Please Vote For Sylvester Turner For Mayor: Prof. Bob Stein Doesn't Quite Say ‘Ku Klux To Call’ In Turner-King Mayoral Runoff, But Admits Race Is A Factor

Those not blinded by the race difference in this race will agree that State Rep. Sylvester Turner is, on paper and in fact, more experienced in the craft of governance than his opponent, businessman Bill King, notwithstanding the cliffhanger discussed yesterday in 88.7 FM commentator Jose Jimeniz's interview of political scientist Dr. Bob Stein.

King is running ostensibly on his skills as a businessman; unfortunately for him, Turner manifestly has those skills, too, having run his own businesses successfully, and claiming in the first debate (probably factually; I am certain a panelist would have called him on it if it weren't true) to have met every employee payroll. In past years I have heard Turner speak in person: he is a dynamic, driven, passionate person, and his constituency is one of the things he is most passionate about.

Although Houston city offices are elected on a nonpartisan basis (by law), this blog is, at least in principle, a Democratic site; Democratic voters will be happy to note that Mr. Turner is solid on many basic Democratic issues, including LGBT rights, public education, affordable health care, equal justice under law (Turner is an attorney who graduated JD, Harvard Law School), and others too numerous to list, a product of his 26 years as a state legislator.

If you haven't already voted, please come out tomorrow (Sat. 12/12) to vote for Sylvester Turner.

(If Bill King's list of failures were not long enough already, his web site... search for it yourself... has serious mechanical flaws in its home page when viewed with a fully updated Google Chrome browser. Prepare to shade your eyes if you visit!)

Monday Medley

• Why Conservatives Still Won't Admit That Charleston Was A Racist Crime
  

  Aurin Squire at TPM lists several prominent GOPers (e.g., Jeb Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Gov. Nikki Haley, a WSJ columnist [anonymous and invisible if you don't have a subscription], etc.) who use words like "I don't know [why it happened]," "unimaginable," "we don't know the motivation," "senseless tragedy," etc., and responds to these protestations of incomprehension:
  

  Given the history of the South, along the rise of both active shooters and gun access, we can't call what happened Wednesday night a “senseless tragedy.” In fact, the Charleston church shooting is full of savage sense. Thanks to complicity at best, and outright racist at worst, the “inconceivable” is still feasible. The fear tactics that were once localized in the dark backwoods of our political landscape now reach every phone and laptop. ...

  We DO know the motivation, the act is NOT inconceivable, we CAN imagine, and Repub's will find there's no use in pretending we don't or can't.
  
  
• Sixth greatest extinction event in the history of our planet is underway
  

  (Be sure to click through to the underlying paper and at least read the abstract, in which the authors justify this statement: "These estimates reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.")

  Yes, it IS happening, as demonstrated under fairly strict criteria. Yes, humans ARE causing it. Will H. sapiens survive it? The abstract doesn't explicitly say, but you may live to find out!
  
  
• Supreme Courts rejects appeal of decision overturning NC's mandatory ultrasound abortion law
  

  (At last, some good news, however limited: because the Supreme Court rejected an appeal of this lower court's decision, women who reside in North Carolina cannot be forced by state law to obtain an ultrasound (an unnecessary, expensive and possibly inaccessible procedure) as a precondition for obtaining an abortion.)

  Now if they can only find a clinic that has not closed and get transportation to it...
  

And now two that hardly require any explanation, considering the nature of many of today's police forces:

• Florida police murder black computer engineer as he listens to music; attempted cover-up exposed
  
  
• Police crush, kill man begging for his life, screaming he was suffocating until his ears turned blue
  
  

"Monday, Monday..."

Not Black Rage But White Rage: What It Means To Be Black In America

Can we ever end the intimidation
and alleviate the fear?

Carol Anderson of Emory University, principal investigator in numerous projects focusing on race in America, gives us a superb op-ed about the repeated White erection of deliberate obstacles to Black equality, progress and independence in life and work. From the nominal end of slavery in 1863 to the present day, not less often than once every two decades, such obstacles have sprung up, usually embedded in the law itself, giving such obstacles a public respectability that is, at best, an obscene offense against any sentient being, let alone a whole race of H. sapiens. Please give Professor Anderson a chance to lead you through this extended and repeating tale of deliberately inflicted disadvantage against a people that did nothing to deserve it. If you are Black, I imagine (I can only imagine, not personally experience) you will grimace in exasperation and shake your head at what has been done to you and yours. If you are White, please allow yourself to fathom the deep, painful frustration of ongoing, engineered inequality of social and economic status.

Yes, it's great that an African American became president (my reservations about the individual aside). But were any minds changed? or did racism simply become respectable in our political institutions to a degree unsurpassed in my lifetime (i.e., since the late 1940s)? How has Obama's presidency mitigated the racist behavior of the worst racists our nation continues to foster?

As I age, as I observe the perniciousness of the diversifying ways in which racism manifests itself, I despair of seeing its end within my lifetime. But I do know this: America can address the problem promptly and concretely, or America can go to ground in a conflict that will make the French Revolution look like a bedtime story. There's no middle ground on this one: it's do or die. At present I wouldn't place money on "do," however much I cajole myself to hope.

"Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on..."

Emptywheel On Ferguson/Wilson/Brown/McCulloch

Emptywheel, as is often the case, expresses some of my thoughts on the whole matter better than I could do myself, so I commend to you her article on a couple of aspects of this insanely painful episode.

CORRECTION: as Bryan of Why Now? notes, the article linked is by bmaz, not emptywheel. My apologies.

‘Dog Whistle Politics’: Bill Moyers Interviews Ian Haney López, Part II

Here.

'Dog Whistle Politics': F. Michael Higginbotham Hosts Discussion With Author Ian Haney López

The breadth, degree and sometimes subtlety of today's racial dog whistle politics as related to its history back through Nixon's Southern strategy is examined by Prof. Ian Haney López, faculty member of U.C. Berkeley's Boalt School of Law, in his book, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, and in conversation with Prof. Higginbotham, U. Baltimore School of Law, and the usual range of commenters (many undeniably astute) at FDL.

I found this conversation more inspiring of optimism than fear, and I found the subject more complicated than I anticipated. Recommended!

Santa And Jesus: Are Either Or Both Of Them... Caucasian White?

After Megyn Kelly and other Fox Folx assert they were, Jon Stewart and Jessica Williams discuss the matter:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

(OK someone or something is intermittently blocking display of the video on this site. If you can't view it here, go see it on TPM; see if I care!)

Something Obama Did Right

I am so frequently (and justifiably) critical of President Obama that when he does something just right, with the right message delivered in the right tone, in a manner that reduces rather than increases the divisiveness intrinsic in practically every issue Americans face and debate, his right action should be rewarded. This short speech on his reaction to the Trayvon Martin killing and the nature and outcome of George Zimmerman's trial are certainly such a right thing. Without further chatter, here is President Obama:



Exactly so. America's racial conflict truly has decreased since my youth 50 years ago, and if we can somehow avoid responding to the people who would rather stir up trouble over an incident than learn from it, grieve, approach the incident as constructively as possible in an inevitably tragic and divisive situation, maybe, just maybe, we can make things better for the next generation. In my opinion, it is long past time to attempt a more constructive approach.

(H/T TPM for the White House video.)

America, Election 2012: For The First Time, Blacks Voted At A Higher Rate Than Whites... But It's Not That Simple

Here's Hope Yen of AP at TPM:

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home.

Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated Press.

...

This has been coming for a long time. No doubt having a Black at the top of the Democratic ticket brought out a lot more Black voters than in earlier presidential election years, and it's not clear to me whether this is repeatable, but it has now happened once, and an African American has now been elected president twice.

Why do I doubt the reproducibility of the result? because Blacks constitute only 13.1 percent of America's population. If that figure is believable, that's a steep hill to climb. Unless another African American heads the Democratic ticket (or the Republican ticket? gimme a break...) in 2016, this level of turnout seems unlikely to me.

But that African American at the head of the ticket is actually a person of mixed race. Growing numbers of Americans are of mixed race. Some of those are emphatic in their desire not to be pigeonholed in one race. Even those who are not may identify variously among individuals of the same mixture. A friend of mine, filling out a form, was confronted with a checkbox labeled "Person with Hispanic surname." WTF? Her surname is as Anglo as my own, her ethnicity is indisputably Hispanic, her parents are Colombian by birth, and her citizenship is American by birth. At some point, the whole classification scheme itself becomes a vehicle for misrepresentation of ethnicity.

State governments may nonetheless be in for some real changes. Texas, for example, has been "majority minority" (I do hate that phrase, but it's the standard term now) for some years, and if federal courts including the Supremes are ever of a composition to reverse the rampant gerrymander that Republicans in power here have perpetrated over at least the last two decades, we Texans may lose our status as the laughingstock of the nation.

Old white guys like me (actually, old white guys NOT like me) might want to start adjusting their mindsets right now...

Thank You, John Sununu, For Admitting GOP Racism

Igor Bobic of TPM:

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, a Romney surrogate, said on Thursday night that the reason former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed President Obama today was due to the color of his skin.

...

Yeah, that's why I endorse Obama, because the color of his skin is the same as mine: human. [/snark]

Stupid Man

Black Man

Look: Sununu's thinking is straight out of antebellum Mississippi, only worse. I don't know what Colin Powell's motives are for endorsing Obama, and neither does Sununu. If race enters into Powell's thinking, that's his business.

But Sununu's announcement, made in the role of surrogate of Myth Rmoney (he's co-chair of Rmoney's campaign), broadcasts to the world that great bit of Republican "wisdom" that you should vote your skin color, not your politics, when choosing the most powerful leader in the world. Great job, Johnny-boy. Such high-minded political thinking! [/snark]

Astonishing: Chris Matthews Accuses GOP Of Playing Race Card Against Obama

Let me make myself clear: it is not astonishing in the least that the GOP uses race as a tool in persuading white voters inclined to racism to vote for its candidates. And the GOP has so few black members that they have to harass TV networks into focusing on individual blacks in the crowd at their convention. Ever since Nixon's "Southern strategy," the Republican Party has depended on racial prejudice to win elections.

So what or who is astonishing here? Chris Matthews, that's who. Let's let Pema Levy of TPM tell us about it:

Political observers have noted for a while that Mitt Romney’s claim that President Obama gutted the work requirement in the 1996 welfare reform law is false. But few in the mainstream media have have gone so far as to accuse Republicans of playing the ‘race card.’

But Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” didn’t hold back in a tirade launched against RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Monday morning, accusing the Romney campaign of using race to defeat Obama. Matthews lit into Priebus, citing both the welfare attacks and Romney’s recent birth certificate joke as evidence that the GOP is “playing that little ethnic card there.”

“I have to call you on this, Mr. Chairman,” Matthews said in an appearance with Priebus on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” as he responded to Republicans’ criticism that Obama is running a very negative campaign. “But they’ve both negative. That cheap shot about ‘I don’t have a problem with my birth certificate’ was awful. It is an embarrassment to your party to play that card.”

...

“You can play your games and giggle about it but the fact is your side playing that card. When you start talking about work requirements, you know what game you’re playing and everybody knows what game you’re playing. It’s a race card and yeah, if your name’s Romney, yeah you were well born, you went to prep school, yeah, brag about it. This guy has an African name and he’s got to live with it. Look who’s gone further in their life. Who was born on third base? Making fun of the guy’s birth certificate issue when it was never a real issue except for the right wing.”

...

I never thought I'd live to see the day that the GOP's racism would offend even a mainstream media reporter. It's about damned time! Priebus responded with sarcasm, no real answer to the racism charge. Feel free to read his response... elsewhere, not on this site.

Levy goes on to quote a Romney ad:

“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job,” one of many Romney ads on welfare says. “They just send you your welfare check.”

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We really have reverted to the era of Richard Nixon's politics, haven't we. This was not forgivable when Nixon did it, but it is incredible that Romney's revived racism is so unsubtle. I suppose it's useless to presume the GOP can change in any significant way.

What's For Breakfast? Southern-Fried America

There seems to be a newfound interest in the South lately, and in how its history affects America's politics and race relations today. On the whole the news is not good, at least if you believe in human equality and republican (as opposed to Republican) government. These two stories are a good starting point (H/T Fallenmonk; see link below):

• Sara Robinson at AlterNet: "Conservative Southern Values Revived: How a Brutal Strain of American Aristocrats Have Come to Rule America"
• Fallenmonk (who is himself a liberal Southerner): "The South Has Risen Again"

You'll have to look elsewhere if you want a link to Asshole Ted Nugent's assertion that we'd all be better off if the South had won the Civil War. For the record, he did say something like that, but I'm not going to link to it.

The problem is that the consequences of slavery, an institution that never should have been permitted to arise in a self-proclaimed free society (Robinson's post contains a good explanation of how it did arise), have never been fully dealt with. I could hope that when heretofore racial minorities become, in aggregate, the majority, maybe we can make some headway, but I just don't see it happening in states like Texas, which is already "majority minority." (How I hate that phrase! But it is current usage.) And nationally, old-style Southern thinking, some of it done by Southerners and some not, is leading the nation somewhere many of us perceive as straight to Hell. Here's Robinson:

...

For most of our history, American economics, culture and politics have been dominated by a New England-based Yankee aristocracy that was rooted in Puritan communitarian values, educated at the Ivies and marinated in an ethic of noblesse oblige (the conviction that those who possess wealth and power are morally bound to use it for the betterment of society). While they've done their share of damage to the notion of democracy in the name of profit (as all financial elites inevitably do), this group has, for the most part, tempered its predatory instincts with a code that valued mass education and human rights; held up public service as both a duty and an honor; and imbued them with the belief that once you made your nut, you had a moral duty to do something positive with it for the betterment of mankind. Your own legacy depended on this.

...

Which brings us to that other great historical American nobility -- the plantation aristocracy of the lowland South, which has been notable throughout its 400-year history for its utter lack of civic interest, its hostility to the very ideas of democracy and human rights, its love of hierarchy, its fear of technology and progress, its reliance on brutality and violence to maintain “order,” and its outright celebration of inequality as an order divinely ordained by God.

...

Well, yes. And today's racists, who are by no means exclusively confined to the South and are often very conservative in other aspects of their sociopolitical views, are gaining power, in an apparently intentional effort to transform the United States into something other than what it had evolved to be. Authors like Robinson avoid talking about the nation's origins, in which many of the founders were themselves slaveholders. But That was Then, and Now Everything is Different... Except in the South. If that were true, we would face a much smaller problem. But it isn't, and we don't.

I always remember an experience I had when I was 22 years old, right out of college, working for Texas Instruments in their Software Branch. (The Software Branch was about hardware, and all the other branches were about hardware... it was, and probably still is, the nature of TI.) The company contracted to construct a control system for a major radio station and network headquartered in NYC. Having worked on developing TI's general-purpose control software, I was assigned to adapt it for use by the network. I was to work with a guy named Kevin, sent from NYC to Houston for the duration of the project. Kevin was, like me, a man of lower-class origins. Unlike me, Kevin was an unrestrained racist, and he felt that because he was in "the South" (I could spend a paragraph attacking the concept that Texas is really the South, but I won't), among the white men who dominated the Software Branch, he could freely voice his racist tendencies. He just assumed I would agree with him. I couldn't fight back; it was worth my job to have fought back. So I bit my tongue, tapped my code and somehow got through it. Perhaps I'd have responded better if I had had a few years in the field and a reputation that enabled me to walk out the door and find another job right away. But all that came later. In my solo contracting career, I had the luxury of not putting up with racists, but not in that first job.

It is very important that every person of good will, anywhere in America, who participates in the effort to overcome America's latent (and sometimes blatant) racism, not make automatic assumptions about individuals based solely on their region of origin. If you do that, you'll be wrong more often than right... and you'll damage your cause more than you can imagine. Give us a break. Many of us are pedaling as hard as we can, fighting against obstacles you may understand intellectually but not viscerally. Do not oversimplify the obstacles we face: it doesn't help us, and therefore it doesn't help us to help you.