow the Plessy v. Ferguson colorblind logic. 

For advocates of a reality-based judiciary, Sotomayor’s confirmation is imperative.  Her influence on the court in 2009 and beyond will begin the process of restoring the Brown v. Board reality-based legal thinking.  While the five reliably colorblind rightists on the court will not immediately waver in their conviction against recognizing the impact of race, Sotomayor will affect the thinking of her colleagues on the Court, and her voice from the bench will immeasurably shape public opinion on race and anti-racist policies.  Sotomayor has been involved in nearly 100 race-related cases.  One of her notable rulings impacted voting rights (Hayden v. Pataki), where she ruled that laws disfranchising convicted felons (who are disproportionately African American) are discriminatory and illegal (under the Voting Rights Act of 1965).  And she ruled against white firefighters who were angry that their supervisors recognized the existence of race in her now famous Ricci v. DeStefano decision (a decision that might be reviewed by the Supreme Court later this year).

Sotomayor’s career has shown that she’s capable of recognizing and weighing the impact of history and reality when issuing her opinions.  Arguing that racism isn’t a reality (as a majority of the public and the nine Supreme Court justices often do) requires a rather high level of historical amnesia.  It’s easy to overlook history when you depersonalize it.  So, I’d like to end this discussion with an excerpt from a letter written in Dayton, Ohio by a man named Jourdon Anderson.  Mr. Anderson wrote this letter to his former owner.

To my old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee.

I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can….  It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee.  Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this.  I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me.  I am doing tolerably well here.  I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy, — the folks call her Mrs. Anderson, — and the children — Milly, Jane, and Grundy — go to school and are learning well…  We are kindly treated.  Sometimes we overhear others saying, ‘Them colored people were slaves’ down in Tennessee; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson.  Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master.  Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again….

Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you.  This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future.  I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years.  At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars.  Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.  Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio.  If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future….

[P.S.:] Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant, Jourdon Anderson.

Anderson wrote this letter in 1865, which is hardly ancient history.  It’s relatively easy to connect the dots from the eleven thousand dollar debt owed to Anderson’s family (and millions of other families) to today’s racialized wealth gap, where the average black family has less than 1/8 the wealth of the average white family in America.

It’s relatively easy to understand why black men are so often sent to death row for crimes they didn’t commit, if you consider that the ways freed slaves were dealt with (by the KKK and by the establishment of legal segregation) has never been fully repudiated.

And it’s relatively easy to understand that the average lifespan of Latino and black Americans is less than that of white Americans, if you consider that housing discrimination persists today, and it forces communities of color to live near toxic waste dumps at a disproportionate rate.

Jourdon Anderson and his family in Ohio, you see, are not a legal abstractions.  They’re not an idea or an archetype.  Jourdon and Mandy, and their children Milly, Jane, and Grundy are people.  They lived in the United States, and they had children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  When we talk about race, it’s important to remember a simple fact: centuries of racism shape the present-day landscape in the United States.  Denying that just doesn’t make sense.

Special thanks to Maryam Griffin for her invaluable advice on a draft of this article.

This article originally appeared at New Racial Studies, and at Racismreview.com.

The biggest problem in the Middle East are Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

The settlements are the project of a collection of right wing extremists.  They are homes and roads protected by the mighty Israeli army, strategically placed in and around Palestinian cities, towns, villages, and farmland in such a way as to make Palestinian civilian life uncomfortable.

The settlements cause violence.  Israeli settlers frequently ambush and terrorize their Palestinian neighbors.  Palestinian homes are arbitrarily demolished to make room for settlements.  The settlements’ guardian, the Israeli army, are stationed in Palestinian cities and along Palestinian roads.  Checkpoints, where Palestinians submit to searches, ID checks, and arbitrary arrests, line the roads all along the West Bank, making travel difficult at best.  A massive security barrier snakes across the landscape, in large measure to protect the settlements.  This barrier separates children from schools, farmers from farms, and keeps families apart. 

The settlements are racist, in that they are reserved for the exclusive use of Israeli Jews (Israel’s one million non-Jewish citizens are mostly prevented from living in settlements).

The right wing groups that promote the settlements have exerted a powerful influence on Israeli politics, despite the fact that a majority of Israelis disagree with the settlement project.  The settler movement’s remarkable political power has allowed settlements to expand rapidly in the past few decades.

Despite Israeli government statements that they will curtail settlements, Israeli policy has been to allow settlements to grow.  And this policy is now, finally, under strict scrutiny in the United States.

President Obama has taken a dramatically different approach to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict than any of his predecessors.  Obama’s approach has placed Israeli settlements front and center, where they should be considering that they are the biggest obstacle to peace.

On this thorny issue, the new American president has been masterful.  Obama has managed to isolate the issue of settlements, taking a firm stance and gently but realistically pressing the right wing Israeli government to change its policies.  All the while, Obama has  gathered support for his peace initiative at home in the US and among Arabs and Muslims worldwide.  No American President has been this bold on Middle East peace in a very long time.  Let’s compare Obama with his immediate predecessors before considering the prospects that Obama’s fresh approach will lead to a durable peace.

The American Presidents Fail To Bring Peace

There is no way that George W. Bush could have made the moves that Obama is making.  Bush ignored peace for his entire first term, after giving his total, unqualified support for the right wing Israeli government of Ariel Sharon.  As the Israelis proceeded to build a security barrier in contravention of international law, cutting deep into the West Bank, Bush stood silently.  Settlements expanded in the West Bank more rapidly than ever before, and Bush stood silently. 

Belatedly, Bush attempted to make headway with yet another bloviating “peace conference” in Annapolis.  But the “road map” and other useless documents went unheeded, and Bush showed no interest in making any real progress.

Bill Clinton’s eight years were hardly better, in retrospect.  The Oslo Accords – signed on the White House lawn while Clinton looked on — left the most important disagreements out while requiring the Israelis to keep their word on giving up territory.  The plan failed miserably after only a few months.  As the right wing Israeli government continued expanding settlements, Clinton was mostly silent.  The 2000 conference at Camp David was too little, too late, and the weak draft agreement pushed by Clinton could never have been accepted by the Palestinian leadership.

The George H.W. Bush administration was the last time a US president really pressed Israel, with a threat to withhold financial support unless they attended the Madrid peace conference.  While that Madrid meeting eventually led to the failed Oslo “peace process,” Bush’s firm  directives to push the Israelis toward peace have never been followed up by an American president, until now.

Now, Obama has made a bold move to finally, finally push the Israeli government to listen to the majority of its citizens that want to make a peace deal with their Palestinian neighbors.  The Israeli government, however, is resisting Obama with all its strength.

Israeli Intransigence

The Israeli government isn’t sure what to do in the new atmosphere Obama has created.  For the first time in a very long while, the usual tricks aren’t working for the Israeli government.  How can the Israeli government continue to expand its settlements despite international insistence that they stop?  There’s usually a few simple steps that work to stay within American diplomatic cover, while allowing settlements to expand.  So far, the Israeli government has stuck to the script, while Obama has changed the American role dramatically.

First, the Israeli government tried the time-tested fake “evacuation” of an illegal settlement in the West Bank.  This is where the Israeli army invites cameras to watch as they brusquely arrest a handful of settler extremists who are camping on a hilltop in the West Bank.  The Israeli government makes a proud statement, about how this evacuation shows their seriousness in curtailing the unacceptable expansion of settlements.  But the PR stunt is never followed up with any real changes.  The evacuated settlers soon return to the hilltop.  Illegal settlement construction continues apace all across the West Bank.  Settlers continue to attack Palestinian civilians with impunity.

Second, the Israeli government in the past has excused settlement construction by claiming that any new buildings are just “natural.”  It’s only natural that as the settlers have children, they’ll need to build more houses, they say.  This pretext allows “existing” settlements to grow rapidly.

Third, the Israeli government often insists that there is no way they can prevent settlements unless the Palestinian people stop violence, or stop incitement to violence, or stop all crimes for seven days, or for twenty one days, and so on.  There is always something the Palestinians are doing that the Americans aren’t talking about enough, and that’s why settlement building can’t be stopped.  Sometimes, the Israeli government simply accuses the Palestinians of not being a real “partner for peace,” which of course means that settlements should continue to grow.

None of these usual Israeli approaches are working to blunt the Obama Peace Initiative.  Obama’s secretary of state has said that “natural” growth doesn’t count and must stop.  Obama has countered Israeli protests that the Palestinians aren’t doing enough, and then he has repeated the simple call for an end to settlement activity.

Now, the Israeli government has begun to beg and plead for Obama to stop his peace initiative.  The Israeli government protested that Obama’s demand for an end to settlement activity is “unreasonable.”  Then, when that didn’t work, the Israeli government resorted to pointing at agreements with the Bush administration, claiming that these agreements allow settlements to continue.  Obama’s people have laughed this off (and former Bush administration officials have denied the Israeli interpretation).  Today, after Obama’s remarkable speech in Cairo, the Israeli government announced that Obama’s peace initiative will undermine Israeli security (which is the opposite of the truth – the settlements represent a grave threat to Israeli security).

So, as the debate over settlements continues, the split between the American and Israeli governments grows wider than it has been in decades. 

Change for Peace

What’s next in the Obama Peace Initiative?  After finishing his trip to the Middle East, Obama will send envoys to meet directly with the Israeli government.  It’s likely that behind the scenes, Obama will make even firmer suggestions to the Israeli government to curtail settlement expansion.  But the Israeli government will certainly continue to resist, in large measure due to the remarkable political power of the settlement movement.  Who will blink first, Obama or the Israeli government?

It’s possible that Obama will eventually concede, but the crucial question is what takes place here in the United States in the next few weeks.  Will the Congress support Obama’s peace initiative, or will the Israeli government’s supporters on Capitol Hill manage to pressure Obama to lay off?

If Obama uses his popularity (and political capital) to avoid pressure from the Hill, then he might even go so far as to link American financial and diplomatic support of Israel to the settlements.  Obama’s moves to date suggest that he’s deftly leaving that leverage in reserve.  Obama is allowing the Israelis to feel the pressure now, and giving them the opportunity to respond.  Meanwhile, if the Israelis refuse to budge, Obama is building up support in the Arab world, and among Americans here at home.  Obama’s growing cache of international and domestic support should mean that the Israeli government gives up, and makes real changes on settlements, before Obama retreats.

Eventually, after winning this initial confrontation, Obama will likely use his envoys to project further demands on the Israeli government and for the Palestinian leadership.  These demands – mutual recognition, final agreement on borders, refugees, water rights – could very well lead to a durable and effective peace.  Obama recognizes that moving on these sensitive issues can’t happen overnight, but he has already created a new environment wherein actual progress (not just lip service) can be made.

The crucial support for Obama won’t come from the Middle East, however.  It’s up to us, in America, to allow Obama’s peace initiative to succeed.  If the American people support Obama’s push for peace now, there’s a real chance for a breakthrough in the near future.

The Red Wings are locked in a rematch of last year’s Finals, and we’re expecting a similar result.  The Penguins’ best player defected to the Wings last year, and chances are this year Mr. Hossa will be very happy to show his old team how it’s done.

Of course, for me this is a difficult series, since I’m actually surrounded by Pennsylvanians and assorted Penguins fans.  But don’t worry, folks, I’ll hold my Wings flag high.

Prediction: Wings in 4.

I’ll be recapping each game as it happens right here, so set your bookmarks.

Game 1: Saturday, May 30

The first goal — which caromed into the net off the ass of Pittsburgh goalkeeper Marc-Andre Fleury — was hilarious.  Fortunately, the Wings’ next two goals were more authoratative, especially the one where the new guy (Justin Abdelkader) gracefully snatched the puck out of the air with his hand, onto the ice, and used his stick to smack it back into the air and into the goal.  So, yeah, there were some impressive offensive fireworks.  But, as usual, it was the defense that made the difference.  One huge defensive mistake from Brad Stuart led to the Penguins’ only goal.  Other than that, the Wings’ defense was pretty flawless, with Chris Osgood turning away some 30 shots while making it look easy.  If defense wins championships, I feel even better about my prediction.  Red Wings 1 : 0 Penguins.

Game 2: Sunday, May 31

Outstanding.  Once again, the Michigan State product, Mr. Justin Abdelkader, amazed the crowd and demoralized the Penguins with an incredible feat of coordination and athleticism.  In game 1, Abdelkader knocked the puck down and then swooped it into the net from point-blank range.  This time, he was out near the blue line, 3-on-1, with two sticks bearing down on him, and he managed to twist and turn, then fire the puck right past an astonished Marc-Andre Fleury.  As it turned out, that third goal was just icing on the cake, as the Wings’ defense (led by an unflappable Chris Osgood and the Captain Nicolas Lidstrom) again was nearly flawless.  The rest of these games will be mere formalities if the Wings keep playing like this.  Red Wings 2 : 0 Penguins.

Game 3: Tuesday, June 2

Well, we can forget the “formality” statement.  The Wings actually played quite well, but this time the Penguins’ vaunted offense broke through.  An impressive performance by both teams offenses in the first period, as four goals rained down inside of about fifteen minutes.  The second period was far more cautious, with no scoring and a lot of tension.  Then, the Penguins’ game plan worked, as they poked and prodded their way to a lead, then held on for the win.  Great game — and now we have a series, folks.  Red Wings 2 : 1 Penguins.

Game 4: Thursday, June 4.

Whoa.  Now that was a punch in the gut.  The Penguins played a masterful, opportunistic game.  They had a fantastic gameplan, and they managed to stick to it.  Meanwhile, the Red Wings flailed about, and even when they (briefly) held a lead, they looked sloppy and out of sync.  The second period was full of offensive action, especially after the Wings’ goal put them up 2-1.  Within a few minutes, the Pens got the shorthanded goal, then put in another one with brilliant focus despite some decent defense from the Wings.  The Pens never looked back.  Up 4-2, they played outstanding defense, while keeping pressure on in the Wings’ zone.  Fluery (finally) was the goalie he’s billed to be: world class.  It’s a series, and for the first time, I found myself seriously considering what it would feel like if the Wings lost.  I didn’t like it.  Red Wings 2: 2 Penguins

Game 5: Saturday, June 6.

This one was just embarrassing for the Penguins.  I mean, 5-0?  Four goals given up in the second period made this one a game of role-reversal as compared to Game 4.  Sadly, the Pens disintegrated by the third period, with their great players just getting senselessly violent (and giving the Wings power plays galore).  The good news was the return of Wings star Pavel Datsyuk, who made an immediate impact with two assists.  He was so good, even injured, that you have to be amazed at the depth on the Wings, since they were still effective even without a player of Datsyuk’s caliber. Red Wings 3: 2 Pengins.

ONE WIN TO GO!

Game 6: Tuesday June 9.

Well, this one didn’t turn out as well as we’d hoped.  Pittsburgh played a tough defensive game.  Surprising after they couldn’t stop the Wings from scoring even if we’d given them a brick wall to put in front of their own net in Game 5.  Anyway, tough game.  Also a really good game, to be honest.  Very exciting hockey.  The good news is that we’re at home in Detroit for Game 7.  The bad news is that I’ll be in Pittsburgh, ironically, for Game 7 — where I’ll be watching the Tigers take on the Pirates in lovely PNC Park.  Wow.  Red Wings 3 : 3 Penguins.

Game 7: Friday, June 12, 2009

What a night.  I just returned from Pittsburgh, where I watched the Tigers play a very nice game against the Pirates.  We ended up winning that one by 2 runs.  Unfortunately, those runs couldn’t be transferred to Detroit.  The Pens fans in the crowd at PNC Park let out big cheers at two seemingly random times during the baseball game… those “random” times corresponded to the Penguins goals, of course.

So, I missed the first two periods of this decisive Game 7 in order to watch some great baseball.  Right after the baseball game, Helene and I managed to find a cozy bar in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh just before the start of the final period.  We were crowded in the back, wearing our Tigers hats, and surrounded by excited but tense Penguins fans.  The Pens were up, 2-0.

I honestly didn’t recognize the Penguins.  They looked like a masterful defensive team.  Even better than they were in Game 6.  They had an answer for everything.  Skating all over the Wings, the Pens made it look more like a basketball game than hockey, the way they had a guy right on every Wing.  It was impressive.  The Pens looked good.  The Pens looked young.

Even with that smothering defense, Lidstrom managed to get an assist over to Ericsson for a goal with about 8 minutes left.  I felt a wave of relief.  There was still some life left over there.  And it would have been so utterly humiliating to get shut out at home in a Game 7.

Still, even after we made it 2-1, my stomach was tied up in knots, and I nearly had a heart attack a few minutes later, when the Wings sent a puck slamming right into the bottom 2 centimeters of the crossbar.  Had that puck been just a half an inch lower, we’d be having a different conversation right now.

As it happened, the clock ran out after a flurry of goals stopped by a suddenly fantastic Fluery.  And that was that.

We left Pittsburgh, and even though I head a tear in my eye, I was happy for the chance to spend a very fun evening in a very beautiful city.  We’ll see yinz next year.  Penguins 4 : 3 Red Wings.

(This story also appears at New Racial Studies.)

Last week, Assistant US Attorney Eric Snyder was quoted giving the money line from the latest War on Terror press release, saying, “It’s hard to envision a more chilling plot.”  He’s right.  It’s hard to imagine something more frightening than the US government conspiring, over and over again, to make petty criminals or people who overstay their visas look like terrorist masterminds for public relations purposes.  But that’s what’s going on.

The pattern goes something like this.  The FBI and other law enforcement agencies plant an informant in a targeted group, like at a mosque or an advocacy organization.  The informant is often under pressure after getting in trouble for immigration or drugs charges, and the FBI offers the informant a way to avoid deportation or jail by working instead as a confidential snitch.  Surely, the FBI will be asking the informant to produce results.  So, the informant looks hard for terrorists.  Sometimes, the informant even engages in provocation – asking around about people who would join in a terrorist operation.  Once anyone at the targeted group (even mentally challenged people) start talking about blowing up a building, the informant works to help set up meetings with undercover FBI agents to provide fake “explosives” and other equipment for the fake “operation.”  Once the fake “operation” gets underway, the uniforms and police cars show up to slap handcuffs.  And there’s a big press conference to announce the arrest of dangerous, dangerous terrorists.  Only, once the charges make it to a court of law, they fizzle.  But, by then, no one is paying attention, so as far as the FBI, xenophobic commentators and elected officials are concerned, they’ve got a big success in the War on Terror on the books.  We saw this pattern with a 2004 case in Detroit, when trumped-up terrorism chargers were thrown out by a judge after “terrorist surveillance photos” turned out to be vacation pictures from Disneyland.  We saw a variation on this theme with Jose Padilla, who was originally charged with plotting a radioactive dirty bomb attack, but those charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.

The common thread in this pattern?  Muslim Americans.  Muslim Americans are targeted by the FBI, entrapped in these bogus terrorism plots, and then they are trotted before the cameras for PR purposes.  That’s what happened last week in New York.

The most recent story from New York involves four Muslim men, arrested as they worked to culminate a “terrorist plot,” bombing synagogues in the Bronx.  It fits the pattern of entrapment perfectly.  A paid FBI informant, apparently offering financial inducements to the four accused men, worked to provide fake explosives and just at the right moment, the police rolled in make the arrest.  Big speeches about preventing terrorism quickly followed, including statements by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomburg, and US Representative Peter (“there are too many mosques in America”) King (R-NY).

Earlier this year, Muslim Americans were stunned and terrified by the revelation that paid FBI informants have been working in Los Angeles area mosques.  The community apparently has reason to be afraid of the FBI, especially when mentally challenged people can be ensnared and charged with terrorism.

Muslim American advocacy organizations, while saying again and again that they abhor violence and want to help prevent genuine terrorist plots, have protested the use of paid anonymous agents provocateur.  In protesting the FBI’s actions in the most recent New York case, the Council on American Islamic Relations said yesterday that “the alleged ‘plot’ may have been based more on the financial inducements of a government informant than on the predisposition to terrorism of three petty criminals and a mentally ill Haitian immigrant.”  CAIR and the American Muslim Taskforce have considered suspending their outreach operations with the FBI after a paid government informant in California said he believes Islam itself is a threat to America.

The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss has more details about the FBI’s use of agents provocateur.

This article also appears at New Racial Studies.

Yesterday, President Obama released the “Torture Memos,” a set of previously top secret documents that justified the use of torture by American interrogators.  These memos, authored by top Bush administration officials, argued that certain “techniques” – including forced stress positions, throwing prisoners against a wall, and water torture – do not qualify as torture.  These memos served as the basis for allowing American interrogators to commit acts of torture.

In a written statement, President Obama said that “it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”

I had the opportunity to meet Captain James Yee yesterday, just after the President made these disclosures.  Yee served as the US Muslim Chaplain at Guantanamo Bay prison, where he met with prisoners who described harsh treatment at the hands of American interrogators, treatment that Yee believes constitute torture.  Yee was also held without charge in solitary confinement in a Navy brig for some 76 days, after being falsely accused of spying during his work at Guantanamo Bay.  After all charges against him were dropped, the Army has since recognized him with several awards.  Yee resigned his commission and was honorably discharged in 2005.

I asked Chaplain Yee for his reaction to President Obama’s decision not to prosecute Americans who may have tortured.  “I don’t necessarily agree” with Obama’s decision, Yee said.  “I understand the political considerations” the President has to make, he said.  But Yee emphasized that the excuse “I was only following orders” should not be a defense.  Obama’s statement which seems to exonerate US agents who acted with a “good faith belief” that their actions were legal sounds a lot like the “only following orders” defense, Yee explained.  Overall, Yee said, “To me, it seems like not the right thing to do.”

Yee was an delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2008, where he cast a ballot for Obama’s nomination.  He supported Obama in large part because of his campaign promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

I met Chaplain Yee at Dickinson College, where he was speaking at an event sponsored by the Dickinson College chapters of the Muslim Student Association, Amnesty International, and Campus Democrats.

Yee was imprisoned without charge, and he said that “to this day” he doesn’t know under what authority he was held in solitary confinement in the maximum security prison at the same naval base where the Bush administration imprisoned Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi (both who were named as unlawful enemy combatants by the Bush Administration).  Yee has received no explanation as to how he was imprisoned without the basic due process rights that should have been accorded to him under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  He heard from a reliable source that his name reached President Bush’s desk in a daily intelligence briefing.  Yee believes that he was considered an enemy combatant, despite denials from the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld even considered making such a move.  When asked whether he would consider suing the military for their improper actions, Yee said that he had already considered it, but that the Feres Doctrine protects the military from almost all tort claims.

Yee believes he was subjected to this treatment in part because he is a Muslim American.  He feels that some of the officers at Guantanamo Bay looked at him with suspicion, thinking that he prays the same way that the prisoners do, and he advocates for the rights of these prisoners.  He understands the mentality of national security which sees American Muslims as, first and foremost, potential threats.  Yee believes that his Chinese American ethnicity also played a part.  He remembers being called “Chinese Taliban” by some of the American officials stationed at the Guantanamo Bay camp.  He felt that some people just didn’t like that he was Chinese, because they thought that somehow made him more of a potential threat.

President Obama today announced something that should have been announced about 25 years ago: a high speed rail network for the United States.

Why is this such a fantastic idea?  Number one: building a state-of-the-art passenger rail system would create thousands of good jobs, permanently, in places like Detroit, Kansas, California, Pennsylvania, and everywhere else that needs jobs.  The US is also about two decades behind economies like Western Europe and Japan, where high speed rail has been a reality for a very long time.

Two essays caught my eye this week.  One is a photo essay, describing the opulent train station lobby at the Michigan Central Depot just after its closure in 1973, in comparison with the lobby in 2008 after decades of neglect and decay.

The other essay, The Dark Side of Dubai, explores the slavery-like conditions for workers in the city-state famous for glittering skyscrapers, beach holidays, new wealth, and explosive growth.

It occurred to me that Detroit and Dubai have a lot in common.  More in common than most Detroiters or Emiratis would like to admit.

Detroit is a capitalist boom town.  On the strength of a high-tech industry, the city grew explosively from 1900 until 1950 into the second-largest city in the United States.  Slavery-like conditions for workers – many immigrants and former slaves – persisted for decades, until the Depression and the hard-won success of the labor movement helped to build a middle class in Detroit.  That middle class, especially the white middle class, fled to the publically-subsided suburbs after the 1960s.  The disinvestment in Detroit has left hulking ruins, like the Michigan Central Depot, and abandoned neighborhoods with acute blight across the city.  Detroit has remained viable despite dwindling public funds over the past four decades thanks in large part to the support of the auto industry.  And in 2009, that industry teeters on collapse.  Even if General Motors and the other companies don’t face bankruptcy, they will undergo cataclysmic changes in the next few years.  Detroit has already gone through a slow-motion cataclysm since the 1960s – and the next few years might look more like the rapid collapse that appears to have taken hold in the Dubai of 2009.

Dubai is a capitalist boom town.  On the strength of the high-tech financial industry of the 1980s, the city grew explosively from 1990 until 2008 into the commercial capital of the Gulf.  Slavery-like conditions for workers – mostly immigrants – has persisted until the present day.  The elites in Dubai – native-born Emratis – reap the benefits of oil wealth, while expatriates from Europe and North America have poured in to the lifestyle subsidized by nearly free labor provided by immigrants largely from Asia.  The arrangement worked very well for the Emratis and the Westerners, until the global financial collapse in 2008.  Dubai now faces rapid disinvestment, an environmental catastrophe or two, and fast-action urban blight.

These two cities, facing similar challenges, may cope in similar ways over the next decade – with market-based chaotic decline.  Or, the United States could intervene to provide an additional social safety net to cushion Detroit’s fall.  Similarly, the “feds” from the United Arab Emirates could step in to help cushion Dubai.  Will “free market” orthodoxy end those subsidies, leaving Detroit and Dubai to meet their fate according to the laws of supply and demand?  By 2019, we’ll have some idea of how that question was answered.

In the meantime, one thing is certain: The next ten years in Detroit and Dubai will be fascinating (and depressing), for similar reasons.

Due to popular demand, and the national crisis, I simply have to come back from hiatus.

It appears that the Obama administration continues to feel that the crisis in the economy will not have to define the Obama presidency.  One observer has already called last week’s fiasco over the ridiculous bonuses at AIG a “Katrina moment” for President Obama, referencing the week where President Bush lost all his remaining political capital.  The President sounded strong tonight: “We’ve put in place a comprehensive strategy designed to attack this crisis on all fronts.”

Well, if that’s true, Mr. President, then you need to get your shit together, because you have already bungled big parts of your most important economic recovery plans.

I see three major FAILs.  First, The Stimulus was gutted by Senate Republicans.  Second, just today we learned that the Employee Free Choice Act might be doomed due (in part) to Obama inaction.  And finally there’s the bank bailout run amok.  All three of these issues will become Obama Signature Issues, whether the President realizes it or not.  All three of these issues are currently massive FAILs.  It’s not too late to right the ship.  Yet.

The Stimulus Fail

If the economy is in such a crisis, why did the Obama team allow Senate Republicans to write the final edit of the stimulus package?  The plan that Obama proposed, which passed the House almost completely intact, got all kinds of Republican goodies added onto it, and some important Democratic priorities taken away, because the President himself refused to use any political capital to move the stimulus package he wanted.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.  The stimulus package that passed the House included billions in important funding for school construction.  That money was almost completely removed in the bill that passed the Senate, and it was only somewhat restored in the final bill.  Why did this happen?  Because President Obama was nowhere to be seen.  Why didn’t the President travel to Maine and Pennsylvania, hold some of those massive rallies, and dare the “moderate” Republican Senators from those states to vote against the Obama plan?  The Obama plan with all the trimmings, funding for schools, infrastructure, National Mall repair funds to create hundreds of jobs, and money to expand access to family planning – everything. 

Instead, Obama took a hands-off approach, perhaps thinking that he could avoid blame if the stimulus fails to fix the economy.  The result was a gutted stimulus, written by Republican Senator Arlen Specter.  No – this is The Obama Stimulus Package, and he’ll be made to own it, failings and all.

The Employee Free Choice Fail

One of the most important parts of any economic recovery must be the restoration of middle class jobs – and that means more people working in jobs that are protected by strong unions.  A centerpiece of the way forward to rebuilding the middle class must be a pathway to increase the ranks of unions by re-establishing the universal right to choose to join a union.  The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is the way to accomplish that goal.  This piece of legislation, if passed by the Congress intact, would make it easier to join a union – simply having a majority of employees sign a card saying they want to join a union will automatically create one.  Without the EFCA, corporations are easily able to block the creation of unions using red tape and intimidation.

Once again, Obama has allowed Senate Republicans to set the agenda on a vital issue.  Today, Republican Senator Arlen Specter says he has changed his vote on EFCA from “yes” to “no.”  Why?  Pressure from the Republican right wing.  Why doesn’t Senator Specter have pressure from the Democratic center?  President Obama carried Pennsylvania in the election.  What makes Specter unafraid of Obama Democrats?  Why haven’t Obama and Biden traveled to Scranton, and the Philly suburbs, and Pittsburgh, and anywhere else they need to go to get Specter in line with EFCA?

The Bank Bailout Fail

If the economy is in such dire condition, why hasn’t the President done what so many economists – since at least November 2008 — have been saying needs to be done?  It’s simple: temporarily nationalize the banks, re-start lending, then sell the banks to private investors at a profit for the taxpayers.  Instead, Obama’s team, led by Wall Street veteran Tim Geithner, have pussyfooted around, repackaging the bad ideas originally proposed by Hank Paulson.  Whatever happened to the “stress tests” that were going to lead to temporary takeovers of banks?  Forget that, the Obama team says.  Instead, we’ve got the “buy toxic assets” plan, which apparently will not work, if Nobel Prize winning economists know what they’re talking about.

Again, this is a case where the correct course of action is obvious.  Nationalize the banks.  But weak political prognostication appears to be the Obama choice here.  Why nationalize when it would open up the Obama administration to accusations of “socialism” later?  Instead, Obama seems ready to run the risk of using right-wing plans to fix a right-wing problem: the failure of the banks.

The President said tonight he wants energy reform, health care reform, and deficit reduction in the new budget currently working its way through Congress.  If he continues taking a hands-off approach, handing Senate Republicans the steering wheel, then we’ll continue to see Fail after Fail.

Let’s get this show on the road, Mr. President.

Watch CBS Videos Online

UPDATE: And here’s a bit of well-informed analysis from the Tribune.  Not sure what happened to suddenly enlighten the American press to speak with people who have knowledge on the conflict today, but I’m glad it happened.

It’s almost midnight on January 20 as I write this.  About twelve hours from now, Barack Hussein Obama will become the 44th President of the United States.  He will be the 1st President of the United States who is not white.  It’s easy to forget how recently (and for how long) it was that this day seemed utterly impossible.  Just twelve months ago, for example, I think we were all far from certain that Senator Obama could win the election.  It took an amazing encounter in February 2008 before I became convinced this day might come.

The atmosphere in Washington over the past two days has been jubilant, reverent, and full of life.  The hustle and bustle today stands in stark contrast to the much quieter January 2008, my first month living in DC.  The city is so crowded and full of people looking to celebrate, sell their wares, or just look around and take in the scene.  It reminds me a bit of Cairo – too many cars and too many people, and lots of souvenirs ready for sale – but of course here it’s freezing cold.

The cold didn’t deter the hundreds of thousands of people who went to stand outside, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, to hear famous American (and Irish) movie and music stars, and Barack Obama.  The spectacle of the area around the reflecting pool brimming with people was itself a thrill.  The cheers that greeted Stevie Wonder, and the mention of the dream of freedom shared by the Americans, the Irish, and the Palestinians, and the awed silence that greeted the President-Elect as he spoke, made standing in the cold for hours well worth the effort.

I had seen Barack Obama speak, in person, twice before I saw him yesterday at the Lincoln Memorial.  The first time was in 2007, in San Diego, when he came to the California Democratic Party Convention along with the other candidates for the nomination including Senators Clinton and Edwards.  I thought that Obama was good, but Mr. Edwards really stole the show there.  Obama seemed muted compared to his soaring speech in 2004, to the National Convention, the speech which vaulted him to national fame.  I saw him speak in California again in 2007, this time in my own backyard in Santa Barbara at a campaign rally.  His stump speech was exciting, but I still wasn’t at all convinced that he would be able to win the nomination, much less the presidency.  Senator Clinton seemed so inevitable back in 2007.

Then, of course, Obama won in Iowa, in early January 2008, but then he lost in New Hampshire despite opinion polls showing him winning.  Like everyone else, in early February, I doubted whether this African American man with such an unusual name could win.

But then, one day in February 2008, I stopped in my neighborhood dry cleaning shop, on Capitol Hill.  There was a man already at the counter, speaking with the clerk.  This customer was an unusual customer at a dry cleaning establishment.  He didn’t look to be doing so well.  His clothes were tattered, he had disheveled hair.  He was paying his bill using only small coins – dimes and pennies.  He complained loudly about the high cost for cleaning one shirt, and then he turned to leave.  As he turned, I could see what was on his hangar, in the clear plastic wrap.  This man had dry cleaned a Barack Obama T-shirt.

This is when I realized how much Obama means.  And this is when I realized that he would probably win not just the nomination, but also the presidency.  Obama the candidate was more than just good at giving a speech and exciting an audience.  He was more than just a set of policy proposals.  He was more than just an alternative to Clinton and to McCain.  Obama the candidate was a symbol of hope for this man at the dry cleaners, and people older, younger, richer, and poorer than him around the world.

It remains to be seen if Obama the President will live up to the hopes that we have instilled in him.  And along with a lot of other people on the left, I’m going to do a lot to criticize and push and prod Mr. Obama over the next four years.  But despite the doubts, I’m sure that Mr. Obama can succeed.  And that’s why I can’t wait to see him raise his right hand, about twelve hours from now, to complete a journey few people could have imagined just twelve months ago.  Congratulations, Mr. President.