The National Review's Conservative Case for White Disenfranchisement

"I need to find a New Yorker so I can justify this whole pro-slavery stance I've backed myself into."

I pity The National Review sometimes. Most right-wingers these days don't feel the need to justify their positions; owning the libs is reason enough. But it is the National Review's job is to put a respectable face on contemporary conservative priorities which are in no way respectable. They try their best, but in their brave efforts they end up painting themselves into some pretty cramped ideological corners.

Take, for example, Georgia's new experiments in blatant voter suppression. This initially yielded Kevin Williamson coming flat out and asking "why not fewer voters" -- might it not be good for there to be fewer but "better" voters? Of course, few, if any, of Georgia's proposals to suppress the vote have anything to do with making the rump remaining electorate "better" -- unless, I suppose, the best voters are the ones who can stand in line for three hours without food or water without collapsing or, better still, had the wisdom not to reside in a neighborhood with such long lines to begin with. But Williamson's definition of "better" has nothing to do with being informed and everything to do with "demographically more likely to vote Republican" -- raise the voting age to thirty, not, say, tests of accurate political knowledge.* Remember when William Buckley said "I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty"? Ah, the memories.

Anyway, despite widespread mockery, the conservative intelligentsia wasn't ready to let this one go without a fight. Their next gambit was to attack the entire idea of majoritarian democracy because, and I kid you not, they claim that under "pure" democracy we had Jim Crow and slavery -- two institutions  that were, shall we say, rather famously not committed to pure democratic enfranchisement. But again, even if we take the argument on its own terms, none of the proposals states like Georgia are putting forward would have done anything to check against the abuses of Jim Crow -- if anything, they'd have helped more firmly entrench it. That's obvious once one remembers that the laws Georgia is pushing today are the spiritual successor to Jim Crow, which also used tightly crafted nets of facially "neutral" laws whose mixture of known and desired disparate impacts and biased "discretionary" enforcement in order to maintain a dominant White majority electorate. If one's argument is that it's justified to limit the franchise in order to prevent a democratic (or "democratic") majority from entrenching White Supremacy, you're not making an argument for voter ID laws or for raising the voting age to 30 or for indirect elections of Senators or anything on the GOP's wishlist. The voters you'd have to stop from voting, in this hypothetical justification, are run-of-the-mill White people.

So, I wonder, is that the National Review's new position (quite a ways distant from the position they took at the time)? That the proper response to White Supremacy in the America in the 1960s (and onwards) is to systematically deprive White people of the franchise?

I'm dubious. But alas, such is the position they've backed themselves into.

* Which, to be clear, would also be a terrible and undemocratic idea. However, the reason that Williamson doesn't back it isn't because it's terrible and undemocratic, but because it's terrible and undemocratic in a way that might hurt the electoral prospects of contemporary Republicans, which is the only actual motivator here.

More On Goldberg's Attempt to be a Race Scholar

Oh Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. You've already embarrassed yourself once when you tried to figure out what this whole Black Power thing was all about, conflating together two completely different organizations with wildly opposing outlooks. Why on earth would you think you're in any position to credibly opine on the state of Black people today?*

Goldberg's thesis is that Black elites are no longer connected to their poorer peers, and thus they tend to greatly overemphasize the existence of racism as a barrier to Black success. Since they're largely insulated from the daily struggles of everyday Blacks, it's easier for them to complain about White racism than to "engage in an honest conversation about the other problems facing black America that have little to nothing to do with white racism."

It's interesting that this argument, on face, seems to be an inversion of how most conservative Whites characterize rich Blacks. Normally, the existence of wealthy Blacks is raised in contradistinction to Blacks who have experienced racism and disadvantage, the argument being that a wealthy Black person, by virtue of his or her wealth, suffers no disadvantage due to their race. Goldberg, by contrast, seems to be arguing the opposite -- only wealthy Blacks really worry about racism, because the bulk of the Black community has bigger fish to fry.

Now, Goldberg's surmising that there is a gap between how wealthier versus poorer Blacks think about racism is unsupported by any evidence -- unsurprising, since the data we have indicates that there is no significant class divide in how Blacks rate the prevalence of racial discrimination. And as Jamelle Bouie points out, the entire premise of Goldberg's class disconnect hypothesis is demonstrative of Goldberg's lack of knowledge of the Black community.

Here’s the deal: one result of Jim Crow and its economic disenfranchisement is that the black middle class is a relatively recent event in American history. The same is true of the black elite class, which is—and has always been—quite small.

The byproduct of this is that the temporal distance from working-class life to prosperity is fairly short for many black Americans. So short, in fact, that black elites were often the first in their families to obtain a college degree. On a day-to-day level, what this means is that affluent black families share close connections to lower class African Americans—they are parents, grandparents, cousins, or even sibilings. This simply isn’t as true of affluent white families.

Wealthy Black families are far more likely than their affluent White peers to be well-connected to the thoughts and life goings-on of their poorer brethren. It's unclear why Goldberg doesn't recognize this, except for the obvious answer that Goldberg doesn't actually know anything about this topic and yet feels free to pontificate about it anyway. Which isn't, you know, a departure for him or anything, but still.

* I suppose the right answer is, "because it's not like there's another subject he's more credible on". Why should the lack of knowledge stop him now?

Like Precious Little Snowflakes

Jeffrey Lord, a writer at the American Spectator has concluded that Shirley Sherrods lied about her father being lynched. Yes, her father was brutally beaten to death by a mob on the courthouse steps. But "lynching", we're told, requires a rope -- otherwise, it's just "a brutal and fatal beating," and an outright fabrication to say otherwise.

Needless to say, this doesn't track anybody's definition of "lynching", which generally refers to an extrajudicial execution by a mob (the Israeli commandos who claimed that the crew of the Mavi Marmara was preparing to lynch them were not referring to ropes). And consequently, it seems like virtually everybody is coming down on Lord -- from Matt Yglesias and Jeff Fecke to Radley Balko and Lord's own colleagues at The American Spectator.

But Paul Campos managed to nutpick a gem from a commenter trying, desparately, to defend Lord's statement:

Regardless of the dictionary’s definition, English is considered the most nuanced of languages because each word has a specific, unique meaning giving context and emotion to any written or spoken idea or statement. I don’t need a dictionary to instruct me on the accepted meaning of the word ‘lynching.’

That is so, so far from an accurate description of English that it nearly defies belief. Words in English rarely have just one specific meaning, and the idea that the word "lynching" tends to evoke a noose doesn't mean a extrajudicial mob killing isn't a lynching, any more than the classic image of a "picnic" occurring on a grassy field would mean someone is liar if their "picnic" occurred on a craggy mountain ledge.

The Redemption Scenario

Cross-posted to The Moderate Voice

The scandal of the day was the story of a USDA employee who appeared to indicate that she gave less than full help to a White farmer in an incident over 20 years ago, on account of his race. She told the story at an NAACP dinner, hence the contemporary hook -- conservatives (or at least segments of them) are still on their kick that the NAACP is the true racist organization in America. As it turns out, the employee was actually telling the tale as a redemption scenario -- she realized her prejudice was wrong, threw her full support to the White family, and ended up saving the farm. Hence why the family has consistently intervened to give her their full support.

When I first saw the story this afternoon, I didn't have time to blog about it, which is good, because I didn't know the full context and, like the NAACP, would have been at risk of getting "snookered". But I did know that the incident happened over 20 years ago. And that got me to thinking.

When the United States finally repudiated Jim Crow in the 1960s and 70s, it did not come with any purges. By and large, the same bureaucrats who managed our racist system in 1950 still managed the more egalitarian system that had emerged by 1970. There are lots of reasons for this, starting with the fact that firing every single person who had participated in America's brand of racial apartheid would have effectively left us without a civil service, and ending with the fact that America never really has managed to wrap its head around just how deeply the sins of racism had enmeshed itself in the system -- a full accounting of which would have extracted its pound of flesh from virtually each and every man and woman alive in this nation.

In any event, these bureaucrats took many forms. Some undoubtedly had opposed racism even at its apex, others really didn't care about it one way or the other. Some were loyal disciples of Jim Crow who later realized the error of their ways, and some had no guilt at all regarding their role as agents of apartheid, but adjusted to the new social order all the same. And some, of course, were entirely unrepentant and maintained a belief in White supremacy, but suppressed that outlook just enough to keep their job.

The point being -- this nation has a long history of employing the formerly racist. The best case scenario for such employees, usually, is that they come to see the light and dedicate the remainder of their professional lives towards remedying racial inequality and securing racial justice. And that story -- a story of redemption -- appears to be the story of Shirley Sherrod. It's not the worst tale in the world. To the extent that this country has moved forward on matters of race, it is, in fact, the quintessential American tale.

Stomp the Floor

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a devastating piece up comparing ex-Rep. Harold Ford (D-TN), now considering a run for Senate in New York, to those figures in Southern politics who knew segregation was wrong, but said what they had to say to get elected. George Wallace (and I did not know this) had a reputation as a particularly unbiased and fair-minded judge for Blacks in the south, and indeed at one point ran for office with the NAACP's backing. It failed miserably. And so, Wallace said:

You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.

Ford's political ambitions have caused him to take a variety of socially conservative positions that he is now racing to disavow. The most morally pernicious of these was his effort to position himself as the most anti-gay of the anti-gay politicians that infect the American political system. It's probable that Ford really didn't have a problem with gay marriage. But, as Coates writes:

In the 1950s and 1960s, Alabama had in its midst men who knew segregation was a reeking abomination, but embraced it because it allowed them to fix a road in their hometown, build a clinic in the underserved backwoods, or just hook a friend up for a job. Or maybe it was just power--who can tell?

From my perspective, motive is irrelevant. (There's usually a good reason to do evil. That's the nature of evil.) It takes a particular kind of cowardice to throw people's lives aside and bow to the mutually destructive curse of discrimination. I can believe Harold Ford was never actually against gay marriage, and was more concerned with good schools and good roads. But then when he said "constitutional amendment," they stomped the floor.

Amen.

Halbertal Reflects on Goldstone

A very, very good piece by Moshe Halbertal -- professor of Philosophy at Hebrew University as well as at NYU law school -- giving his thoughts on Cast Lead and the Goldstone commission. Would that everyone approach the issue with such thoughtfulness.

At the highest level, his position is the standard one held by myself and most fair-minded progressives: that the report had severe problems shot through it, and that this fact has precisely zero bearing on Israel's obligation to fully and credibly investigate all allegations of human rights violations (including several very serious ones).

But another point the article raises in pretty stark terms is the degree to which asymmetrical warfare tactics are, in part, organized around taking advantage of the terrain of international law just as much as they are about taking advantage of topographical terrain. Halbertal's account of how Hamas militants, clad (of course) in civilian gear, did not carry arms while moving from position to position (instead relying on arms caches awaiting their arrival is a great example (I have to admit, my first thought on reading that was: "clever!"). The goal is to exploit the blind spots of the current legal regime so as to render ones opponents helpless and give your own operative impunity (in a way that nearly completely subverts the goal of the legal system it is exploiting). This is the logical extension of lawfare -- if law and legal categories are weapons, then we should expect savvy parties to manipulate their conflict so as to maximize their impact.

And this goes back to another problem with the Goldstone commission, and, I honestly suspect, with Judge Goldstone himself. Judge Goldstone, I genuinely believe, is an honest, conscientious man who really saw himself as simply applying facts to law. The problem is that international law is simply too weak at this point for the sort of staid formalism Judge Goldstone exemplifies to be effective. International law is still mostly political -- it doesn't have much existence beyond the specific political desires of actors powerful within UN institutions. This explains, at least in part, why (as Mr. Halbertal noted) Judge Goldstone was able to give so little guidance as to what sort of behavior would have been legally required out of Israel: what sort of civilian : militant death ratio is legally acceptable, what sort of precautions satisfy the obligation to protect civilian lives, and so on and so forth. The doctrine is worse than unsettled -- it is mostly applied in an ad hoc manner based on the political system's preconceptions of bad things and good things (it really doesn't get much more specific than that).

Judge Goldstone, I've often thought, is like a very judicious, public-spirited, personally fair-minded person who volunteers to be the judge at the Scottsboro trial.* The instinct is equal parts admirable, naive, and egomaniacal. Admirable, because of the belief (which I think Judge Goldstone had) that what the situation really needed was for someone who wasn't infected by the endemic prejudice to step in and be a fair arbiter. Naive, because it drastically underestimates the degree to which the prejudice infects the entire system, and thus is perfectly complimentary with formal legal categories -- Jim Crow ate up and spat out formal constitutional doctrine with a near-careless ease (it took rather dramatic changes in how we viewed American law for institutional racism to be rooted out). Egomaniacal, because of the belief that one messianic person could effectively counter an entire system simply by playing by its own rules. Formalism, no matter how judiciously applied, only works when the surrounding system is just. When that quality isn't present, following the rules will do virtually nothing, because they mean virtually nothing.

I really think Judge Goldstone was surprised and dismayed that the UNHRC completely ignored his comments on Palestinian war crimes, just as he, God bless him, continues to assert that his inquiry wasn't "judicial", despite being the only person on the planet who hasn't taken the report as a definitive pronouncement of guilt and innocence. It's because he's coloring inside the lines, and he thinks that if he is absolutely committed to dotting every i and crossing every t, then all the biases and problems and unfairness and double-standards will melt away.

Again, it is partially admirable. But it's far more naive and dangerous, and it just doesn't exhibit a handle on what world he's actually playing in. As they say, the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. If the system is corrupted from top to bottom, even the noblest paladin won't get anywhere from the inside.

* This article actually weakened that sentiment somewhat, because it presented decisions by Judge Goldstone that seemed like conscious injections of additional bias, rather than a mere unwillingness to transcend the straitjackets of the system imposed upon him.

Why Washington Failed

I meant to flag this post earlier, but I forgot. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a trenchant observation on why Booker T. Washington's self-uplift program for Black empowerment was such a resounding failure.

Washington basically said to the white South in 1895. "You win. We don't want the right the vote. We just want to till our farms, better ourselves, and be left alone. Leave us in peace, and you'll here no more of this voting or integration business." You have to remember the state of mind of black people, at that time. Reconstruction had been rolled back. The South was wracked by race riots. Three years after Washington's speech, the only coup in American history was orchestrated in Wilmington, North Carolina by racist thugs. Washington was basically conceding what he'd already lost. In return he hoped to simply secure the right of good Christian blacks to work the land in peace.

The dominant logic of the post-Reconstruction era held that the real problem wasn't white racists, but carpetbaggers and meddlers from up North who'd elevated illiterate blacks above their station. The white Southerner, presumably, had no existential objection to blacks, they just didn't want to live next door to them or have an illiterate and morally degenerate population electing their politicians. To this Washington, and much of black America, said Fine. Cease fire. You let us be, we'll let you be.

In retrospect, this was a grievous error. In point of fact, whites actually did have an existential objection to black people. Their beef wasn't that illiterates and moral degenerates might get too much power. Quite the opposite. Their beef was that blacks would prove to not be illiterates and moral degenerates, and thus fully able to compete with them. To see this point illustrated, one need only look at the history of race riots in the South. When white mobs set upon black communities they didn't simply burn down the "morally degenerate" portions--they attacked the South's burgeoning black middle and working class and its institutions. They went for the churches, the schools and the businesses. It's one thing to be opposed to black amorality. It's quite another to be opposed to black progress. The lesson blacks took post-Atlanta Compromise was that whites had used the former to cover for the latter. These days, it's popular to bemoan the fact that Washington has fallen into disfavor. But it wasn't blacks who proved the Atlanta Compromise fraudulent--it was the whites of that era.

You must understand the chilling effect this had to have on black people. To actually concede to all the racist propaganda out there, and then to be rewarded by hooligans burning down your community must have been psychologically devastating. People wondering why the GOP can't get a foothold in the black community, need to not just think about Goldwater and Nixon. They should think about Du Bois telling black men to go fight in The Great War, and then having those veterans come home to the Red Summer of 1919. They should think about the pogroms that greeted Booker T's compromise. There's a lot of hurt out there. A lot of ancient hurt. A lot of it, even in these times, quite deep.

This is important history to remember. And it's the reason I trace a direct line to Black Power and Black Nationalism from Booker T. The Black Power ideology was also about self-uplift. It just added a spin, learned from Washington's experience: "And this time, if you fuck with us, we're firing back."

Love It or Love It

Conservative style patriotism, as put by Jonah Goldberg: it's a failure of patriotism if you didn't show respect to the American South in the 1920s. As Jonathan Chait remarks, if there was any time and place in America that deserved nothing but condecension and scorn, it was the quasi-oligarchical racist fiefdom that was the Jim Crow south.

It's true, as Matt Yglesias points out, that much Northern scorn towards the South at this time was not matched by a similar commitment to combat epidemic racism in their own communities. But that objectively just serves to further undermine the notion that this is a failure of patriotism: if all of America was at fault, then all of America needed to have its ass kicked into gear.

Quote of the Day

"I make no apologies for the view that the business of judging in constitutional fields is one of searching for the spirit of the constitution in terms of the present as well as the past, not the past alone." -- Judge John R. Brown, dissenting, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 270 F.2d 594. Judge Brown was one of the "5th Circuit Four" whose tireless efforts in the face of southern resistance to desegregation orders were instrumental in making the promise of Brown, and racial equality more generally, a reality in the American South.

Order Up

This is really fascinating. In putting together his seminal work, An American Dilemma (published in 1944) Gunnar Myrdal asked White southerners to list, in order of importance, what they thought American Blacks wanted most. Their response:

1. Intermarriage and sex intercourse with whites
2. Social equality and etiquette
3. Desegregation of public facilities, buses, churches, etc.
4. Political enfranchisement
5. Fair treatment in the law courts
6. Economic opportunities

Myrdal then asked Blacks the same question, and got the same answer, with one significant exception: Blacks listed them in reverse order!

From Patricia J. Williams, "On Imagining Foes, Imagining Friendship," in Struggles in the Promised Land: Toward a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States (Jack Salzman & Cornel West, eds., Oxford: Oxford UP 1997), pp. 371-383, 374-75 (citing Calvin Hernton, "The Sexualization of Racism," in Sex and Racism in America (1988); Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (1944), pp. 587-88).

Where Did All The Nationalism Go?

Scott at LGM provides a quote from the first Justice Harlan's dissent in the Civil Rights Cases:

With all respect for the opinion of others, I insist that the national legislature may, without transcending the limits of the Constitution, do for human liberty and the fundamental rights of American citizenship what it did, with the sanction of this court, for the protection of slavery and the rights of the masters of fugitive slaves. If fugitive slave laws, providing modes and prescribing penalties whereby the master could seize and recover his fugitive slave, were legitimate exercises of an implied power to protect and enforce a right recognized by the Constitution, why shall the hands of Congress be tied so that -- under an express power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce a constitutional provision granting citizenship -- it may not, by means of direct legislation, bring the whole power of this nation to bear upon States and their officers and upon such individuals and corporations exercising public functions as assume to abridge, impair, or deny rights confessedly secured by the supreme law of the land?

Scott goes on to point out that "federalism" claims, outside a narrow swath of academics, have always been mere facades for substantive state interests and are thrown away at the drop of a hat when the national government is doing something the "federalists" like. Fugitive Slave Act on the table? National power! Civil Rights Act? But what about states rights? Oh boo hoo.

Incidentally, while I give Harlan credit for his dissent here, he's still no hero.

The Exchange Rate of Whiteness

I'm back from Colorado (with little, but not no, difficulty), and while on the plane I finished Emory History Professor Eric Goldstein's The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and the American Identity (Princeton UP, 2006) (I don't know which is worse -- that I originally started reading it in July of 2006 as part of a three book set, the goal seeing which I'd finish first -- or that it came in second). Anyway, delay notwithstanding, it was very, very good.

Goldstein examines the way Jews in American history (from about the post-Civil War era to after WWII, with an epilogue dealing with the present day) a) thought of Blacks, b) conceptualized themselves as a "race", and c) identified as White. It really covers a lot of ground, and aptly demonstrates the ambivalence and discomfort Jews had in being labeled as "White." On the one hand, they wanted to access privileges and status that Whiteness entailed (not the least of which is not being subjected to the vicious discrimination and violence that American Blacks faced as a matter of course). On the other hand, Jews worried that assimilating too much into Whiteness would threaten their own cultural distinctiveness. Moreover, the Jewish relationship with Whiteness was always tempered by their own ethical and historical commitment to Black Americans, whom they often saw as brother sufferers with experiences that mirrored their own oppression in Europe. Casting their lot with White America meant adopting the mantle of the very persecutors they fled from to the United States.

But after finishing the book, there was a further observation I had that I found very intriguing. The phenomena of groups "becoming" White (the Irish, Italians, Jews, etc.) is not at all unknown or novel. Most scholars of race, as far as I've seen, have associated this "Whitening" with a simultaneous divergence of the incorporated group's interests with those of Black Americans. Indeed, often times, enthusiastically buying into anti-Black discrimination was a way for groups to prove their Whiteness bona fides. The Irish, for example, were staunch supporters of Black equality in Ireland, but in the United States they rapidly became one of the most anti-Black groups in all the country. And as they became more firmly entrenched as White, the formerly distinct groups adopted the interests of their new racial category and -- generally speaking -- effectively ceased to care about the plight or standing of African-Americans.

But Goldstein's book seems to demonstrate that Jews didn't quite fit this pattern. In fact, the "Whiter" Jews got, the more likely they were to press for Black equality. Tracking the oscillations in Jewish "Whiteness" in the little less than a century between the Civil War and World War II, Jews exhibited the most racism when their status as White persons was threatened. Undoubtedly, this was to avoid falling out of Whiteness entirely and being grouped with Blacks, which would demolish whatever social, economic, and political gains the Jewish community had managed to achieve for itself. But when Jewish Whiteness stabilized, Jews would swing back towards loud, prominent, and passionate advocacy for Black rights. In fact, Goldstein notes that Jewish Whiteness has today become so entrenched that Jews are actively fleeing from it -- specifically disassociating themselves from Whiteness and launching a whole new wave of engagement with the Black community. Contrary to popular belief, and despite the emergence of a small but vocal "neo-conservative" Jewish movement, Jews of the 1960s and 70s became noticeably more likely to identify with and work for "Black" causes than their generational predecessors -- at least in part, it seems, in reaction their discomfort with being seen as 100% White.

What does this imply? First, it shows that Whiteness is a powerful draw for dispossessed groups, particularly when the alternative place in the hierarchy is so starkly presented. Even otherwise sympathetic or allied groups, such as Jews, can abandon their Black comrades if solidarity means risking falling to the bottom of the racial pile. But on the flip-side, it demonstrates that Whiteness does not have to be all encompassing. "White" groups can still see it in their interests to act outside the stereotypical White interest of maintaining White supremacy. Indeed, White groups can sometimes see it as in their interest to "flee" from Whiteness, if they view it as threatening other important aspects of their identity (such as social distinctiveness or solidarity with the dispossessed). And perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates that the very ascertainment of Whiteness can provide the social cushion for sympathetic groups to work with their marginalized brethren without fear and thus subvert the racial system from the inside. Once Jews became unambiguously White, they could freely advocate for Black interests without fear (or at least, with reduced fear) that their work would lead to a revival of anti-Semitic oppression and murder. Being at the top of the racial hierarchy, with access to all the privileges that entailed, gave Jews the opportunity to let their ethical commitments shine through, rather than having to only look out for themselves. It's tough to behave selflessly when you're one step away from an Inquisition. Those with power at least have the capacity to use it for good.

Don't Get Distracted Now

The House Judiciary Committee held hearings on John Conyers' bill to study the issue of reparations (you can read my own several-years-old thoughts on reparations here). All the witnesses had interesting things to say, though if you're only going to read one, Eric Miller's testimony is, in my opinion, particularly interesting and insightful (particularly in how it seeks to broaden the discourse beyond stale cliches about "blaming Whitey").

At the other end of the intelligence spectrum, there's shorter Roger Clegg:

Studying reparations would be bad, because it would distract Black people from remembering that all their problems are their own fault. Also, why should the US government apologize for slavery, when it had nothing to do with it? Now, if Democrats want to apologize for racial injustice, that would be just swell.

Other common themes from the anti-reparations (or rather, anti-studying reparations, since that's all the bill would do) crowd include that there are many confusing questions to ask about reparations (which would seem to be an argument for studying the issue), some Blacks don't descend from slaves and some Whites don't descend from slave owners (which a) is meaningless, because some do and some are, and b) assumes that the fruits of the slave system only affect its direct descendants which probably isn't true), and (my personal favorite) that reparations are "radical" because Whites oppose them, even though Blacks support them. The latter, incidentally, are only supporting them because of their financial interest in the matter (the former, of course, are coming to a neutral and dispassionate conclusion the way only White citizens can).

Via Christopher Bracey.

The Bright Line

While I suppose I can admit that there might be a fuzzy line when a permissible interrogation tactic becomes torture, here's a good rule of thumb: If the Mississippi Supreme Court in the 1920s was willing to reverse the conviction of a Black man charged with killing a White guy because his confession was elicited under the procedure in question, we're probably talking about torture.

The case in question is White v. State, 91 So. 903 (Miss. 1922), and the technique, needless to say, was water boarding (then known as "the water cure"). Four years later, in Fisher v. State, 110 So. 361, 362 (Miss. 1926), the court went all the way and flatly described water boarding as "a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country."

Water boarding: too barbaric for the guardians of Jim Crow, but a-okay for the 21st century federal government.

Incidentally, there was nothing particularly progressive about the Mississippi Supreme Court of this era -- it was not an opponent of the system of Jim Crow oppression, or even the idea of coerced confessions generally. Nine years after Fisher, the Court held in Brown v. State, 173 Miss. 542 (1935) that a confession obtained after the (Black) suspects had been physically whipped during interrogation was admissible. This case eventually reached the US Supreme Court in the form of Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936), which reversed and held that physical torture was a violation of the 14th amendment's due process clause. Another fun fact: the prosecutor in Brown was none other than John C. Stennis, who pressed the case forward fully aware that the defendants had been tortured by the police. Stennis would later become the U.S. Senator for the state of Mississippi, and the National Forensics League named its entire model Congress event after him.

Crazy in the Best Way Possible

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) is genuinely crazy. I mean that in the best possible way.

For better or for worse, the Republican Party has a great many crazy people. They support ludicrous policies. They have an insane persecution complex about the "liberal media" which is always out to get them. They attack 12-year olds because they dare rely on the SCHIP program. This is nothing new.

What is distinctive about many of these crazy folk, though, is how hackish they are. It's not like they're just beholden to some extreme ideology which pushes them to weird and outlandish positions all the time. For if that were the case, everyone once in awhile you'd see them deviated from the electoral interests of the GOP. Yet, for many of the most passionate nut-cases in the Republican Party -- be they Christian Conservatives or supply-side voodooists, this never happens. Their craziness is not genuine. It is a mere facade for Republican Party politics.

Brownback, by contrast, is if nothing else genuine. This doesn't mean that he doesn't do crazy things. Holding up a judicial nomination because the candidate attended the commitment ceremony of a lesbian friend definitely qualifies. But at other times, he does surprisingly nice things, because he is truly committed to a belief structure beyond "Republicans winning." One example is his human rights advocacy in North Korea. Another is his recently announced resolution apologizing for slavery and segregation.

It is beyond obvious that such a statement is long overdue. An apology, which exacts no cost on any "innocent" party, is the least we could do to atone for our centuries long enactment of state-sponsored terror, discrimination, violence, and hate. Most scholars who examine the aftermath of mass atrocity (which is the best descriptor of America's racial caste system) agree that some level of reckoning by the majority culture for its deeds is crucial to reconstituting the victims. This is why truth commissions are so important -- even more so, often, than legally punishing perpetrators (this ties in nicely with my general belief that justice for the victims is more important than punishing wrongdoers). But America never went through this period of self-reflection. Indeed, as Kimberle Crenshaw noted, we shifted seamlessly into "post-racist", often without even changing the officials in charge (can you say Jessie Helms?). People victimized by mass atrocities are hurt all over again when they find that nobody cares, or that those who committed the violent acts don't even recognize their wrongdoing. The wounds of oppression live on in this situation -- a continued legacy fostered by silence.

The mass resistance too many White politicians have to simple official acknowledgment the grave moral wrongs our nation has inflicted upon people of color is untenable. I agree with Brownback, incidentally, that these aspects of racism are a national problem -- let's not let the north get off scot-free. Brownback concedes that this is an uphill fight. Indeed, in a political sense such a resolution is crazy -- it's not going to win him any votes, it's not going to restart his stalled presidential campaign, and it likely won't even succeed. But it is someone like him -- a Nixon-goes-to-China figure -- who can get the ball rolling. Has the time for this resolution passed? Not while those victimized by America's racist heritage still demand it. Even if his resolution doesn't pass, even the effort is worth something. And I applaud Brownback for his leadership in this regard.

So, while I still think Brownback is crazy, in the words of today's youth, I also want to say: "Brownback, you craaazy!" And I salute him for that.

Crazy in the Best Way Possible

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) is genuinely crazy. I mean that in the best possible way.

For better or for worse, the Republican Party has a great many crazy people. They support ludicrous policies. They have an insane persecution complex about the "liberal media" which is always out to get them. They attack 12-year olds because they dare rely on the SCHIP program. This is nothing new.

What is distinctive about many of these crazy folk, though, is how hackish they are. It's not like they're just beholden to some extreme ideology which pushes them to weird and outlandish positions all the time. For if that were the case, everyone once in awhile you'd see them deviated from the electoral interests of the GOP. Yet, for many of the most passionate nut-cases in the Republican Party -- be they Christian Conservatives or supply-side voodooists, this never happens. Their craziness is not genuine. It is a mere facade for Republican Party politics.

Brownback, by contrast, is if nothing else genuine. This doesn't mean that he doesn't do crazy things. Holding up a judicial nomination because the candidate attended the commitment ceremony of a lesbian friend definitely qualifies. But at other times, he does surprisingly nice things, because he is truly committed to a belief structure beyond "Republicans winning." One example is his human rights advocacy in North Korea. Another is his recently announced resolution apologizing for slavery and segregation.

It is beyond obvious that such a statement is long overdue. An apology, which exacts no cost on any "innocent" party, is the least we could do to atone for our centuries long enactment of state-sponsored terror, discrimination, violence, and hate. Most scholars who examine the aftermath of mass atrocity (which is the best descriptor of America's racial caste system) agree that some level of reckoning by the majority culture for its deeds is crucial to reconstituting the victims. This is why truth commissions are so important -- even more so, often, than legally punishing perpetrators (this ties in nicely with my general belief that justice for the victims is more important than punishing wrongdoers). But America never went through this period of self-reflection. Indeed, as Kimberle Crenshaw noted, we shifted seamlessly into "post-racist", often without even changing the officials in charge (can you say Jessie Helms?). People victimized by mass atrocities are hurt all over again when they find that nobody cares, or that those who committed the violent acts don't even recognize their wrongdoing. The wounds of oppression live on in this situation -- a continued legacy fostered by silence.

The mass resistance too many White politicians have to simple official acknowledgment the grave moral wrongs our nation has inflicted upon people of color is untenable. I agree with Brownback, incidentally, that these aspects of racism are a national problem -- let's not let the north get off scot-free. Brownback concedes that this is an uphill fight. Indeed, in a political sense such a resolution is crazy -- it's not going to win him any votes, it's not going to restart his stalled presidential campaign, and it likely won't even succeed. But it is someone like him -- a Nixon-goes-to-China figure -- who can get the ball rolling. Has the time for this resolution passed? Not while those victimized by America's racist heritage still demand it. Even if his resolution doesn't pass, even the effort is worth something. And I applaud Brownback for his leadership in this regard.

So, while I still think Brownback is crazy, in the words of today's youth, I also want to say: "Brownback, you craaazy!" And I salute him for that.

Quote of the (Yester)day

As so often is the case, my quote of the day comes from quite some time ago. This one comes from a Chinese Newspaper (one year prior to the communist takeover) commenting on the application of segregationist law in Alabama:

We cannot help having some impressions of the United States which actually already leads half the world and which would like to continue to lead it. If the United States merely wants to 'dominate' the world, the atomic bomb and the U.S. dollar will be sufficient to achieve this purpose. However, the world cannot be 'dominated' for a long period of time. If the United States wants to 'lead' the world, it must have a kind of moral superiority in addition to military superiority.

Ta Kung Pao (Shanghai), May 1948 (quoted in Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton UP 2000), 32).

Dudziak's book, incidentally, is quite good and a must-read for anyone who wants an accessible history for the way the moral atrocities of Jim Crow impacted America's crucial Cold War image as a beacon of democracy and hope.

The Past is Now: The Jena Six

The case of the Jena Six is one of those that even I, massive cynic that I am on the state of America's racial progress, thought was a thing of the past. It is reminiscent of nothing more than the "legal lynchings" that characterized the Jim Crow South. Its facts are appalling. It is an unbelievable display of state-sponsored racism that dwarfs even the Genarlow Wilson case in terms of raw injustice. Here is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer with the scoop:

This story begins in the small, central Louisiana town of Jena. Last September, a black high school student requested the school's permission to sit beneath a broad, leafy tree in the hot schoolyard. Until then, only white students sat there.

The next morning, three nooses were hanging from the tree. The black students responded en masse. Justin Purvis, the kid who first sat under the tree, told filmmaker Jacquie Soohen: "They said, 'Y'all want to go stand under the tree?' We said, 'Yeah.' They said, 'If you go, I'll go. If you go, I'll go.' One person went, the next person went, everybody else just went."

Then the police and the district attorney showed up. Substitute teacher Michelle Rogers recounts: "District Attorney Reed Walters proceeded to tell those kids that 'I could end your lives with the stroke of a pen.' "

It wouldn't happen for a few more months, but that is exactly what the district attorney is trying to do.

Jena, a community of 4,000, is about 85 percent white. While the black community gathered at a church to respond, others didn't see the significance. Soohen interviewed Jena town librarian Barbara Murphy, who reflected: "The nooses? I don't even know why they were there, what they were supposed to mean. There's pranks all the time, of one type or another, going on. And it just didn't seem to be racist to me." Tensions rose.

Robert Bailey, a black student, was beaten up at a white party. Then, a few nights later, Robert and two others were threatened by a white man with a sawed-off shotgun, at a convenience store. They wrestled the gun away and fled. Robert's mother, Caseptla Bailey, said: "I know they were in fear of their lives. They were afraid that this man was going to shoot them, you know, especially in the back, running away from the scene."

The next day, Dec. 4, 2006, a fight broke out at the school. A white student was injured, taken to the hospital and released. Robert Bailey and five other black students were charged ... with second-degree attempted murder. They each faced 100 years in prison. The black community was reeling.

Independent journalist Jordan Flaherty was the first to break the story nationally. He explained: "I'm sure it was a serious fight, and I'm sure it deserved real discipline within the school system, but he (the white student) was out later that day. He was smiling. He was with friends ... it was a serious school problem that came on the heels of a long series of other events ... as soon as black students were involved, that's when the hammer came down."

The African American community began to call them the Jena Six. The first to be tried was Mychal Bell, 17 years old and a talented football player, looking forward to a university scholarship. Bell was offered a plea deal, but refused. His father, Marcus Jones, took a few minutes off from work to talk to me: "Here in LaSalle Parish, whenever a black man is offered a plea bargain, he is innocent. That's a dead giveaway here in the South."

Right before the trial, the charges of attempted second-degree murder were lowered to aggravated battery, which under Louisiana law requires a dangerous weapon. The weapon? Tennis shoes.

Mychal Bell was convicted by an all-white jury. His court-appointed defense attorney called no witnesses. Bell will be sentenced on July 31, facing a possible 22 years. The remaining five teens, several of whom were jailed for months, unable to make bail, still face attempted second-degree murder charges and a hundred years each in prison.

Color of Change has a petition you can sign urging their freedom, and here is another petition asking the DOJ to open a civil rights investigation.

More:

Pandagon

While Seated

Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University-New Orleans, gives his account of the story at Counter Currents

Racialicious: "The racism in the behavior of the local government is as flagrant as anything that occurred during segregation. The institutions of government in Jena, Louisiana are operating on de-facto Jim Crow; they carry out through cultural practice what was once law."

Elle, Ph.D

Free the Jena Six!

Happy Juneteenth!

I almost forgot: Happy Juneteenth!

For those of you who don't know, Juneteenth commemorates the day in which Union General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas, and announced that the slaves were free in the state of Texas. It was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, but Juneteenth generally commemorates the day in which all southern slaves were freed.

Juneteenth is symbolic of what I hope America can be. Not a country that denies its sins, but one that overcomes them. One cannot celebrate Juneteenth without remembering that we are celebrating the freedom of those we enslaved. But it is justly a celebration--a celebration of a shining moment when we could see beyond the clouds of racial hostility and oppression and, if only briefly, join hands to act as our brother and sister's keeper. I only wish it was more prevalent (I had only first heard about it last year).

Blogospheric roundup:

Kimberly Michelle explains the modern-day import of Juneteenth:

Today Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and in some areas a month marked with celebrations, guest speakers, picnics and family gatherings. It is a time for reflection and rejoicing. It is a time for assessment, self-improvement and for planning the future. Its growing popularity signifies a level of maturity and dignity in America long over due. In cities across the country, people of all races, nationalities and religions are joining hands to truthfully acknowledge a period in our history that shaped and continues to influence our society today.

Ward Smythe:

Juneteenth is a day of reflection, a day of renewal, a pride-filled day. It is a moment in time taken to appreciate the African American experience. It is inclusive of all races, ethnicities and nationalities - as nothing is more comforting than the hand of a friend.

Beautiful, Also, Are The Souls of My Black Sisters

Facing South

Stereohyped

Chicagoist

And finally, here is the conclusion from an American Heritage essay:

In a famous public address delivered nine years before the Civil War, Frederick Douglass asked, “What, to the American slave, is your fourth of July?” It was a question that lingered for well over a century after emancipation. For black Americans living through Jim Crow, Juneteenth was the closest approximation of a true Independence Day. Each year they gathered in churches throughout the South and sang, “Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel?/ Then why not every man?”

Enjoy the festivities, if you have them--otherwise, create some of your own!

Reenfranchisement

New Florida Governor Charlie Crist has come out in favor of at least the limited restoration of voting rights for convicted felons.

Crist's predecessor, fellow Republican Jeb Bush, opposed automatic restoration. But Crist has called the failure to restore rights a legacy of the era of "unjust" anti-black Jim Crow laws of the racially segregated south.

Florida has one of the toughest disenfranchisement laws in the country. These laws tend to concentrate themselves in deep south states, where they were promulgated to dilute Black voting strength. See J.F. Barbour, Jr., Note and Comment, 8 Miss. L.J. 196, 202 (1935)

In specifying those crimes which would disqualify a citizen from exercise of the privilege of voting, upon conviction, the compilers of the Mississippi Constitution listed those offenses which the irresponsible and impulsive class of uneducated Negroes are most prone to commit....

Barbour's article was written in the wake of the Scottsboro decision, explaining why the Supreme Court ruling would not threaten Southern efforts to disenfranchise Black voters and keep them off jury service.

Today, felon disenfranchisement laws survive because the last thing these Republican-dominated states want is more poor and Black people voting (they'd likely vote Democratic). It is supremely difficult to convince any politician to stand up for the rights of Black ex-cons (not the most politically popular group), much less one for whom it is not in his political interest.

So, kudos to Governor Crist--for making this an issue, and for not letting it drop after the campaign ended. Via Blackprof.