PROBABLY NOT A GOOD SIGN FOR THE JENA SIX

It looks like Reed Walters may not have to wait too long before a sympathetic governor is in power in Louisiana:

MIAMI, Oct. 20 -- Rep. Bobby Jindal (R) became the nation's first Indian American governor Saturday, outpolling 11 rivals in Louisiana and drawing enough votes to avoid a runoff election next month.

[...]

Jindal, 36, was making his second attempt to become Louisiana's first nonwhite governor since Reconstruction. The last one was P.B.S. Pinchback, a black Republican who served briefly between 1872 and 1873, at a time when many white voters were disenfranchised.

Jindal, whose given name is Piyush, is the American-born son of Indian immigrants; his parents moved from New Delhi to Baton Rouge so his mother could take graduate classes at Louisiana State University.

"Bobby" Jindal thinks things shouldn't be about race. Which is why he changed his name to "Bobby" from "Piyush".

When he was 4, he decided to call himself Bobby -- after the youngest son on the "Brady Bunch" television show. In high school, he gave up Hinduism and became a Christian; and during his first year at Brown University, he was baptized as a Roman Catholic. His wife, Supriya, is also a Catholic convert.

On the campaign trail, his origins often aroused curiosity and comment. But Jindal sometimes deflected related questions.

"People want to make everything about race," he said during one of the debates. "The only colors that matter here are red, white and blue."

A fantastically circular argument, perfectly exemplifying Right wing ideas on race. A man who gave himself a whiter name arguing that race doesn't matter. Because to the Right, it doesn't--as long as you give appropriate deference to white cultural hegemony.

Not exactly Cassius Clay to Mohammed Ali.

More disturbing is how the new governor of Louisiana makes broad statements about how "race doesn't matter" in the state that brought us the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Jena Six.

Mr. Jindal is another example of a cynical Right wing politician all to willing to take advantage of cultural prejudice. I don't believe for a second that Mr. Jindal, a Rhodes Scholar, believes the "theory" of intelligent design has any merit. But he's indicated a willingness to saddle that particular form of non-scholarship with public school students.

Especially with targeted audiences, Jindal could speak to the Republican base. He professed his opposition to abortion, signaled a willingness to consider the teaching of intelligent design, and discussed the need to cut taxes.

After all, if they're relying on public education, it must be because their parents are lazy or bad or something, otherwise they'd be sending them to private school. So why not teach them junk science?

Xposted at Too Sense

GET THIS M-FER OFF TV


It never ceases to amaze me how some people who talk about race have absolutely no experience or knowledge of the people they refer to other than what they see on television. Yet, they remain undeterred, rattling off nonsense as though they had any idea what they were talking about.

During the September 19 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, discussing his recent trip to have dinner with Rev. Al Sharpton at Sylvia's, a famous restaurant in Harlem, Bill O'Reilly reported that he "had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful," adding: "I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship." Later, during a discussion with National Public Radio senior correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams about the effect of rap on culture, O'Reilly asserted: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.' You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all." O'Reilly also stated: "I think black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. They're getting away from the Sharptons and the [Rev. Jesse] Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture. They're just trying to figure it out. 'Look, I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it."

Until now, Bill O'Reilly has probably never been in a room full of black people in his entire life. Yet black culture is a subject on which he comments endlessly, as though he actually had any frame of reference beyond what he has seen in popular entertainment. The man has even admitted that he's "scared of having black friends," but he is not apparently, scared of pontificating forever about people he's never spent five minutes around outside of a newsroom. It's clear he didn't ask anyone in Sylvia's a single question besides "Can I have Another Coke?". And the media has another million people just like him.

To a normal person, this experience would have raised questions about their previous judgments and stereotypes held about black people. But O'Reilly, who is a pathological liar and in a state of perpetual denial, cannot actually let go of a previously held bias, no matter how wrong. So it's not that black people were never what he believed them to be, it's that "we're getting away from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton."

This is a man expressing literal shock at the realization, no, the mere possibility that black people are human beings.

Xposted at Too Sense

A BLACK GUY DID IT

Usually, it's "a black guy raped me" or "a black guy put my kids into a car and pushed them into a lake." Never before have I heard "a black guy made me offer him twenty bucks so I could give him a blowjob. "

TITUSVILLE - State Rep. Bob Allen told police he was just playing along when a undercover officer suggested in a public restroom that the legislator give him oral sex and $20 because he was intimidated, according to a taped statement and other documents released Thursday.

[...]

"I certainly wasn't there to have sex with anybody and certainly wasn't there to exchange money for it," said Allen, R-Merritt Island, who was arrested on charges of soliciting prostitution.

"This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park," Allen, who is white, told police in a taped statement after his arrest. Allen said he feared he "was about to be a statistic" and would have said anything just to get away.

I didn't know it was possible, but State Rep. and former McCain campaign operative Bob Allen just may have found the limits of the "a black guy did it" defense. But I've been wrong before.

Pam Spaulding points out that the police report doesn't exactly support Allen's version of events, so his acquittal may rely entirely on his lawyer somehow picking a jury that has every season of OZ on DVD.

The officer: “I was standing against the far wall of the stall. Allen closed the door behind him and stood against it. I said “what’s up” and Allen said “Hi.” Allen then said “this is kind of a public place isn’t it.” I said “do you have somewhere else where we can go?” Allen said “How about across the bridge it’s quite [sic] over there.” Allen engaged me in a conversation in which he agreed to pay me $20.00 in order to perform a “blow job” on me.”

Stocky black guys are apparently telepathic.

Senate Passes Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act


The Senate has just passed a bill that establishes an unsolved crimes section of the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department. Three of the four presidential candidates, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama have signed onto the bill, with Dodd as primary sponsor and Biden and Obama as co-sponsors.

Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act - Establishes an Unsolved Crimes Section in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and an Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Investigative Office in the Civil Rights Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investiga more...tion (FBI). Makes the Chief of the Section (Chief) and the Chief Investigator of the Office responsible for investigating violations of criminal civil rights statutes in which the alleged violation occurred before January 1, 1970 and resulted in death.

While I understand that no Democrat could have possibly voted against this act, my question is given the Bush Justice Department's deliberate efforts to exclude black lawyers from its Civil Rights Division, its lack of interest in pursuing cases of minority vote suppression by the GOP, and its new focus on protecting the rights of religious groups to proselytize American schoolchildren, who actually believes that there will be any effort made to solve murders that are decades old when violations of people's civil rights are tolerated every day?

In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government’s role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.

[...]

The changes are evident in a variety of actions:

¶Intervening in federal court cases on behalf of religion-based groups like the Salvation Army that assert they have the right to discriminate in hiring in favor of people who share their beliefs even though they are running charitable programs with federal money.

¶Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.

I want to know what members of Congress are going to do to provide oversight and make sure that a Justice Department that has thus far been completely hostile to defending the rights of minorities actually does what the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act mandates.

The Act is a wonderful resume padder for Democratic Presidential candidates, but I question its sincerity. These murders have gone without justice for a generation. Why does Congress care now?

BLOOMBERG: SLIGHTLY LESS FASCIST THAN GIULIANI

At least, that seems to be the selling point in this WaPo article on Bloomberg's possible entry into the race. The primary cause of the media fascination with Bloomberg is not his viability as a candidate, but the opportunities he gives media pundits to engage in wild speculation without accountability.

At any rate, this seems a stretch to me:

Giuliani is selling himself as a strong leader who achieved the impossible in bringing an ungovernable New York under control, even if it required some bruising confrontations along the way. But Bloomberg, his admirers say, has shown that the city of 8 million can be run successfully in a far more understated fashion -- that a mayor can reduce crime without cultivating a sheriff's swagger and antagonizing minorities, protect against terrorism without overly fixating on security, and tackle deeply rooted urban problems without getting into public spats with top appointees.

"Bloomberg shows it's possible to manage New York without offending people," said Peter Kostmayer, a former Democratic congressman who is president of Citizens for New York City, a nonprofit group. "His entrance would be a complete disaster for Giuliani, because then you're able to compare. You have one mayor who was successful and turned off lots of people and one who was successful and has turned on lots of people. "

Bloomberg didn't offend people? Really? because I was pretty turned off when Bloomberg used the racially charged word "thugs" to refer to the NYC Transit Union (otherwise known as the folks essential to making New York City able to function) during their strike last year.

Toussaint said he took issue with Bloomberg's earlier remarks that the union "thuggishly" turned its back on New York. He called the language "undignified and unbecoming."

"We are not thugs,'' Toussaint said. "We wake up at 3 and 4 in the morning to move the trains in this town. That's not the behavior of thugs and selfish people."

Many more people were "turned off" by revelations that Bloomberg enlisted significant resources to spy on political enemies of the Republican Party before their convention in New York in 2004.

CNN correspondent Tom Foreman reported on the May 17 edition of The Situation Room, that "the New York Police Department was secretly monitoring" protesters before and during the convention "and not just at public events." In March, Bloomberg had defended the surveillance activities, saying, "We were not keeping track of political activities. ... We have no interest in doing that." As a March 28 New York Times article noted, however, "the records [in federal lawsuits] show that the police did covertly monitor political activity. Virtually every intelligence report, even those about expressly peaceful groups, described the political viewpoints of the organizations."

I'd say the Bloomberg turns a great deal of people off. Apparently, few of those people are reporters. Even more frustrating, the media still seems to think it can offer the perspective of the black community simply by interviewing Al Sharpton.

The starkest contrast has come in dealings with minority neighborhoods. Giuliani feuded with several top African American elected officials, and was criticized for his handling of fatal police shootings of unarmed black men. Bloomberg can seem out of touch with the city's minority areas -- in 2001, he tried to connect with a Harlem congregation by marveling that his daughter's chief rival in equestrian racing was black. But he won nearly half of the black vote in his 2005 reelection. And when police killed an unarmed black man in Queens in November, Bloomberg moved to quell the uproar, going so far as to meet with the Rev. Al Sharpton.

"Giuliani had people suffer the illusion that meanness was tantamount to management," Sharpton said. "When people would say, why was he not reaching out to people who disagreed with him, he would justify that by saying that's not how you manage. Well, Bloomberg has reached out but managed anyway."

Bloomberg being an improvement over Giuliani is hardly a selling point for his candidacy in my view. But more importantly, since he hasn't declared or formed an exploratory committee, why is this article being written?

The new rhetorical strategy conservatives employ when dealing with the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Brown is the idea that the goal of Brown was to achieve a "colorblind" society. To say you "don't see someones' color" may seem like a compliment, but it's actually a patronizing insult. Not only is it dishonest, since to make such a comment you would have to be conscious of my color as a social factor to believe not "seeing it" is some kind of virtue, but what the philosophy of colorblindness actually says is that being black is somewhat like having a disability, it is something to be "overlooked", ignored, like the stump of a severed limb or an awkward lisp.

Of course, what conservatives mean by colorblindness is the removal of all cultural and historical context from matters of importance--not because such issues don't matter, but because it allows them to write their own prejudice out of history.

Take George Will's most recent column:

The court ruled 5 to 4 that Seattle, which never had school segregation, and Louisville, which did but seven years ago completed judicially mandated remedial measures, must stop using race in assigning children to schools to produce particular racial ratios in enrollments. How did we get from this: "Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere" (the NAACP's brief, written by Thurgood Marshall, in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case), to this: local public education establishments routinely taking cognizance of race in assigning children to schools?

[...]

reyer said that last week's decision abandons "the promise of Brown." Actually, that promise -- a colorblind society -- has been traduced by the "diversity" exception to the equal protection clause. That exception allows white majorities to feel noble while treating blacks and certain other minorities as seasoning -- a sort of human oregano -- to be sprinkled across a student body to make the majority's educational experience more flavorful.

This repulsive practice merits Clarence Thomas's warning in his opinion concurring with last week's ruling: Beware of elites eager to constitutionalize "faddish social theories." Often, they are only theories. As Roberts said, Seattle and Louisville offered "no evidence" that the diversity they have achieved (by what he has called the "sordid business" of "divvying us up by race") is necessary to achieve the "asserted" educational benefits.

Evidence is beside the point. The point for race-mongering diversity tinkerers is their professional and ideological stake in preventing America from achieving "a colorblind mentality."

Once again, someone hostile to integration has chose to quote Justice Thurgood Marshall in a lengthy and out of context manner, distorting his words to fit an essentially racist end.

The fundamental premise of Brown is simply this: "Segregated is inherently unequal."

By no measure are public schools in America either integrated, or equal in the education they provides their children. The Supreme Court case doesn't rely on Jim Crow to maintain segregation, but rather the cultural practice of racism that results in the de-facto segregation of residential areas. There is no need for Jim Crow when Americans segregate themselves voluntarily.

Since a significant portion of the American electorate still feels as though any effort to help African Americans gain access to adequate public education, the best way to create opportunities for minority children is to place them in schools where those opportunities exist--most of these schools are white schools. The goal of "colorblindness," a social farce; the only people who claim never to take race into account are those who do so without restraint. The purported goal of "colorblindness" is an attempt to distract from Brown's real goal, a goal the United States has failed, to give the same educational opportunities to black kids that it gives to white kids.

The court can choose to ignore the circumstances out of a desire for "colorblindness" but "colorblindness" has become a euphemism for "blind to the issues faced by people of color."

George Will gave us a taste of his conception of "colorblindness" last week when he wiped away the reasons for George Wallace's Presidential Campaign:

A candidate can succeed in giving an aggrieved minority a voice—e.g., George Wallace, speaking for people furious about the '60s tumults.

Any mention or understanding of he fundamental, the only purpose of Wallace's campaign, "Segregation Now, Segregation Forever" is eliminated from Will's account of his success in representing "an aggrieved minority".

This is the "colorblindness" conservatives are aiming for. One where racism is removed from all historical and social context; not to grant equality of opportunity, but to pretend that racism doesn't exist as social force, and never did. Not a world where race doesn't matter, but a world where you can't say that race matters.

The results of such a goal, not the elimination of Americas' racial prejudice but the willful ignorance of it, we can see, are not so different from those of Governor George Wallace.

The goal of those interested in eradicating racism should not be that society pretends racism does not exist, but rather, as Manning Marable puts it:

New formations composed primarily if not exclusively of racialized ethnic minorities have a special responsibility for crafting new strategies of political intervention and mobilization. What we should seek is not a color-blind society but a more democratic social order where race disappears as a fundamental category for the distribution of power, material resources and privilege.

That of course, as anyone who has read Will's column regularly knows, is the last thing he would ever want.