Things That Make You Look Over Your Shoulder

Two articles well worth your time to read:

• It turns out Donald Trump's father was the racist landlord Woody Guthrie hated
  

  

  I admit I am a fan of Woody Guthrie (I wish I could truthfully say "This Keyboard Kills Fascists," as Guthrie often labeled his "machine" [guitar]), and not so much a fan of Donald Trump or landlords in general, but based on this article, Fred Trump was worse than the lot regarding racial discrimination. Like father, like son? I wouldn't go that far, but things one learns in youth about interaction with other people tend to last a lifetime, and a racist parent makes me nervous about the child.

• U.S. will use facial recognition at airports
  

  

  I no longer fly because I do not like undergoing invasive searches without a warrant, but these machines, however well they appear to work, make me very uncomfortable. What happens if you're a close match (as the device reckons) with a terrorist? Are your happy urban life, your career, your relationships personal and business, etc. immediately over? I wouldn't bet against it. It's the no-fly list writ large. ("No-live list"?)
  
  And then there's the fact that these machines work, um, badly. Here's the ACLU on the subject:
  

  A study by the government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), for example, found false-negative rates for face-recognition verification of 43 percent using photos of subjects taken just 18 months earlier, for example. And those photos were taken in perfect conditions, significant because facial recognition software is terrible at handling changes in lighting or camera angle or images with busy backgrounds. The NIST study also found that a change of 45 degrees in the camera angle rendered the software useless. The technology works best under tightly controlled conditions, when the subject is starting directly into the camera under bright lights - although another study by the Department of Defense found high error rates even in those ideal conditions. Grainy, dated video surveillance photographs of the type likely to be on file for suspected terrorists would be of very little use.

  Does that give you a lot of confidence?

(I'm afraid I didn't log the sources of these links. If you published one or both, and you are on my blogroll, please accept my thanks.)

New Slogan: ‘Alabama... The N****r-F^<king State’

Tierney Sneed at TPM:

What happens when a state with a tough voter ID law suddenly makes it much harder for minorities to get driver's licenses? We are about to find out in Alabama.

Facing a budget crisis, Alabama has shuttered 31 driver's license offices, many of them in counties with a high proportion of black residents. Coming after the state recently put into effect a tougher voter ID law, the closures will cut off access -- particularly for minorities -- to one of the few types of IDs accepted. 

According to a tally by AL.com columnist John Archibald, eight of the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters saw their driver's license offices closed.

...

This seems truly blatant to me. But that only implies that the outcome depends on how thoroughly the judiciary in Alabama is bought and paid for. As Repub's become more desperate to "win," they are willing to move more aggressively and take more chances of being convicted of out-and-out theft by a variety of means. If the various balances of power... federal vs. state, judiciary vs. legislature, etc. ... fail to result in significant court cases, at the federal level at least, we could see more of Alabamans' fundamental voting rights yanked away from citizens and defended only to the extent the state judiciary wants them defended. Which, in Alabama, may not be very damned much.

Representative democracy, even a sorry, low-life representative democracy like the one in America, requires a meaningful process that allows every adult permanent resident h. sapiens to vote according to her or his district. What happens if we don't have that? You tell me...

Speaking Of Krugman... The K-Man Nails The Trumpster

Maybe it's ridiculous of me to react that way, but this brought a smile to my face:

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was blunt Monday when he speculated that real estate mogul Donald Trump was polling so well within the GOP presidential field because he's a "loudmouth racist."

"[Trump]'s a belligerent, loudmouth racist with not an ounce of compassion for less fortunate people," Krugman said in an interview with Bloomberg TV's Joe Weisenthal. "In other words, he's exactly the kind of person the Republican base consists of and identifies with."

The Nobel laureate further predicted that the 2016 election cycle would shake out like a repeat of the horserace that took place during the 2012 Republican presidential primaries. In his estimation, the GOP establishment had "lost control" over the current crop of candidates.

...

Next week, Krugman reveals the GOP for what it really is...

Krugman: ‘America Is A Much Less Racist Nation Than It Used To Be...’

...

Yet racial hatred is still a potent force in our society, as we’ve just been reminded to our horror. And I’m sorry to say this, but the racial divide is still a defining feature of our political economy, the reason America is unique among advanced nations in its harsh treatment of the less fortunate and its willingness to tolerate unnecessary suffering among its citizens.

...

Krugman goes on to analyze and describe the nature of the undeniable racism still present in the fabric of America's society and economy. He employs the work of political scientist Larry Bartels and economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote. Krugman compares Bartels's ‘What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?’ with Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? and concludes this:

Mr. Frank argued that working-class whites were being induced to vote against their own interests by the right’s exploitation of cultural issues. But Mr. Bartels showed that the working-class turn against Democrats wasn’t a national phenomenon — it was entirely restricted to the South, where whites turned overwhelmingly Republican after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon’s adoption of the so-called Southern strategy. [Bolds mine. - SB]

Then, regarding Alesina, Glaeser and Sacerdote's “Why Doesn’t the United States Have a European-style Welfare State? [.pdf]”, Krugman concludes:

... Its authors — who are not, by the way, especially liberal — explored a number of hypotheses, but eventually concluded that race is central, because in America programs that help the needy are all too often seen as programs that help Those People: ...

Now, that paper was published in 2001, and you might wonder if things have changed since then. Unfortunately, the answer is that they haven’t, as you can see by looking at how states are implementing — or refusing to implement — Obamacare.

...

Please read the rest. Unfortunately, Krugman is as pessimistic as I am about the prospects for a genuine reconciliation between races in America; here's how he says it:

Every once in a while you hear a chorus of voices declaring that race is no longer a problem in America. That’s wishful thinking; we are still haunted by our nation’s original sin.

[/sigh...]

Miscellany: Police Behavior, Riots, Race, Nutjob GOPers And Their Guns

This post may not be particularly coherent, but I need to clean the accumulation of tabs in the browser...

• Bryan at Why Now? points us to CBC for a less ruthlessly "edited" view of police behavior in the news: Baltimore shows police killings America's real state of emergency
• Jon Sopel at BBC News explores What a riot does achieve
• Paul J. Weber at AP via TPM notes that TX Gov Orders State Guard to Monitor Possible Military Takeover of Texas, and similarly, Rand [Paul]: I'll Look Into Whether The Military Is Planning To Takeover The Southwest; together, these tend to prove that the Texas GOP is full-blown batshit fucking nuts
• Josh Marshall at TPM thinks we're crossing that Bridgegate exactly when we come to it
• Aniza Garcia at TPM reports that a Child Finds A Loaded Gun In John Boehner's Capitol Bathroom
• antifa at Kos poses and firmly answers ignorant white Americans' too-frequent question, "Why do they burn down their own neighborhood?"

Maybe next time I'll have something original to write. (Maybe not...)

NLRB: McDonald's Responsible For Franchises' Violations Of Workers' Rights

I missed this in December when it first was announced. This is from Low Pay is Not OK:

On December 19, 2014, just a few weeks after [Low Pay is Not OK's] biggest fast food strike to-date, the National Labor Relations Board made a groundbreaking ruling: McDonald’s can no longer hide behind their franchisees and will be held responsible for violations against the rights of their workers.

The ruling states:

[NLRB's] investigation found that McDonald’s, USA, LLC, through its franchise relationship and its use of tools, resources and technology, engages in sufficient control over its franchisees’ operations, beyond protection of the brand, to make it a putative joint employer with its franchisees, sharing liability for violations of our Act. This finding is further supported by McDonald’s, USA, LLC’s nationwide response to franchise employee activities while participating in fast food worker protests to improve their wages and working conditions.

McDonald’s has long claimed no responsibility for working conditions — placing all the blame for bad practices on the franchisees. But the NLRB made it clear that the McDonald’s corporation is the real boss, and it’s up to them to take responsibility and treat their workers fairly.

Read more about the historic ruling here [at NYT].

Over the years, Stella and I have occasionally driven through the line at a local McDonald's to satisfy our sweet tooth with a McCafe™. We prefer Starbucks's Frappucino™, but the McDonald's product is cheaper and very few Starbucks outlets have a drive‑thru.

Mickey D feels Rosie's muscle
(organizing really works!)

But that has changed over the past year. First, McDonald's appeared to have no intention of negotiating a wage higher than the legal minimum, until LPisNOK began organizing its workers. Then McDonald's workers went on strike for better pay; about 500 workers at many franchises around the country were actually arrested for doing so. (That is the point at which I stopped trading with McDonalds altogether.) Then there was a credible report that a McDonald's in South Boston fired 10 workers because they didn't “fit the profile” of the store; all 10 workers just happened to be Black, and management made statements that can only reasonably be construed as confirming that the workers were fired because of their race. (Follow the link; read the statements for yourself.) McDonald's Corp. declined to make any effort to compel the store to rehire the workers, claiming franchises make those decisions independently. Hence the NLRB case and the ruling that the corporation can't hide behind its franchises in matters of violations of workers' legal rights, such as firing people because of their race.

Stella is not a vocally aggressive labor rights advocate like me, but she does put her money where her heart is, and has a strong sense of fairness. I've noticed she has silently stopped going to McDonalds now. For her as for me, as for the workers, enough is enough.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad: Darren Wilson Is ‘America's Model Policeman’

Khalil Gibran Muhammad at The Nation argues persuasively that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson is speaking both accurately and truthfully when he says he was just "doing [his] job" when he shot and killed Brown:

...

And yet, despite all the equivocations, the shooting death of the teenager on August 9 and Monday’s grand jury decision not to indict Wilson were entirely unsurprising. They are the predictable outcomes of a criminal justice system doing exactly what it was meant to do. For all the dissecting and debating of the veracity of Darren Wilson’s grand jury testimony this week, one thing seems crystal clear. He was in fact doing his job.

Indeed, by this standard, isn’t Darren Wilson actually a model police officer?

Wilson, Brown

He certainly thinks so. When asked by Stephanopoulos if he could make “something good” come of this experience, he said he would “love to teach people” and give them “more insight in uses of force.” That he may have logged more time on first-person shooters—emptying clip after clip to take down demonic super-villains who “run through shots”—than actual police work is beside the point. Darren Wilson has the kind of experience that many Americans value.

...

(Bolds mine. - SB)

What can we do to render the system and its White citizens less predisposed to regard Black men as criminals based solely on the color of their skin?

That's a hard question, if for no other reason than that 85-90 percent of our population has never given a thought to reforming that system, or even acknowledged to themselves that there is a problem.

This is not about overt racists; it's about a large percentage of White people who do not think of themselves as racist and who are not thought of as racist by other White people. That's far more insidious than racism out in the open.

One thing Americans could do, if we had the political will, is to de‑commercialize the penal system, to reduce any financial incentive to imprison people. That won't reduce the number of police murders of young Black men for no reason, but it will reduce the number of such men jailed prospectively, so to speak. I'll never forget a neighbor of mine when I was a kid who saw a Black man walking through our (overwhelmingly White) neighborhood and cursed him: I said, "He's probably just walking to the bus stop; that's not a crime." The neighbor replied, "I've never known a n***** who's not guilty of some crime!" That's a much more difficult problem to address, and I confess I don't have a clue how to fix it in general. I suspect most racists become racists in their childhood, and that by the time it manifests itself in a public context, it's too late.

Anybody have any good ideas? or is Muhammad right, that Wilson is, was and ever shall be just "doing [his] job"?

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..."

‘Hands Up, Don't Shoot!’ — St. Louis Rams

Yes, they really did: the St. Louis Rams came out on the field, each raising both arms, palms outward, in the "hands up, don't shoot" gesture used by many of the protesters of Michael Brown's killing by Darren Wilson. (Daily Kos, Huffington Post)

According to the Kos article, many Rams fans were not amused. And now the St. Louis Police Officer's Association is "condemning the display." Did they get their lil' fee-fees hurt? Awwww, that's too bad... at least no one shot them dead in cold blood when they were unarmed and mouthing off.

But y'know what? A great many of the Rams players are African American. In their place, I'd probably make a similar statement. If the league punishes them, the league board should be taken to court for a First Amendment violation. Yeah, I know; that would never happen...

A Noun, A Verb, And 9/11 A Racial Slur:Giuliani Holds Forth On Race

Dylan Scott at TPM tells us about the former mayor, no stranger to racial rhetoric even in the old days. It seems the Ferguson murder has made him crank it up a notch...

Back To The ‘Darkie’ Ages: The New Undisguised Face Of Racism In America

If you believe nakedly racist behavior has been eliminated in government services, read here and wonder what happens the next time an African American calls Southeast Bullitt, Kentucky's fire department in an emergency.

If you believe major national news agencies unlikely to misrepresent the fundamental facts in a case in which a White man kills a Black man, read this story about CNN's reporting on the Ferguson, MO incident.

And if you believe (in your inexplicable credulity) that racism in America has no partisan component, read about the incoming GOP speaker of the Nevada Assembly, who believes Democrats have, in his words, a "master-slave relationship" with "simple‑minded darkies."

Got the picture? Racism, especially in the Deep South but distressingly often in the rest of the country as well, may have abated for a while, but it's back, quite literally with a vengeance. I grieve for my country as I contemplate what might have been, in place of this gratuitous cruelty.

ADDENDUM: Oh, and I didn't even mention NYPD beating the crap out of Black people...

How To Commit Professional Suicide

L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling shows us how it's done.

If there is a signature African American sport, it's got to be basketball. Racism is of course always inappropriate, but one would think if a white owner of an NBA team were racist, s/he would keep quiet about it... and certainly wouldn't commit it to an audio recording. More proof that wealth does not confer wisdom...

'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!

Republicans: Explain To Me Again How Your Ceaseless Filibusters Are Not Because Obama Is Black

Sahil Kapur of TPM presents some stats on the use of the filibuster against presidents' nominees from Eisenhower through Obama (so far).

• Against the nominees of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, the filibuster was never used.
  
  
• Against Carter and Reagan, the filibuster was used twice against each president.
  
  
• Against nominees of Poppy Bush, the filibuster was never used.
  
  
• Against Clinton, 9 times. Against Baby Bush, 7 times.
  
  
• Against Obama... so far... 72 (seventy-two) times.
  
  

Once again, explain to me how it's not because Obama is Black. Better stand back with your nose beyond my arm's reach with your lame-assed excuse...

The filibuster has always been a thorn in my side. Even when it was not anti-Democratic, it was certainly always antidemocratic. It may occasionally have prevented Jefferson's frequent‑revolution solution, serving as an escape valve when one party did something utterly outrageous against the other. But 72 times against Obama in about five years? As often as I oppose Obama, his policies, his appointments... that record of filibusters against his nominees is plain and simple racism. And Senate Republicans who employ the filibuster against Obama about as often as they breathe... they are plain and simple racists.

End of story.

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.)