The source is of middling credibility (I mean that honestly -- Debka has an agenda, and it does tend to traffic in rumors, but it does get some legit scoops), but it's very worrisome if true. And it certainly seems well within the realm of possibility: Anti-Zionist entities, including Iran, have long preferred to hold up Jewish shields to legitimize repellant views (see also, Iran's embrace of the Neturei Karta as part of their Holocaust denial campaign); here it's just more literal than most. It's not like Iran is particularly concerned with the rights of its religious minorities, and Iranian Jews are under special suspicion for supposed "Zionist" sympathies, making it easy to pressure or coerce them into serving as the vanguard for the country's anti-Zionist endeavors.
Anyway, we'll see what develops.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Israeli Supreme Court Skeptical of Migron Deal
The Israeli Supreme Court expressed skepticism over a deal that would see the illegal Migron outpost demolished ... eventually ... in three years. The deal involves creating a new, "legal" settlement nearby, and moving the Migron residents there. The state estimates this will take three and a half years, and is asking that the Court delay its demolition order until then,
Justice Joubran's concerns are hardly unfounded -- Israel originally promised to dismantle the Migron outpost in 2003. Almost a decade later, we're still waiting. And of course, the difficulty Israel has dismantling even outposts it admits are illegal in a timely fashion is very worrisome for any future peace deal which will require far more outposts with far more residents to be taken down.
“What will the rule of law look like when ruling is not followed?” asked [Justice Salim] Joubran in relation to the original High Court ruling on Migron that called for the demolition of the outpost by the end of March. “You, the State Attorney, say that the outpost in three years, but I know this type of behavior. Three years will inevitably turn into eight.”
Justice Joubran's concerns are hardly unfounded -- Israel originally promised to dismantle the Migron outpost in 2003. Almost a decade later, we're still waiting. And of course, the difficulty Israel has dismantling even outposts it admits are illegal in a timely fashion is very worrisome for any future peace deal which will require far more outposts with far more residents to be taken down.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
New Hampshire Votes Down Gay Marriage Repeal
After retaking control of the New Hampshire legislature, conservative activists set their sights on repealing the state's gay marriage law. Today, that effort went down in smoking defeat, losing a lopsided 211-116 vote.
Said Rep. Michael Hall (R-Manchester): "These folks are just people just like you are, they want the same things you do. This bill needs to be put down. Put this dog down like it deserves to be."
Said Rep. Michael Hall (R-Manchester): "These folks are just people just like you are, they want the same things you do. This bill needs to be put down. Put this dog down like it deserves to be."
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
The Latest Anti-Israel Organization
I argued in my last post that an alternative to boycotting settlements is to more aggressively take on their supporters in the American "pro-Israel" establishment. Groups like the Zionist Organization of America, I argue, are anti-Israel under generally accepted definitions promulgated by mainstream American Jewish institutions -- most notably, for its apparent endorsement of a one-state solution.
In Ha'aretz, Bradley Burston fires his own salvo at ZOA, indicting them for their vitriolic attacks on Israeli security measures aimed at preserving peace in Jerusalem. Conservative "pro-Israel" groups often claim that we should be deferential to Israeli security appraisals and be reticent to criticize them, but it is a standard they have never purported to live up to.
And in all honesty, they shouldn't. Caring about something means having opinions about it, and ZOA is entitled to think that Israeli policies are wrong. That, in itself, isn't the sin -- though ZOA's substantive support for one-stateism, which would end Israel as a Jewish, democratic state, is a whole different kettle of fish. But the hypocrisy is telling, and it would be bad enough even if it wasn't a smokescreen to disguise the fact that ZOA has moved itself beyond the borders of what the pro-Israel community should deem tolerable.
In Ha'aretz, Bradley Burston fires his own salvo at ZOA, indicting them for their vitriolic attacks on Israeli security measures aimed at preserving peace in Jerusalem. Conservative "pro-Israel" groups often claim that we should be deferential to Israeli security appraisals and be reticent to criticize them, but it is a standard they have never purported to live up to.
And in all honesty, they shouldn't. Caring about something means having opinions about it, and ZOA is entitled to think that Israeli policies are wrong. That, in itself, isn't the sin -- though ZOA's substantive support for one-stateism, which would end Israel as a Jewish, democratic state, is a whole different kettle of fish. But the hypocrisy is telling, and it would be bad enough even if it wasn't a smokescreen to disguise the fact that ZOA has moved itself beyond the borders of what the pro-Israel community should deem tolerable.
Beinart's Settlement Boycott
Peter Beinart made waves in the NYT the other day in calling for a boycott of Israeli settlements -- paired with, Beinart says, a sharp opposition to boycotting Israel-proper. The goal, Beinart argues, is to effectuate a sharp separation between Green Line Israel -- an imperfect democracy that nonetheless is among the freest places on earth, and a beacon for what the liberal Zionist dream should be -- and the occupied territories, which is ... not. I'm a sharp critic of boycotts, and a sharp critic of the settlements, which puts in me a bit of bind. While I might agree that conceptually there is a distinction between boycotts of Israel writ large and the settlements I instinctively recoil at boycotts targeting Israel, because the BDS movement pervasively shot through with anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that appears intractable. I think Beinart underestimates just how much a visceral reaction Jews have against this particular tactic -- it has such a dark history, and it's current manifestation has been surrounded by such a vicious resurgence of anti-Semitic rhetoric, that it really can't be viewed abstracted from the context. It's like Glenn Greenwald writing in Pat Buchanan's outfit. Sometimes past and present prejudice circumscribes what would otherwise be acceptable, and this could be one of those cases.
In any event, the reaction to Beinart's call has mostly been negative on the Jewish left -- J Street, for instance, said it thought a boycott would cause the settlers to hunker down and become more radical. Beinart's own site posted a powerful rebuttal to his argument (which is testament, one should say, to Beinart's desire for honest dialogue on this question), saying that the boycott absolves both the left and right of having to deal with the tough questions that -- despite ever-present efforts to simplify the conflict to dueling caricatures -- have to be answered for any lasting peace to be created. This is the crux of Jeffrey Goldberg's objection as well -- Beinart simplifies the conflict so greatly that he doesn't seem to recognize that even if Israel starts acting like a perfect mensch, it won't solve things.
The retort Beinart and his supporters (like Andrew Sullivan) have been throwing out is "well, how do you propose to arrest the settlements?" This debate, after all, is being held amongst people who all agree the settlements are a bad thing and should be opposed -- but Beinart's allegation is that for many, this is purely a rhetorical trope, and they reflexively oppose any calls for actual action aimed at restricting settlement expansion. Which is not an unreasonable retort, and I'd like to see a more comprehensive response. But that cuts both ways -- it's a fair critique that Beinart is wildly oversimplifying too, and he needs to tack onto his proposal concrete agenda items to demonstrate, for example, how to ensure that a final status agreement is actually "final", how to delegitimize anti-Israel and anti-Semitic zealots who seem to view the existence of Jews in any state but one of abject supplication as an affront, or how to take non-starters like a Palestinian right of return off the table.
Still, seeing as I do think that arresting settlement growth is critical both to the peace process as well as Israel's long-term longevity, it is important to think of tactics for making that happen. So I tentatively forward a few proposals -- not meant as a firm commitment to any of them as either necessary or sufficient, but an effort to get ideas flowing.
(1) Increased support for efforts aimed at revitalizing the Israeli left (e.g., OneVoice and TULIP). Israelis are always going to be in the best position to stop the settlements from destroying their state -- but the pro-peace left in Israel has been largely moribund since the second intifada, and has largely been ignored by its international peers.
(2) Better policing of the pro-Israel tent in the US. I am absolutely in agreement that not any and every group which claims to be "pro-Israel" should be allowed to get away with it -- if they advocate "solutions" to the conflict that are manifestly anti-Israel and outside the consensus of the broader Jewish community, they should be expelled. But in recent years this has been a one-sided standard -- left-wing groups have been closely scrutinized (sometimes rightly so), while their conservative counterparts have gotten a free hand, even when the advocate policies (like one-statism) that are clearly considered beyond the pale. No more: the onus is on mainstream Jewish groups like the AJC and ADL to come down hard on politicians and organizations -- putatively "Zionist" or not -- which endorse one-statism and encourage settlement growth. What Americans consider to be "pro-Israel" has influence in Israel-proper -- to the extent that the consensus Jewish-American position is clearly and unabashedly anti-settlement and anti-one state, that will strengthen forces inside Israel pushing for those same results.
In any event, the reaction to Beinart's call has mostly been negative on the Jewish left -- J Street, for instance, said it thought a boycott would cause the settlers to hunker down and become more radical. Beinart's own site posted a powerful rebuttal to his argument (which is testament, one should say, to Beinart's desire for honest dialogue on this question), saying that the boycott absolves both the left and right of having to deal with the tough questions that -- despite ever-present efforts to simplify the conflict to dueling caricatures -- have to be answered for any lasting peace to be created. This is the crux of Jeffrey Goldberg's objection as well -- Beinart simplifies the conflict so greatly that he doesn't seem to recognize that even if Israel starts acting like a perfect mensch, it won't solve things.
The retort Beinart and his supporters (like Andrew Sullivan) have been throwing out is "well, how do you propose to arrest the settlements?" This debate, after all, is being held amongst people who all agree the settlements are a bad thing and should be opposed -- but Beinart's allegation is that for many, this is purely a rhetorical trope, and they reflexively oppose any calls for actual action aimed at restricting settlement expansion. Which is not an unreasonable retort, and I'd like to see a more comprehensive response. But that cuts both ways -- it's a fair critique that Beinart is wildly oversimplifying too, and he needs to tack onto his proposal concrete agenda items to demonstrate, for example, how to ensure that a final status agreement is actually "final", how to delegitimize anti-Israel and anti-Semitic zealots who seem to view the existence of Jews in any state but one of abject supplication as an affront, or how to take non-starters like a Palestinian right of return off the table.
Still, seeing as I do think that arresting settlement growth is critical both to the peace process as well as Israel's long-term longevity, it is important to think of tactics for making that happen. So I tentatively forward a few proposals -- not meant as a firm commitment to any of them as either necessary or sufficient, but an effort to get ideas flowing.
(1) Increased support for efforts aimed at revitalizing the Israeli left (e.g., OneVoice and TULIP). Israelis are always going to be in the best position to stop the settlements from destroying their state -- but the pro-peace left in Israel has been largely moribund since the second intifada, and has largely been ignored by its international peers.
(2) Better policing of the pro-Israel tent in the US. I am absolutely in agreement that not any and every group which claims to be "pro-Israel" should be allowed to get away with it -- if they advocate "solutions" to the conflict that are manifestly anti-Israel and outside the consensus of the broader Jewish community, they should be expelled. But in recent years this has been a one-sided standard -- left-wing groups have been closely scrutinized (sometimes rightly so), while their conservative counterparts have gotten a free hand, even when the advocate policies (like one-statism) that are clearly considered beyond the pale. No more: the onus is on mainstream Jewish groups like the AJC and ADL to come down hard on politicians and organizations -- putatively "Zionist" or not -- which endorse one-statism and encourage settlement growth. What Americans consider to be "pro-Israel" has influence in Israel-proper -- to the extent that the consensus Jewish-American position is clearly and unabashedly anti-settlement and anti-one state, that will strengthen forces inside Israel pushing for those same results.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Automatic Self-Defense, Redux
In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, and in particular this piece by Michael Skolnik on how he has the privilege of "never looking suspicious", I thought I might repost this piece of mine from 2010, wherein I relate the following story:
See also this one from 2006 ("They'll pull me aside sometimes because they say I fit the description. Yeah. Young black male. I always 'fit the description.'").
I've never been stopped "on the street" by a cop. But I do remember one time when I was a teenager playing "hide and go seek in the dark" by my house. I was crouching behind a leaf pile in my front yard, wearing a dark hoodie, when a cop pulls up behind me. It could not have possibly looked more like a stakeout, and I knew it. So I stood up and heartily waved at the cop, who looked at me for a moment, then kept driving. There is no way in hell he would have just kept driving if I was Black.
See also this one from 2006 ("They'll pull me aside sometimes because they say I fit the description. Yeah. Young black male. I always 'fit the description.'").
It's Not What You Do, It's Who You Are
Remember the hoopla when rapper Common visited the White House? Conservatives were aghast, complaining that Common (and the rap community in general) glorified guns and violence, bragging about the weight of his Uzi and how "I hold up a peace sign but I carry a gun." These violent rap lyrics were responsible for violence and bloodshed in the inner cities, as a generation of Black youths grew up thinking that the way to be cool and authentic was to pack heat. Ever keen on blame-throwing, conservatives asked why prominent Black leaders weren't speaking out against this poison.
And while certainly this isn't a consistent tradition, and we can be rightly suspicious of whether it's being offered up in good faith, in the abstract there's nothing wrong with forwarding the position that Black leaders should more aggressively try to work against cultural glorification of guns and violence. Right or wrong, it's certainly within the realm of argument, and there's no intrinsic problem with favoring those leaders who adopt that standpoint and chastising those who do not.
So what happens when a Black leader does take it upon himself to aggressively oppose the cultural glorification of packing heat among our youth? The answer, of course, is that he's extremist, un-American, hostile to the Constitution and seeking an agenda of radical left-wing "reform".
Fresh off hug-gate, where Barack Obama stood accused of embracing a civil rights hero (horrors), Breitbart is now training its sights on Attorney General Eric Holder for this precise sin. Specifically, they've got him on tape arguing that we need to break the belief amongst young people that it's "hip" to carry guns -- in other words, precisely the standpoint conservatives claimed they wanted folks like Holder to take in response to the purportedly pro-gun, pro-violence lyrics of folks like Common. Only it turns out that this position is equally objectionable as standing in opposition to our fundamental right tocradle snuggle bear arms.
I'm hardly the first one to notice the overlap between conservative gun politics and contemporary hip-hop -- The Boondocks had Riley announce that "I'm down with the NRA!" after realizing that the right-wing group was far better at living out his gun fantasies than any of his rap idols ("You know how NWA brags about looking for trouble, packing everywhere they go, and killing for fun? Well, the NRA actually does that."). But it does hit home, once more, the catch-22 racial minorities face whenever they try to appease conservatives -- no matter what they do to demonstrate themselves as good public citizens, it will not only be insufficient, it will be proof of the opposite.
Defending cultural expressions glorifying guns makes you a harbinger of cultural decay, responsible for violence and crime and God knows what else. Opposing these expressions makes you a latte-sipping liberal elitist who wants to take away our God-given right to bear arms (probably using jack-booted governmental thugs). If Blacks pursue integration and aggressive inclusion in America's social fabric, they're pushy and demanding special rights; but if they decide to forgo those demands and instead focus on developing their own, separatist institution, they're radical racists. If you're poor and don't do well in school, you're a mooch with a welfare mentality; if you succeed and make something of yourself, you're a fraud who only got as far as you did through cheating and special preferences (a message Latinos also received loud and clear during the ugly Sotomayor nomination fight).
It is an article of faith amongst the right that any bad thing that happens to racial minorities is their own fault, and that if they just did this or that thing, they'd have every opportunity and be treated just as well as anybody else. The problem is "this thing" and "that thing" are often mutually exclusive, because the objectionable quality isn't the substance of the behavior, it's the fact that a racial minority is doing it. The attack on Holder for opposing gun glorification -- so often exactly what conservatives have demanded of people like Holder -- is just another data point for the sobering conclusion: The problem isn't what you do, the problem is who you are.
And while certainly this isn't a consistent tradition, and we can be rightly suspicious of whether it's being offered up in good faith, in the abstract there's nothing wrong with forwarding the position that Black leaders should more aggressively try to work against cultural glorification of guns and violence. Right or wrong, it's certainly within the realm of argument, and there's no intrinsic problem with favoring those leaders who adopt that standpoint and chastising those who do not.
So what happens when a Black leader does take it upon himself to aggressively oppose the cultural glorification of packing heat among our youth? The answer, of course, is that he's extremist, un-American, hostile to the Constitution and seeking an agenda of radical left-wing "reform".
Fresh off hug-gate, where Barack Obama stood accused of embracing a civil rights hero (horrors), Breitbart is now training its sights on Attorney General Eric Holder for this precise sin. Specifically, they've got him on tape arguing that we need to break the belief amongst young people that it's "hip" to carry guns -- in other words, precisely the standpoint conservatives claimed they wanted folks like Holder to take in response to the purportedly pro-gun, pro-violence lyrics of folks like Common. Only it turns out that this position is equally objectionable as standing in opposition to our fundamental right to
I'm hardly the first one to notice the overlap between conservative gun politics and contemporary hip-hop -- The Boondocks had Riley announce that "I'm down with the NRA!" after realizing that the right-wing group was far better at living out his gun fantasies than any of his rap idols ("You know how NWA brags about looking for trouble, packing everywhere they go, and killing for fun? Well, the NRA actually does that."). But it does hit home, once more, the catch-22 racial minorities face whenever they try to appease conservatives -- no matter what they do to demonstrate themselves as good public citizens, it will not only be insufficient, it will be proof of the opposite.
Defending cultural expressions glorifying guns makes you a harbinger of cultural decay, responsible for violence and crime and God knows what else. Opposing these expressions makes you a latte-sipping liberal elitist who wants to take away our God-given right to bear arms (probably using jack-booted governmental thugs). If Blacks pursue integration and aggressive inclusion in America's social fabric, they're pushy and demanding special rights; but if they decide to forgo those demands and instead focus on developing their own, separatist institution, they're radical racists. If you're poor and don't do well in school, you're a mooch with a welfare mentality; if you succeed and make something of yourself, you're a fraud who only got as far as you did through cheating and special preferences (a message Latinos also received loud and clear during the ugly Sotomayor nomination fight).
It is an article of faith amongst the right that any bad thing that happens to racial minorities is their own fault, and that if they just did this or that thing, they'd have every opportunity and be treated just as well as anybody else. The problem is "this thing" and "that thing" are often mutually exclusive, because the objectionable quality isn't the substance of the behavior, it's the fact that a racial minority is doing it. The attack on Holder for opposing gun glorification -- so often exactly what conservatives have demanded of people like Holder -- is just another data point for the sobering conclusion: The problem isn't what you do, the problem is who you are.
Friday, March 16, 2012
The Fatal Flaw of Brandeis University
The latest element of the Sandra Fluke walking disaster for the right controversy is that her boyfriend is ... Jewish. Socialist Jew Brandeis University Marxist Jewish Socialist Unionizing Jew (to be precise). Fluke's connection with this Brandeis-affiliated Jewy Jew
Indeed, what an interesting question! Why would Ms. Fluke prefer to attend Georgetown for law school rather than Brandeis University? An implicit concession of the inferiority of the leftist worldview? A natural aversion to associating with those unionizing Christ-butchers? A subconscious desire to cleanse herself of sinfully wicked lustful desires -- or a guerilla campaign to introduce such decadent ways amongst the faithful?
Or perhaps -- just perhaps -- it's because Brandeis University doesn't have a law school. Good news for the University of Louisville, bad news for the coherence (such as it is) of the conspiracy.
begs the question… if you’re so connected to the Mutterperl family, Sandra, why not go to Brandeis, a school much more aligned with your worldview, instead of Georgetown University, a Catholic Jesuit school? Are you admitting that a Christian school is better than a neo-Marxist school, or is there some other agenda?
Indeed, what an interesting question! Why would Ms. Fluke prefer to attend Georgetown for law school rather than Brandeis University? An implicit concession of the inferiority of the leftist worldview? A natural aversion to associating with those unionizing Christ-butchers? A subconscious desire to cleanse herself of sinfully wicked lustful desires -- or a guerilla campaign to introduce such decadent ways amongst the faithful?
Or perhaps -- just perhaps -- it's because Brandeis University doesn't have a law school. Good news for the University of Louisville, bad news for the coherence (such as it is) of the conspiracy.
The Wise Also Fail
I knew of then-General Ulysses S. Grant's "General Order No. 11", which expelled all Jews from a huge swath of America. The order proclaimed that "The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order." It was one of the most prominent examples of officially condoned anti-Semitism in American history (though the order itself was reversed by President Lincoln 11 days later).
What I didn't know was the story of the rest of Grant's career vis-a-vis the Jews (via TNC). Grant, it seems, was sincerely and genuinely repentant over what he had done. He recognized that it was incompatible with his broader commitments to human equality. And he committed himself, particularly while as President, to protecting the equality of Jews and fostering their inclusion as full Americans. This included visiting newly opened synagogues in DC, speaking out against abuses of Jewish human rights in eastern Europe, and appointing more Jews to public office than any President up to that point. At the end of his life, Grant was exceptionally proud of the fact that he counted Jews and non-Jews alike amongst his friends and visitors.
This was all the more impressive because Grant was not simply responding to a change in social attitudes. In fact, he was actively resisting social tides, which were trying to aggressively declare America a "Christian nation" and viewed Jews with distrust and contempt. Grant's overt and repeated gestures towards Jewish inclusion helped foster in a "golden age" of Jewish life in America paralleling the high point of reconstruction. Unfortunately, like with reconstruction, this era faded when Grant left office, as other national leaders were not committed to keeping equality on the front-burner.
Grant's response to the depravity of General Order No. 11 wasn't "but I have Jewish friends!" By all accounts, Grant exhibited genuine remorse and genuinely worked to make things better. It was not cheap grace. It was a true impressive commitment by Grant to make up for an acknowledged wrong. And so it was after Grant died that one of the great Jewish leaders of the era, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, remarked "that the wise also fail." They do, and when they do they do so on a more public stage than most. But the wise also repent, and set out to make things right. And the ability to do that, consistently, in public, over the course of a long and powerful political career, is the sign of a great American patriot.
What I didn't know was the story of the rest of Grant's career vis-a-vis the Jews (via TNC). Grant, it seems, was sincerely and genuinely repentant over what he had done. He recognized that it was incompatible with his broader commitments to human equality. And he committed himself, particularly while as President, to protecting the equality of Jews and fostering their inclusion as full Americans. This included visiting newly opened synagogues in DC, speaking out against abuses of Jewish human rights in eastern Europe, and appointing more Jews to public office than any President up to that point. At the end of his life, Grant was exceptionally proud of the fact that he counted Jews and non-Jews alike amongst his friends and visitors.
This was all the more impressive because Grant was not simply responding to a change in social attitudes. In fact, he was actively resisting social tides, which were trying to aggressively declare America a "Christian nation" and viewed Jews with distrust and contempt. Grant's overt and repeated gestures towards Jewish inclusion helped foster in a "golden age" of Jewish life in America paralleling the high point of reconstruction. Unfortunately, like with reconstruction, this era faded when Grant left office, as other national leaders were not committed to keeping equality on the front-burner.
Grant's response to the depravity of General Order No. 11 wasn't "but I have Jewish friends!" By all accounts, Grant exhibited genuine remorse and genuinely worked to make things better. It was not cheap grace. It was a true impressive commitment by Grant to make up for an acknowledged wrong. And so it was after Grant died that one of the great Jewish leaders of the era, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, remarked "that the wise also fail." They do, and when they do they do so on a more public stage than most. But the wise also repent, and set out to make things right. And the ability to do that, consistently, in public, over the course of a long and powerful political career, is the sign of a great American patriot.
Wisconsin State Senate Evens Up
In a stunning announcement, Republican State Sen. Pam Galloway -- targeted in the latest round of Democratic recall efforts -- is resigning her seat (due to familial health concerns). This causes the State Senate to even up at 16 members apiece, depriving Republicans of their majority.
Not only does this temporarily stop the Scott Walker/Fitzgerald Bros. steamroller that's been ramming through right-wing legislation (until the next round of elections, which will more permanently settle who is in charge of the chamber), but it could have a huge effect on redistricting. A Republican gerrymander is currently in front of the courts. If the Court rules the maps unlawful, they get kicked back to the legislature -- which, no longer unified under GOP control, won't be able to pass a map anywhere near as GOP-friendly as the one currently being pushed. That means either there will need to be a compromise map, or the courts will draw one -- either way, gerrymander (likely) averted.
Not only does this temporarily stop the Scott Walker/Fitzgerald Bros. steamroller that's been ramming through right-wing legislation (until the next round of elections, which will more permanently settle who is in charge of the chamber), but it could have a huge effect on redistricting. A Republican gerrymander is currently in front of the courts. If the Court rules the maps unlawful, they get kicked back to the legislature -- which, no longer unified under GOP control, won't be able to pass a map anywhere near as GOP-friendly as the one currently being pushed. That means either there will need to be a compromise map, or the courts will draw one -- either way, gerrymander (likely) averted.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) Retiring
All I really knew about Ackerman was that he was a seemingly run-of-the-mill NYC Jewish Democrat. So the tidbits about him in the story about his surprise retirement were particularly entertaining:
The district is solidly Democratic, but there will undoubtedly be some primary action on the blue side after this announcement.
Mr. Ackerman had always baffled people on the Hill. He was hard to miss in the corridors of Congress, always wearing a white carnation boutonniere on his lapel and pulling up to work in white 1966 Plymouth Valiant.
And unlike other lawmakers who live in apartments, hotels and houses during the week while Congress is in session, he lived on a houseboat called the Unsinkable II, a 42-foot vessel with one room that was docked on the Potomac River, just miles from Capitol Hill. (The Unsinkable I sank in the Potomac in the mid-1980s.)
The district is solidly Democratic, but there will undoubtedly be some primary action on the blue side after this announcement.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
National Treasure
Know who I respect? Richard Simmons. He was basically a national joke for so long, with his flamboyance and short shorts and overwhelming perkiness. And you know what? He just decided "I am going to own this." And he did. He played along with all the jokes and totally owned his character, and look at him now. He's completely made the transition to from national laughingstock to national treasure. And now when we see him on TV, he's a cherished part of our collective culture.
And he hasn't changed a bit.
And he hasn't changed a bit.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Pro-Israel Groups Silent as One-State Goes Mainstream
Following South Carolina and the RNC, the Florida state legislature just passed a resolution calling for a one-state solution. Specifically, the resolution disavows that Israel is "an occupier of the lands of others", instead affirming its right to jurisdiction over the West Bank and Gaza and proclaiming "that peace can be afforded the region only through a whole and united Israel governed under one law for all people." Which is another way of saying one-stateism.
The anti-Zionists at Mondoweiss are crowing, and why shouldn't they? This rash of one-state support is easily the highest-profile domestic victory they've ever seen. The ADL and AJC, among others, have denounced one-stateism as inherently anti-Israel. But it is rapidly becoming mainstream, with these resolutions leading the charge.
What might be most remarkable, though, is that essentially all the main players are effectively admitting that they simply weren't thinking too hard about Israel's best interests. Responding to the objection that he was forwarding a one-state agenda, Alan Clemmons (author of the South Carolina resolution) stated that "This document was drafted over a period of hours, not months, in an exercise of exorcising my own concerns with President Obama over advocating that Israel abandon Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem." He continued: "this resolution was passed as a symbol and it truly is little more than a symbol. I don’t pretend to know what the best answer is with respect to the voting issue in Judea and Samaria, and in Israel for that matter." A Florida Democratic co-sponsor conceded that "I did not focus on [the one-state call" and ventured that "If it’s anything other than support for the State of Israel, then I would say shame on us for signing on."
Even (well, "even") the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, which was the prime mover behind these resolutions, admits that it doesn't actually know what it was advocating. Talking about the the "one law for all people" clause, ZOA President Mort Klein admitted "It’s not so clear what it means. I remember struggling with that phrase. It was not written very clearly." (Of course, the problem is actually that it is written too clearly, and too clearly indicates that ZOA prefers a one-state solution to the conflict compared to the two-state paradigm which ZOA's Joe Sabag declared "is not working").
What is going on here? Well, at one level, it is another indicator of Zionism becoming post-Jewish, as what counts as "pro-Israel" becomes ever more divorced from how Jews think of the issue. Instead, Zionism becomes a talking point right- and left-wing agitators who neither know nor care about Jewish values or interests. Essentially none of the proponents of this resolution were actually willing to defend its text; most candidly admitted that it was an attempt at symbolic support for Israel, agnostic to any particular policy paradigm. But of course, the last thing Israel needs is empty symbolism -- what it needs is friends who care about it and are willing to fight to make sure it stays secure as a Jewish democratic homeland. That's a policy priority for most Jews, but it's not for the new gentile "Zionism" and their token Jewish allies in ZOA. For these so-called Zionists, the important thing isn't whether Zionism lives or dies, it's whether one demonstrated fealty to the right "symbol". That sort of "support" is worse than worthless -- it is disgraceful and should have no place in the pro-Israel community.
At another level, it shows the weakness of mainstream Jewish institutions like the ADL and AJC. It is notable that while these groups were able to react swiftly and decisively to a one-state conference hosted by fringe leftists, they've been virtually silent about its growing hold on mainstream American political institutions (particularly on the right). Obviously, there's a reason for that: The AJC has more than enough clout to take on a few radical academic types, but nowhere near the influence to be able to comfortably check the entirety of the Republican Party.
For all the claims at the massive power and influence of The Israel Lobby(tm), for the most part it is successful because it advocates positions which are overwhelmingly popular amongst the public and amongst mainstream politicians. It is a rare situation where pro-Israel groups are forced to frontally challenge a mainstream political position -- but of course, the prospect of an anti-Israel position becoming mainstream is precisely why it is so important that we have these sorts of groups. So where are there? Cowering. The AJC, the ADL, AIPAC, these groups don't have the spine to challenge the right's push to mainstream one-stateism. Remember what happened when the ADL tried to take on Mike Huckabee? So while the AJC and ADL should be coming out with statements lambasting Florida, South Carolina, the RNC, and ZOA (which frankly should be drummed out of the pro-Israel tent as the right-wing equivalent of the JVP for this heresy), they'll remain silent -- and Israel's security will suffer for it.
Israel is in a very precarious situation right now, and this whole scenario illustrates just how dangerous things are. Its "friends" are, by their own admission, more concerned with empty symbolism than actually securing Israel's future. Its stateside political veneer is, more and more, falling under sway of a radically anti-Israel position that has as its inevitable end the destruction of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state. And the American Jewish community -- tasked with protecting Israel from that fate --can't muster up the courage to draw a line in the sand and say that this is all a bridge too far. It's disgraceful, and true friends of Israel won't forget their failure.
The anti-Zionists at Mondoweiss are crowing, and why shouldn't they? This rash of one-state support is easily the highest-profile domestic victory they've ever seen. The ADL and AJC, among others, have denounced one-stateism as inherently anti-Israel. But it is rapidly becoming mainstream, with these resolutions leading the charge.
What might be most remarkable, though, is that essentially all the main players are effectively admitting that they simply weren't thinking too hard about Israel's best interests. Responding to the objection that he was forwarding a one-state agenda, Alan Clemmons (author of the South Carolina resolution) stated that "This document was drafted over a period of hours, not months, in an exercise of exorcising my own concerns with President Obama over advocating that Israel abandon Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem." He continued: "this resolution was passed as a symbol and it truly is little more than a symbol. I don’t pretend to know what the best answer is with respect to the voting issue in Judea and Samaria, and in Israel for that matter." A Florida Democratic co-sponsor conceded that "I did not focus on [the one-state call" and ventured that "If it’s anything other than support for the State of Israel, then I would say shame on us for signing on."
Even (well, "even") the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, which was the prime mover behind these resolutions, admits that it doesn't actually know what it was advocating. Talking about the the "one law for all people" clause, ZOA President Mort Klein admitted "It’s not so clear what it means. I remember struggling with that phrase. It was not written very clearly." (Of course, the problem is actually that it is written too clearly, and too clearly indicates that ZOA prefers a one-state solution to the conflict compared to the two-state paradigm which ZOA's Joe Sabag declared "is not working").
What is going on here? Well, at one level, it is another indicator of Zionism becoming post-Jewish, as what counts as "pro-Israel" becomes ever more divorced from how Jews think of the issue. Instead, Zionism becomes a talking point right- and left-wing agitators who neither know nor care about Jewish values or interests. Essentially none of the proponents of this resolution were actually willing to defend its text; most candidly admitted that it was an attempt at symbolic support for Israel, agnostic to any particular policy paradigm. But of course, the last thing Israel needs is empty symbolism -- what it needs is friends who care about it and are willing to fight to make sure it stays secure as a Jewish democratic homeland. That's a policy priority for most Jews, but it's not for the new gentile "Zionism" and their token Jewish allies in ZOA. For these so-called Zionists, the important thing isn't whether Zionism lives or dies, it's whether one demonstrated fealty to the right "symbol". That sort of "support" is worse than worthless -- it is disgraceful and should have no place in the pro-Israel community.
At another level, it shows the weakness of mainstream Jewish institutions like the ADL and AJC. It is notable that while these groups were able to react swiftly and decisively to a one-state conference hosted by fringe leftists, they've been virtually silent about its growing hold on mainstream American political institutions (particularly on the right). Obviously, there's a reason for that: The AJC has more than enough clout to take on a few radical academic types, but nowhere near the influence to be able to comfortably check the entirety of the Republican Party.
For all the claims at the massive power and influence of The Israel Lobby(tm), for the most part it is successful because it advocates positions which are overwhelmingly popular amongst the public and amongst mainstream politicians. It is a rare situation where pro-Israel groups are forced to frontally challenge a mainstream political position -- but of course, the prospect of an anti-Israel position becoming mainstream is precisely why it is so important that we have these sorts of groups. So where are there? Cowering. The AJC, the ADL, AIPAC, these groups don't have the spine to challenge the right's push to mainstream one-stateism. Remember what happened when the ADL tried to take on Mike Huckabee? So while the AJC and ADL should be coming out with statements lambasting Florida, South Carolina, the RNC, and ZOA (which frankly should be drummed out of the pro-Israel tent as the right-wing equivalent of the JVP for this heresy), they'll remain silent -- and Israel's security will suffer for it.
Israel is in a very precarious situation right now, and this whole scenario illustrates just how dangerous things are. Its "friends" are, by their own admission, more concerned with empty symbolism than actually securing Israel's future. Its stateside political veneer is, more and more, falling under sway of a radically anti-Israel position that has as its inevitable end the destruction of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state. And the American Jewish community -- tasked with protecting Israel from that fate --can't muster up the courage to draw a line in the sand and say that this is all a bridge too far. It's disgraceful, and true friends of Israel won't forget their failure.
Monday, March 12, 2012
As a Breitbart-Approved Expert, Breitbart is Full of Shit
One of the Breitbart flunkies has decreed that I am an officially approved Derrick Bell expert, and that in order for the "controversy" regarding Derrick Bell and Critical Race Theory to abate, folks need to hear me weigh in.
Hey, anything for Breitbart. Ready? The claims Breitbart's site is making about Bell and Obama are entirely wrong, and betray a fundamental misunderstanding not just of critical race theory, but of massive swaths of literature on the judiciary.
Now, the pattern of Breitbart's attacks is hard to discern -- it seems to be just throwing up random arguments Bell has made over the course of his career, punctuated by scary adjectives. So, for example, my expertise is demonstrated via my 2006 description of Bell's interest-convergence theory, which holds, in essence, that civil rights advances occur when they are in the interest of Whites. In terms of Brown v. Board, the interest was maintaining our diplomatic edge in the Cold War, which caused the Eisenhower administration to intervene on the side of the NAACP (the Soviets had been using Jim Crow abuses as a cudgel against the US in their diplomatic efforts to curry favor in the Third World).
As I noted in my post, subsequent historians have verified that Bell's argument here is perfectly accurate (the key book is Cold War Civil Rights, by USC legal historian Mary Dudziak), and I'm not sure why the claim should be seen as controversial. I mean, I suppose it dispenses with the notion that civil rights advances were done because White people collectively saw the light, but so what? Obviously the truth should be an absolute defense anyway, but to the extent Bell is arguing simply that people act in their self-interest, he's observing nothing more controversial than the building block of capitalism, law & economics, and the Federalist Papers ("if men were angels ..."). If anything, Bell's argument is fundamentally conservative -- it's not about fuzzy notions of "justice" and "doing the right thing", it's about hard-headed analysis of the national interest.
In any event, despite linking to me on this point, this doesn't form the core of their objection to Professor Bell. Rather, they take issue with his general disdain for using courts as methods of social change. Well -- sort of, and here is where they seem to fall wildly off the rails. This column attempts to claim that Barack Obama wished the Warren Court had been "more radical", a sentiment he allegedly shares with Bell. It is almost impossible to count the ways this is wrong -- it manages to get Obama's position wrong, Bell's position wrong, as well as misattributing the actual position in question as emblematic of "critical race theory", when it has a much broader reach than that.
The quotes they give from Obama make the relatively unremarkable assertion that, for all the Warren Court's supposed "radicalism", it actually was surprisingly modest in its reach. It did not attempt wide-ranging socio-economic reform (typically seen as beyond the reach of the judiciary). It focused on enforcing negative rights -- freedom from governmental coercion -- which is well within the classic wheelhouse of the judiciary. And he goes on to say that social movements who adopted a "courts-focused" strategy made a terrible mistake, because they expended resources in a forum that would not and likely could not actually grant them the victories they desired. And Bell is mostly in agreement here -- his experiences as a litigator for the NAACP convinced him that a judicial strategy was sharply limited in what it would be able to accomplish for everyday Blacks.
What's wrong is the extension Breitbart asserts over and over is "clear" -- that Obama (and Bell) wish the Court would have taken on this role. That claim, alas, is "clearly" wrong. Most mainstream legal theorists don't think the Court is legitimately in the business of guaranteeing positive rights -- it would be illegitimate for them to make such guarantees part of their jurisprudence. This holds true even if one thinks that some positive guarantees should exist. So, for example, I might think that we should have a minimum wage (I do), but not believe the Courts should mandate one as a matter of constitutional law. This is not a particularly complicated concept -- it simply holds that there is a difference between one's political commitments and what one thinks is the legitimate province of the courts -- a staple of conservative constitutional principles, incidentally. That's half of Obama's point (I'll get to the latter half in a second) -- that the judiciary is properly constrained by certain essential principles, that the Warren Court did not break free of those constraints but rather stayed well within them, and that thus nothing it did should be seen as particularly out of the mainstream. To the extent liberals wanted to see change of the sort not properly engineered by the courts, they should have focused on social elements that are legitimately tasked with those projects (such as legislatures).
That's a legitimacy point -- that the Courts are not properly tasked with certain social agenda items, even if it would be a good thing for society if they were accomplished in some other way -- and it is perfectly mainstream. Does Bell agree? It's unclear, since Bell is more focused on the second half of the equation -- legitimate or not, are courts institutionally capable of accomplishing widespread social reform? Bell's answer here -- mediated by his time as a frontline NAACP attorney during the civil rights revolution -- is a resounding no. If what one wants is widespread social reform, going through the courts is a bad idea. It doesn't matter whether courts ought to do it or not, in fact, it doesn't matter whether courts want to do it or not. They are structurally incapable of accomplishing significant social reform. Reformers should focus their attention on other, more effective means of attaining their desired ends -- like community organizing, like lobbying elected branches.
Is this a CRT position? To some extent, yes, but it's hardly restricted to them. Probably the most well-known defense of this stance came in Gerald Rosenberg's The Hollow Hope. Rosenberg is not part of the Critical Race Theory movement (he's also a White dude, so Breitbart readers can trust him), but his book is the go-to citation for the claim that courts can't bring about social change on their own. Brown, he argues (and backs up with a mountain of data), was relatively meaningless -- desegregation didn't begin in earnest until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, and desegregation ceased as soon as the political costs began to outweigh the benefits. Rosenberg is quite clear that the problem was not a lack of effort by the judiciary. Rather, it is structural weaknesses present in the judicial branch -- for example, lack of control over budget and enforcement, lack of resources and expertise to oversee complicated remedial plans, and constitutional inability (due to standing rules in Article III) to be proactive in face of popular resistance. To say the problem is that Courts "aren't radical enough" is to wildly miss the point -- the problem is that people think the Courts are even capable of effectuating this sort of change. Bell absolutely concurs with this argument -- adding other reasons for judicial incapacity as well -- but the position itself is not unique to Crits. It is a mainstay of the entire American Courts subfield of political science and law.
And again, why should this position -- that social movements shouldn't rely on the judiciary to achieve their ends -- even be controversial? The irony is that these positions are fundamentally conservative ones. The right-wing has always complained that liberals want courts to engage in social engineering beyond their institutional capacity, in ways that supersede the will of the people as expressed through democratic branches. But Bell's beliefs are entirely consistent with this critique -- he agrees that one shouldn't use courts as primary engines of reform, and that one should instead look to more localized methods of achieving ones ends. The obsession liberals have with the courts, Bell and Obama both hold, is counterproductive -- it accords the courts far more power than they either ought to have or are capable of effectively wielding.
The final area of Bell's writing that might be controversial is his belief that the American corpus of law maintains and perpetuates racism and White supremacy. This would be something thing is distinctively CRT. It also has no link to President Obama, who is notable for the rarity with which he approaches policy through the lens of race or racial equality. And that, more than anything, is why Dorothy Brown was clearly right in saying Obama doesn't even have a "vapor" of CRT. CRT approaches problems of law primarily through how they affect questions of race, and their general answer is "American law perpetuates racism". As Obama doesn't really focus on race in American life at all, it is bizarre to label him as particularly CRT-oriented.
Should the idea that racism is ingrained in American law be controversial? I guess it's inevitable. But the argument isn't hard to make. The starting point is that racism is normal in American society. That's an empirical argument resolvable by empirical research -- people can chest-thump all they want about how outrageous it is to assert that racism is common-place in America, but the fact remains that racism is something we can measure, and the measurements indicate it still is very prevalent (see, e.g., here (applicants with Black-sounding names fare considerably worse than Whites with identical qualifications), here (holding credentials constant, Blacks on the job market fare worse than Whites with criminal records), and here (knowledge of a seller's race causes buyers to offer reduced prices for goods of identical quality sold by Black merchants)).
But since the law (incorrectly) assumes racism is aberrational, it generally maintains a stance of neutrality -- it doesn't talk about race, and generally just upholds the (still racially biased) status quo. Moreover, since the law's presumption is that it should not delve into racial matters, what efforts do exist to remedy that still-extant racial inequality are greeted with significant suspicion by the courts -- leading to, for example, the Court finding that voluntary desegregation of public schools is an unconstitutional violation of the 14th Amendment. Given these twin arguments (1) that society remains racist and (2) that the dominant legal structures are geared to prevent significant shifts along the axis of race, the conclusion that the law acts to perpetuate racism is perfectly plausible.
It's worth one final point here -- note that these problems of racism (e.g., that Black sellers receive less than White sellers, all else equal) are not problems that seem amenable to judicial resolution. How exactly would a seller bring a claim to remedy this racial disparity? It's unclear, and for a court to try and solve this problem would likely be futile and would probably constitute overreach. So if we think that disparity is bad, our remedy should not come from the courts but from elsewhere. But that observation -- that social reform should come from institution more democratically accountable than the federal judiciary -- is not something that distinguishes Crits from mainstream Americans. If anything, it is something that seemingly unites across political borders.
So to conclude:
(1) Many of the arguments under dispute here simply aren't (or shouldn't be) that controversial. Interest-convergence is simply a historical point regarding what causes major civil rights shifts, and the particular claim about Brown has been verified by subsequent historical literature. The idea that people should not look to the courts as the primary engineers of social reform is (a) mainstream, if not conservative, and (b) hardly the exclusive province of critical race theorists.
(2) The claim that Obama and Bell want a "more radical" judiciary is almost comically false in its misreading of the argument. The claim Bell, like Rosenberg and Obama, make is that the judiciary is a terrible locus point for social movement efforts, and that it was a massive tactical mistake to focus on the courts as opposed to other avenues for reform. Their argument is fundamentally a critique of those who were saying "if only the courts were willing to do more, we'd be in the promised land".
(3) The distinctively "CRT" elements of CRT are the focus on race as the point of the analysis for American law, with Bell concluding that the law entrenches and reifies racial hierarchy in America. Obama can't be said to operate from this lens, since Obama almost never talks about or focuses on the law's effect on race and racial relations -- putting him in a polar opposite position from the CRTers. As for the merits of Bell's position itself, it's perfectly plausible. American legal doctrine as stands generally views the racial status quo as adequate and works to maintain it -- unwilling to tolerate significant efforts to make it either more or less racist. But if the baseline is already one of White supremacy -- if racism is the default setting (an empirical question) -- then this "neutrality" perpetuates and protects a racist status quo. This is "radical" in the sense of challenging fundamental assumptions about American law, but it's hardly something that should be beyond the pale for academics to explore.
UPDATE: The one thing left is this question about whether CRT is "about White supremacy". "About" is ambiguous language -- it can mean "related to" ("this class is about physics") or it can mean "exemplifying" ("I'm all about authenticity"), and I think that's where the confusion lies. Pollak cast CRT as being the antithesis of Martin Luther King, instead being "about White supremacy". That is more of the "exemplifying" reading (the opposite of being MLK is supporting White supremacy), and that sounds like what Brown and O'Brien were responding to (obviously, CRT is not about supporting or maintaining White supremacy). Does Critical Race Theory talks about racism and White supremacy? Of course it does. Does it support White supremacy and racism? Obviously not.
Now which way to Pollak mean it? It's hard to say, as he was kind of rambling, which is how these sorts of miscommunications happen. If anything, it seems like he doesn't mean anything in particular, instead relying on the emotive punch of the phrase "White supremacy" (specifically, his belief that it will rile up White ressentiment which is tired of being supposedly blamed for the existence of racism and sees all discourse about racial inequity as "playing the race card") absent any content whatsoever. This is the political cleverness of this gambit -- it's not about particular arguments. It's simply a belief that any discussion about racism is a discussion Republicans are winning, because it appeals to a sense of siege and victimization by the GOP's White base.
Hey, anything for Breitbart. Ready? The claims Breitbart's site is making about Bell and Obama are entirely wrong, and betray a fundamental misunderstanding not just of critical race theory, but of massive swaths of literature on the judiciary.
Now, the pattern of Breitbart's attacks is hard to discern -- it seems to be just throwing up random arguments Bell has made over the course of his career, punctuated by scary adjectives. So, for example, my expertise is demonstrated via my 2006 description of Bell's interest-convergence theory, which holds, in essence, that civil rights advances occur when they are in the interest of Whites. In terms of Brown v. Board, the interest was maintaining our diplomatic edge in the Cold War, which caused the Eisenhower administration to intervene on the side of the NAACP (the Soviets had been using Jim Crow abuses as a cudgel against the US in their diplomatic efforts to curry favor in the Third World).
As I noted in my post, subsequent historians have verified that Bell's argument here is perfectly accurate (the key book is Cold War Civil Rights, by USC legal historian Mary Dudziak), and I'm not sure why the claim should be seen as controversial. I mean, I suppose it dispenses with the notion that civil rights advances were done because White people collectively saw the light, but so what? Obviously the truth should be an absolute defense anyway, but to the extent Bell is arguing simply that people act in their self-interest, he's observing nothing more controversial than the building block of capitalism, law & economics, and the Federalist Papers ("if men were angels ..."). If anything, Bell's argument is fundamentally conservative -- it's not about fuzzy notions of "justice" and "doing the right thing", it's about hard-headed analysis of the national interest.
In any event, despite linking to me on this point, this doesn't form the core of their objection to Professor Bell. Rather, they take issue with his general disdain for using courts as methods of social change. Well -- sort of, and here is where they seem to fall wildly off the rails. This column attempts to claim that Barack Obama wished the Warren Court had been "more radical", a sentiment he allegedly shares with Bell. It is almost impossible to count the ways this is wrong -- it manages to get Obama's position wrong, Bell's position wrong, as well as misattributing the actual position in question as emblematic of "critical race theory", when it has a much broader reach than that.
The quotes they give from Obama make the relatively unremarkable assertion that, for all the Warren Court's supposed "radicalism", it actually was surprisingly modest in its reach. It did not attempt wide-ranging socio-economic reform (typically seen as beyond the reach of the judiciary). It focused on enforcing negative rights -- freedom from governmental coercion -- which is well within the classic wheelhouse of the judiciary. And he goes on to say that social movements who adopted a "courts-focused" strategy made a terrible mistake, because they expended resources in a forum that would not and likely could not actually grant them the victories they desired. And Bell is mostly in agreement here -- his experiences as a litigator for the NAACP convinced him that a judicial strategy was sharply limited in what it would be able to accomplish for everyday Blacks.
What's wrong is the extension Breitbart asserts over and over is "clear" -- that Obama (and Bell) wish the Court would have taken on this role. That claim, alas, is "clearly" wrong. Most mainstream legal theorists don't think the Court is legitimately in the business of guaranteeing positive rights -- it would be illegitimate for them to make such guarantees part of their jurisprudence. This holds true even if one thinks that some positive guarantees should exist. So, for example, I might think that we should have a minimum wage (I do), but not believe the Courts should mandate one as a matter of constitutional law. This is not a particularly complicated concept -- it simply holds that there is a difference between one's political commitments and what one thinks is the legitimate province of the courts -- a staple of conservative constitutional principles, incidentally. That's half of Obama's point (I'll get to the latter half in a second) -- that the judiciary is properly constrained by certain essential principles, that the Warren Court did not break free of those constraints but rather stayed well within them, and that thus nothing it did should be seen as particularly out of the mainstream. To the extent liberals wanted to see change of the sort not properly engineered by the courts, they should have focused on social elements that are legitimately tasked with those projects (such as legislatures).
That's a legitimacy point -- that the Courts are not properly tasked with certain social agenda items, even if it would be a good thing for society if they were accomplished in some other way -- and it is perfectly mainstream. Does Bell agree? It's unclear, since Bell is more focused on the second half of the equation -- legitimate or not, are courts institutionally capable of accomplishing widespread social reform? Bell's answer here -- mediated by his time as a frontline NAACP attorney during the civil rights revolution -- is a resounding no. If what one wants is widespread social reform, going through the courts is a bad idea. It doesn't matter whether courts ought to do it or not, in fact, it doesn't matter whether courts want to do it or not. They are structurally incapable of accomplishing significant social reform. Reformers should focus their attention on other, more effective means of attaining their desired ends -- like community organizing, like lobbying elected branches.
Is this a CRT position? To some extent, yes, but it's hardly restricted to them. Probably the most well-known defense of this stance came in Gerald Rosenberg's The Hollow Hope. Rosenberg is not part of the Critical Race Theory movement (he's also a White dude, so Breitbart readers can trust him), but his book is the go-to citation for the claim that courts can't bring about social change on their own. Brown, he argues (and backs up with a mountain of data), was relatively meaningless -- desegregation didn't begin in earnest until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, and desegregation ceased as soon as the political costs began to outweigh the benefits. Rosenberg is quite clear that the problem was not a lack of effort by the judiciary. Rather, it is structural weaknesses present in the judicial branch -- for example, lack of control over budget and enforcement, lack of resources and expertise to oversee complicated remedial plans, and constitutional inability (due to standing rules in Article III) to be proactive in face of popular resistance. To say the problem is that Courts "aren't radical enough" is to wildly miss the point -- the problem is that people think the Courts are even capable of effectuating this sort of change. Bell absolutely concurs with this argument -- adding other reasons for judicial incapacity as well -- but the position itself is not unique to Crits. It is a mainstay of the entire American Courts subfield of political science and law.
And again, why should this position -- that social movements shouldn't rely on the judiciary to achieve their ends -- even be controversial? The irony is that these positions are fundamentally conservative ones. The right-wing has always complained that liberals want courts to engage in social engineering beyond their institutional capacity, in ways that supersede the will of the people as expressed through democratic branches. But Bell's beliefs are entirely consistent with this critique -- he agrees that one shouldn't use courts as primary engines of reform, and that one should instead look to more localized methods of achieving ones ends. The obsession liberals have with the courts, Bell and Obama both hold, is counterproductive -- it accords the courts far more power than they either ought to have or are capable of effectively wielding.
The final area of Bell's writing that might be controversial is his belief that the American corpus of law maintains and perpetuates racism and White supremacy. This would be something thing is distinctively CRT. It also has no link to President Obama, who is notable for the rarity with which he approaches policy through the lens of race or racial equality. And that, more than anything, is why Dorothy Brown was clearly right in saying Obama doesn't even have a "vapor" of CRT. CRT approaches problems of law primarily through how they affect questions of race, and their general answer is "American law perpetuates racism". As Obama doesn't really focus on race in American life at all, it is bizarre to label him as particularly CRT-oriented.
Should the idea that racism is ingrained in American law be controversial? I guess it's inevitable. But the argument isn't hard to make. The starting point is that racism is normal in American society. That's an empirical argument resolvable by empirical research -- people can chest-thump all they want about how outrageous it is to assert that racism is common-place in America, but the fact remains that racism is something we can measure, and the measurements indicate it still is very prevalent (see, e.g., here (applicants with Black-sounding names fare considerably worse than Whites with identical qualifications), here (holding credentials constant, Blacks on the job market fare worse than Whites with criminal records), and here (knowledge of a seller's race causes buyers to offer reduced prices for goods of identical quality sold by Black merchants)).
But since the law (incorrectly) assumes racism is aberrational, it generally maintains a stance of neutrality -- it doesn't talk about race, and generally just upholds the (still racially biased) status quo. Moreover, since the law's presumption is that it should not delve into racial matters, what efforts do exist to remedy that still-extant racial inequality are greeted with significant suspicion by the courts -- leading to, for example, the Court finding that voluntary desegregation of public schools is an unconstitutional violation of the 14th Amendment. Given these twin arguments (1) that society remains racist and (2) that the dominant legal structures are geared to prevent significant shifts along the axis of race, the conclusion that the law acts to perpetuate racism is perfectly plausible.
It's worth one final point here -- note that these problems of racism (e.g., that Black sellers receive less than White sellers, all else equal) are not problems that seem amenable to judicial resolution. How exactly would a seller bring a claim to remedy this racial disparity? It's unclear, and for a court to try and solve this problem would likely be futile and would probably constitute overreach. So if we think that disparity is bad, our remedy should not come from the courts but from elsewhere. But that observation -- that social reform should come from institution more democratically accountable than the federal judiciary -- is not something that distinguishes Crits from mainstream Americans. If anything, it is something that seemingly unites across political borders.
So to conclude:
(1) Many of the arguments under dispute here simply aren't (or shouldn't be) that controversial. Interest-convergence is simply a historical point regarding what causes major civil rights shifts, and the particular claim about Brown has been verified by subsequent historical literature. The idea that people should not look to the courts as the primary engineers of social reform is (a) mainstream, if not conservative, and (b) hardly the exclusive province of critical race theorists.
(2) The claim that Obama and Bell want a "more radical" judiciary is almost comically false in its misreading of the argument. The claim Bell, like Rosenberg and Obama, make is that the judiciary is a terrible locus point for social movement efforts, and that it was a massive tactical mistake to focus on the courts as opposed to other avenues for reform. Their argument is fundamentally a critique of those who were saying "if only the courts were willing to do more, we'd be in the promised land".
(3) The distinctively "CRT" elements of CRT are the focus on race as the point of the analysis for American law, with Bell concluding that the law entrenches and reifies racial hierarchy in America. Obama can't be said to operate from this lens, since Obama almost never talks about or focuses on the law's effect on race and racial relations -- putting him in a polar opposite position from the CRTers. As for the merits of Bell's position itself, it's perfectly plausible. American legal doctrine as stands generally views the racial status quo as adequate and works to maintain it -- unwilling to tolerate significant efforts to make it either more or less racist. But if the baseline is already one of White supremacy -- if racism is the default setting (an empirical question) -- then this "neutrality" perpetuates and protects a racist status quo. This is "radical" in the sense of challenging fundamental assumptions about American law, but it's hardly something that should be beyond the pale for academics to explore.
UPDATE: The one thing left is this question about whether CRT is "about White supremacy". "About" is ambiguous language -- it can mean "related to" ("this class is about physics") or it can mean "exemplifying" ("I'm all about authenticity"), and I think that's where the confusion lies. Pollak cast CRT as being the antithesis of Martin Luther King, instead being "about White supremacy". That is more of the "exemplifying" reading (the opposite of being MLK is supporting White supremacy), and that sounds like what Brown and O'Brien were responding to (obviously, CRT is not about supporting or maintaining White supremacy). Does Critical Race Theory talks about racism and White supremacy? Of course it does. Does it support White supremacy and racism? Obviously not.
Now which way to Pollak mean it? It's hard to say, as he was kind of rambling, which is how these sorts of miscommunications happen. If anything, it seems like he doesn't mean anything in particular, instead relying on the emotive punch of the phrase "White supremacy" (specifically, his belief that it will rile up White ressentiment which is tired of being supposedly blamed for the existence of racism and sees all discourse about racial inequity as "playing the race card") absent any content whatsoever. This is the political cleverness of this gambit -- it's not about particular arguments. It's simply a belief that any discussion about racism is a discussion Republicans are winning, because it appeals to a sense of siege and victimization by the GOP's White base.
Reality-Based Voting Bloc
In anticipation of their upcoming primaries, PPP polls Alabama and Mississippi. They're finding that both states are essentially knotted up between Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum. But there are some interesting breakdowns once you consider the, er, unique views of many Dixie Republicans.
For example, in Mississippi only 12% of voters think Obama's a Christian to 52% who think he's a Muslim and 36% who are not sure. In Alabama just 14% think Obama's a Christian to 45% who think he's a Muslim and 41% who aren't sure. Among voters who answer this question correctly, Romney dominates, but among the Obama's-a-Muslim crowd Gingrich starts to pull back into favor (holding an 11 point lead in Mississippi and tying the race in Alabama).
Barely half of Mississippi Republicans belief interracial marriage should be legal, and Newt crushes amongst those who think it should not. Romney leads amongst the quarter of Alabamans and Mississippians who believe in evolution, while Gingrich tops amongst the majority that does not.
Basically, one thing you can say about Romney is that he does do better among the bloc of Republicans who still have at least a foot planted in reality. The problem, of course, is that this is a relatively small segment of the GOP primary electorate.
For example, in Mississippi only 12% of voters think Obama's a Christian to 52% who think he's a Muslim and 36% who are not sure. In Alabama just 14% think Obama's a Christian to 45% who think he's a Muslim and 41% who aren't sure. Among voters who answer this question correctly, Romney dominates, but among the Obama's-a-Muslim crowd Gingrich starts to pull back into favor (holding an 11 point lead in Mississippi and tying the race in Alabama).
Barely half of Mississippi Republicans belief interracial marriage should be legal, and Newt crushes amongst those who think it should not. Romney leads amongst the quarter of Alabamans and Mississippians who believe in evolution, while Gingrich tops amongst the majority that does not.
Basically, one thing you can say about Romney is that he does do better among the bloc of Republicans who still have at least a foot planted in reality. The problem, of course, is that this is a relatively small segment of the GOP primary electorate.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Bibi Backs Arab Justice
Israeli Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran, the first Arab to sit on the state's high court (and whom I blogged about here), caused a mild stir when he declined to sing the Israeli national anthem at a swearing-in ceremony (he didn't disrespect the anthem -- he just stood silently). The anthem specifically refers to the Jewish yearning for Zion, which needless to say the state's Arab residents find alienating.
The usual far-right suspects went nuts and called for him to be removed from the bench, but Justice Joubran is getting backing from a perhaps surprising source: Bibi Netanyahu himself. Netanyahu dispatched one of his top aides to assure Joubran that the Prime Minister understood and backed his decision. Meanwhile, a right-wing heavy-hitter, Moshe Ya'alon of Likud (not known as the fuzzy sort), savaged Joubran's critics, saying "The attack on Salim Joubran is inexplicable, unnecessary and reeks of persecution due to his origin."
The usual far-right suspects went nuts and called for him to be removed from the bench, but Justice Joubran is getting backing from a perhaps surprising source: Bibi Netanyahu himself. Netanyahu dispatched one of his top aides to assure Joubran that the Prime Minister understood and backed his decision. Meanwhile, a right-wing heavy-hitter, Moshe Ya'alon of Likud (not known as the fuzzy sort), savaged Joubran's critics, saying "The attack on Salim Joubran is inexplicable, unnecessary and reeks of persecution due to his origin."
Weekend Roundup
I have been dialed in these past few weeks, and the blogging has suffered, I know. Not sure if things will pick-up or not in the upcoming days.
* * *
Rick Santorum lets the economic cat out of the bag -- if it improves, Republicans suffer.
Republicans try, fail, to lift a consent decree barring them from voter suppression.
Sarah Palin says Obama pines for pre-Civil War America. I have to say, anytime someone says "obviously, even the most hardened conservative wouldn't say such-and-such", I immediately have very little trouble envisioning a conservative saying it.
My job is awesome. But lots of jobs stink.
Jon Chait postulates that "Bellgate" is just an instantiation of Jewish Republicans wild tendency to see Black anti-Semitism in every corner.
* * *
Rick Santorum lets the economic cat out of the bag -- if it improves, Republicans suffer.
Republicans try, fail, to lift a consent decree barring them from voter suppression.
Sarah Palin says Obama pines for pre-Civil War America. I have to say, anytime someone says "obviously, even the most hardened conservative wouldn't say such-and-such", I immediately have very little trouble envisioning a conservative saying it.
My job is awesome. But lots of jobs stink.
Jon Chait postulates that "Bellgate" is just an instantiation of Jewish Republicans wild tendency to see Black anti-Semitism in every corner.
Friday, March 09, 2012
Long Live the King
Chris Hughes, looking to spend some of the megabucks he's earned as co-founder of Facebook, has bought a majority share in The New Republic and installed himself as the new editor-in-chief. You can read his introductory letter here.
Count me in as a supporter. The New Republic still has, I think, quite a bit to give to the progressive political community. But the increasingly misanthropic rantings of Marty Peretz were holding it back. Hughes is not only a break from the old guard, he is obviously well tied-in to modern media platforms, making him more than just a rich dude playing publisher. He has a real chance to make TNR into an opinion leader again.
Count me in as a supporter. The New Republic still has, I think, quite a bit to give to the progressive political community. But the increasingly misanthropic rantings of Marty Peretz were holding it back. Hughes is not only a break from the old guard, he is obviously well tied-in to modern media platforms, making him more than just a rich dude playing publisher. He has a real chance to make TNR into an opinion leader again.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Bell and Obama
Despite calls from my adoring fan base, I do not plan on providing a lengthy defense of Derrick Bell in the wake of the "revelation" that Barack Obama hugged him. The simple reason is that I don't have the energy to respond to the GOP faux-scandal d'jour, and it feels like only yesterday that I wrote Bell's obituary. Bell's status as a warrior for racial justice, and one of the most important writers on race relations in America should be beyond question, and I'd rather just make believe that we're not so stunted as a society that we can be deluded into thinking Bell is the bad guy in our anti-racism saga.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
The BDS Campaign, All Wrapped in a Little Bow
Who would have thought one little tweet could sum up the entire BDS movement in a tidy little package? The tweet, posted on Monday, brags about an Alitalia Pilot who announced "Welcome To Palestine" after landing at Tel Aviv Airport, linking to this story.
Now, right off the bat this gives us two of the most noteworthy attributes of the BDS campaign -- its incredible ability to hyperventilate regarding the most minute of "victories" (a pilot said a phrase!), and its inability to mask its agenda of eliminating Israel (Tel Aviv, of course, is well on the Israeli side of the Green Line). The latter part is quite important to stress, because it is something the BDSers like to obfuscate -- they are notoriously evasive regarding whether they view all of Israel as "occupied Palestinian land", mostly because they believe the answer is yes but know that position is (a) a complete non-starter and (b) would effectively negate any claims they have that they're pushing -- however inelegantly -- for a just solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. What they want is a situation where Jews are once again a minority everywhere -- where the horror of Jews exercising self-determination and directing their own affairs is no more.
That's a little heavy, and I meant this post to be light. What can bring it back -- oh how's this? This story? It's from 2003. That's right -- it's a tweet praising a random person calling Tel Aviv part of Palestine from nine years ago.
Classic. (Via).
Now, right off the bat this gives us two of the most noteworthy attributes of the BDS campaign -- its incredible ability to hyperventilate regarding the most minute of "victories" (a pilot said a phrase!), and its inability to mask its agenda of eliminating Israel (Tel Aviv, of course, is well on the Israeli side of the Green Line). The latter part is quite important to stress, because it is something the BDSers like to obfuscate -- they are notoriously evasive regarding whether they view all of Israel as "occupied Palestinian land", mostly because they believe the answer is yes but know that position is (a) a complete non-starter and (b) would effectively negate any claims they have that they're pushing -- however inelegantly -- for a just solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. What they want is a situation where Jews are once again a minority everywhere -- where the horror of Jews exercising self-determination and directing their own affairs is no more.
That's a little heavy, and I meant this post to be light. What can bring it back -- oh how's this? This story? It's from 2003. That's right -- it's a tweet praising a random person calling Tel Aviv part of Palestine from nine years ago.
Classic. (Via).
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