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!)

Young White Female Seattle Cop Pepper Sprays Older Black Man Walking Past Her In MLK Day March, Talking On His Cell Phone

I can hardly believe my eyes. To this have we fallen: A line of Seattle police monitors passing marchers at an MLK Day event, apparently some sort of (obviously peaceful) protest. The young white woman cop turns from checking someone's sign on a stick and handing it back to him, instantly shrieks at the orderly line of marchers to "get back" (at least I think that's what she's shouting), and without pausing to await action by the crowd on her command, pepper-sprays the line, squirting several people and dousing an older Black man talking on his cell phone, who reacts in obvious pain:

(Watch Hagopian clip on YouTube)

I watched this clip perhaps a dozen times to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, and wound up thinking, "Jeebus on a crutch! To what depths have we plunged?"

I'm sorry, but "I was scared of the big n[BLEEP!]r walking toward me" is simply NOT an adequate excuse. At a minimum, this policewoman needs some training, and the City of Seattle should pay the man his medical expenses and probably compensate him for his pain and suffering as well.

And most of all... we have to put a stop to the "cops can get away with anything" mentality that seems to prevail throughout the nation these days. Otherwise, people outside America might think we are uncivilized or something. 

(H/T Ahiza Garcia at TPM.)

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..."