“Doomed To Fail”: When Tea Partiers Try To Show Their “Diversity”
Judging from the matching red t-shirts, bottled water, snack stands, and cover band playing a passable version of Marvin Gaye’s classic, “What’s Going On?”, you wouldn’t be wrong to assume there was a large and elaborate family reunion yesterday, held on the Capitol. But, in fact, it was a rally—organized by the Black American Leadership Alliance, a right-wing group with ties to white nationalists—to oppose the comprehensive immigration bill that has passed the Senate, and is fighting to survive in the House of Representatives.
Two things stood out about the event. First, even in the shade—and even with fans placed strategically around the area—it was hot. I would say it was too hot to be outside in the first place, but obviously, several hundred people disagreed with me. Or at least, opposed immigration reform enough to tolerate the conditions. And second, despite its organizers and its speakers—who were predominantly African American—the large bulk of the crowd was white. At best, there were a smattering of black faces, located at the edges of the group, seated away from the core of the gathering. Most of these faces were male, and like almost everyone there, they traveled from other parts of the country to join this demonstration.
Troy Warren is an unemployed graduate of the University of Wisconsin who came from Los Angeles, California, where he’s lived for the last seventeen years who says that immigration reform is an attempt to take jobs from blacks, and leave them impoverished. Indeed, he’s angry at the idea that African Americans won’t work the same jobs as “Mexicans.” “Look around,” he said, gesturing to the surrounding buildings, “We built this. The slaves. And if we built this, how can we not have the knowledge to work?”
(It’s worth pointing out that, at this point, he struck the drum on his shoulder, to emphasize the question.)
As for politics beyond immigration? When I asked if he liked President Obama, Warren said yes. “Yeah, I’m an Obama supporter. And I think he’s a good example. But he hasn’t done much for black people.”
This is what separated the black attendees from their white counterparts. While the white demonstrators were nearly unanimous in their disdain for President Obama—carrying signs slamming the president for Benghazi and allowing “amnesty”—the African American demonstrators ranged from careful ambivalence about the president, to outright support.
“I love President Obama,” said Gerald Pitts, founder of the “Milllennium Panthers,” an all-black anti-immigration group based out of LA, “I love the First Lady. I love their children. We support the president, completely. And if you fuck with him, I’ll protect him. I’ll be his top security.”
Dressed in military-esque gear, he waved his anti-immigration signs as he explained his stance. “If I did something illegally as a black man, I would be locked up. It’s a double standard,” Pitts said. “I’m a man of God, and I can’t have racism, sexism, or any kind of prejudice in my heart. But the law is the law.”
If there’s one thing that stood out about Warren, Pitts, and others, it was that their opposition to immigration reform—and their conservatism—had more to do with a kind of black nationalism than it did with any actual adherence to Tea Party ideology. Take Kenniss, a middle-aged woman who, in the precise voice of a grammar school teacher (she declined to tell me her occupation), took issue with the idea that all Americans were immigrants. “No African, living in their homeland begged for an opportunity to come here and work as free labor. Still, we were the basis for building this country.” Kenniss’ opposition to immigration reform had less to do with the identity of the immigrants (though she saw a double standard in the treatment of Latino immigrants versus Haitian ones), and everything to do with the idea that it was unfair. If anyone should receive assistance from the government—which, by and large, is how she saw reform—it should be the descendants of slaves.
As for the white attendees? They were there to oppose immigration reform, oppose Obama, and—yes—show their concern for black unemployment. “Adding more workers is irrational,” said Staci, a young single mother from Birmingham, Alabama, “Immigration reform will threaten jobs for black Americans, my children, and every American.” She was disappointed with the president, both for his policies, and for—as she saw it—squandering an opportunity to “bring the races together.” Instead, she said, citing Obama’s decision to get involved in the Trayvon Martin controversy last year, “he’s done the most damage of any president to race relations.”
This comment points to something important. In addition to voicing opposition to the “Gang of Eight” bill, it seems that the goal of this event was to show—loudly—that the Tea Party is as diverse as it claims. Most of the speakers were conservative African American activists, who mixed their attacks on immigration with post-racial red meat—“We’re not African Americans, we’re Americans,” said Ted Hayes, an L.A.-based black Republican—and odd call outs to black culture. Hayes, for instance, ended his speech with a nod to Flavor Flav. “Yeeaaah boyeeee!”, he yelled, which was followed by a crowd-driven chant of “USA, USA, USA!”
Of all the speakers, however, the crowd was most enthusiastic for Texas senator Ted Cruz, who didn’t deviate from his typical approach of broad condemnation for the federal government. But for as much as attendees appreciated the display, all it did was emphasize the extent to which, outside of immigration, there’s not much that could plausibly connect the interests of black Americans to anti-government conservatives.
Indeed, if this rally was meant as a pitch to black voters—to enlist them in the fight against immigration reform—then, from conception to execution, it was doomed to fail. “I voted for Obama both times,” said Pitts, the man who also urged “anchor babies” to go back to their “home country.”
When it comes to black people, that—in a nutshell—is the Tea Party’s problem.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, July 16, 2013
“Paula Deen Is Confusing People”: A Stange Epidemic Of People Pretending To Be More Stupid Than They Actually Are
American life is full of two groups of people: those who find racism abhorent, and those who find this first group of people tiresome. Paula Deen’s humilation this week seems to have brought out the members of Group 2. Why is everyone making such a big fuss, they ask?
Thankfully, The New York Times has a very amusing report from Georgia on this subject:
The line of Paula Deen fans waiting for her restaurant here to open grew throughout the hot, muggy morning Saturday. They discussed what they might select from the buffet inside The Lady and Sons, her wildly popular restaurant in the heart of Savannah. But they also talked of boycotting the Food Network, which dropped their beloved TV chef on Friday after she awkwardly apologized for having used racial slurs and for considering a plantation-themed wedding for her brother, with well-dressed black male servants.
And what are these folks really angry about?
“Everybody in the South over 60 used the N-word at some time or the other in the past,” wrote Dick Jackson, a white man from Missouri. “No more ‘Chopped’ for me, and I suspect thousands like me,” he said, referring to a popular Food Network show.
A white man? I never would have guessed. And, then, of course, the question that good white folks love to ask:
In the line Saturday, some pointed out that some African-Americans regularly used the word Ms. Deen had admitted to saying. “I don’t understand why some people can use it and others can’t,” said Rebecca Beckerwerth, 55, a North Carolina native who lives in Arizona and had made reservations at the restaurant Friday.
Really? You don’t understand it? Ms. Beckerwerth doesn’t say she wants to use it, but it sure sounds like she thinks she is making a real sacrifice by not using it.
The article descends into unintentional hilarity when the writer decides to call an expert on race:
Tyrone A. Forman, the director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University, said the use of derogatory words can mean different things to different groups. “People take a term that was a way to denigrate or hold people in bondage for the purpose of continuing their subordination and turn it around as a way to reclaim it,” he said. But that kind of subtlety is often lost in a discussion of race. “That nuance is too much for us,” Mr. Forman said. “We have a black president so we’re postracial, right? Someone uses the N-word? That’s racist. But the reality is there is a lot of gray.”
Thank God we have someone to address all this confusion, although the final sentence here left me, if anything, even more confused.
The piece ends as follows:
[One man] was particularly bothered by a commentator on a national news program who suggested that Ms. Deen should have atoned for the pain of slavery, given credit to African-Americans who helped influence some of the country food that made her famous and offered a stronger statement against racism. “She’s a cook,” Mr. Hattaway said. “She’s not a Harvard graduate.”
Hold on, aren’t we supposed to sneer at Harvard graduates? Now apparently you have to go to Harvard to understand that using racist language is wrong. The Deen case has brought with it a stange epidemic of people pretending to be a lot more stupid than they actually are. Ms. Beckerwerth and her ilk aren’t really confused. I didn’t go to Harvard, but I’d diagnose their problem as something a little worse than a lack of comprehension.
By: Isaac Chotiner, Senior Editor, The New Republic, June 24, 2013
“Make Peace With God”: Embattled Federal Judge Called For Texas To Execute 8 To 12 Times As Many Inmates Per Year
According to a complaint filed last week against federal appellate Judge Edith Jones, Jones suggested that African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed towards violent crime and that the death penalty is a public service because it allows inmates to “make peace with God.” Should these allegations against Judge Jones be proven, they will be only the latest examples of a career’s worth of nonchalance regarding executions. Indeed, as far back as 1990, a much younger Jones proposed a series of reforms to Texas’ execution procedures that would have increased that state’s execution rate by as much as twelve times.
In an article for the Texas Bar Journal entitled “Death Penalty Procedures: A Proposal for Reform,” which is available through the legal research service HeinOnline, Jones decries a capital punishment system in Texas which she views as too inefficient, in large part because judges delay executions by taking time to review death sentences to determine that they were lawfully handed down. Indeed, at one point Jones blames the slow rate of executions on “the frequent, human reaction of most judges . . . to defer a decision if any element of a case raises doubts, or to grant a temporary stay for further consideration.”
To speed along Texas’ ability to kill death row inmates, Jones proposes that Texas schedule “four to six executions per month, commencing six months to one year from the date” those execution dates are made public. Notably, in the five years prior to when Jones wrote this piece, Texas executed an average of just under six inmates per year, so the immediate impact of her proposal would have been to multiply the state’s execution rate eight to twelvefold.
It’s also worth noting that Texas’ execution rate did spike significantly in the years after Jones wrote this piece. Most significantly, during the four years after Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which limited the ability of death row inmates to challenge their sentences in federal court, Texas executed an average of 33 people per year. Nevertheless, in the modern era of American death penalty law, Texas has never executed the 48 to 72 people per year suggested by Jones’ piece. The deadliest year for Texas inmates was 2000, when 40 people were executed. 15 people were executed last year. Nevertheless, Jones concludes her list of proposals for expediting Texas’ executions by suggesting they could be viewed as “too lenient” because they would “take more than four years to conclude all the currently pending capital cases.”
A decade after publishing this proposal, Jones joined two opinions claiming that a man whose attorney slept through much of his trial could nonetheless be executed.
Even without Jones’ proposal for a wave of executions, Texas has a higher execution rate than any other state. More than one third of all U.S. executions took place in Texas since 1976, when the Supreme Court announced the modern constitutional regime governing death penalty cases.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, June 10, 2013
“Cleaving Unto Rand Paul”: Did Mitch McConnell Call For African-American Outreach To Republicans?
Last night Roll Call’s Meredith Shiner published a report on Mitch McConnell’s obsessive efforts to head off (or undermine) a right-wing primary challenge in 2014 (perhaps, other observers suggest, from Louisville business figure Matthew Bevin, who is being courted by Kentucky Tea Party activists, or perhaps from some other heavily funded direction.
That’s all interesting to be sure, but here’s what caught my attention in Shiner’s story, as part of a general theme of McConnell cleaving unto Rand Paul for protection:
McConnell has shown a special deference to his freshman partner. He has held multiple votes on Paul’s amendments, even though many of them barely attract supporters in the double digits, sometimes at the expense of veteran lawmakers’ proposals. He has repeatedly been among only a handful of Republicans to vote for Paul’s budget alternative. He hired Paul’s 2010 campaign manager. And aides take frequent opportunities to link the two men.
McConnell’s address to the National Urban League, for example, sounded a lot like Paul’s at Howard. According to a source familiar with McConnell’s speech, the leader told the room of black business leaders: “I want to see a day when more African-Americans look at the issues and realize that they identify with the Republican Party.” That message echoed Paul’s at the historically black university.
Yes, McConnell did his own “African-American outreach” speech the same week as Paul’s, though it attracted about one-tenth of one percent of Paul’s media attention. But check out the direct quote above. Sounds like Mitch is standing pat on the GOP’s merits and asking African-Americans to figure it out.
There are a lot of different ways for a guy like McConnell to send valentines to disgruntled wingnuts. But calling for African-Americans to conduct “outreach” to an unmoving GOP is a new one.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington MOnthly Political Animal, April 15, 2013
“The Lineage Of Today’s Republican’s”: What Rand Paul Doesn’t Get About Abe Lincoln, Abe Vigoda, And Black Voters
Here’s something that someone might want to share with Rand Paul. Abraham Lincoln was a president. Abe Vigoda was an actor. The fact that they both have the same first name, does not make them the same person.
That may seem obvious to you, but it’s something that I feel compelled to share. Because after listening to his Howard University speech, I’m not sure it’s a concept that Senator Paul fully understands.
Here’s why: On some basic level, Paul’s speech was an inquiry into the alienation that exists between the GOP and African-Americans. His conclusion: It’s all just a big misunderstanding.
You see, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It was Democrats who led the South’s retrenchment after Reconstruction, established segregation and fought tooth and nail to protect Jim Crow. So it’s Republicans, not Democrats, according to Paul, who have always been the party of civil rights.
So why aren’t more African-Americans Republicans? Paul has an explanation: Having achieved electoral and civil rights African-Americans wanted economic equality, too. Republicans offered one way to get it, according to Paul, the free market, while Democrats offered another, government largesse. Thus far, Paul says, African-Americans have preferred the latter path to the former and what Republicans need to do is better explain why African-Americans should instead embrace the free market model. That’s his theory anyway.
Here Paul’s trying to pull off an interesting trick: using Republican performance from the pretty distant past to try and credential current policies. But in his historical retelling, Paul essentially collapses the timeline and says: look, we’ve always been for civil rights, and our free market prescriptions are just the latest iteration of that.
Now, it may be that this is the argument the GOP’s been looking for. Perhaps, having heard it, African-Americans will vote Republican in droves in 2014. But I’m not convinced.
First, despite Paul’s convictions, there’s a pretty obvious reason why African Americans vote for more Democratic candidates than Republicans: They prefer Democratic policies. That’s how most voters decide who to vote for – they review the candidate’s positions on issues important to them, and then vote for the one whose views are more in sync with their own.
Paul probably wouldn’t contest that – but he’d place the blame for Republican losses on someone who you might not expect: the voter. Instead of concluding that to compete for African-American votes Republicans have to change their policies, he suggests that the problem is the failure of African-Americans to fully comprehend the policies Republicans propose. That’s what he means when he says that Republicans have to find a different way to talk about them, right? The policy isn’t the problem, it’s your ability, (or lack thereof) to grasp it.
And here, Paul finds himself on something of a slippery slope. I mean, politics isn’t rocket science. And somehow every couple of years voters across the country manage to sift through the various policy papers and pronouncements of politicians up and down the ballot to make decisions about who to support. It’s peculiar (at the very least) to suggest that African-Americans are somehow incapable of engaging in the required analysis to do it when it comes to Republicans.
There’s something else about Paul’s thesis that just doesn’t add up. Yes, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and Democrats dominated southern politics during segregation. But really, which of these parties of the past has more in common with the iterations that exist today?
If the answers not obvious to you, there’s another bit of history that can help clear it up. Starting in the 1940s and accelerating in the 1960s national Democratic attitudes about segregation moved to the left, while the attitudes of the southern conservatives who had long affiliated with the Democratic Party pushed further to the right. This created an untenable intraparty tension that couldn’t last forever. And it didn’t, because southern conservatives found a new, more comfortable party to call home, one that expressed values in sync with their own. It was the Republican Party. They switched to it in droves.
All of which means, you guessed it, the lineage of today’s Republican party traces much more directly to those pro-segregation Democrats than it does to any southern Republicans who may have been around in that day.
So let’s be clear: Yes, Rand Paul is a Republican but when it comes to civil rights, his version of the GOP has about as much in common with the one that helped free the slaves as Abe Lincoln has with Abe Vigoda.
Which is to say: once you get past the name, not very much at all.
By: Anson Kaye, U. S. News and World Report, April 12, 2013
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