Tips to Win the Black Vote#1 Lose the Democratic Party as Plantation Metaphor

Among the political rhetoric which has become obscenely overused by white conservatives (and all too often parroted by black conservatives), the "democratic plantation or slave" metaphor ranks right at the top of rhetoric which should be urgently retired. I'm like as not to find myself guilty of using this egregious analogy if I peruse my prior posts enough.  But it should be banished from the rhetorical dictionary.

Let's get it straight here and now:  Voluntarily casting a vote in support of Democratic Party candidates or policies is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like living under a racist terror state where your labor is stolen from you by violence and your family can literally be sold to punish you.  Choosing to vote for and support the liberal agenda of the democratic party DOES NOT REMOTELY resemble being owned by another person, brutalized at whim, forbidden to marry, bred like an animal, tortured, raped,  being sold away from your family or forbidden to learn to read & write on pain of death or torture.  Slavery was horrific.  Comparing the free exercise of the franchise in support of democrats to it is beyond offensive and stupid.

This metaphor is moronic and ignorant in the extreme and it is beyond unfortunate that it has become a standard rhetorical trope of the right.  If you are a white conservative and you use it, you immediately brand yourself as someone who is more interested in pummeling black folk with your political ideas than engaging them.  If you are a black conservative  and employ this metaphor, you show yourself to be not only ignorant of your history, but dismissive of it, for the sake of being provocative.

UPDATE: Because I have this debate repeatedly with white conservatives and too many black conservatives, I'm going to use some comparatives illustrations to help make my point.  This isn't rocket science.  Have you ever seen Pepsi market its product to Coke drinkers with a campaign that suggests they are stupid to buy Coke? No, for the obvious reason that you don't insult the customer you are trying to win.

Things you should not and would not say or do to sell the conservative political message to voters you were trying to persuade to support you with their votes:

• Tell a woman who is a rape survivor that voting for democrats is like making herself a rape victim
• Tell a Jew that voting for democrats is like voting to experience the Holocaust

If you can understand and agree that the two things above are really stupid, insensitive and more likely to repel the voter you are attempting to win a vote from than attract them, then it should be very easy to understand that likewise, you should not

• Tell the actual descendants of slaves that exercising the voting rights the generation before them actually had to fight and die for in favor of a democrat is like voting to be a slave again.

If you don't get why this is really, really bad messaging, why its really offensive and insulting, then I would say you don't want to get it.  I would say that if its the persuasive argument you insist on using with black voters, you're not actually interested in winning their votes, you are simply demonstrating that you have contempt for them because they don't agree with you politically.  And if you spend a lot of time using this metaphor when talking to white voters, in my opinion, you are trading in racial stereotypes and endorsing and fostering contempt towards black voters to curry favor with white voters.

Gingrich Insulting Blacks for Votes Too: If its Good Enough for Santorum, I'll Double Down

Gingrich doubles down on insulting black people to curry favor with white voters.

I want to say they just don't get it, but its not true.  The difference between Newt and Santorum on this is that as the The Root cogently points out, Santorum is basically a coward when it comes to talking about race.  He just claims he didn't say what he said and wants to run from the issue.  Newt on the other hand, is not one to throw a stone and then hide his hand.  Oh no, Newt is going to insult you, and then tell you why its okay, you know, the old pee in your face and tell you its rain approach.

“I went back and pulled up the exact language of the text,” Mr. Gingrich told reporters on Friday. “I think you’d have to be nuts’’ to interpret the words as critical of blacks.

You have to be nuts to take Newt's stupid denials seriously. You're speaking to an audience of white people at a senior center in NH. You describe Obama as the biggest food stamp president of all time and then declare based on that analysis, that you will go to the NAACP and tell them to start demanding paychecks.  Because when you are talking to a white audience, nothing makes the point better about welfare and dependency and not working than references to black folks and food stamps.

There is no natural relationship or nexus between his food stamp hit on the President and exhorting the NAACP to demand paychecks intstead of food stamps. The common factor of shared ethnicity is what makes it work.  Newt knows that the comment is incendiary, offensive and plays to a stereotype.  Nonetheless he declares to his white audience that he has the courage to go to the NAACP and say this offensive thing to their faces (an NAACP he's presumably talking to try to persuade them to his point of view).

The comment is clearly designed to curry favor with white voters by playing to a stereotype of blacks as lazy, welfare scamming people.  It's certainly not intended to be persuasive to black people.  You don't insult people you're trying to persuade.  Santorum was working on reflex.  Newt however is delivering his line very deliberately to stoke his white audience, feeding the stereotype to his audience to garner their approval and get their vote.  Thats evil.  Assholish.  A real conservative would see the problem immediately, and further, would call it out.

If you're a republican/conservative who thought his comments were cool, who can't fathom what the problem with them is, then you're a lame ass conservative.

Republicans Have Become Incapable of Discussing Race (UPDATED)

The day before the Iowa Caucus, Rick Santorum uses blacks to illustrate a point about government creating dependency in order to win votes.  The statement is on video and its pretty clear at least to me that its what he said. Here is the "cleaned up" version of the CBS video posted at HotAir.com which Ed Morrissey reviews and declares Santorum didn't say black peoples lives:

Santorum has now also said that he didn't actually say that. I think he's lying to the public and I think he's lying to himself.

When people like me reacted to Santorum's statement, conservatives rushed to his defense with the wildest of arguments: He didn't say it.  Its right there on the tape, but no, you didn't hear what you thought.  Its become the Rodney King video of presidential campaign politics. The denial is unreal. Here's how a commenter at NPR on the story explained it all away:

I worked on developing speech synthesis and speech recognition technology for a number of years and learned a lot about speech articulation and human perception. I am a Romney supporter but it is clear to me that Senator Santorum stumbled when attempting to say the phrase "peoples lives" so he paused after the first attempt and repeated the phrase "peoples lives". If you read his lips you can see that he mangled the first attempt to say the word 'people; and only the second half of the word people came out with part of the word 'lives' which is why he corrected himself. Since both the b sound and the p sound are made on the lips (the only difference is that the vocal cords "hum" with a b sound) the 'pl' sound when mangled sounded like a 'bl' sound. However if you listen to the recording and watch his lips he was not attempting to make an 'ack' sound but lots of listeners heard "black" because mentally they associate "black people" with public assistance. It was not Senator Santorum that was prejudicial, it was the listeners.

 Got that?  Its basically just in our minds.  Our brains, all of our brains, are just playing mental auditory tricks on us, making us hear our own prejudiced thoughts. Look at the extraordinary mental gymnastics going on in the above statement to negate what you clearly see and hear in the video.

As an aside, and a tip for others who need to defend themselves against a charge of prejudicial speech,  using as a defense all the great things you've done for black people is the wrong response.  If you have to tell all the great things you've done, you've already lost.  If Santorum were smart AND he truly had done some things in the black community that were beneficial, there would be a black person willing to say so.  You let them say all the good stuff you've done.  Just a little PR tip for free.

That Santorum would make a statement that suggests that blacks are largely on welfare and that welfare comes to us via money taken out of the pockets of white voters by government is not surprising, shocking or unusual.  That is a persistent meme on the right.  If I sat down with a Tea Party member or your average poster at Hot Air, they would would largely agree with that supposition.

What this episode really illustrates is how completely incapable of a principled discussion about race the GOP has become. Where does this denial come from? This refusal to face the issue and discuss it? Part of it is black folks fault. For years, we cried racism for so many things, sometimes deserved, sometimes not and we won the war.  White people think being a racist is evil and they are horrified to even have it suggested about them. Herein lies the problem now.  If you even suggest a critique of a policy or statement which alludes to a racial element, you are assumed to be making a charge of racism.  But because the terminology has been used so indiscriminately, we no longer have any shared understanding of what that means.  So now if you call someone a racist, or something milder such as suggesting that their behavior, words or opinion is motivated by race in some way, it is interpreted as an accusation that they are essentially akin to a Klansman and bear an irrational hatred to blacks.  Its like calling someone an evil caricature or cartoon.  And since most people are NOT Klansman, the accusation or critique is dismissed as though that's what you suggested.

Take Santorum.  He's obviously NOT a racist. But what he said in Iowa is clearly influenced by racially stereotypical ideas that are not grounded in the facts.  That is something that should be called out and discussed.  The issue isn't whether Santorum is a racist.  The issue is that his thinking has been shaped by faulty racial stereotypes and we should talk about that so that its surfaced and he can correct his thinking.

Conservatives however can never reach a discussion of the merits, because they are too busy defending themselves and saying that they are not evil Klansman.  They simply deny the charge, whatever it is, rather than engage the issue.  Now, it is simply become routine to adopt a posture that says any charge that suggests I'm influenced by racial stereotypes is defacto an accusation that I'm an evil racist and since that's obviously not true, I don't even have to make a principled response to your charge, I can just dismiss it. Its become an easy way to avoid having a real discussion about the memes regarding black people that are commonplace in the minds of conservatives.  That avoidance has rendered the GOP incapable of discussing the issue in any self critical way, to its detriment.

Rick Santorum Surges in Iowa with Stereotypes of Lazy Blacks Taking Welfare Out of White People's Pockets

How you think the brother "working" the camera behind him liked that?

Rick Santorum has been riding a real surge in Iowa over the last few days, moving into striking distance of being in the top three finishers out there in the caucuses.  He's been putting in work the old fashioned way, visiting every single county in the state, doing small group meetings one after the other and talking to the voters.

Campaigning isn't the only thing Santorum is apparently doing the old fashioned way. Using stereotypes of blacks as a convenient shorthand to illustrate the ills of America as white voters see it is another way that Rick is demonstrating his old school campaign chops. At a campaign stop in Sioux City Iowa, a voter asks Santorum: "how do we get off this crazy train? We've got so much foreign influence in this country now," adding "where do we go from here?"

Santorum's answer perhaps started with foreign influence but rambled over to the subject of government creating dependency and he apparently reached into his campaign communication bag of tricks for the most easily relatable and easy to understand illustration of that issue he could think of on the fly: black people:

Notice how he basically defaulted to this stereotyped racially based meme in trying to communicate with a room full of white folks?  Check the pause as he was trying to find an illustration of his point about dependency.  He needed that illustration right then, something that would resonate with a room full of white people and where did his brain go in that moment? Black people.

With his numbers surging in Iowa, Santorum is perhaps poised to be the next of the Not Romney's to rise in the polls and get a more serious look.  I was certainly willing to pay him some more attention, as I've got real respect for a guy who hits the ground and pounds the pavement like he's been doing in Iowa.  But unless Santorum gives a far more insightful, honest answer to the question of why he defaulted to "blacks" as the best illustration for his point regarding dependency on government, he's effectively blown any serious future look from me irregardless of what he says.  When asked directly about why he talked about blacks, he ducked and dodged.




I'm sorry, but his response is not gonna cut it with me.  We'll see if any other media ask him to speak to the issue.  I think it would be an interesting exercise to ask the other candidates to assess those remarks as well.  No one is gonna do it, but I'm already certain that one or more of them would likely double down on it if they were asked.

Here's what he said:

"It just keeps expanding - I was in Indianola a few months ago and I was talking to someone who works in the department of public welfare here, and she told me that the state of Iowa is going to get fined if they don't sign up more people under the Medicaid program. They're just pushing harder and harder to get more and more of you dependent upon them so they can get your vote. That's what the bottom line is. I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families. The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling again." 

There is a lot to object to in Santorum's statement;

Context: he's in Iowa, in a room full of white people, in a state in which about 3% of the population is black, using "blacks" to illustrate the problem of government dependency.
 

Implicit assumptions: To illustrate his point about government dependency, he plays to a stereotype that the majority of blacks are dependent on government welfare.  He just says "blacks".  He doesn't qualify it or limit it in anyway, presumably because he doesn't have to.  Everyone in the room will immediately understand and agree with his implicit assumption that most blacks are on welfare.

This is a guy who's response to Howard Dean saying diversity was a strength of America was that talking about our diversity is divisive.  Yet, here, he plays to racial resentment by implicitly suggesting that "blacks" are being given white people's money, money which the government took from hard working white people to give to lazy blacks. He wants to give us "blacks" the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for ourselves, I guess because all us shiftless lazy Negroes don't work to take care of ourselves. Those are the implicit assumptions behind his statement.  Its offensive.  Its untrue.  We've been called lazy for hundreds of years.   When we were forced to work for free as slaves in the fields on pain of death, they called us lazy. It was not true then.  Its not true now.

His statements and the assumptions behind them are pretty offensive.  "Blacks" are on welfare.  All of us.  Now of course, the out he and others will use to justify labeling blacks as welfare parasites, if he's even asked, is to say "what I was really referring to is that a larger percentage of blacks are on welfare relative to their share of the population compared to whites".  Right?   Wrong. What is welfare?  I say welfare is any government financial assistance that is received but not earned, that taxes one group to support another group, meaning it's pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people's own savings pay their  benefits and lastly Congress can alter benefits to reflect changing needs, economic conditions and politics.  That being the case, welfare comes in many forms besides public assistance that goes to poor black people, like for example the subsidies we pay farmers NOT to farm or even better, Social Security, which is definitely welfare.  Those programs are breaking the bank and even more interesting, the majority of those benefits go to people who are not the same color as me. But Santorum doesn't have a problem with welfare payments where the benefits go primarily to white people. If welfare and government dependence are really the big issues, lets talk about all of it; why do you get in a room with other white people, start talking about welfare and single out black recipients? How do you justify such divisive talk on the campaign trail, even as you claim to be all about our equality and our common citizenship? Its racebaiting, and what makes it really insidious and repugnant in this instance is the routine nature of it.  That particular meme of black dependency on government is a standard staple of political discourse on the right, certainly within its more conservative wings, even though its not supported by the facts. Its a racial lie that has been perpetuated in just the way Santorum spreads it here.

Nobody in that room of good Iowa voters in there challenged that.  Indeed, Santorum got applause for those remarks, so clearly there were a significant number of the voters in that room who completely agreed with those comments.  Rick Santorum is a darling of the Tea Party, regarded as a consistent conservative after their own hearts.  He's the darling of aTea Party that vehemently denies any allegation that it is racially biased in any way whatsoever. Well,  here is an opportunity for the Tea Party to actually demonstrate its regard for African Americans as equal citizens worthy of the basic consideration of not being blanketly described as lazy, welfare parasites leeching the money of hard working white folks.  Repudiate these statements of Santorum's.  Publicly state that they are wrong and divisive. Demand that he apologize for them.  I'm not gonna hold my breath.  And if you're a Tea Party member and think these statements are okay, then I'm gonna tell you that you and the Tea Party do have racial bias when it comes to race if you buy into the stereotypes and assumptions implicit in Santorum's statements.

I'm betting that no one in the Tea Party movement will decry these statements or even criticize them in any but the most namby pamby of ways.  I'm betting none of his fellow candidates will say squat about these comments or take the opportunity to hammer him with them in political attack ads (though well they should).  On the contrary, to the extent anyone else in the party speaks to the comments, I'm betting they will either soft pedal their critique or more likely and worse, they will try to explain, using statistics, how blacks are heavily dependent on government welfare and that Santorum's comments are really accurate. But the facts are quite the opposite.  Whites receive far more welfare benefits than blacks.  Saying anything else is simply a divisive racially biased lie.  Unless of course you're Rick Santorum on the campaign trail in Iowa looking to get nice white conservative voters on your team. 

If You're Black and Dress Funny, Don't Fly US Airways

I tend to think the Color of Change model of activism is a study in majoring in the minors most of the time. Fellow blogger Cultural Strategist has a lower opinion of their activities than that. From time to time however, they shine a light on BS that needs some type of response.  They've found another this week where I agree a response is warranted.

DeShon Marman was taken off of US Airways flight 488, arrested, shackled, and jailed after airline staff confronted him about his sagging pants.  He describes the event in his own words:

For the record,  I buy his side of the story in total.  I detest the phenomenon of sagging pants en vogue among some young black men and I'm not particularly offended that the young man was asked to adjust his clothing, which he did, although apparently not to the satisfaction of the ticketing agent or flight crew.  However, poor taste in attire should not be cause for arrest and forced removal of a paying customer from an aircraft.

If this is to be the response of US Airways to clothing in poor taste, then they need to set a standard which is clear and transparent so that their customers can be forewarned. US Airways acknowledges that six days before they removed DeShon Marman from the plane because of his attire, they let this guy fly without any hassle at all, even in the face of complaints from passengers during and after the flight. According to their spokesperson, Valerie Wunder,
"We don't have a dress code policy".  Actually, US Airways, you do, and its apparently whatever your ticketing and flight crew happen to think it is that day.  Its tremendously disappointing.  This is the airline of nerves of steel hero pilot Chelsley Sullenberger for crying out loud.

We're not the only ones detecting the pungent aroma of BS. The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office reviewed the June 15 arrest and found the matter unworthy of filing any charges, publicly stating “My belief is if we took this into a courtroom with 12 members of our community on our jury, they would tell me, ‘Come on guys, you have more important things to spend your time on, and I share that view.” - San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe

As an African American professional male who does not wear sagging pants, but does fly for business and pleasure, US Airways' treatment of this young man, if not addressed more satisfactorily, would cause me to avoid flying their airline and to encourage others, white, black or indifferent, to avoid their airline as well.  This entire incident smacks of unwarranted arbitrariness and the exercise of unfettered poor judgement.  Who knows how you might be treated at the hands of employees of a company that behaves this erratically.

The young man's clothing, while in poor taste, posed no threat to passengers or crew other than the distaste of being exposed to its view.  US Airways has no dress code and is flexible enough to let drag queen's fly in an outrageous get up on a flight containing all sorts of people including children, even when customers complain. Yet US Airway's personnel responded to DeShon as though he posed a material threat to the security of the flight. The young man adjusted his clothing upon reaching his seat, entirely understandable considering the crush of boarding a plane, but that was not sufficient. If the white drag queen can fly, I'm sorry, its a little hard not feel like its racial when the young brother who's pajamas are hanging a little low gets a swat team called on him.  US Airways wants to make much of the mild resistance DeShon apparently rendered when he was being arrested, but frankly, I'm not going to hold it against the young brother that he was justifiably pissed off as a paying customer to be treated in such a disgraceful way.

The pilot is law on the plane, but they should exercise sound judgement. This action was not that.  US Airway's and the pilot whose actions they defend will have to decide if this petty exercise of a pilot's prerogative was actually warranted or worth the justifiable offense they've given.  US Airways should acknowledge the error in this situation and make amends before their corporate reputation is done any further damage.

1. "Exclusive: Student talks about saggy pants arrest," KGO-TV, 06-18-11
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/897?akid=2066.867061.6Y7sB6&t=7

2. "Prosecutors won’t file charges against man arrested with saggy pants at San Francisco airport," Washington Post, 07-13-11
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/904?akid=2066.867061.6Y7sB6&t=9

6. "Man flies US Airways in women's underwear," SF Gate, 06-21-11
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/899?akid=2066.867061.6Y7sB6&t=13

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Slavery on the Collective Conservative Mind

The advent of a black president has created a moment in which the GOP is twisting itself into knots trying to play the race card in a way that makes it sound as though they are articulating an actual concern with blacks as a political constituency, because they think it makes such a nifty line of attack. Its a twofer; criticize the president and rub his incompetence in black people's faces at the same time. Gingrich has his foodstamp president line for example.


The FAMiLY Leader, a public advocacy organization affiliated with the Iowa Family Policy Center, is the latest conservative entity to indulge in this dig at black political gullibility. They recently issued the Marriage Vow, a declaration of principles adherence to marriage and family values and have wasted no time asking GOP candidates to sign it. Several have, with Michelle Bachman being the candidate who got called out for missing the little racial bomblet in the pledge, to wit:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.3


 It's worth pointing out that the Family Leader actually footnoted the above mentioned conclusion with a reference to the work of a group of academics hailing from colleges including Morehouse and Hampton, with a contribution from Lorraine Blackman hailing from right here at the Indiana University School of Social Work. I've read through the report, somewhat ominously titled The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans.  Based on my read of it, the Family Leader drew the above conclusion from this statement on page 8.

But overall, family formation patterns were relatively similar for Blacks and Whites, with marriage occupying a paramount place in family life. For example, in 1880 and 1910 about 56.3 percent of Black and 66.9 percent of White households were nuclear households,

Bachman caught flack for signing onto the pledge, on the grounds that this passage in the pledge suggests that there was actually something beneficial for blacks families in the institution of slavery. The Jack & Jill Politics blog bluntly called out this passage as using slavery as a cheap emotional hook to make a political point. I agree with that.

Intellectual conservative Jedi master Cobb (I say that with sincere respect) opines " You have a conservative group trying to say something reasonable and putting black families in the focus and it is being shot down by idiots."

My take? I don't buy for a minute that the Family Leader was attempting to put black families in the focus.  You know that is not the case when you consider the target audience of the pledge, which is conservative base GOP voters. The candidates are signing on to the pledge in order to curry favor with that portion of the electorate.  This is not a document that was intended to be spread around in the black community, nor written with them in mind. 

Ham handed invocations of slavery like this one are proof positive that both the GOP leadership and rank and file still do not regard blacks as a political constituency necessary or essential to their aspirations for governance. If we did, we would figure out the right communication and enforce some goddamn messaging discipline just like we do for all other messaging we think is important. Its just not that hard.  Because the GOP doesn't really give a damn about blacks as a political constituency, we continue to be subjected to unforced errors like this. Lazy, small bore attacks that aspire to depress a portion of the black vote by demoralizing attrition, all the while deriving what I can't help but believe is a certain savage subconscious satisfaction at rubbing the incompetence of the first African American president in the black communities' collective face.

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White People Raising Black Children.....

.....that don't properly take care of the child's hair make me want to scream.  Literally.  It makes me genuinely angry when I am out in public and I see a white family that is raising a black child and the child's hair is a hot mess.  I had this experience again today while shopping with the Hot Little Number at a local jewelers.  A white couple came into the store with a black daughter, probably age 10 or 11. Her hair was nappy, unkempt, uncombed and altogether terrible looking.  A black family with any standard about personal appearance would NEVER allow their child in the street looking the way this young lady looked. Other black people observing such a child within a black family would regard them as trifling in the extreme for taking such poor care of the child's hair.  I assume the white families I see like this love their children and want their children to of course look their best and always present their best face to the world. I also assume that as incredulous as it may seem, they simply don't know what or how to appropriately take care of a black child's hair and quite possibly live within a personal circle devoid of other black families who would be a resource to them in this regard or from which they would get a clue on the issue of hair care.  You have to make that assumption when you see a black child out with their parents and their hair looks that atrocious, because there is no other way to reconcile it. In lieu of a picture of the family I saw, I included in this post a picture of Angeline Jolie out with two of her children (for the record, I think both Zahara and Shiloh's hair look a mess, so Jolie catches a break from me for being an equal opportunity unkempt maternal hair stylist). This pic generated serious discussion at the Love Isn't Enough blog, with some people making the case that we need to get past cultural strictures about black hair care and embrace the natural hair look. To those arguments, I say, I hear where you coming from, but that's a bunch of hooey. Just like you can't roll into a job interview with your pants sagging, you can't roll through the world with your hair a hot mess.  Going natural doesn't mean going uncared for or going unkempt.

It makes me angry at the parents, because I feel like they don't have a good excuse not to know better.  This is especially true where middle class and affluent white parents are concerned.  You see other black people and their children. You can buy a magazine like Ebony or Essence and look at the pictures and see black women and girls with attractively styled hair.  You can investigate how to get your child's hair taken care of appropriately. There are white parents who have done this, so there is just not an excuse to be so neglectful in this area.  In some places, local stylists have taken a proactive approach to this issue and God bless them.  There are resources out there to consult.  White parents who have CHOSEN to raise a black child have no excuse to not be educated on this front.

I have to confess to cowardice in the face of this issue.  Every single time I have encountered such situations, I have wanted to approach the couple in question, broach the issue with them and offer to connect them to a hair stylist who could appropriately care for the child's hair.  I have never done so out of fear of giving offense and because I felt at a complete loss as to how to even begin such a conversation without giving offense.  In every case, I come away feeling the way I do right now, a hour or so after this most recent siting; angry, embarrassed (for myself and on the child's behalf) and that I have failed this black child, that I have left her in an esteem destroying situation because I didn't open my mouth. Particularly for a black female child being raised in a white family and in a predominately white community (this child was from Carmel, In), to be permitted to walk around with her hair unkempt and uncombed is simply not acceptable.  People are judged on their appearance and those judgments have consequences and generate behavioral outcomes. That child is being shaped in part by the responses of the people around her and her hair is an important part of her personal presentation.  Its a woman's crowning glory for Pete's sake.   All of which seemed lost on the parents I saw this evening.

Think I'm out of line? Well, give me your take. Assuming this situation makes you feel the same way, how would you handle it, or if you did handle it, what did you do?   I need a protocol, a way to broach this issue with total strangers in public where my window is probably 120 seconds or less.  Because I just cannot bear to fail another black child growing up in a caring, loving but clueless white family in this way.

Dr. Laura: For White People Who Have Considered Saying "Nigger" When Common Sense Was Enough

Apologies to Ntzotke Shange. I've been a Dr. Laura fan for years. I started listening to her show on WJR when I lived in Detroit.  I recall the first time I listened to the show and being appalled at her comments and thinking she was a horrible and mean person.  There were other advice shows on the air with hosts who were nice to their callers.  But Dr. Laura was not about coddling people as she handed out her moral opinions.  Though I at first found her objectionable, I kept listening and over time, came to appreciate the fact that she's actually a very insightful person.  In church language, she has a perceiver motive gift.  She can gain insight into a situation with only a bit of information or observation. And while she can be harsh and stern with her callers, I have again and again heard her on her show demonstrate tremendous compassion and empathy, at times towards people I didn't think there was any thing to empathize with them about. I have also heard her help a lot of people with her advice.  Don't let the Listerine delivery cause you to miss the value in her advice.

But Dr. Laura, like many of us, black and white, has a bit of blind spot when it comes to race. That blind spot was on display in this call to her show from a black woman married to a white man who called for advice about how to handle what she deemed racially insensitive comments from her husband's family and friends.  Check the audio.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Laura got a boatload of criticism for her response and subsequently apologized.
Her apology seemed sincere enough, at least in the reading of it.  But its clear from the apology and from the conversation with her caller Jade, that Dr. Laura was off base in a variety of ways that I'd like to lift up for some examination.  Responding to Jade, Dr. Laura asserts that black guys use the slur "nigger" all the time.

Schlessinger:"Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO and listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger. I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing."

Jade: Is it OK to say that word? Is it ever OK to say that word?

Schlessinger: It depends how it's said. Black guys talking to each other seem to think it's OK.

Jade: But you're not black, they're not black, my husband is white.

Schlessinger: Oh, I see, so a word is restricted to race. Got it. Can't do much about that.

First, the main thrust of her argument to the caller which is often referenced by people in arguments about the slur "nigger", namely that  black people use it in conversation with each other, comics use it copiously and so on.  I'm sorry, but this is a stupid argument based on the false premise that black people routinely and casually use the word "nigger" to refer to each other. Its not true.   Despite the unfortunate prevalence of this racial vulgarity in popular culture created by and targeted at urban youth, many blacks find it to be an offensive and unwelcome vulgarity whatever the color of the person speaking. Dr. Laura actually attempted a bit of an argument for context which would have been somewhat sensible, but misapplied it. She jumped from raunchy black comics talking to adults in HBO programming to the blanket idea that black people use that terminology on each other routinely. Thats a leap.

People, this isn't complicated, its plain common sense.  I don't walk around thinking that it would be appropriate to use the word "bitch" in reference to women, despite the fact that I hear women saying it in the popular culture all the time and the same common sense logic applies here.  Moreover, Dr. Laura's point about observing black comics in pop culture programming using the term is an exercise in stereotyping.  While it is entirely true that black comics routinely use the word "nigger", that's a small subset of the black population. That group is not broadly representative of black Americans in general.  Yet Dr. Laura looks at  the raunchy language of black comics and extrapolates that to the entire black population.  Its inaccurate stereotyping. Some people observe that many urban youth commonly use the word "nigger" in reference to each other in casual conversation ,and that's accurate. However, its also true that most adult black people are chagrined and embarrassed by the way which this vulgarity has become very common in the everyday language of urban youth.  We wince at hearing it, just like we metaphorically throw up a little in our mouths every time we see young black men in sagging pants with their underwear hanging out. Popular culture amplifies this vulgar behavior, thus the mistaken idea that its common among all blacks. Its not.

Her caller, Jade, had a bit of a blindspot too.  Her comments suggested that she subscribed to the idea that using the term "nigger" was acceptable if you were black, but not if you were white. White people react to that because it seems arbitrary.  If its okay when a black person says it, why isn't it okay for a white person? The reality is that in 2010, there is a bit of arbitrariness to this unwritten social rule. But there is nothing magical about why it doesn't go over well when a white person uses this vulgarity for any reason. #1 We're not all walking around calling each other "nigger". I know pop culture tv shows and videos and comics make it seem that way, but you're extrapolating from the behavior of a subset of black people to the whole group.  The majority of the group does not behave that way. So if most of us don't routinely use the word nigger to each other (and we don't) white people have no basis to be mad when we object to you using it either. #2 history is relevant.  There was a time in America when you could be called a nigger by a white person and be killed if you dared to object.  That went on for a few hundred years.  Times have changed, but its no surprise that a word so bound up in a history of oppression, violence and degradation should have a continuing stigma and taboo attached to it. And even if you think "hey, times have changed, don't  be so sensitive", see #1 again. This is the point that Jade should have made to Dr. Laura in response to the bit about comics.

 The social stigma around the word "nigger" also mirrors a practical, commonsense reality which is that I can't really think of very many situations that call for the average white person to use the  racial slur "nigger" in a sentence around the average black person, for any reason. Just doesn't happen very often. And guess what, the same is largely true when black people are talking to other black people.  Simple self test you can try if you're a white person reading this: can you think of a situation where it would be appropriate to use the word "nigger" in a sentence in the company of any black person you know?  The reality is that the majority of black people don't go around calling each other nigger all day.  There is a subset of the population (urban youth) that refers to each other this way quite frequently, but they are not representative, merely more visible via pop culture.  So, if you share Dr. Laura's frustration that a white person simply is not permitted to use the word "nigger" without suffering severe social opprobrium,  get over it. You're laboring under a mistaken impression.

And oh yeah, for the record; I'm still a big Dr. Laura show fan. 

The Racist Web

There is a whole network of sites that cater to a group of people in our society who are quite racist in the sense that they forthrightly argue for the ordering of society based on racial determinism.  I don't go looking for these sites, I simply stumble upon them.  I think they are worth sharing to illuminate the point that a very dangerous kind of racial groupthink is quite alive and well in America.  Here's one that fits that bill:

Majority Rights.com

Joseph Cao: Proof of Concept That Blacks and the GOP Go Together?

Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) may be about to demonstrate how its done for the GOP on how to politically engage with the black community. Cao, a naturalized citizen of Vietnamese descent, is a New Orleans lawyer and the current U.S. Representative from Louisiana's 2nd congressional district. He defeated nine-term Democratic U.S. Representative William Jefferson with 49.6 percent of the vote to Jefferson's 46.8 percent in the 2008 elections. His win was an obvious referendum on the clearly corrupt Jefferson, collector of frozen benjamins.

Cao's district is about 61% African American and he's got a November challenger in state Rep. Cedric Richmond (D), an African American.  Democrats think Cao is vulnerable against a black challenger and pretty much assume that racial identification plus Cao's republican affiliation spells defeat in November.  However, Cao currently sports a quite healthy poll lead over the less well known Richmond. by a 51%-26% margin, according to a survey conducted May 27-June 2 by LA pollster Verne Kennedy. Cao leads Richmond by a 67%-13% margin among white voters, and by a narrower 39%-36% margin among African American voters. 

The poll lead appears to reflect the stronger support among his districts white voters than black ones, but blacks are the majority of the district and there is no good reason to think so many of them will stay home that he can afford to be complacent about their vote.  In point of fact, Cao has a great opportunity here to show the rest of the GOP how to communicate conservative values and policy positions to an African American voting audience and translate those ideas into conservative solutions that benefit his constituents. The fact that he currently maintains a poll lead with blacks over his challenger demonstrates that for black voters, its about performance, not just whether the candidate looks like them. If Cao can make the case that the GOP approach in their district is better, he can close the deal and in the process, cut off at the knees any and all excuses by the GOP for not effectively engaging with the black community as a political constituency. 

Rush, the GOP Race Baiter in Chief

Race Baiting: implying that there is an underlying race-based motive in the actions of others towards the group baited, where none in fact exists.

GOP messaging fails just go on and on and on.  Rush, the GOP's race baiter in chief is at it again.  Rush is no longer bothering to slyly couch his race baiting.  Now, he just issues an overt rhetorical attack on the President and since 90% + blacks supported Obama, by extension, he's talking about the rest of us too.  He's most recent race baiting goodness from the July 2nd show:

Why aren't we growing jobs in this country like we used to?  Why aren't we?  It's not hard to do.  There's all kinds of textbook evidence, real-life historical evidence of how to do it.  We're not doing it; we're not doing it on purpose.  It's payback time.  All the people who are unemployed? It's time for you to find out what it's like to be an American all these 200 years.  "Yeah, greatest country on earth, superpower? Right.  Well, might have been for some people, but you're going to find out what it's been like for 200 years for some of us to be an American.  It's payback time."  That's what's going on here. 

For his massive audience, he ascribes to the President of the United States a racial revenge motive.  He basically argues that the black president and the black DOJ head have it in for white people.  Its naked racebaiting....and no one in the GOP will object to it.

President Obama, Don't Leave Ms. Sherrod Under the Bus

Dear President Obama,

Secretary Vilsack's decision to fire Shirley Sherrod in response to Andrew Breitbart's fabricated racebaiting attack on her is unacceptable. That the White House has endorsed that action, given the facts that have come to light, is unconscionable.

It's one thing to rush to judgment. It's another to refuse to correct the error when it becomes clear that you were wrong.

On several occasions since you have been president, you have been willing to candidly admit when mistakes have been made. I applauded your candor in those moments and I urge you to be as straightforward and direct here.  You lose nothing by doing the right thing here, namely instructing Sec. Vilsack to reinstate Ms. Sherrod.  If you do not however, you co-sign a clear injustice and let stand a decision that the majority of the nation will be unable to respect. You gain the respect of the American people when your administration admits mistakes and rectifies them. That is what is called for here.

I therefore urge you in the strongest possible manner to reinstate Ms. Sherrod to her position, as the decision to force her to resign was made based on a lie.  Its the right thing to do.

Letter to Lincoln: Stereotypes Disguised as Satire Reflect Real Views of Tea Party and GOP Rank & File

Mark Williams,  leader of the Tea Party Express, in response to the NAACP's resolution calling on the Tea Party to expel bigots from its ranks wrote a Letter to Lincoln.

I've reproduced it below as Williams has removed it from his site, but you can find the text and and a screenshot here:

Dear Mr. Lincoln
We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the ‘tea party movement’.  The tea party position to “end the bailouts” for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us coloreds! Of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that should be granted the right to disperse the funds.

And the ridiculous idea of “reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government.” What kind of massa would ever not want to control my life? As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out of control spending.” Again, they directly target coloreds. That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right. Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?

Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.

Sincerely
Precious Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew NAACP Head Colored Person

 Mark Williams' letter played right into the hands of Tea Party opponents on the left.  Numerous commentators and the general public have labeled it a virulent screed that is so offensive on its face that it proves the NAACP's point. Reading this letter, my personal take on this guy is that he is really angry at black people, because he employs some nasty stereotyping and insulting language. Looking at his history, this isn't new.  A regularly intelligent commentator here, the Everlasting Phelps, once pointed out to me that white people are convinced that racism is evil and this explains why Tea Party denials of racism are often so vehement as to appear unhinged.  That's the charitable way to interpret the virulence of Mark Williams' response to the NAACP in terms of this letter and his public comments.

I don't feel particularly charitable however. I feel like talking some truth.  Here's one. The underlying stereotypes and background assumptions in Mark Williams Letter to Lincoln reflect what he and a majority of Tea Party members really feel about blacks as a political constituency, disguised as satire. Here's another.  Conservatives often use satire to respond to criticism from the black community because if they straightforwardly articulated their actual thoughts, the general public would find them repugnant. 


Let me clarify the meaning of what I said above just a bit. Specifically, I'm NOT declaring Williams to be a racist. If you read this blog even semi-regularly then you already know I consider the term "racist" to be almost devoid of utility in our public discourse due to its gratuitous misuse.  I am declaring that Williams does not consider blacks to be a political constituency necessary or essential to the Tea Party's aspirations for governance and is representative of the Tea Party rank and file he leads in that respect.  

I make this conclusion based on the way in which Williams draws on stereotypes and what I consider widely shared assumptions within the Tea Party in the writing of his letter. Lets examine them:


As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

Williams is expressing here in satire what I will argue to all comers is a dominant sentiment among Tea party members and quite frankly the GOP rank and file, namely that blacks are brainwashed thralls of the left and so incapable of independent thought that it is essentially not even worth the effort to engage them in political discourse. Its why the messaging of the GOP and the Tea Party is so consistently bad on the issue of race. Tea Party rank and file members don't believe blacks as political constituency engage in any thoughtful consideration of the merits of conservative positions, but  reflexively resist conservatives because they are told to. Its a perspective that has evolved to a species of contempt on the part of Tea Party and conservative GOP leadership and rank and file which prevents them from seeing or engaging blacks as rational political actors.

  Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for?
  How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn?

These two comments flow from the idea that blacks are unwilling to work hard, preferring to benefit from the efforts of the white working class via welfare programs or other government largess paid for by the tax dollars of the white working class. I think Williams believes this to be essentially true, but since he won't say it straightforwardly, he can only thinly disguise it as satire to maintain plausible deniability to the charge that he is trafficking in stereotypes. 

 That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

This line plays to the related idea that what jobs blacks have, we don't earn, but rather are given them through misguided affirmative action policies at the expense of hard working whites.  Again, I will argue this is what Williams feels about blacks as a political constituency but can't say in any way other than satire without repelling most people. I will further argue to all comers that this feeling is widely shared by the members of the Tea Party movement in general. 

These themes permeate the discourse and the unspoken and spoken views of the Tea Party Express membership. Thats absolutely true, because Mark Williams is the spokesperson and leader of that group. He articulates the feelings and viewpoints of his membership.  He is their leader and spokesperson because they believe he represents and articulates their views the best.


Its unfortunate. Mark Williams and the Tea Party movement writ large have a political point of view that many blacks would find appealing, and when he articulates that, he is in the zone.  Listen to him here on Anderson Cooper: 

 

If  the Tea Party stuck to that message, they'd do just fine with black folks.  

Williams has since appeared on Geraldo at Large along with Sharpton and Ben Jealous and some others and to hear Williams tell it, they all managed to sing Kumbaya by the time the program ended.  I'm reserving judgment on that score until I see the video after it airs. Perhaps a moderation of my view on Williams himself may be in order. We'll see. 


In any event, I have strong words on the Letter to Lincoln and strong assertions. I'm open to having those assertions disputed.  Give it your best shot.

Political Buffoon: Malik Zulu Shabazz

This man is a political buffoon. I weep for black youth influenced by this fool. Geraldo has really slipped in his craft. As interviews go, this was pathetic. Everybody is doing the same thing these days, tee up some gotcha video or audio and then try to castigate your guest instead of ask intelligent questions and let your audience hear and assess their answer.

NAACP Declares War on the Tea Party: Not A Good Look

 

Hat tip to Electronic Village for highlighting NAACP Chairman Roslyn Brock's speech at the NAACP 2010 convention July 11th in Kansas City.  Ms. Brock is part of the "new generation" of leadership that Julian Bond and the other old guard members of the NAACP leadership have passed the torch too.  Its too bad what she had to say sounds like the same old wine in new skins. I wanted to find something to be encouraged about in this speech, I really did, but color me totally unimpressed. Black folk catching hell and she's touting school snack programs? the opening of a few college chapters; so called curriculum reforms to teach civil rights history? Thats it? Thats the best you've got to tout as achievements? The speech has a constant focus on the wrongs done to us, not nearly enough of anything about problem solving in our communities. It was heavy on platitudes, way light on substance.

Here's the problem; the NAACP does not have a true strategic vision about what their purpose is. They are aligned with the democrats and with the White House and essentially have signed up to be a tool of the administration's policy aims. I heard a whole lot about healthcare but can someone tell me when the NAACP became healthcare experts and champions? The speech sounds like an organization doing little more than following the federal money trail and influence.  The NAACP is merely cosigning the administration's legislative objectives and pledging the NAACP to work on it. But they don't have an original thought going here. I didn't hear anything about what the NAACP thinks ought to happen on the issues, I just heard parroting of the administration's ideas. Black activist organizations and figures from Sharpton to the NAACP have been co-opted by Obama and politically lobotomized. There is at least a 50/50 chance that the Obama administration's policy goals will crash and burn. What is the NAACP going to do when they land on the wrong side of public opinion, especially when we experience the massive mid term election correction in control of the House and Senate come November? Or if they get thrown under the bus by Obama over the NBP debacle at DOJ?

The really bad news? This rudderless organization has signed up to be the shock troops of Obama and declared war on the Tea Party in what is really a transparent bid to be more political relevant, passing a resolution condemning bigotry within the Tea Party. Listen to Ben Jealous:

 Thats not a good look. Because I guarantee you there is enough foolishness, bad management, chicanery, nepotism, cronyism and worse to be found going on in and around the NAACP to quickly hoist them on their own petard. The NAACP had better be careful that they don't get ACORNED out of existence. The Tea Party are the right's shock troops and their special ops teams play real rough.

Interestingly enough (and disappointingly so) with the face off threatening to steal the thunder from yet another Holy Mother of God make it stop planned march for jobs and justice (HAH!)on Aug. 28th, usual suspects Jackson and Sharpton are putting distance between themselves and the comments.

I do like the "I'm an NAACP American"  campaign pledge though.  Sign the pledge.....I did. Hey Sarah, come sign it with me.

DOJ Should Have Prosecuted New Black Panthers....For Criminal Stupidity

I don't know if this is the sum total of all the video evidence in the black panther voter intimidation case.  The video by itself  is interesting to me.  You've got this poll worker who is so "intimidated", but he's able to carry on a conversation with the Panther dimwit and film him with his cell phone camera.  You've also got white and black people coming in and out of the polling place and they don't seem to be paying much attention to the Panthers at all. As evidence of how the Panthers struck fear into the hearts of voters, it doesn't seem to hold up.

Full blown racial fear mongering mania has broken out on the left and right and it really concerns me. I'll have more to say on that shortly.  But I guess my biggest reaction here is to the so called New Black Panthers themselves. It would be much more constructive to prosecute them for being a bunch of lazy, stupid, loser black men.  Do I sound harsh? Not if you read what passes for the New Black Panther manifesto as laid out in their 10 Point Plan.  I threw up in my mouth a little as I read it.  AG Holder has allowed the Obama administration to become associated with a bunch of dimwits who advocate, with a straight face, some of the following:
 
We want full employment for our people and we demand the dignity to do for ourselves what we have begged the white man to do for us. We believe that since the white man has kept us deaf, dumb and blind, and used every dirty trick in the book to stand in the way of our freedom and independence, that we should be gainfully employed until such time we can employ and provide for ourselves

We believe our people should be exempt from ALL TAXATION as long as we are deprived of equal justice under the laws of the land and the overdue reparations debt remains unpaid. We will accept payment in fertile and mine rally rich land, precious metals, industry, commerce and currency.

We want all Black Men and Black Women to be exempt from military service.

 We [therefore] believe that all Black People should unite and form an African United Front and arm ourselves for self-defense.

We want freedom for all Black Men and Black Women held in international, military, federal, state, county, city jails and prisons. We believe that all Black People and people of color should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial. Released means released to the lawful authorities of the Black Nation.

We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And, as our political objective, we want NATIONAL LIBERATION in a separate state or territory of our own, here or elsewhere, a liberated zone (New Africa or Africa), and a plebiscite to be held throughout the BLACK NATION in which only we will be allowed to participate for the purposes of determining our will and DIVINE destiny as a people.

Nice going Eric.  Holy Mother of God, I'm not even going to bother to point out all of the horrific idiocy on display in the above.  This is an organization of losers led by losers.  Someone at DOJ should have brought charges of crimes against humanity's intelligence, not voter intimidation.  These guys are fringe losers so far out from the edge of the black mainstream they are hovering in mid air.  Before this case, I had never heard of these morons. Now, thanks to the DOJ and the hysterical racial fear mongering of the right, we'll probably be hearing from this embarrassment to righteous black men everywhere until we are nauseous.

King Samir Shabazz is the leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the NBP, starring in the video above and in full Negro stupidity mode below.  The national head of the NBP is a brother by the name of Malik Zulu Shabazz, I kid you not, thats the name this brother picked to replace his "slave name" of Paris Lewis.  Zulu? Really?  He's a graduate of Howard which just gives me more heartburn that such a fine institution has to be associated with this bunch of victimhood promoters. If they are smart, they will distance themselves from him quickly.

As an aside, what is with the popularity of Shabazz as a slave name replacement with this crowd anyway? Has Malcom X  popularized the name so much that all these militant pretenders keep copying it?  No originality. These guys are a complete embarrassment.  Militants? Activists? Nope.  More like cheesy entertainment, the kind you're embarrassed to tell people you even watch.  The politics of the deeply stupid.

All a Black Woman Needs is a Good Smack in the Face: Part I

That seems to be the message being delivered from the media ether this past few weeks.  It was a message with enough potency to stimulate me out of my writing lethargy of late. This particular topic comes to us from two very different scenarios; the police punch to the dome of a teenage black female behaving badly in Seattle, and the caught on tape assault and humiliation of the colossally misguided and obviously emotionally damaged Kat Stacks by idiot thug associates of BowWow. I'll have more to say about that in Part II..



First up though, is the police smack of a black female teen in Seattle. By now, the general facts are known.  Officer Ian Walsh attempted to give a citation for jaywalking to 19-year old Marilyn Levias.  She refused to identify herself  for the citation, essentially ignored the officer and attempted to walk away. Officer Walsh grabbed her to physically detain her and she resisted.  Presumably, he intended to arrest her at that point for not complying with his directive to identify herself and accept the citation. A 17 year old young woman, a friend of Ms. Levias, attempted to intervene and shoved Officer Walsh.  He responded by  punching her directly in the face, which had the desired effect of causing her to back up off him.  He then resumed arresting Ms. Levias, which took some doing as she continued to be uncooperative.

The city prosecutor has indicated that jaywalking was a major problem due to 60+ accidents over a 5 year period prior to 2006 involving pedestrians in this area and a 2006 action plan called for it to be addressed with increased safety patrols.  As it happens, that bit of CYA doesn't seem to hold up however.  There have been no accidents due to jaywalking in that area for five years.

It pains me to say it, but in fairness to Officer Walsh, I'm not sure he had a better or more immediately effective course of action available to him. I've watched the video several times and here is the question. At the point she pushes him, stop the video and ask yourself "Okay, I'm the cop, what do  I do"?  On the continuum of force options he has available, what would have been more acceptable? They are not obeying his verbal commands and they are both physically resistant.  What could he do? Mace them? Draw his weapon? Employ his nightstick? Talk some more? Notice that after he punched her, the 17 year old backed off.  I don't like it, but the results speak for themselves.  As an aside, this event does cause me to ask the question however "what is wrong with these young black women"? I mean, check out the brothers in the video and the cat doing the filming that you can hear talking.  They, like me, have a clear understanding of how to respond to a police officer who is determined to exercise his authority, namely comply and if you ain't the one getting taken down, stay the hell out of the way.  The one brother tries to save homegirl from getting it twisted, holding her, but she breaks free and homie decides he's not following her in. Not one brother attempts to intervene against the officer physically as the girl did, exercising a very commendable level of common sense.  Would that the sistas had profited by their example.

So who's at fault here?  The young ladies are certainly at fault.  I can totally identify with the fact that Ms. Levias first thought upon hearing Officer Walsh intention to give her a jaywalking citation was probably Bulls***. But if she had complied, she would have avoided another mark on her record (she was arrested for kicking an officer previously) and the rest of this fallout.  Her young friend didn't do her any favors by taking the same flight of idiocy with her.  If she had counseled compliance instead of fighting the officer, she would have avoided eating a knuckle sandwhich on tape and criminal charges.  She has subsequently met with the officer and apologized, demonstrating some capacity to think straight and accept some wise counsel.

But the cops are not off the hook here by any stretch. Because on the facts as presented, I don't have anything to indicate that this wasn't an arbitrary exercise of police power that prompted the resistance. This unfortunate incident began with a simple jaywalking citation and escalated to a use of force incident. Minor infractions like jaywalking are merely one of a bevy of violations available to cops to use as justification or pretext to stop or detain a civilian. The Seattle Police Office of Accountability has pointed out the high number of low level police contacts which escalate to incidents like this.

That's not just me suggesting there is a problem here with professionalism of the Seattle Police Force as it relates to officer skills at handling low threat situations or deescalating an interaction with a citizen.  That comes from their own department. You cannot argue to me that best practice police work should result in a use of force episode based on a minor infraction that was not itself an arrestable offense.  Is it a reasonable use of police time and resources to arrest this girl for jaywalking?  Is there a reasonable cost/benefit to be had here? Was the initial infraction merely the pretext for a petty exercise of police power, to which Ms. Levias objected? The public pays for police services, its a reasonable question. Police expect their commands and directives to be obeyed when they are warranted and when they are arbitrary and are prepared to use their coercive power in either case, irrespective of whether they are acting reasonably or not.  This is the same city where police officers tased THREE TIMES an 8 month pregnant black women sitting in her car and accompanied by her minor son for refusing to sign a traffic citation! (BTW, refusing to sign a traffic citation is not an arrestible offense in Seattle. In other words, they had no authority to arrest her for refusing to comply with that directive and oh yeah,  not signing the citation does not obviate the ticket). 

The larger issue implicated here for me is whether any petty exercise of power by police is legitimate and whether any citizen, save those protected by lots of money, political clout or. bias will be safe from arbitrary impositions of police authority. Because I can't recall the last time myself or anybody I know got a ticket for jaywalking.

Imagine if the Tea Party was Black

Staying with the White Privilege topice for a minute (Phelps, my comments are broken, I cant respond to your comment from yesterday, I'll get it fixed), this seems like a very thought provoking piece. The following was written by Tim Wise.  I don't think all of his examples work equally well, but quite a few of them are on the money.  Read it for yourself and then tell me in the comments if he has a point or not.

----------------------------------

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.

Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.

Tim Wise is a prominent anti-racist writer and activist.  His latest book is called Between Barack and a Hard Place.