History of Voter Suppression

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Peace. I think the following are worth mentioning. First, voter suppression has been going on in this country since before I was born. It was a natural result of giving black people (and poor white people and Latinos/Latinas, and orientals and women ...) the right to vote. Therefore, when you hear about voter suppression you should not think that there is anything new about it (although there are interesting minor innovations and mutations) in broad strokes it is more or less the same: poll taxes, gerry mandering, removing polling places, hanging chads. You should think to yourself, "this is really tiresome".

Second, the courts are perfectly capable of stopping this behavior whenever they want.  I slightly exaggerate, but they have broad powers here. Often, they choose not to. Therefore, it is a mistake to put your faith in the courts to "fix things". The Supreme Court coup d'etat in 2000, its support of Citizens United and its destruction of the Voting Rights Act are three good examples. The courts permit the states to set voting procedures based on by-county tax rates, hence worse voting machines in poor/black districts which is a form of voter suppression (see hanging chads). The courts may help or they may not. Their record is inconsistant.

Third, if you read some of the comments and forums and editorials, then you know there are phrases used by racists and Trump supporters to justify their racism. If you use those phrases (e.g. "we must condemn violence on all sides...") then you should expect people to conclude that you subscribe to the full racist agenda. That may not be true, but you should be aware of this.

Finally, local police forces have been using intimidation and violence to keep minority groups in place since at least the War Between the States (Civil War to you Northerners). If by this time, we have not plausibly dealt with this issue, why do you think the so-called minority groups should have any faith in the system self-correcting? Why shouldnt they defend themselves? Its not as if the problem is going to go away and they live here too. As a Jew in Virginia, growing up, how many times was I asked why the Jews of Germany did not defend themselves? (*)

All of these issues have come up in the last few weeks as people criticise me for being opposed to institutional racism, as I understand it, in this country. Everyone here is on the side of righteousness but we come from different backgrounds so maybe it is good to state assumptions. I will probably need to edit this post. I apologize for making this post so short, obviously it could and maybe should be much longer. Peace!

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(*) Of course, the answer to that is that they would have been slaughtered, I think.  
 

Real Clear Politics, Republicans and Georgia

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According to Real Clear Politics (a Republican news aggregator), Stacey Abrams hurt Georgia business because of "sour grapes" after a lost election.

You see, this is why Republicans are evil.  There is no thought in their twisted little minds that Kemp did not win the election, that Kemp is a racist who stole the election.

Are the Republicans really that stupid?  No.  They are just lying to steal the money, always have been, always will.

Lock him up. Lock Kemp up, period.

Knowing When to Retreat

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In the battle for public opinion, controlling the message is everything.

The issue of memorializing the Confederacy, an issue which is fraught with problems, was lost the moment the alt-right, the neo-Nazis and the KKK attached themselves to the process.

Whether or not these memorials are and must be to celebrate racism is no longer relevant. They are seen that way by too many people.

The fact is that racism persists in this country, just about everywhere. Its pernicious, its real, it penetrates our country in subtle and overt ways. Until that issue is dealt with, and I doubt it will be anytime soon, then the Confderacy becomes the great symbol of the struggle against racism unfinished.

The cause of commemorating those who fought and died to defend their home against invasion is not tenable at this time. Lets put these monuments and source materials in archive, underground, or in a warehouse somewhere, with museum-quality care. One day we will pull them out and have an exhibit.

But not for a long time.

Is "The Force Awakens" A Film About White People?

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This film contains a very modest spoiler for The Force Awakens.

You could hardly not notice the John Boyega character in the first trailer of Star Wars. His Black skin was set against the white of storm trooper uniform, the sand and the sky. The implication was that this was the first time a Black man would be a leading character of the Star Wars films and not merely a token character chosen to appeal to a Black audience (i.e. the Billy Dee Williams and Samuel Jackson characters).

The character played by Mr. Boyega is certainly one of the main characters of the film, or so someone as naive about race relations such as myself might have thought.  But maybe not.

Hey I'm in a Star Wars movie!

In this editorial by Andre Seewood of the “Shadow and Act” blog of Indiewire, “Hyper-Tokenism: The “Force Awakens” While the Black Man Sleeps”, see here, he makes the argument that the Finn character is just a new style of token Black character and that in reality nothing has changed.

He makes the following points. First, that because Finn is knocked unconscious near the end of the movie, he does not actually participate in the climax of the film. Second, that Finn is a second class character in that he does not have the Force, does not speak Droid, and so forth. Third, that he fits the model of the “Hyper Token” Black person which amounts to giving the Black character much more screen time but depriving him or her of the dramatic potential of how the film is resolved: that ultimately the film is by White people about White people. And fourth, that he finds some sort of connection between this type of character and the final year of the Obama Administration.

He goes on to further describe how annoyed he is at the Black community for supporting a film like this that so crassly exploits Black people.  

I was a little surprised by this discussion, I had not really thought about it.  I did interpret the casting of Boyega in a cynical manner, assuming that the filmmakers had cast him as a way of marketing the film.  As a person who often passes as White it is easy for me to overlook the racial implications.  

It is implicit to Seewood's argument that nothing about such a character would be accidental and that therefore it is fair to look for motive and, being a little sensitive to the larger issues, to be looking for limitations in the range of the character, as Mr. Seewood certainly is.  

I think his editorial is worth reading and thinking about.

My knee jerk opinion is that probably, and in the absence of any other evidence, that any racism is accidental.  A fair rejoinder to that argument might be that by 2015 nothing on the topic could possibly be accidental.

Two final points that are far less interesting. I did not understand his Obama argument at all. President Obama seems about as White as a Black person could be. And second, apparently the correct way to spell Black is to capitalize it.

When Neil deGrasse Tyson Spoke at the Virginia Military Institute

Recent events have conspired, one more time, to paint the Southern United States in a bad light. People are so negative and instead of lauding the fabulous cuisine (grits, cornbread, Smithfield ham), for example, they always emphasize the same old negative stuff. You know, racism, slavery, segregation, separate but unequal schools, that sort of thing.

So much for tolerance of cultural diversity.

But I am here to testify to you that at least parts of the South has changed in recent years and I have an example that is pretty amazing, and very specific to Virginia.

A few days ago, while throwing away my life while surfing the Internet, I came across an article on the AAAS website (American Association for the Advancement of Science) about science education that featured Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson who was a speaker at a conference on the subject. You can find this article at the following URL and I have provided some screengrabs of it at the end of the post.

http://membercentral.aaas.org/blogs/stemedu/neil-degrasse-tysons-battle-cry-stem

Neil deGrasse Tyson is, of course, the very eloquent spokesperson for Astrophysics at the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History. A PhD in astrophysics, a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, an author of many books, the star of the recent Cosmos reboot, and so forth, Neil is very entertaining and is very well known in the New York area and now because of Cosmos is also well known nationally.  I worked with Neil for a few years as a consultant on the Hayden Planetarium rebuild and the NASA Digital Galaxy project and Neil was very entertaining even when he was not in public.  He is also, apparently, a nice guy.  Or at least he was with me.

Here is a picture of Neil.

I don't know if you noticed, but Neil seems to be an African American. Well I am not sure what the whole story is, but no doubt Neil is definitely a person of color, we might say. Or maybe a scientist of color. I dont know, whatever.

Now we get to the point. I can prove to you that Virginia, at least, has come a long, long way since the war, even if it may still have a long way to go.

The conference on science education (STEM) where Neil was a speaker was held at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, VA.

(pause for reaction)

Well, I can tell that you are not from Virginia, because if you had been from Virginia and I had just told you that Dr. Tyson had spoken at VMI and your jaw did not drop, or your eyes bug out, or you fell out of your chair, then that is a pretty clear indication that indeed you are not from the Old Dominion.

Its a long story but it goes something like this. VMI is considered to be a bastion of Virginian aristocracy. It was said for many years that if you wanted to become Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, that it was helpful to have attended VMI. Many famous people have been alumni of VMI including Gen. George Marshall who was the Chief of Staff of the US Army during WW 2, George Patton's grandfather, who died in the War Between the States defending liberty and grandson, the third George Patton, and the one they made the movie about, attended VMI before he left to go to West Point.

There are many other colorful stories one might tell about VMI that would help to illustrate how tightly VMI is tied into the self-image of Virginians. Here is the well-known story behind a famous Southern nickname, not of a student, but of one of the early VMI professors. It seems this professor of Philosophy from VMI got his nickname during the very first battle of that destructive and stupid war between the states when he refused to retreat from the field and the commander of a Texas regiment, exhorting his troops, said “There stands Jackson like a stone wall”, although some people think he was saying that Prof. Jackson was dumb as a rock.

In other words, no less than the Country Club of Virginia, and maybe even more so, VMI is a part of the established order of the very aristocratic would-be aristocracy of Virginia who are still pissed off about the whole slavery thing.

That a black man, however famous, spoke at VMI is not to be sniffed at.

At the very least it surprised me and I grew up there.

Should I want you to conclude that there is racism in Virginia? Of course there is racism in Virginia and I wish it would go away. But things do change slowly for the better. A few years ago there was actually a black governor of Virginia which is a pretty amazing situation right there.

At least many Virginians realize there is racism present which is more than I can say about most of my friends in Southern and Northern California who seem to be in complete denial of the racism in their own communities.

Here are some scans of the article and quotes from Neil that prompted this post.

Virginia Military Institute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Military_Institute

Cosmos (2014) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2395695/

Bronx High School of Science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bronx_High_School_of_Science

Stonewall Jackson on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_Jackson

Stonewall Brigade on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_Brigade

How to Join the Daughters of the American Revolution

Those of you who were raised on the west coast may not be as aware of the higher forms of society that exist in this country. But those of us who grew up on the east coast and, in particular, the Commonwealth of Virginia, are certainly aware of organizations, bodies, clubs, societies, what have you, that are for people who are of better breeding than the lower classes.

First among these elite societies is the Daughters of the American Revolution which is an organization of the women who are descended from those who fought on the side of liberty in the American Revolution. To the best of my knowledge no men can be a member of this club and I am uncertain about the status of transgendered people but I doubt that they are eligible. I guess you can always apply.

Eligibility is a big deal to these women, and to be a member, you have to demonstrate “service” of an ancestor, and show a clear line of descent to that person. To that end, and to be of assistance to those who would join this worthy society, they have prepared a guide to establishing service for purposes of joining the DAR.

What surprised me, but perhaps should not have, is that the guide contains a wealth of information about the American Revolution and who fought when. Its worth a glance and I have included a few representative pages here.

The guide goes by the provocative name of “Is That Service Right?” and is available via Google Docs at the following URL:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1hYywD4eS8sODkzMTYwMzgtYzYxYi00NzI2LWE1OWEtN2U0ZThjZmU3YjA3/edit?pli=1

I have three stories/comments about the DAR which I think are amusing.

1. When FDR addressed the national society of the DAR he began his speech with “Fellow Immigrants....”. This of course annoyed the hell out of people.

2. Strom Thurmond was the senator from the state of S. Carolina for many years, first as a Democrat and then as a Republican, changing allegiance in response to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In other words, a well-known Southern racist. What everyone in DC knew, and most people in the South as well, is that Strom had fathered a child by his family's young black maid when he was a young man. He always supported the woman and her daughter and appearances were maintained until Strom passed away, at which time his daughter went public. In order to avoid embarrassing her father she waited until he had passed away before she applied for membership to the DAR. I never heard whether she became a member.

3. Until recently, I did not realize how many black Americans fought in the American Revolution. But quite a few did. I wonder how the DAR deals with this, because, in case you had not guessed, the DAR is very definitely one of those famous racist clubs that only admits whites and looks down on blacks, jews, and other types.  This must be quite a problem for them.

Strom Thurmond

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond

and his lovely daughter, Essie Mae

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essie_Mae_Washington-Williams