Be Aggressive!

NYT columnist Bob Herbert wants the Black community to start calling out the national GOP on their "anti-black" agenda. While the march on Jena was great, he writes, "what I’d really like to see is a million angry protesters marching on the headquarters of the National Republican Party in Washington." Herbert cites Republican presidential candidates dodging debates on Black issues, and also brings up GOP operative Lee Atwater's summary of his Party's "southern strategy":

"You start out in 1954 by saying, Nigger, nigger, nigger,'" said Atwater. "By 1968, you can't say 'nigger' — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites."

This is what passes for progress.

Also, Kevin Drum links to a fantastic Vanity Fair essay on one of the original members of the Little Rock Nine, Elizabeth Eckford, and her relationship with the White student whose hate-filled face is the focus of one of the most famous civil rights photos of all time. As he says, it's worth the read.