“The Racists Among Us”: No, Racism Isn’t Back. It Never Went Away
Let’s not pretend that deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy and basketball team owner Donald Sterling are the last two racists in the United States. They have company.
I hear regularly from proud racists who send me — anonymously — some of the vilest and most hateful correspondence you could imagine. You’ll have to trust me about the content; this stuff, mostly vulgar racial insults directed at President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, is too disgusting to repeat.
My sensibilities are not delicate. I grew up in South Carolina as the civil rights movement reached its climax, a place and time where racism was open, unambiguous and often violent. I would be the last person to deny that we’ve made tremendous progress against discrimination. But it is obvious that we have miles to go.
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. was harshly criticized five years ago when he said we are “essentially a nation of cowards” in our reluctance to confront the racial issues that remain. In retrospect, Holder was merely telling a truth that many still will not acknowledge.
Bundy’s hideous assessment of “the Negro” — he wondered whether African Americans were better off as slaves, picking cotton, than they are today — should have come as no shock.
A Nevada rancher who refuses to pay for grazing his cattle on federal land, Bundy belongs to the far-right, anti-government fringe. I’m talking about the kind of people who deny the federal government has any legitimacy and expect black helicopters to land any minute. This worldview has found a home in the tea party movement, which harbors — let’s be honest — a racist strain.
This is not to say that all or most tea party adherents share Bundy’s ugly prejudices. But it has been obvious since the movement emerged that some tea partyers do. Media-savvy leaders eventually convinced those attending rallies to leave the racist placards at home, but such discretion says nothing about what remains in those people’s hearts and minds.
Racist words from Donald Sterling, a real estate mogul who owns the Los Angeles Clippers, also should have been less than surprising. In 2009, Sterling agreed to pay $2.73 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit alleging discrimination against African American and Latino tenants in his apartment buildings. In an earlier discrimination suit, settled for an undisclosed sum, one of his property managers quoted Sterling as saying of black tenants in general that “they smell, they’re not clean.”
Still, the recording of the alleged conversation between the 80-year-old Sterling — there has been no denial that it’s his voice — and his young girlfriend dominated the weekend’s news, perhaps because it was not only racist but truly weird.
“It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people,” the voice believed to be Sterling’s says to the girlfriend, V. Stiviano — who is of mixed African American and Mexican heritage.
Sterling apparently believes that since Stiviano is light-skinned and has straight hair, no one has to know that she is part black — if only she would stop posting photos of herself with African Americans, such as basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson, on Instagram. He instructs her not to bring Johnson to Clippers games.
Throughout the recorded conversation, which was obtained by TMZ.com, Sterling is unable to grasp why a black woman might resist his demand that she not be photographed with other black people. He apparently views racial segregation, at least in public, as the way things still ought to be.
Sterling’s racism has the National Basketball Association in an uproar — understandably, given that nearly 80 percent of the league’s players are black. Even Obama, midway through a trip to Asia, felt the need to comment on what he called Sterling’s “incredibly offensive racist statements.” He said Sterling was advertising his “ignorance.”
But something more sinister than cluelessness was involved. Sterling made clear in the conversation with Stiviano that African Americans were unwelcome in his “culture.” This is old-fashioned “separate-but-equal” racism, pure and simple.
The Republican Party, Fox News and a majority of the Supreme Court would like to believe such naked prejudice is history. Yet some big-city school systems are as segregated as they were in the 1960s. Leading public universities are admitting fewer black students than a decade ago. The black-white wealth gap has grown in recent years. Blacks are no more likely than whites to use illegal drugs, yet about four times more likely to be arrested and jailed for it.
No, racism isn’t back. It never went away.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 28, 2014
“Slavery Nostalgia Is Real, And It’s Dangerous”: Yearning For The Past Of Segregation And Slavery Is Neither Quaint Nor Harmless
Northerners may be a little shocked that anyone could feel a bit nostalgic for slavery, in the manner of the government-hating Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy. But in the South, such sentiments are hardly unheard of, even if they are usually muttered in private over a few bourbons rather than spoken at a news conference.
Occasionally, in fact, they are expressed or embraced by public figures. A particularly relevant case started about 14 years ago, when Maurice Bessinger, owner of a chain of South Carolina barbecue restaurants called Maurice’s Piggy Park, began distributing pro-slavery tracts in his stores. One of the tracts, called the “Biblical View of Slavery,” said the practice wasn’t really so bad, because it was permitted in the Bible. It argued that many black slaves in the South “blessed the Lord” for their condition, because it was better than their life in Africa.
When the tract was discovered, Mr. Bessinger was denounced and his restaurants boycotted. Many retail stores pulled his distinctive (to be kind) yellow mustardy barbecue sauce from their shelves.
But one prominent South Carolinian decided to stand up for Mr. Bessinger. Glenn McConnell, then a state senator from Charleston, stocked the sauce in his Confederate “art gallery,” which was loaded with secessionist flags and uniforms, as well as toilet paper bearing the image of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. When a local power utility banned its trucks from the parking lots of Piggie Park, Mr. McConnell threatened a legislative vendetta against the company.
Mr. Bessinger died in February. Mr. McConnell is now the lieutenant governor of South Carolina.
In that state, it is not considered a stain to have fought passionately to keep the Confederate flag flying on top of the Capitol dome, or to have appeared on a notorious white-nationalist radio program in 2007. (All of this is meticulously chronicled on the website of the invaluable Southern Poverty Law Center.)
No reputational damage was done even when Mr. McConnell, a well-known Civil War re-enactor and then president pro-tem of the Senate, appeared in a 2010 photograph dressed as a Confederate general, standing between a black man and a woman dressed as slaves. The man was wearing a floppy hat and holding a washboard; the woman wore an apron and a bandanna. When black leaders protested, Senator McConnell said the photo actually showed how far the state had come in race relations.
“If somebody is trying to be politically correct and use a tunnel vision on it and hook in the slavery issue, they’re on a slippery slope toward narrow-mindedness,” he told the Charleston Post and Courier, using a justification that Mr. Bundy might want to try. “They should extend the charity of understanding. Receive it in the spirit that it is presented.”
A few weeks ago, Mr. McConnell was named the president of the College of Charleston, under pressure from likeminded state legislators who have decided the school is taking academic freedom a little too literally. Religious conservatives in the legislature were angry that the college assigned students to read “Fun Home,” a memoir with gay themes by Alison Bechdel, and tried to cut its budget. Despite a vote of no confidence by the faculty, and no experience running an educational institution, Mr. McConnell will take over the presidency of the school in July.
The College of Charleston had no black students until 1967, having gone private in the 1950s to avoid integration. Even now, once again a public institution, only 6 percent of its students are black, one of the lowest percentages for a college or university in the state. Nostalgia for a past of segregation and slavery is neither quaint nor harmless; it remains a very present danger.
By: David Firestone, The Opinion Pages, The New York Times, April 24, 2014
Fox News’ Dangerous New Hero”: Cliven Bundy Steals From America–The Scary Return To A West Where Guns, Not Law, Rule
The showdown in Bunkerville last week was sensational – a rancher, his cows, and an armed militia resisting the federal government’s roundup of trespassing livestock. With banners pronouncing “Liberty” and “We the People,” these protesters mistook the issue of long overdue grazing fees for an issue of states’ rights and federal overreach. In the end, Cliven Bundy’s 400 cows were herded back onto the Mojave Desert to trample desert tortoise habitat, degrade water quality, crush cultural sites, consume native vegetation and defecate in springs and the Virgin River. The cheering crowds proclaimed, “Freedom!” and “Victory!”
What a disaster.
The public lands livestock grazing program uses approximately 250 million acres of the arid west, with permitted users paying a pittance to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) or the Forest Service for the privilege to do so. And it is truly a pittance. When Bundy stopped paying BLM in 1993, he owed just $1.86 per animal unit month for his mama cows, or $3,348 to use the land year-round. But Bundy refused to pay the fees because he didn’t want to reduce his herd to just 150 animals in order to help save the Mojave desert tortoise, a species given an emergency Endangered Species Act listing, and whose existence is specifically threatened by livestock competition for scarce desert vegetation and direct crushing and trampling of tortoise burrows. Bundy’s non-payment of fees was coupled with non-cooperation about getting his cows off the range. Since 1993, Bundy’s herd has ranged from 550 to more than 900 animals, far more than he was ever legally permitted. His cows have roamed over a much broader area than he was ever legally allowed to use. Without accounting for the legal expenses incurred by BLM and the costs of last week’s failed roundup, Bundy has since racked up a million dollar bill for overdue fees, trespass fees, and fines.
As Bundy musters up an army of supporters for this theft from the American public and the harm to the public lands, taxpayers lose at least $123 million each year that the federal grazing program continues. According to the Government Accountability Office, in 2005, the grazing fee wasn’t nearly sufficient to cover the costs of managing public lands grazing, and we – you and me, but apparently not Mr. Bundy – subsidize the program with $1.2 billion every decade, not counting the additional costs of species recovery, range infrastructure, soil loss, weed infestations, increasing wildfires, and bacterial contamination of water supplies. Despite the efforts of Western Watersheds Project and others, the fee formula has never been revised.
What a disaster, indeed.
The public lands livestock grazing program continues for many of the same reasons that Bundy “won” his range war this week. Federal land managers are afraid to stand up to the undue influence of Bundy and the mythical American cowboy he represents. There are only about 22,000 public lands livestock operators. The BLM and Forest Service place grossly disproportionate value on grazing, and fail to address the varied and severe negative impacts of public lands livestock grazing on the environment and on the federal deficit. Managers who try to rein in rogue permittees are quickly transferred out of their positions, and members of Congress who propose reforming the fee formula or allowing for voluntary permanent retirement are accused of trying to ruin a way of life.
Furthermore, the American public is woefully misinformed about the entrenchment, expense, and ecological harm of this land use. Make no mistake, Bundy isn’t the only rancher ripping off the American public. Every public lands livestock permittee is banking on federally-funded range infrastructure like solar wells and fences and benefitting from federally-funded wildlife killing that targets native predators like wolves and coyotes for the sake of livestock safety. Many permittees benefit from drought payments and disaster payments, seek handouts for “restoration projects” that are really just reseeding the forage species their cows stripped in the first place. And most livestock operations occur at the peril of endangered species, whether it’s the Mojave desert tortoise being nutritionally starved or Greater sage-grouse nests being trampled and their eggs destroyed. How do you calculate the cost of extinction?
Turning Bundy’s cattle back out onto Gold Butte does more than continue his illegal actions; it turns back the clock to a time when the West was controlled by whoever had the most guns, federal laws notwithstanding.
Public lands are valuable lands. The time to reform the public lands grazing program is now.
By: Travis Bruner and Greta Anderson, Salon, April 18, 2014
“Radicals Feeling Emboldened”: ‘They’re Nothing More Than Domestic Terrorists’
It’s been nearly a week since the U.S. Bureau of Land Management tried to enforce federal court orders at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch, only to back off in order to deescalate a potentially dangerous situation with heavily armed protesters.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), who of course represents Nevada, said earlier this week, “We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it’s not over.”
Yesterday, Reid went further.
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid on Thursday called supporters of Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy “domestic terrorists” because they defended him against a Bureau of Land Management cattle roundup with guns and put their children in harm’s way.
“Those people who hold themselves out to be patriots are not. They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists,” Reid said during an appearance at a Las Vegas Review-Journal “Hashtags & Headlines” event at the Paris. “… I repeat: what went on up there was domestic terrorism.”
The senator added that he’s been in communication with Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI leaders, and Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie, as well as the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association, ‘which has not backed Bundy’s personal battle but has expressed concerns about access to public land.”
There is, Reid said, a task force being set up to deal with the situation. “It is an issue that we cannot let go, just walk away from,” he added.
One assumes Bundy’s militia allies weren’t impressed with the senator’s comments, but Reid probably isn’t foremost on their minds. Rather, many on this far-right fringe are contemplating their next move, embracing what they see as a new precedent established six days ago at the Bundy ranch.
Reuters ran a striking piece yesterday, citing militia experts saying that armed Americans “using the threat of a gunfight to force federal officers to back down is virtually unparalleled in the modern era.” It’s left the radicals feeling emboldened.
Energized by their success, Bundy’s supporters are already talking about where else they can exercise armed defiance. They include groups deeply suspicious of what they see as a bloated, over-reaching government they fear wants to restrict their constitutional right to bear arms.
Alex Jones, a radio host and anti-government conspiracy theorist whose popular right-wing website, Infowars, helped popularize Bundy’s dispute, called it a watershed moment.
“Americans showed up with guns and said, ‘No, you’re not,” before confronting the armed BLM agents, Jones said in a telephone interview. “And they said, ‘Shoot us.’ And they did not. That’s epic. And it’s going to happen more.”
“More” is precisely what the American system cannot expect to tolerate.
As we’ve discussed, there’s an obvious problem with establishing a precedent that says Americans can disregard laws and court orders, whenever they feel justified in doing so, if they surround themselves with friends with guns. It’s a dynamic that invites and encourages lawlessness.
And it’s why this standoff isn’t over.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 18, 2014
“Cliven Bundy Is No Hero”: Republicans Are Mistaking The Angry Nevada Debtor For A States’ Rights Crusader
It’s no surprise that Republicans are jumping on Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s bandwagon. They’re desperate for any issue that will help them push propaganda designed to attract votes.
Some are painting the Bundy rebellion as a states’ rights issue. It’s not. The federal government isn’t threatening people’s freedoms nor Nevada’s sovereignty. Nevada isn’t fighting the Bureau of Land Management to reclaim the land. Bundy got himself in hot water because he refused to pay his $1 million grazing bill.
It’s not like Bundy didn’t know that the bureau was going to his confiscate his cattle. His dispute with them is 20 years old. He had plenty of opportunities to pursue legal action. The government never denied him due process.
A law abiding citizen would have respectfully paid his debt, but Bundy believes he’s special and that the rules don’t apply to him. He didn’t like the outcome, so he resorted to terrorist tactics, organizing a 1,000 person, gun posse to threaten federal agents and make his point.
Bundy won applause from Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Republican Sen. Dean Heller. Fox News host Sean Hannity hailed him as a capitalist hero, and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said he’d make a good politician. Florida Republican House candidate Joshua Black said President Obama should be arrested and hung for treason. Texas Senate candidate Chris Mapp said ranchers should be allowed to shoot on sight anyone illegally crossing the border on their land.
This talk is politically useful. It plays on conservatives’ distrust of government. The Pew Center for People and the Press found that 65 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of the government, but only 23 percent of Republicans think the same.
The party admires Bundy, but they have shown no such sentiment when it comes to ranchers fighting against the Keystone XL pipeline. Randy Thompson and hundreds of other Nebraskan have been resisting TransCanada’s efforts to lease their property. The GOP isn’t hailing them as champions of property rights. They’re silent because these ranchers are fighting against their big money, big business supporters.
Conservatives would be better off seeing this issue for what it is: an angry debtor who pulled out his gun because he didn’t like the fact that he had to pay up. They won’t be better off believing the GOP means what it says.
By: Jamie Chandler, U. S. News and World Report, April 16, 2014
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