Race in America: A Hot Mess

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous calls on the Tea Party to disavow itself of the racist elements within its ranks. Sarah Palin fires back, calling the NAACP a "racist organization." She also creates a new word, "refudiate," which, up until then, had probably never been used in the New York Times. Then someone fires back with video of U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod's speech from an NAACP fundraiser taken out of context. The Secretary of Agriculture overreacts, fires Sherrod, only to find out later that the video had been edited and that Ms. Sherrod's message was not racist, but reconciling. And throughout, Ms. Sherrod maintains her cool, is later offered a better job at the Department of Agriculture, and receives a well-deserved apology from President Obama himself.

Then this morning I listen to Dean Christopher Edley of the Boalt Hall School of Law and John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute on CNN state that these shenanigans did not involve racism. Race, but not racism.

Indeed.

When it comes to dealing with issues of race, America is, in the oft-used words of Niecy Nash, "a hot mess." We can't seem to have an open and honest dialogue about racism and race without resorting to name-calling and sound bites. I don't think it would even be safe to have a Clinton-esque "Town Hall Meeting on Race" because, give the hodge-podge of concealed weapons laws around the country, you don't know who could be packing heat at one of the meetings. It's that much of a hot-button issue.

As to the Tea Party members, I actually know and like a lot of Tea Partyers. I admire that, unlike most Americans, they feel so strongly about what they believe in that they're willing to coalesce and become a vehicle for political action. That said, I believe Congressman John Lewis when he said he was called the "N-word" by people protesting with the Tea Party against health care reform. I saw the video of Congressman Lewis being spat on as he crossed the street to vote. I also remember watching Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" dismiss those who spewed racial epithets and spit on black members of Congress as being on the fringe without going so far as to condem what they said or were purported to have said.

How hard is it for any organization to condemn racism and the racists hiding behind the umbrella of that organization? Why is that so hard to agree on?

That said, I doubt Shirley Sherrod would have been shown the door so quickly if she had been white and her words had been similarly misconstrued to have been anti-black. I doubt the Japanese American Citizens League would have been called "a racist organization" had it called the Tea Party on racist elements within the Tea Party.

Whenever black people, or black organizations, raise their voices to call out racism, there seems to be this furious backlash as if to say we have no standing to speak of the racism we've heard and seen with our own eyes, as if we are inherently unreliable witnesses when it comes to calling out racism simply because we are black and, in the minds of many, inherently racists ourselves.

For Dean Edley and John McWhorter's edification, the racism in all this was that a conservative edited Ms. Sherrod's speech to make the NAACP look like racial hypocrites and show the NAACP as an inherently unreliable witness when it comes to calling out racism. That's not political; it's racist.

If Ms. Palin is as certain of her accusation as she appears to be, I would hope she'd have the courage to attend an NAACP convention and make that same accusation and back it up with facts.

As for African Americans, my hope is that, as a people, we redouble our efforts to not only stand up and call out racism when we see it, but that we also do what we can to insulate ourselves and our children from it. We need to strengthen our institutions -- organizations, colleges, you name it -- as well as ourselves -- with greater educational achievement, entrepreneurial growth, and economic independence -- so that we're relatively unaffected by the slings and arrows of racists, and racist elements, in positions of power.

A good start might be actually joining the NAACP, and putting Shirley Sherrod in charge of it.

The Constitution Is Not A Menu

Just when we think we’ve plumbed the depths of Sarah Palin’s stupidity, she shows us she’s far more stupid than we could have ever imagined.

Like when she said the nation needs a commander-in-chief, not a law professor, as president. Or when she bemoaned the fact that the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had had his Miranda rights read to him and had the opportunity to “lawyer up.”

I wish Ms. Palin had been as much of a barracuda in the civics classroom as she was on the basketball court or in beauty pageants.

You see, the U.S. Constitution, to my knowledge, is not a menu. You don’t get to order up the parts you like and leave out the ones you don’t. And it applies to everyone on U.S. soil, no matter how they got here. Why? Because the Constitution acts as a limitation on the powers of government to curtail the liberties and rights of the people in this country, no matter how they got here, even if they intended to bomb a few people during their stay. The principles embodied in the Constitution are not to be compromised in order to achieve an of-the-moment outcome. The reason that they are enduring and define us as a nation and as a people is because they are not easily compromised.

As an African American and an attorney, I am more keenly focused on the Constitution and its limits on government power than most because, to put it bluntly, my people have usually been on the stinky end of the stick when it comes to constitutional rights. We were defined as three-fifths of a person in the original document; we were “compromised” by the Hayes-Tilden compromise into Jim Crow, 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments be damned; and we gave full life to the civil liberties promised by the document thanks to the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans know what happens when a tyrannical majority can treat the Constitution as a menu and order up only the parts it likes.

And no, Ms. Palin, you don’t get to jerryrig the judicial system to get the results you want. Regardless of whether terrorists are tried in federal courts or military tribunals, the government doesn’t get to forum shop to get the outcome it wants. I’m sure if Ms. Palin had her way, the presumption of innocence unique to the American judicial system would go by the wayside for terrorists because it “gets in the way.” It is the very Constitution she would subvert that makes sure that we don’t compromise process or principles. What would be the point of having a Constitution if the very processes and principles we have held dear as a nation, albeit somewhat inconsistently, for more than 200 years could be compromised anytime the majority perceived a threat? What kind of nation would we be?

A nation that would order “some First Amendment, but only for Christians, with a heaping side of Second Amendment, hold the Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments, please . . . . “

Copenhatin', Or When The Polar Bears Eat Sarah Palin's Pets

The poorer nations at the Copenhagen Summit (Is the term "lesser developed countries" considered politically incorrect?) want the richer nations to not only accelerate their decrease of greenhouse gas emissions, but to pay the poorer nations for having to adjust to climate change. The U.S. wants China to reduce its emissions more, and China is waiting for the U.S. to take greater steps, to wit, some form of legislation from the U.S. Senate. Good luck with that. I'm sure Joe Lieberman would be opposed to that, too. And Sarah Palin, the Britney Spears of politics, is dismissing climate change and the "politicized science" behind it (Is that similar to "politicized memoir-writing?") while taking swipes at California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is, well the Arnold Schwarzenegger of politics.

And while all this Copenhatin' is going on, some polar bear is swimming a marathon trying to get to an ice floe. Trust me, evolution is on the bear's side. When they can't find seals or walruses to eat and ice floes to get to, they're gonna come on land. We and our pets are next. And since Sarah's pets, assuming she has any, are closer to the polar bears than ours, well, she should have a greater stake in climate change legislation than the rest of us in the lower 48. To borrow from a Stanford joke, I don't have to outrun the polar bear -- I just have to outrun Sarah Palin and her pets. Assuming she has any.

I don't think effective responses to climate change are going to come from Copenhagen, Kyoto, or any other city with some trumped-up summit where nations play prisoner's dilemma with respect to ratifying any resulting treaty. Instead of climate scientists, we need some economists skilled in game theory to figure out how this Copenhagen thing is going to play out.

No, effective responses to climate change are going to have to come from you and me. We're going to have to make those small changes that, when heaped one upon the other, like one-dollar contributions to the Obama campaign, make big changes. We're going to have to hold industry accountable for greenhouse emissions and pass up their products that contribute greatly to the problem. We're going to have to buy locally, eschew our cars for mass transportation, and get used to those funny light bulbs. Because if we wait for the fools and climate change pimps in Copenhagen to act, there won't be any economy or much of anything else left to fight about. Because if we wait for people who don't represent our interests to act in our interests, we're doomed to not only be disappointed, but to join the food chain in a way I don't even want to contemplate.

Although it would be funny watching Sarah Palin trying to outrun a polar bear.

Memo to Obama Camp: Ask The Damn Question

So far, I haven't heard the Obama campaign ask The Damn Question.

You know the question: The one question politicians are afraid to ask when they're running because they're afraid it will be turned back on them when they're in office.

You know the question:

"Are you better off now than you were eight years ago?"

Or, in the case of this failed Bush administration, "Are you better off under W than you were under the Bill?"

Somehow, we've allowed the country to lose focus of what's at stake: Four more years of being on the wrong track.

The Bush administration has failed this country domestically, internationally, environmentally, you name it. And people forget that we're not just electing a president (or vice president, for that matter), we're also electing a party. The likelihood that McCain won't drag back into office more Republican ideologues? Not high. Not high at all. Idealogues who paint Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals and then run up deficits and national debt. Idealogues who don't want to leave until there's victory in Iraq, but haven't defined what victory is. Idealogues who are just now accepting that global warming is for real. Idealogues who would invade Iran at the drop of a hat, or rather, at the hint of weapons of mass destruction (Oh, by the way, where are those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, anyway?)

And personally, I'm tired of our nation being governed by "likeable" but average/stupid people. Yep, W may be likeable enough, but that's not a qualification for the job. Intelligence is. Good judgment is. The ability to work with Congress is. Not whether you can thow back a few beers or dress a moose. Or, in the case of Cheney, shoot your friends on a hunting trip.

I don't think any C student should labor under the misperception that he or she can be President of the United States. It should be a job reserved for the most intelligent among us, not the most likeable. Too much is at stake. Did W know that Russia would eventually invade Georgia (Gov. Palin: That would be the former Soviet bloc country, not the state south of the Mason-Dixon line) when he "looked into Putin's soul?" I don't want a soul-looking president; I want a president who is sharp enought to assemble sharp enough staff to provide good intelligence briefings that are actually paid attention to (that means you, Condi Rice).

Average, likeable people don't belong in the White House. They belong in the shoe department at Macy's.

So, Obama Camp, you've brought us supporters too far to eff up now by being silent.

Ask the Damn Question.