Clintons Aren't Saints. Does It Matter?

I've argued previously, that African Americans soured on Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Presidential campaign in part because it appeared that Clinton and her surrogates attempted to use race and racial fear to influence the election. Clinton supporters like Geraldine Ferraro, Bob Johnson, and Bill Clinton made either direct references to Obama's race during the campaign and/or invoked sentiments meant to play on racial stereotypes.

On Monday, Christopher Hitchens, citing John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's new campaign book Game Change, detailed more troubling claims about the Clintons:

"After his wife's third-place showing in the Iowa caucuses, Bill Clinton telephoned Sen. Edward Kennedy in pursuit of an endorsement and, according to Kennedy's own account as given to a friend, said of then-Sen. Barack Obama: A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee."

"In a subsequent conversation, former President Clinton told Kennedy in so many words: "The only reason you're endorsing him is because he's black. Let's just be clear." (This last is given in direct quotes and not in reported speech.)"

"After Obama so handily won the South Carolina primary in January 2008, drawing more than half the state's white voters under the age of 30, Bill Clinton's comment to a reporter was: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here." Answering Obama's question—"Now, why would he say that?"—the authors conclude:

Clinton was comparing Obama to Jackson to diminish the former's victory, and to accomplish the blackening that Obama's advisers suspected was his objective all along. (The Jackson comparison circulated in Clintonworld the night before, in an email from Bill's former White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, which prophesied, "After Feb 5, Obama may prove to be a lesser version of Jackson.")"

"Mention of Blumenthal brings me to the next point of shock in the narrative, where by mid-May 2008 the Clinton campaign is foundering hopelessly and beginning to rely on the desperate pitch to "superdelegates." Two things then happen: Bill Clinton plays the race card even more crudely, and Sidney Blumenthal claims that Michelle Obama has been caught on tape using the word whitey. To cite Heilemann and Halperin again:

Bill Clinton's main assignment was continuing to make phone calls to superdelegates, in which he pressed the case for Hillary and against Obama aggressively—at times, too aggressively. Clinton's message, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, was that the country wasn't ready to elect an African American president. And then there's this:

Blumenthal was obsessed with the "whitey tape," and so were the Clintons, who not only believed that it existed but felt that there was a chance it might emerge in time to save Hillary. "They've got a tape, they've got a tape," she told her aides excitedly."

At the outset, let's be clear: Hitchens is not an objective or necessarily fair critic. As Charles Taylor notes in Salon:

""I would not testify against anyone but Clinton, and only in his Senate trial." Having been denied that opportunity, he has presented us with "No One Left to Lie To," the star turn he didn't get on the witness stand. And as the book builds up to the rhetorical flourishes of its conclusion ("It took no time to make up my mind that I wouldn't protect Clinton's lies, or help pass them along. I wasn't going to be the last one left to lie to"), we can hear music swelling, see the spotlights focusing, take in the camera rolling -- "I'm ready for my close-up now, Justice Rehnquist." The issues Hitchens is writing about are big. It's his ethics that got small."

That said, Hitchens is just quoting from Game Change, so objectivity is kinda beside the point. The Clintons did. use. race. to try to win the 2008 election. Whether it's reported by Hitchens or Heilemann and Halperin, or the LA Times, it's apparently true.  The main issue remains: Does it Matter?

Republicans would probabaly say yes, then mention the hypocrisy of Democrats and Liberals who admonish the Right for racial insensitivity but appear incapable of heaping the same scorn for similar (if not worse) acts on the Left.

Democrats? Democrats are on the whole silent about racial insensitivity claims against the Clintons. Ben Smith of Politico reports:

"What’s notable about the highly publicized release of “Game Change,” however, is the virtual silence from the Clinton camp. The lack of public outrage [Hull emphasis] seems to mark the sputtering end of what was once known as the Clinton political machine and underlines a fact that onetime Clinton loyalists acknowledge: The book’s primary sources about the former candidate and current secretary of state are her own former staffers and intimates.

As a result, there is no campaign of veteran Clintonites spinning the press corps and trying to pre-emptively discredit the book’s scathing depiction of Hillary Clinton as a rudderless candidate and a cheerleader for vicious tactics against eventual winner Barack Obama. There is no team of Clinton proxies going on cable television to denounce authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann as scurrilous and unworthy of belief.  This time, Bill and Hillary Clinton are virtually alone. "

And Blacks? I think ambivalence would probabaly be the term that best describes African Americans' attitude toward the Clintons. In 1998, Toni Morrison dubbed Bill Clinton the "first Black President." And the Clintons have long been popular with African Americans. But from Bill's "sister soulja" moment, to welfare reform, to the 2008 election, I think the attitude toward the Clinton's has . . . uhm . . cooled (Mammy? Really? You don't think, Dr. Harris-Lacewell, that's a little over the top?). There has indeed been a lack of public outcry, particularly in the Black community, over the elegations in Game Change, and to all of the Clinton's shenanigans since they took the national stage. I suppose this is currently due, in large part, to Obama's prominence: The Clintons and their baggage are old news.

There're other factors at play here, including Liberals' hypocrisy on issues of race. We hold the Right to a much tougher standard on race issues than we hold for ourselves. Conservatives don't help matters by making themselves the bad guy so often. In other words, if you've been caught stealing several times, you may be accused of stealing thereafter more often than someone who hasn't been caught stealing as often. Conservatives are accused of racism more often than Liberals because for the past forty years or so, they have made more racist claims, race baited, and gave comfort to more overtly racist groups than Liberals have. Consequently, they are viewed more harshly when they conform to the preconceived notions we've developed for them. Similarly, Liberals have recently been accused of socialism despite the facts of policy and ideology, because we have more often been associated with socialism in the past.

The question of "does it matter whether Clintons have made racially insensitive comments" is important in the end, not just to avoid hypocrisy, but to determine our judgment and how we will react toward the Clintons in the future. It's the same decision making process I go through when I'm confronted with racially charged comments in my personal life. And it's just as vexing. Does it matter? Does it matter that a co-worker called me a Negro? Does it matter that a friend used the word, "Nigger" around me? Should I just forget about it? Let it go? Am I a hypocrite if so? Am I a coward if I do let it go? Have I betrayed my ancestors by allowing these slights to go unchallenged? Will the offender continue to offend if I don't address her actions? Sphere: Related Content

The Sky is Falling!!!!

Nooooo!!!! Democrats lost Ted Kennedy's Seat! Argh!!!! Unemployment is historically high! Noooo!!!! Republicans are dancing in the streets and Democrats are folding up tents. Everybody needs to take a deep cleansing breath.

Obama was inaugurated January 20th 2009. Maybe pronouncing he and his administration dead one year into his presidency is a bit, like, uhm, what's the word? Premature. It's been one year. Did people really think we were going to restore the economy, jobs, pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, cut carbon emissions, and establish universal healthcare in one year? Really? If you didn't think we would accomplish all those goals in a year, then it doesn't make much sense to complain about any of those things not being accomplished. If you did think we would accomplish those goals in a year, I have a simple question to ask: What the hell is wrong with you? I mean, for real. What are you on?

In the wake of Coakley's Senate election defeat in Massachusetts, it seems like everyone has some advice for curing what ails Obama and Democrats:

Fareed Zakaria thinks Obama should act more like a President and less like a Prime Minister.

Jacob Weisberg thinks Obama needs to be less cool and detached. If only Obama would connect with "the People".  [Avatar Nugget! Saw it this weekend in IMAX 3-d . . . enh . . . people are such lemmings, present company included. Dances with Wolves with blue people instead of Indians, should not be the highest grossing movie of all time, but once some blockbuster like Avatar becomes part of the American public's consciousness, forget about it; it's going to be part of your life whether you like it or not].

Michael Gerson thinks Obama has to deal with Americans' anger.

I've got an idea about what Obama and Democrats should do as well: continue what's been successful, reassess and (perhaps) change what hasn't. The problems the United States faces today will not, and cannot be solved in one year. Pass healthcare reform. Continue the drawdown in Iraq. Get Afghanistan/Pakistan under control. Make sure stimulus money is distributed effectively. This is the first inning. There's still a long way to go.

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History, Law, and Race

Many of us are trying to free ourselves from the worst parts of our history. As individuals and as a country, we all want to be free from the ghosts of the past and free to achieve our goals. Yet, despite our desire for freedom we are still trying to untangle ourselves from the remnants of our collective past. We still regularly confront issues the roots of which lie in slave history. Today, when we debate the consequences of affirmative action or racial profiling we are confronting these issues of our collective slave history.

Politics complicate our ability to act ethically. Politics played a role in slavery by obscuring essential moral considerations with less controversial issues, thereby ensnaring Americans in a purgatory of racial suspicion. Under different political contexts maybe the relics of slavery would have taken on different faces. Maybe we would have been able to act faster as a nation to right the wrong of slavery, or internment, or the Holocaust had politics not delayed our actions. If cotton were a less valuable cash crop would slavery, as we know it have existed at all? If the union of the United States were not in danger would the civil war have occurred? Certainly, political pressures have influenced the reality and tragedy of our history, but men, not policies nor the influences of political pressure, made the final decisions concerning slavery. Knowing this you kind of have to ask yourself whether politics itself has enslaved or freed us?

There is still a great deal to be learned from the events of the past and the affect that politics have had on our collective slavery. High Court cases like Somerset v. Stewart, barred slavery in England yet allowed it throughout the rest of the British Empire; Scott v. Sandford, the Dred Scott case which denied rights and citizenship to African Americans, and Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation and established the doctrine of "separate but equal", provide insight into the history of slavery and how all of our freedom was compromised by the influence of politics. Cases like these represent turning points in judicial history where the highest courts rendered decisions that continue to shape our current perspectives on race.

When the Plessy opinion was issued in 1896, the United States was still in the process of rebuilding itself in the aftermath of the Civil War. This period, just following Reconstruction, saw the establishment of several measures, such as the Freedmen's Bureau meant to ensure newly freed slaves integration into American society. But, the political context of the aftermath of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and President Andrew Johnson’s subsequent presidency altered the philosophy of Reconstruction. Congressional debate moved from a progressive stance seeking to advance beyond the oppression of slavery to a conservative conciliatory policy espousing leniency toward former Southern Confederates and neglect, if not antipathy toward the freedmen. Under this administration, Southern whites established black codes restricting the rights of newly freed Blacks. During Reconstruction, Congress debated this restrictive policy settling on the fourteenth amendment as a measure to protect the rights of Blacks and restrict the political power of former Confederates.

Social tensions rose primarily in the South as African-Americans and whites struggled with the new policies and the status of slaves. Blacks faced oppression that rivaled that imposed during slavery. Between 1890 and 1900 more than 1,200 lynchings occurred in the South. In the wake of the Civil War, racial separation became conventional wisdom. The Supreme Court in the Plessy decision came to their conclusions upholding racial segregation and establishing the doctrine of "separate but equal" without difficulty. The majority reached its decision with relative ease because "separate but equal" was good politics. The policy echoed the sentiments of the public at large. This was the will of the people.

Plessy v. Ferguson represents one of many instances when White jurists decided questions regarding the freedom and status of human beings, specifically Black people. The political context of that era affected the outcome of the judicial opinion resulting in a society that has struggled with the legacy of segregation ever since.

Do political contexts affect judicial decision making? Certainly. Judicial decisions are not rendered within a vacuum. Knowing this and the harm that may come when personal and global political contexts overly influence judicial decisions we must ask ourselves, what political contexts may be influencing us today? Will we render a contemporary Dred Scott decision toward peoples of middle-eastern descent? Perhaps the September 11th attack on the United States has pushed us so far away from objectivity that we are in danger of repeating the past. If slavery is to have any meaning it must lie in the lessons that we have learned and can apply to our present world and context. History.

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Brown Wins

Sigh. . .

I have little to no interest in talking about the Brown victory over Coakly in the Massachusetts election for Ted Kennedy's seat.  In fact, over the last year I've lost almost all interest in talking about policy differences between modern U.S. Conservatives and Liberals.  There's no there there. There's no point. There's no dialectic synthesis between the Conservatives' argument for say lower taxes and the Liberals' argument for government intervention. There's no group that says, "hey well you make a good point about lowering taxes, but as you can see from the Katrina disaster for example, sometimes we need robust government intervention for the sake of human dignity." There is no point in you yelling "LOWER TAXES" and me yelling back "UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE" until we both turn blue in the face and or resort to violence. So why bother?

I spent a few years really trying to understand what Conservatives believe and why those beliefs conflicted with Liberals' beliefs. I read Conservative magazines and websites. I talked to Conservatives I knew and asked them how they came to their philosophy. And yes, sure, it makes sense to revere many of the institutions and traditions of our past as Conservative philosophy advocates. But perhaps as an African American, my perspective on the "good ol days" might not be as glowing as others'. The institutions and traditions of the United States have not always treated African Americans well. Slavery is an instituion and tradition of this country. Jim Crow is an instituion and tradition of this country. I have no reverence for these traditions. So, immediately it should be clear that for many African Americans like me, Conservatism's core foundation is problematic.

That exploration, sadly, appears to be the end of the story for most Americans these days and that's why I've tuned out. If the farthest we can get in an argument is for you to present your side and I present my side, then we vote, it becomes difficult to see a reason to pursue or follow the "debate." There is no debate. There is no evolution of ideas. So why should I keep coming to the table looking for a discussion when none exists?

Going back to dialectics we can see that there is currently no resolution or synthesis of the ideas and arguments of Conservatives and Liberals in this country. Conservatives believe one thing, Liberals believe another thing and we then proceed to yell at each other until one side can get that one imbecile who apparently has no opinion on anything to vote. So we're stuck. The only factor that seems to matter right now is which side is angriest. Before the 2008 election, Democrats and Liberals were the angriest side, so that one imbecile (let's call him Mr. Independent) decided to vote Dem. Now, Republicans are angry because of . . . government spending? government run healthcare . . . like um, Medicare? . . . the creep of Socialism into our society? And now Mr. Independent has rushed back to the right. There is no synthesis of the arguments against government running everything and the arguments for government intervention. There's no synthesis of the arguments for social conservatism and civil rights. There is currently no robust middle nor a viable solution to these countervailing political forces.

So (for the time being) I'm out. Sphere: Related Content

MLK Service Day

It's kind of a pain in the ass. I love Dr. King. I like the idea of helping people and community service. As long as I have money in the bank, I'll write you a check for most causes. But actually dragging my sorry ass out of bed at 6 o'clock in the morning to go to a service project today was something beyond painful: agonizing? awful? dreadful? excruciating? Yeah, something in that ballpark. I should note that I'm a morning person and usually at my cheeriest between 6am and noon.

The idea of marking the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday as a national community service event is relatively recent, so I think those of us who participate begrudgingly should be cut a little slack.

"For a decade and half, Harris Wofford has taken what Americans do on the national holiday marking the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy personally.

During his single term in the U.S. Senate, Wofford (D-Pa.) partnered with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) in 1994 to pass the King Holiday and Service Act. Both men, veterans of the civil rights movement who were friends of King, were fed up and disappointed with what the holiday had become. Rather than a day of unity and service as they had envisioned, the holiday was little more than broadcasts of the "I have a dream" speech and sales at shopping malls." Thompson, WaPo

So today my mentee through Capital Partners for Education, and I slouched into a local food distribuation center at 8am for a morning of moving heavy foodstuffs and taking out garbage. All b.s., complaining, and corny jokes aside, it was cool. We had a good time. And it makes sense that we should all take a day (at least) out of the year to provide service to our communities. WE LIVE HERE. We have a collective interest in making this place, this house, this city, this state, this country, this planet, better.

Still, part of me feels like, man, why do all the Black holidays have to be such a downer? I mean, c'mon, most Black people I know are fun to be around. Why do our national holidays all have to be about slavery and people being assassinated? Can we get like a Cinco De Mayo? We could all celebrate the Battle of Isandlwana, a Zulu victory in the opening stages of the Anglo-Zulu War in the late 1800's. Too controversial? Maybe something with a slightly more religious tone (as opposed to militaristic), like St. Patrick's Day?

I don't know. It's all good though. We've got MLK Service Day and there are, again, worse things than taking a day to help out. If you haven't done anything yet, maybe think about donating to a good cause like the Red Cross, or call your mom or something. Sphere: Related Content

Talking White, Talkin' Black, and Code Switching

If nothing else positive came from the Harry Reid, "Negro" gaffe, at least we had the opportunity to think about an interesting concept touching on race, language, and authenticity: the concept of code switching.

"Code-switching is a linguistics term denoting the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals, people who speak more than one language, sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the syntactically and phonologically appropriate use of more than one linguistic variety."

Code switching is the phenomenon Reid was clumsliy referring to when he noted that Obama had, "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one;" the key phrase being, "unless he wanted to have one." Slate's Christopher Beam explains further:

"Reid was praising Obama for one of the oldest political skills there is: the ability to adjust one's speech, and one's mannerisms, to different audiences.


Obama's knack for tweaking how he talks—or code-switching, in linguistics terminology—was on display during the campaign and after. At fundraisers in New York, he'd put on his professorial lilt. In front of mostly black audiences in South Carolina, he'd warn them against believing rumors that he was a Muslim. "They try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you," he said, in a deliberate homage to Malcolm X. On the Ellen show, he won the week by doing a harmless dance that drove the mostly white audience crazy. After a particularly rough debate in North Carolina, he referenced Jay-Z by brushing dirt off his shoulders and got a standing ovation. In an interview with Steve Kroft, he talked about college football and getting a dog. In an interview with MTV's Sway, he complimented his interviewer—"You look tight"—and emphasized his policy position that "brothers should pull up their pants.""

The upside to code switching is clearly an enhanced capacity to communicate with different audiences. If Obama only had access to his "Negro dialect" and no facility with his, uhm, "Honkey dialect", he would not have succeeded in the 2008 election or in his former choosen career paths. On the other hand, we all sense some level of duplicity when we see people talk one way around one group of people and another way around others. It seems like the code switcher is playing down to his or her audiences and worse betraying his or her own authenticity.

"Code-switching—or code-mixing, or style-shifting—is as universally derided as it is universal. In day-to-day life, it's seen as somehow deceitful—a betrayal of one's true self. In politics, it's considered the worst kind of pandering. Hillary Clinton was mocked when she affected a drawl for black audiences. John Edwards got smacked by William F. Buckley for putting on "a carefully maintained Southern accent." "Poor-mouthing," as one Edwards fan put it to me on the campaign trail."

Among African Americans, code switching can be an especially vexing issue that can violate class and racial solidarity boundaries.  Blacks in the U.S. don't switch language and affect between say, Portugese and Russian. We switch (if we're able) between "talkin' White" and "talkin' Black". Race and racial solidarity then come into play. The idea of a Black person "talkin' White" is oftentimes greeted with disdain from other Blacks. At best, a Black person "talkin' White" will be regarded as "safe", "tame", and "non threatening." Even for the most refined and integrated Black person, the descriptions of "safe" and "tame" somehow cut away at our individual sense of authenticity. For better or worse, African Americans have a group identity and the words "safe" and "tame" don't exactly conform to that image.

Is that a bad thing?  Is it bad for Italians or people of Latin decent to think of themselves as passionate?

These notions we carry of our own racial and ethnic identity help us to know and understand ourselves and our world. The elimination of these characteristics, I think, diminishes many of us in the same way that a lion with dull claws or a chili pepper with no heat is diminished. There is, however, a fine line between expressing authenticity and . . . caricature.

Class also plays into the troubling aspects of code switching. People of different classes oftentimes have trouble code switching to the language of the other class. If you haven't been exposed to "talkin' White" (or speaking proper English which seems to me to be just as offensive a term), you won't convey that language accurately. The reverse is also true. If your only exposure to "talkin' Black" is through last week's "What's Happenin'" marathon on TVOne, you will quickly be exposed as inauthentic.

In the end, Senator Reid's observation about Obama's  . . . dialect . . . wasn't wrong, just extraordinarily poorly phrased. If we've had a better opportunity to learn about ourselves, it was probabaly worth it. Sphere: Related Content

Our Kind of People

If you don't live in an area with a large concentration of African-Americans, you might be surprised at the level of diversity within the Black community. Southern Blacks, Northeastern Blacks, West Coast Blacks, lower class Blacks, middle class, upper class Blacks. Social Conservatives. Liberals. Athiests. Agnostics. This fact of intraracial diversity gets overlooked far too often in discussions of race. Recently, I finished reading Lawrence Otis Graham's mildly controversial, "Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class," which comprehensively details the history and character of Upper Class African Americans throughout the United States. Graham describes the social organizations, secondary schools, colleges, fraternities, vacation spots, and cities that the Black upper class favor. The opening lines of "Our Kind of People" establish the nature of the beast:

Bryant Gumbel is, but Bill Cosby isn't.
Lena Horne is, but Whitney Houston isn't.
Andrew Young is, but Jesse Jackson isn't.
And neither is Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Clarence Thomas, or Quincy Jones.
And even though both of them try extremely hard, neither Diana Ross nor Robin Givens will ever be.

Reading Graham's work brought back hazy memories of my mother and grandmother and the, what I thought at the time, strange responses they gave to certain institutions, people, and behavior. Howard University was, to my light-skinned grandmother, the epitome of higher education. So transfixed was my grandmother by Howard that she sent my uncle, a blue chip football prospect, there to establish his football career. She pushed Howard despite interest from UCLA, USC, and several other big name college football programs. As a young adult, this astonished me. Howard? You want to send your kid to play football at Howard? Wouldn't you rather send him somewhere with better facilities and coaches? The choice seemed even more absurd to me after my mother explained that my uncle's football career ended with a severe knee injury on Howard's practice field. But after reading more about the Black upper class and their affinity for certain Black colleges like Howard, Spellman, and Morehouse, my grandmother's attraction to Howard makes more sense. She was emulating the Black upper class of her day. Howard was and remains a source of great pride for African Americans. If your family attended a school like Howard or Morehouse for generations, you could jockey your family into a better position within the Black caste system.

I remember having similar experiences with my mother when subjects like Jack and Jill, or the Links came up; the hand wringing, overwrought attention to dress, behavior, and language that were an issue before visiting some of our friends, but mysteriously not all. The elation my mother showed when she felt she had been included in some ritual of the Black upper class or when she coyly dropped the name of an exclusive school her own children attended thereby, ostensibly, identifying herself as a member of the class. This left me perplexed as a child. Why do you care what I wear to Johnny's house but not Rumal's? Why do you even want me to be friends with Johnny? Johnny's a dick. Why do you talk "white" around Johnny's parents but you get all ghetto around Rumal's parents?  We're all Black, right? Well, yeah, sort of. [It occurs to me that "talking white around Johnny's parents" is an example of code switching. You can see how troubling it can be.]

All that said, I don't really harbor animosity toward the Black upper class anymore than you hold animosity for a cousin who voted for Bush or an uncle who wears Crocs. My main beef is simply that my contemporaries of that class are as Lawrence Otis Graham describes them, "always rather bland and 'safe,' with little interest in testing the authenticity of [my] blackness." I'm certainly not angry at anyone for their success. As for the semi-secret organizations that characterize the Black elite: the Links, Jack and Jill, Sigma Pi Phi, they do contribute to the Black community, primarily through fund raising for organizations like the United Negro College Fund. But with all the ski trips, cotillions, black-tie events, networking activites, yachting parties, and such, while literacy rates, graduation rates, HIV/AIDS, and out-of-wedlock child birth for lower-income Blacks remain problematic; what is the point? What's the point of organizing high class Blacks for parties while the rest of the community suffers? What's that all about?

Published in EzineArticles dot com.
Re-Printed in emPower Magazine. Sphere: Related Content

Speaking of Riots . . .

Growing up in and around Washington D.C., I learned a little bit about riots.

In 1968, the center of D.C.'s Black community was crippled when riots in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination, destroyed 900 businesses, caused 12 deaths, and over 1,000 injuries. The city, particularly its Black residents, has been recovering from that blow for the past 40 years. That's FOUR ZERO years. Not a week. Not a month. 40 years. Business corridors on 14th Street in Northwest and H street, Northeast have only begun to resemble some form of their previous prosperity in the last 15 years.

Soon after Dr. King fell, Stokley Carmichael, former Howard student, former head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and future leader in the Black Panther Party, led a group of young men into businesses near 14th and U St, NW, demanding they shut down as they had when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Not an unreasonable demand. Carmichael urged calm, but the crowds grew out of control. And let's be real, we all know Stokley Carmichael wasn't exactly a calming influence. Soon after, the 1968 DC riot ensued. The riots began near what was then known as "Black Broadway" and spread through areas that we still consider in many ways blighted: H street, NE; Anacostia; 17th St, NW.

Which all leads me to wonder: Why?

Not in a conspiracy theory, "the CIA planted coke" sort of way, but more in a, "we [Black people] decided to destroy BLACK businesses in our anger over the death of Dr. King?!? The non-violent Dr. Martin Luther King? Really??? Black businesses? Nobody thought about taking that anger to the federal buildings a few blocks away? or the suburbs? or Georgetown?" The term misguided aggression comes to mind.

After reading a bit about the 1992 Rodney King riots and the 2005 French Riots for a piece I wrote for Flak, it occured to me that a couple of common factors seem to provide fuel for these fires:

First, unemployment. As Denise Kersten Wills explains,

"“I don’t like to predict violence,” Martin Luther King Jr. told an audience at Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968. The mostly white crowd of 4,000 packed the cathedral and spilled onto the lawn.


“But if nothing is done between now and June to raise ghetto hope,” King continued, “I feel this summer will not only be as bad but worse than last year.”


Angered by poor living conditions, unemployment, and discrimination, African-Americans in 1967 rioted in cities across the country. Twenty-seven people died in Newark, 43 in Detroit.
Four days after his sermon at the cathedral—on Thursday, April 4—King was assassinated in Memphis."

The same issue of "ghetto hope" was at play in LA during the Rodney King riots as well as in the Paris suburb, Clichy-sous-Bois, in the 2005 French riots.

Second, tension with authorities. In the '68 D.C. riot, tension between citizens and authorities over civil rights was at a boiling point. In 1992, citizens were angered by the acquittal of four police officers accused of brutalizing Rodney King. In 2005, the French riots were triggered by the deaths of two teenagers who were hiding from police in an impoverished suburb.
 
In each of these riots race played a role as well, we're all familiar with the demographics of the '68 riot and the '92 riot. The French riots involved discrimination against Arab and African immigrants which fomented the tension leading to the unrest.
 
A couple of weeks ago, while reading a book about race and class (that I'll post on soon), I learned about another District riot; really the first DC race riot; that also destroyed Black businesses. The Snow Riot of 1835 shared most of the characteristics of the riots discussused above with at least one interesting difference.
 
Mr. Beverly Snow's Epicurean Eating House
 
"Location: Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW (northwest corner)


The Epicurean Eating House, owned by Mr. Beverly Snow, was the site of a riot in 1835 popularly known as the Snow Riot. Though the exact cause of the riot will probably never be known [Hull Note:  see  the Snow Riot article linked above from WaPo for more details including the role of Francis Scott Key], the larger context was white working-class men's frustration over their status as workers and resentment of black competition for jobs. The clear result was the unleashing of white terror against blacks.

Beverly Snow was one of a number of black entrepreneurs who owned businesses in the downtown area. His success was evidence of the strength of Washington's free black population.

One of the sparks for the riot may have been an assault by an enslaved man against Anna Maria Thornton, wife of William Thornton, white architect of the U.S. Capitol. Snow may also have been a target because it was alleged that he spoke disrespectfully about the wives and daughters of white Navy Yard mechanics (working men). One historian suggests that rioters associated Snow with his regular patrons, the wealthy white men who wielded considerable power over the white working classes. Whatever the reason, Snow was forced to flee as an angry white mob took over and ransacked his restaurant. White mobs also attacked school houses and other structures associated with the free black population.

Prior to the 1835 riot, there had been considerable racial tension in Washington. White anxiety over abolitionist activities had grown ever since the 1831 Nat Turner Rebellion. In 1835, after Congress received a large number of petitions calling for emancipation in the District of Columbia (the only place over which Congress exercised exclusive jurisdiction), Congress had instituted a gag rule prohibiting debate on the abolition of slavery. After the Snow Riot, Washington's white City Council made existing Black Codes even more restrictive. "

In the Snow Riot (named for the Black owner of a restaurant that served mostly White people, not for actual snow, which I'm tired of at this point in the winter), an angry Irish mob took to the streets in the name of racial justice. Ironic? I guess not for the times (yeah, I'd never heard of Hibernophobia either, but you can bet your bottom dollar I'll bust that out the next time I'm at an Irish bar). Sphere: Related Content

What are They Calling Themselves These Days?

Names are funny things. They're just words; a noun or nouns we use to designate and establish how things, places, and people are known. But, as an act, assigning the wrong name to a place or person can elicit not just hard feelings, but violence. Complicating the matter further is the fact that given the context of a situation, the same mis-naming will be taken in drastically different ways. If I call my sister a jerk, for example, my sister and the rest of my family will react differently than if you call my sister a jerk.

If I, as a Black person, call another Black person a ni . . . you get the point.

All this came to mind to me this morning as I read the smoldering embers of news and opinion stories surrounding Senate Majority leader Harry Reid's remarks about Obama's "light" complexion and lack of "negro" dialect. As the news cycle moves forward a growing number of reporters, leaders, and analysts have adopted the position that, "enh, it wasn't so bad. What Reid said was insensitive, but not untrue." Slate's Brian Palmer wrote an interesting piece on the topic today explaining "How the Word Negro Became Taboo".

"It started its decline in 1966 and was totally uncouth by the mid-1980s. The turning point came when Stokley Carmichael coined the phrase black power at a 1966 rally in Mississippi. Until then, Negro was how most black Americans described themselves. But in Carmichael's speeches and in his landmark 1967 book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, he persuasively argued that the term implied black inferiority. Among black activists, Negro soon became shorthand for a member of the establishment. Prominent black publications like Ebony switched from Negro to black at the end of the decade, and the masses soon followed. According to a 1968 Newsweek poll, more than two-thirds of black Americans still preferred Negro, but black had become the majority preference by 1974. Both the Associated Press and the New York Times abandoned Negro in the 1970s, and by the mid-1980s, even the most hidebound institutions, like the U.S. Supreme Court, had largely stopped using Negro."

What is it about mis-naming that drives so many of us insane? I suppose if the mis-naming is purposeful (e.g. I know your name is Betty, but I'll call you Biaaatch instead) then both parties can recognize the inherant aggression. But that's not really what happened with Reid's gaffe.  Harry Reid referred to a name for Black people that has fallen out of favor. That is literally what happened. That's kind of hard for me to accept, given that my first reaction to the story was, "Wow, Harry Reid, you're a jackass." . . .  hmm . . .  so . . . uhm . . . my bad. Sphere: Related Content

Rebels With a Cause

2005
It'd been been a brief year since the death of Russell Jones, the Ol' Dirty Bastard and founding member of the hip-hop clique Wu-Tang Clan when, the following year, the eruption of the ghettos of Paris in flames fanned by institutional discrimination against North African and Arab immigrants brought the legacy of the hip-hop absurdist to mind again. While the teenagers of France's low-income cités grew up listening to the New York hip-hop of Ol' Dirty and his contemporaries, and their riots bear some resemblance to our own racial strife in the early '90s, there were important differences between the two.

Ol' Dirty embraced the absurdist's acceptance of meaninglessness in the wake of the so-called crack epidemic. For whatever reasons — be they differing methods of immigration, differing social supports, differing circumstances or differing time periods — the riots in France were fundamentally different than the expressions of outrage many African-Americans articulated in the early '90s.

Ol' Dirty and his contemporaries expressed themselves through their music and lifestyles. Their expression was often nihilistic. Notorious B.I.G. was Ready to Die. He wasn't alone in that sentiment. But the riots in France portend a passion for an improved society that was absent among indigent African-Americans of the early '90s. The most important difference between the two may be hope and despair.

While the addictive nature of crack was certainly overstated in the American media, the effect of the crack industry's turf battles and cultural pathology is obvious. If the devastation of the crack industry might have been observed in inner cities throughout the United States, it can undoubtedly be observed through music produced at the time. In 1992 Dr. Dre released his debut solo album, The Chronic. In 1993, Snoop Doggy Dog followed with his own debut album, Doggystyle. New York hip-hop, under pressure to match Dre's Death Row ascendancy, produced 1993's Wu-Tang debut, Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers. In 1994 Nas and the Notorious B.I.G. released their debut albums, Illmatic and Ready to Die. Five classic hip-hop albums that irrevocably reconstructed the genre were released in less than two years. Each dealt explicitly with the business, lifestyle and consequences of crack culture and its impact on Black America. These artists were moved by what they saw as adolescents growing up, often in poverty, against the backdrop of crack culture.

While hip-hop on the US coasts was evolving into the popular music of today, Los Angeles experienced its own "creative explosion" during the 1992 Rodney King riots. Like today's French riots, high unemployment in South LA was a critical factor in the violence and destruction that ensued that week. Both riots can also be traced to tension with local police. In LA, the acquittal of the four police officers accused in the beating of Rodney King fostered a perception of excessive force and racial profiling. The riots in Paris were triggered by the deaths of two teenagers in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor community in an eastern suburb of Paris. The immigrant suburbs of Paris, as opposed to LA in the '90s, are lawless. The zones de non-droit are policed through checkpoints at the outer fringes. Police do not enter these immigrant zones as a matter of French policy.

Still, despite the lack of police presence, unemployment and institutional segregation in France, the rioters, French citizens, carry entitlements that afford them a level of humanity most destitute US citizens can only dream of. In France, a typical poor family of four has much of its rent subsidized by the government and can receive over $1,200 a month in various government benefits. They enjoy universal national healthcare, generous retirement benefits and even more help if they're unemployed.

Moreover, while the crack epidemic in the United States is open to debate, there has been no such epidemic alleged in France. Between 1992 and 2002, less than 2.2 percent of French 15-64 year olds reported experimentation with or lifetime use of heroin, LSD or crack. As a result, the nature of the two riots, and the cultures of post-crack US and today's French cités, are fundamentally different. While thousands of vehicles were burned in France, it appears that the rioters killed only one person. Reports on the LA riots estimate between 50 and 60 lives lost. Two of the defining characteristics of the LA riots were looting and the theft of luxury items. In France, the rioting was targeted toward the destruction of vehicles and civil disobedience itself.

What the cultures of post-crack US and present-day France share is an exclusion of the underprivileged. So it's no surprise the American media have looked on the French riots with marked interest. We've seen this before: in LA, in Watts, in New York. We saw what happened when the underprivileged were excluded in New Orleans. The inclination for schadenfreude concerning the French riots has been muted by fear that today's Clichy-sous-Bois is tomorrow's Prince George's County, Maryland.

The rioters in France may have had an easier go of life than African-Americans after the crack wars. Unemployment benefits from France's social welfare system afford French youth benefits that most poor in the US do not enjoy. An official policy of segregation coupled with no discernable neighborhood police presence and pervasive unemployment are, on the other hand, no walk in the Tuileries. Still, today's French rioters have shown they are more interested in drawing attention to their plight than in the destruction of lives. Their uprising is social upheaval, lashing out against what they perceive to be injustice. Ol' Dirty and impoverished blacks in the '90s — perhaps too jaded or scarred by their worlds — could not move past the self. Hopefully, France's leaders will be able to tell the difference between the '90s revolt of the meaningless in the US and France's '00s revolt of the optimistic. Sphere: Related Content

Were Blacks Voting for Obama Racist?

"Fully 96 percent of black voters supported Obama"

Therefore, according to some, Blacks are racist because they voted uniformly for a Black candidate. The reasoning continues that if Whites voted for a White candidate by such percentages, they would be labeled racists.

A cursory review of history shows why this makes no sense. Black people were certainly not racist for voting for Obama. In fact, Black voting percentages for Obama in 2008 were not much different than Black voting percentages for Al Gore in 2000.

Blacks' voting patterns have remained fairly consistent for the past 30 years:

ELECTION, 1976
Jimmy Carter, Democrat, 85 percent of the black vote (election winner)
Gerald Ford, Republican, 15 percent of the black vote.

ELECTION, 1980
Democrat Jimmy Carter—86 percent of the black vote
Republican Ronald Reagan—12 percent (election winner)

ELECTION 1984
Democrat Walter Mondale—89 percent of the black vote
Republican Ronald Reagan—9 percent of the black vote(election winner)

ELECTION 1988
Democrat Michael Dukakis—88 percent of the black vote
Republican George H.W. Bush—10 percent of the black vote (election winner)

ELECTION 1992
Democrat Bill Clinton—82 percent of the black vote
Republican George H.W. Bush—11 percent of the black vote

ELECTION 1996
Democrat Bill Clinton—84 percent of the black vote
Republican Bob Dole—12 percent of the black vote

ELECTION 2000
Democrat Al Gore: 90 percent of the black vote
Republican George W. Bush: 9 percent of the black vote

ELECTION 2004
Democrat John Kerry—88 percent of the black vote
Republican George W. Bush—11 percent of the black vote (election winner)

The election results for the past thirty or so years show that African-Americans tend to vote as a bloc in Presidential elections and almost always vote for the Democratic candidate.

It seems more than a stretch to argue that African-Americans are racist by voting for Obama, when African-Americans have voted in similar fashion for white candidates for the past thirty years. If Blacks are racist for voting for Obama, were Blacks also racist for voting for Al Gore, Walter Mondale, or LBJ? One could even argue that a part of Hillary's problem with the African-American vote  (as compared to Obama or anyone else) is the Clinton brand name.  Bill Clinton earned some of the lowest Black vote totals for Democrats in recent history.

Further, African-American support for Obama was not high during the entire campaign:

"In an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in mid-January, Clinton received 53 percent of African-Americans' support; Obama received 27 percent. The poll also found 85 percent of blacks view Clinton favorably, while 12 percent view her unfavorably. Only 59 percent of African-Americans said they had a favorable opinion of Obama, to 19 percent with an unfavorable opinion."

If Blacks were voting solely on the basis of race, wouldn't that have been the case from the begining? Did Black people somehow become more racist during the course of the campaign? Not likely. Black voters did not immediately flock to the Black candidate, Obama, over the white candidate, Clinton, as one might expect of a group motivated by race.

Finally, I'm not sure if these news stories flew under everyone else's radar but many Black people feel that Clinton's surrogates made racially charged remarks about Obama. Is it any wonder that Blacks would vote against the candidate whom they perceived to be at the heart of these assaults? Race did not drive Black voters to Obama as much as the perception of racial shenanigans drove Black voters away from Clinton.

"Former congresswoman and vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro is resigning her fundraising position with Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign after controversial comments she made about Clinton's rival, Sen. Barack Obama."


"The bitterness of ex-president Bill Clinton's scorched earth march to the sea across South Carolina lingers not just in the chilly relations between his wife, Hillary, and Sen. Barack Obama, and apparently in the votes of thousands of South Carolinians. There was considerable criticism of Bill Clinton for injecting race into the race, which Obama easily won 2 to 1."

"High-profile Hillary Clinton supporter Bob Johnson is apologizing to Barack Obama for comments he made last week regarding the Illinois senator's acknowledged drug use as a teenager. Johnson said he sent a letter to Obama Thursday morning and said he was also reaching out by phone."

I think a much more plausible reading of the election is that African-Americans were going to vote Democrat as usual and during the course of the primary, African-Americans collectively soured on Clinton and embraced Obama as the Democratic candidate. The race element may account for the extra 1 or 2 percentage points of African-American support for Obama, but that might just as easily be attributed to disapproval of the Bush Administration.

Also see: When did blacks start voting Democratic?

Sphere: Related Content

Harry Reid: Why Do Blacks vote Democrat again?

Another day, another bone-headed, racially insensitive comment by a leader of the Democratic Party.  For those who missed the latest embarrassment, Senate Majority leader, Harry Reid apologized Saturday for referring to President Obama as "light skinned" and claiming that Obama spoke with no "Negro dialect".

As Chris Cillizza in today's WaPo reports:

"Reid's remarks about Obama were revealed in "Game Change," a book detailing the 2008 race by Time's Mark Halperin and New York magazine's John Heilemann.
The authors describe Reid assessing Obama's strengths as a candidate. Reid, they write, "believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,' as he said privately. Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama's race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination."

On it's own, Reid's gaffe seems more like the forehead-slapping type of comment that a grandparent might make at Thanksgiving dinner. But Reid's comment sits atop a steaming pile of Democrat comments and actions that leave many Americans wondering exactly why Blacks consistently vote D. It's an interesting question that inevitably arises in any discussion of race and politics in the U.S.

My personal take is that given only two (realistic) choices of political alignment in this country, Blacks, like everyone else, are forced to choose the lesser of two evils. While Democrats like Reid may make the occasional racially insensitive or outright racist remark, what does the other choice offer?

The Southern Strategy? Rush Limabugh? Ann Coulter? Trent Lott? Even bizarro-Obama, Michael Steele, gets in on the act.

More important than a racial sensitivity scorecard, though, is the question of which party is better for Black people. At the moment that party appears to be Democrat. When Republicans begin to treat the Black vote as an asset instead of a not-so-necessary evil, the question of which party is more racist, may become irrelevant. Sphere: Related Content