Social Ethics

THE VACILLATION OF A PRESIDENT

2011-09-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama remembers working with the poor on the south side of Chicago, but he has not sought to be an advocate for the alleviation of their plight. During his campaign for the US presidency Obama refused to state how he would addressed the situation of poverty in this country. Like many of his contenders, Obama spoke more about seeking to secure and enlarge the middle class than he ever did about helping the working class and eliminating the economic depression plaguing African Americans and other communities. Recently, when the congressional black caucus pressed him about the staggering unemployment among African Americans (over 16 percent), Obama fundamentally scolded them like children and commanded they stop their grumbling. No wonder Representative Maxine Waters felt unnecessarily chided, reprimanded, and singled out because of some presumed racial kinship that allows the president to humiliate her and the other caucus members. The fact of the matter is that Obama deserves criticism for his inattention towards jobs training and creation heretofore.

This convenient amnesia is indicative of his political response to crisis. It was not long ago that Obama acquiesced to condescending calls that he renounce his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. An excerpt from Wright’s sermon that condemned America was put on YouTube for all to see and hear. This land basting of the racial history and ethos of the United States is common fare black churches across the country. The alarm from many white citizens stem from the fact that worship hour on Sunday mornings is the most racially segregated period in our land. Consequently, they are not familiar with the rhetorical gymnastics in which African American ministers have routinely engaged. To the majority of blacks, what Wright said was far from alarming—it was right on! Obama prevaricated over the type of utterances he had heard from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ, and particularly from its pastor—the man who conducted the wedding of the President and the First Lady!

Obama’s renunciation of Rev. Wright was ludicrous, and the fact that his denials could be deemed a substantive response is downright absurd! Yet it passed muster so much so that he could be lauded for his “expert” statement on current race relations. Prior to his alleged debacle, Wright had been celebrated as one of the twentieth century’s greatest preachers. Had his language deteriorated within a span of eight years that he needed to be denounced in such a manner? I think not!
It was not long into his administration that some people started murmuring about the note worthy black environmentalist Van Jones. He was being castigated for claiming that people in the Bush administration knew about the tragedy of 9/11 before it occurred. This kind of assessment was not new, and it should not have caused much commotion at all. Obama chose not to address it to the point where Jones felt compelled to resign. Obama accepted his resignation and went about his own business. Obama showed no support for Jones and spinelessly claimed that he was busy with more substantive matters. How dare he!

As Hurricane Irene swept along the eastern seaboard, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial committee elected to postpone the dedication ceremony indefinitely. Recently, the date of October 16th was approved for it. That Sunday is also the sixteenth anniversary of the first Million Man March, whose keynote speaker was none other than Mr. Louis Farrakhan, titular head of the Nation of Islam or Black Muslim organization. Will Pres. Obama transcend political expediency, or cowardice, that day, to pay homage to that controversial leader? Or will he completely ignore the anniversary of that groundbreaking gathering? Or, worse still, will he beg off from attending the historic dedication altogether?

Perhaps, Obama would do well to heed the lesson found in the words of James Russell Lowell:

They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.

POLITICAL STUCKNESS

2011-07-01T14:20:00.001-07:00

As a body politic, we remain stuck in diametrically opposed positions as an artifice for distinction or differentiation. This polarity is based on the fear that variance from the party line will result in ostracism and lack of support and votes, if one is a candidate. This fear compels people to stand for things that the party generally holds even when endorsing it runs counter to common sense and personal integrity. A byproduct of this hypocrisy is lying, deceit, and intentional mischaracterization of the opposition. We are stuck!

This absurdity explains the recklessness of war, the neglect of the poor in favor of the wealthy, the allowance of corporations to be citizens, the disproportionate incarceration of black males and many and sundry other inequitable and unethical policies and procedures. We continue these shenanigans because they are easy and convenient, despite their brutality and misanthropic effects. How can we escape from such perniciousness and forge a society whose denizens concentrate on building solidarity among the citizenry, helping folks have productive and meaningful lives, and working to eliminate poverty and disease at home and abroad?

The masses of people have to recognize the folly in our youthful, yet originally promising, republic, and build a movement that emphasizes compassion, humaneness, and the best possible. The intense difficulty of maintaining this coalition is understandable, but the fierce urgency of the situation requires immediate action. We are spiraling down a road of repeated government shutdowns because compromise means betrayal and bipartisanship is rare.

Today’s leaders seem unable to discern that any given issue has a variety of response options. Very little is purely right or wrong, and having an opinion about something should not preempt the ability to engage in mature discussion. Filibustering and other tactics are not noble affairs as depicted in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; rather, they are childish maneuverings that make a mockery of what it means to have dialogue and to lead.

Knowing when to concede is a skill that is seldom practiced in the halls of government. For example, failing a promise to eliminate tax breaks for the wealthy and to use part of the money to ensure much-needed social programs do not get unduly excised are actions that do not exemplify good decision-making. Instead, it is simply a matter of not keeping one’s word. It was a concession at the wrong time: many people are in dire need of federal assistance in an economic recession and the wealthy are not numbered among them. The decision Pres. Obama made in December 2010 to extend the gratis to the exorbitantly rich seemed to breach his being on the square, so to speak, and to result in a loss of integrity.

He was so stuck in the political malaise we have in this country that he made a concession in the eleventh hour he definitely claimed he would never do. Would that Obama kept his word about not giving the dole to the wealthiest as he did about ferreting out and killing Osama bin Laden!

MLK, JR. & ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT

2011-05-16T10:02:00.000-07:00

I know that it is improper never to say “never.” However, I feel I must in order to set the record straight. Martin Luther King, Jr., was never an advocate of capitalism in his campaigns for civil and human rights. His perspective had been that of a democratic socialist since the latter part of his college days. He did not insist on spouting off about socialism for much of his public career because he was attacking the fundamental rights related to local and interstate travel, public accommodations, and voting for the first ten years. The remaining three years of his life, before it was struck down by an assassin’s bullet, were focused on economic exploitation, militarization, and the ongoing institutional discrimination.

Many scholars like to demythologize King by claiming that he evolved into a radical or revolutionary; he became a socialist only after his foray into the ghettos of Chicago; he acceded to some of the demands of the Black Power movement and the burgeoning Black Panthers crusade; he learned more about the evils of capitalism as he answered the call of Marian Wright (Edelman) and then-Senator Robert F. Kennedy to construct a Poor People’s Campaign; he sought to evangelize the nation about nonviolent resolution of conflict by lambasting the Johnson Administration’s escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and connecting it to the mistreatment of young black males; and his concern for Memphis sanitation workers forced him to address directly the worth of the labor movement and the exploitation of labor. In my opinion, these scholars are wrong, for they do not appreciate the fact that there is ample evidence of King’s strong affinity to socialism prior to 1955; King intermittently criticized American capitalism throughout his public career; and, perhaps most importantly, King was compelled first to deal with the superficial and peripheral elements of Jim Crow segregation before he could grapple with the systemic structural, procedural, and policymaking dimensions of racism.

King was not flawless in his pursuit of justice for the marginalized. After all, he was a member of a fallible species as all Homo sapiens are. The development of Operation Breadbasket in 1962 on the heels of the Albany movement in Atlanta, Georgia, was not acquiescence to the economic mainstream by encouraging blacks to become diehard capitalists. Rather, it was in recognition of the fact that employers were racist in their actions and African Americans were faced with unfair hiring practices, on the one hand, and deprived of job training, on the other hand. Breadbasket was begun in order to call attention to unemployment and underemployment among blacks through boycotts against companies not hiring blacks in appreciable, if any, numbers and arbitration with those and other businesses to agree to ways to address and redress the inequitable disparities. These actions were not salvos to modern industrial capitalism, but, rather, a realization of the urgent and emergent needs of people who could not support themselves or their families.

When we embark upon a discussion of King’s legacy, we must not settle on simply paying homage to the “I Have a Dream” speech, the Birmingham and Selma campaigns that largely contributed to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, respectively, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the paranormal premonition of his “Mountaintop” climax the night before his murder. We must, even in confabulating about his meaning for the twenty-first century, mirror his exhortation that “the whole Jericho Road must be changed.” Dr. King’s legacy is one that embraces the tenets of moral law: try to reach your ideal of society through knowing your values, pursuing the best possible, making your strategies and tactics relevant and specific to the situation or the issue, being aware of the consequences of your actions, working in collaboration with others, and seeking to effectuate positive social change that respects the dignity and worth of human personality—whatever one’s metaphysical or theological persuasion might be.

Any real legatee of King’s must be acutely cognizant of the latter’s core orientation towards democratic socialism. The solution to economic exploitation—apart from discriminatory employment practices—is not only a redistribution of the wealth of this country, but also ensuring that every individual has a livable income, can participate fully in the body politic, and can have all the basic and existential human needs satisfied.

AH, HAH! MOMENTS

2011-03-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have been hearing folks having epiphanic experiences when it comes to institutionalized racism in the United States. I am surprised and quickly become suspicious when these instances are reported, because I reflexively disbelieve anyone living in this country can be so impervious to what has been systematically going on for centuries with regard to African Americans (as well as other peoples of color), that they claim ignorance even as they continue to swim, if you will, in reservoirs of privilege as they have all of their lives! There are countless matrices and social stimuli that daily replay the racial divide within everybody’s purview. We do not need a surfeit of data to observe the injustices and to resolve to collaborate unendingly to fight against this blight upon all of our humanity—although Michelle Alexander has done precisely that in her book entitled, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Colorblindness, of course, is a popular descriptor of what many wish for and claim today it exists, on the one hand, and an expression of the shallow and uncritical perception many have who simply do not wish to deal with the sickness of racism, on the other hand. Colorblindness can be used as a foil ostensibly to hide our greed, selfishness, individualism, and indifference to the plight of people of darker hue. Prejudice raises its ugly head not only in the thoughts of lower-class whites who have the privilege of sighing that they ain’t like no nigger, but also in the charitable contributions of the well-off who never consider sacrificing current material comforts in order to help to begin to dismantle a system designed to lock people in the poorhouse. Yet because we insist that our society has reached an age of colorblindness, we can exculpate ourselves from any responsibility for a system of oppression and exploitation that scandalizes human dignity and worth. Consequently, a structure of exclusion fundamentally based on racial categories can be blatantly perpetuated by lofting from our lips the sordid and flagrantly cynical subterfuge that we have finally arrived!

Every black person in the United States should develop a hermeneutic of suspicion when dealing with others alleging enlightenment and also live in this environment steeped in racism. It is very, very difficult to transcend it unscathed. Knowing the history of well-minded liberals and some progressives in this country, blacks cannot drop their guards because some of the most vicious forms of racism have been engendered and propagated by such people! Race matters in this country because we let it by supposedly having the luxury to ignore and be indifferent to it—while those categorized, prejudged, and victimized by it recognize its validity and its entrenchment in all facets of our regular milieu.

Until we discern the continuum of racial discrimination—from individual prejudice to institutional genocide—we will forever plead some exonerative ignorance or contemplative epiphany ad infinitum that renders us in effect inactive perpetrators of the status quo, which promises that the day of freedom, dignity, and equality for all persons shall remain a pipe dream!

MILITARY ACTION IN LIBYA?

2011-03-11T10:17:00.000-08:00

There is pressure upon Nobel Peace Prize laureate, President Barack Obama, to proceed to a military solution to the crisis in Libya. Unfortunately, Col. Muammar Qaddafi has elected to trounce the rebels through air attacks, ground forces, and other military technologies rather than face up to the civil strife he helped to cause prior to his offensive defense tactics in the face of the uprising. The United States has tolerated Qaddafi’s human rights abuses since he became less vituperative against us some years back.

Qaddafi has been in office much longer than Hosni Mubarak. With such a long tenure at the helm of the ship of state, a political leader must be dictatorial and violent against the people. There is no way for opposition to be on the losing end for decades without massive suppression occurring. Needless to say, Qaddafi’s rule has not been exceptional.

It is ironic that one of the main responses of the Obama administration has been to defer to the United Nations as far as military intervention is concerned. We have repeatedly defied the U.N. since its inception, when we have used the device of “national security” to do whatsoever we wanted to preserve or advance our interests. Meanwhile, we watch from afar innocent Libyan civilians being massacred and virtually defenseless demonstrators struck down, because we are more concerned about Afghanistan and Iraq—two places where a hefty portion of our military arsenal is still engaged, both actively and poised for future sorties.

There are many in Obama’s coterie who believe that Qaddafi is definitely on the way out and, therefore, sitting on our duffs is not a bad option for now. This attitude is appalling, for it makes light of the awful devastation the Libyan dictator is wreaking on his own people today. How can we be so cavalier about people’s lives?
Many of our European allies depend upon this authoritarian regime’s oil. They will begin to feel more desperate about what’s happening in that country and may themselves opt to engage their own military might. Perhaps, we will be more favorable to that action, or more willing to support them rather than the democratic rebels of darker hue in Libya itself.

Ultimately, I do not favor a military solution to the crisis in Libya. There are ways to force Qaddafi out without using a weapon of mass destruction. The question is whether our intelligence and diplomacy are fit for the challenge. At this point, I fear the answer to that question and the many lives that are at stake!

UNION BUSTING IN WISCONSIN

2011-03-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

The public sector needs protection from those who favor the well-to-do at the expense of the average worker. Many who have this inclination seem impervious to the fact that their support works against their own interest. What kind of democracy is it that fervently seeks after tax cuts for the richest in the nation, yet removes the primarily thing that has historically kept workers shielded from callously greedy business owners, namely, collective bargaining? Many people had struggled and died to make the work environment tolerable. If it were not for unions, children would be allowed to work, wages would not keep up with inflation, the work week would be tediously longer than it is now, there would be no such thing as overtime, maternity leave, medical benefits, pensions, retirement pay, improved working conditions, etc.

What makes what happened in Wisconsin that much more egregious is the manner in which they railroaded the bill through because of the absence of fourteen Democratic lawmakers who were disgusted in the puerile discussions made by Republicans. These Republican legislators claimed they were acting on a conservative mandate from the people—people who were clearly unable to ascertain that they themselves were being blamed for the fiscal crisis in their state. The average public sector worker is not the type of individual that brought the economy to its knees in 2008. It is so much easier to attack the masses of people who have very little recourse for defense except for protesting in the public square.

If a repressive regime can be forced to abdicate and abscond by citizen protests, then why is not a government of the people, by the people, and for the people able to be squashed, impeached, or radically reformed? Union busting is repressive; the denial of the breadth of collective bargaining removes the major form of safeguards for the average laborer. Such action flies in the face of what it means to be a human being worthy of dignity and respect. Certainly, corporate Wisconsin could have taken much of the slack, rather than lobbying to save themselves and ignore consumers upon whom they depend.

Voting is a right in this country, and it ought to be. But that does not mean that voters are aware of their rights or can discern what is in their best interests and in the best interest of the whole. It is incumbent upon the informed electorate to educate the rest of the population that is perpetuating their own self-affliction. Labor unions are still needed to protect the contemporary worker. They are by no means antiquated, and all workers have benefitted from their long history of struggle and activism on behalf of laborers.

The other states that are considering Wisconsin-like measures, including my own state of Iowa, need to be assailed by an Egyptian-type rebellion in order to salvage the last vestiges of real democracy in our weakening republic. Union busting has to become and remain a relic of the Reagan administration!

FINALLY, HE RESIGNS!

2011-02-11T12:44:00.000-08:00

I'm not particularly fond of the daily fare of social networks like Facebook, but at last such tools have been used to advocate for a democratic society and urge protests aimed at the removal of an oligarchy that has been in place since for thirty years! Now, that's employing the Internet in a constructive manner, and I applaud the youth liberation movement in Egypt for its fervor and ingenuity.

As Frederick Douglass stated in the latter part of the nineteenth century, "Power concedes nothing without a demand." Certainly, the masses of people repeatedly demanded the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, and today their earnest met with success. Hallelujah! Alhamdulillah!

After Anwar Sadat was assassinated, Mohammed Hosni Mubarak seemed like a godsend. He appeared generous to the opposition, freeing many political prisoners, and interested in opening up the economy to the marginalized. But that soon changed. In trying to squash what he saw as radical fundamentalism, the trajectory of his rulership changed dramatically. Rather than becoming a paradigm for democratic leadership, he became increasingly repressive and oppressive, allowing for nearly half of the population to live at subsistence levels. Mubarak cracked down on free, fair, and open elections, and sought to orchestrate his eventual succession. He put a lot of his personal allies in high political positions, including his son Gamal. Egypt has been in a state of emergency for decades, which served as a vehicle to crush any political reform. The dream of democracy was transformed into a nightmare of exploitation.

Somehow, Egypt remained a strong ally of the United States, as administration after administration simply looked the other way in order to maintain American interests in the region. As we have become increasingly receptive to the alleviation of pain for the Palestinians, we have not stridently criticized Mubarak for closing off refuge for displaced Palestinians. Because we consider Egypt key to our national security interests, we have oftentimes suddenly become blind when Egypt offends--as we have been with Saudi Arabia as well as with Israel. Rather than support the burgeoning liberation movement in Egypt, we acted like immobile deer in approaching headlights. The Obama Administration did not have the foresight or insight to discern the unrest brewing at the surface; it was afraid that any words critical of the Mubarak regime would enervate our friendly relations and destabilize the region. Mubarak use this softness on the part of the United States and continued to horde money for himself and his henchmen for a couple decades.

What's in store for Egyptland now? I would never fully trust military personnel to rule a country. It would be optimistic, however, to expect the military to share power, for the instability of the country needs to end, and who else but the military can forge such a state of affairs? I think a civilian coalition should spring up to help organize a new democracy that believes in curtailing the plight of the disinherited. That's what ethical government is all about!

In a very real sense, Mubarak is a tragic figure. Despite his billions, he clinged to a position against the will of the people. He still needed to be bolstered by status and station, rather than ceding to the masses their own process of striving for ideal democracy. In essence, he had become corrupt to the bone: delighting in power and disdaining the people whom he, at one time, vowed to support, sustain, develop, and enhance. Lord Acton was right: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Mubarak had to be forced out; an it happened without the violence of most protesters. Now that's how to walk like an Egyptian!

PORTMAN & THE BIG O

2011-02-06T14:10:00.001-08:00

I have never been a fan of Natalie Portman’s acting ability. Unlike critics who have been making comments about last year’s female performances, I do not believe she should be the odds-on favorite. I do not regard her acting in The Black Swan to be persuasive; she does not seem to emote very well and the way she talks appears to me to be one step removed from struggling both to remember her lines and to follow the director’s instructions. It seems to me she tries to rely on her appearance–which is far less than a lot of other talented actresses–to get her over. However, her outward countenance simply cannot compensate for a very shallow reservoir of talent.

Another aspect which is troubling is a condescending comportment on Portman’s part. I recall years ago when she was criticizing actresses who appear nude on screen, she insisted she would not deign to that. It was not long ago that she played a stripper in Closer scarcely removing any of her underwear. Her playing of this role was not only weak, but also mocking reality. Strippers remove their clothing and their relationship to the clientele goes much further than Portman’s portrayal. Perhaps, her statement was more a reflection of her age, rather than some precocity or moral compass. Clearly, age, romance, and pregnancy removed this sexual constipation, if you will, for she engages in hetero and same-sex activity in The Black Swan, albeit Mila Kunis is more knowledgeable and bare than Portman.

Of course, I am under no illusion that the buzz about Portman’s being a shoe-in for the Oscar will not mirror reality. The unfortunate thing is that her victory will slight the many other powerful performances over the past year. I liked her words at the Screen Actors Guild awards ceremony, when she supported labor. I glad she took advantage of the opportunity to say what she did. So, even though she did not, in my opinion, deserve to be standing there receiving the Actor for Best Actress, her real life show was par excellent!

WHOSE WAR IS IT NOW?

2011-02-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

During the Presidential Campaign of 2008, candidate Barack Obama repeatedly stated that in the Executive Office and as Commander in Chief, he would search in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden and kill him. Those words, which I heard numerous times, not only sent chills up and down my spine, but also elicited anger. They still make me cringe! I did not see the point: after all, he had been criticized for saying he would converse with so-called enemies of the United States; however, I guess killing the enemy of all our enemies was alright.

When it was announced that President Obama would be the 2009 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, my horror and ire returned. Initially I felt it must be some weird or cruel joke, for how could a person who advocated violent retaliation against another be considered a paragon of peace? As a matter of fact, he was not only advocating murder, but also escalating warfare that had clearly failed heretofore and lost its erstwhile, ostensible purpose. Obama had spent much of the second term of President George W. Bush condemning the latter’s foreign policy and diplomacy. Now, here he was proverbially talking out of both sides of his mouth by extending and intensifying the war through a surge of military combatants.

I am not certain when a current U.S. president ought to stop blaming present circumstances on the past administration and take ownership of what is happening in the nation and the world under his own term. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were, indeed, inherited by Obama—bequeathed to him by Bush and his entourage. But now we are two years past that abomination, if you will, and the continued 50,000 troops in Iraq and the nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan clearly belong to Obama. He has lowered the number in Iraq, although some U.S. soldiers are still fighting there; and he has acceded to the necessity of a surge in Afghanistan that continued the debacle of the Bush administration. This concessionary behavior emphasizes the fact Obama has purchased certain policies and made them his own.

Although I hold to a pacifist faith, I do not expect or require that posture of my political leaders. However, the greatest advocates and articulators of international law promulgated some dimension of the just war theory. Warfare is something that should never be engaged in lightly; and it should always be the last resort. It is not even arguable that our entrance into Iraq was either justifiable or the final straw, so to speak. Weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein, and Islamic feuding had absolutely nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Pres. Obama seemed fully aware of this duping of the American people from the outset. Our foray into Afghanistan within a month after the horrible attacks seemed, on the surface, to be in hot pursuit of the alleged orchestrator of 9/11—this despite the fact that the base of operation for the terrorist themselves was our ally namely Saudi Arabia!

The U.S. military had been in Afghanistan before. Apparently, the Commander-in-Chief and the Joint Chiefs of Staff should have known the nearly insurmountable challenge of ferreting out terrorists in the cavernous, mountainous terrain would not achieve the goal of breaking up Al-quaeda and gaining the corporation of the Taliban. By perpetuating this folly, Obama must now own whatever course of action is taken under his watch. If withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan actually takes place in July without a concomitant redirection of foreign policy, then Obama is only engaging in cosmetic surgery without having made a precise diagnosis.

This October will mark the tenth anniversary of war against terror in Afghanistan. Better yet, it reveals some level of ineptitude over trying to find a culprit without a hint of warmness, if you will, for an entire decade! When should such a feckless pursuit end? I believe Obama’s wars—may, our wars—should come to an abrupt end!

SORRY IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

2011-02-02T13:39:00.000-08:00

There is very little substantive discussion about affirmative action these days, because the opposition has successfully distorted the debate in a way that is fundamentally both racist and sexist. This opposition allows for the perpetuation of white-male dominance and the denial of white-female privilege, for the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action policies have been white women. Antagonists of affirmative action skew the discussion from how to address historical discrimination and oppression of categories of people—especially African Americans—to the horrible and countless rejection of white men under the specious rubric of reverse discrimination.

The inception of affirmative action related to the centuries of African slavery and the subsequent near-century of Jim Crow segregation, which existed prior to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, but became legal after the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Clearly, the purpose of affirmative action was to account for the long duration of suppression of black people in the United States by ensuring such discrimination and exploitation would not happen again. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower sought to address antidiscrimination in government contracts through executive orders, but it was President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925 that pinpointed taking affirmative action to eliminate racial bias and President Johnson’s enforcement thereof with Executive Order 11246 to inject that phrase into the veins of our civilization.

The major, unfortunate problem with these renditions of antiracist hiring policy is the letter did not reflect the intent. For the mandates were not to ignore the history and refuse to make amends for egregious past wrongs; instead, they were to compensate for deliberate obstruction of employment opportunities for generations. By using language that indicated hiring should not occur with race in mind, the presidential orders created the possibility for white people to claim they were being discriminated against based on the very orders intended to improve and increase the chances of people of color to be gainfully employed! Those words, “without regard to race,” eventually became the precise impediment to redressing the historical lockout that plagued the African American population for centuries.

The arguments pleading reverse discrimination failed to appreciate past oppression. All of a sudden, opponents of affirmative action wanted to forgive the discrimination of categories of people over time by dismissing such categories in favor of individual or selfish concerns. Thus, from their vantage point, two candidates qualified for a job at a particular institution that practiced racially discriminative hiring could not now hire the black, rather than the white, applicant because of the former’s belonging to a racial category heretofore deemed unemployable by that institution. Supposedly, the white candidate would be treated unfairly by being denied employment as a member of the white race—a category nevertheless privileged over blacks for centuries! This type of thinking disrespects history and turns upside down the intent of affirmative action.

The initial executive orders did not include sex and gender as protected classes so to speak. Gender was added in 1967. With this addition, affirmative action garnered some support, because it softened singularly advantaging persons of color. By the late 1970s, however, along with the coincident white backlash after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., affirmative action was being publically lambasted and attained status with the Bakke decision, which attacked the use of quotas.

Another turning point in the affirmative action debate came with the shifting of the burden of proof from defendants to plaintiffs. Many plaintiffs seeking legal redress for being discriminated against had, as a result, to research and present the evidence with the necessary help of a costly attorney. They simply did not have the means and wherewithal to challenge unfair practices. The continuous assault against affirmative action sullies and hides the fact that institutional racism still exists in this country and employers knowingly and unwittingly perpetuate it.

Affirmative action has never been about hiring unqualified persons. It has always been about alleviating structural racism and its myriad effects by ensuring certain categories of people land jobs and get promoted as they ought and in accordance with or greater than their numbers in the local and county populations. Despite the election of a U.S. president who is biracial and self-identifies as black, and in spite of the fact that his ascendancy has provoked and elicited fantasies about a colorblind society, the terrible fact remains that paucity of opportunities available to employable people of color reveals not only that we have not yet arrived at such a society, but also that we must call into question the validity of such dream in the first place.

The past is very important, and we cannot turn a blind eye to it. The attack on affirmative action is disingenuous, at best, for it continues to dismiss not only the history of racism in the United States, but also the ongoing institutionalized oppression and exploitation of peoples of color throughout all dimensions of life. Apologizing for racism, which is the pernicious categorizing of certain people as inferior, is not enough. It requires, using Christian references, repentance, redemption, and reconciliation: in other words, to make amends to the categories of people adversely affected, to leave and never return to the dehumanizing system, and to regard each member of each category as a complete human being.

Sorry is not good enough!

OBAMA'S SELECTION OF NEW CHIEF OF STAFF

2011-01-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

The fact that President Obama selected as his new chief of staff a person with banking interests goes against the perception that he has strong socialist leanings. William Daley used to be commerce secretary, which also suggests that Obama is a good ole capitalist after all.

Part and parcel of his choice anticipates not only the creation of new jobs to undergird and grow our economy, but also to increase our competitive advantage in the world market. What this divulges is his support for the hackneyed system of rivalry, rather than anything really new: like the forging of international enterprise collaboration or the effort to stabilize floundering economies in the Second and Third Worlds.

Obama has consistently backpedaled from his “redistribution of wealth” comment to Joe the Plumber on the 2008 presidential campaign trail. One cannot help but get the feeling that he never actually held the view à la Martin Luther King, Jr. that what we need in America is a revolution of values and a radical redistribution of wealth in this country. Instead Obama has, by his selection, kowtowed once again to corporate interests, which inevitably lead to a widening gap between the rich and the poor. This increasing chasm also will result in the strangulation of the middle class, an effect that contradicts his purported goal of buttressing and bolstering that shrinking social class.

The banking industry was the culprit that took the American economy over the cliff in the first place. So why is Obama inviting one of its leaders and a Chicago associate to play John to his Jesus, so to speak? What is needed in this country is a concerted effort to bring about full employment, not further steeping ourselves amid the mire of laissez-faire capitalism. At this juncture, the mere appearance of camaraderie with the banking establishment is ill-advised. Hence, Obama’s boldness in this regard reflects a disturbing comfort with business as usual. The palsy-walsy nature of his selection processes resembles the customary good ole boys’ network.

The economic situation in this country is still dire, and very little is being said about the devastating effects it is having upon the middle and lower classes. People’s lifestyles are drastically changing: those living from paycheck to paycheck are forced to live desperately, while solutions to the crisis are not being attended to in recognition of that fact. How can we expect folks who are under the iron feet of foreclosure, family dislocation, and homelessness to remain upstanding citizens with a zeal for or trust in our allegedly empathetic democratic republic, while a minority of people have their jobs saved, get hefty bonuses, and make more money in a year than most make in a lifetime? It is grossly unfair, hypocritical, immoral, and unethical!

Bailing out, subsidizing, and stimulating big business has certainly not trickled down to reinvigorate the economy, put people back to work, and help people to earn a sustainable and livable income. Attending to the least of these should be the president’s and government’s number one priority. But what kind of lobbying power do the poor or the indigent have compared with the ubiquity of lobbyists paid by big business? Paying lip service to job creation without putting forth a feasible and effective process to accomplish it is what many low-income people have been experiencing from time immemorial. Obama’s promise of a new day in Washington, D.C., Is now falling even more so upon deaf ears.

Obama needs to hear the words of that great socialist and pacifist of yesteryear, Eugene V. Debs, echoing down through the twentieth into the twenty-first century: “While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is one man in prison, I am not free.” If the members of the current administration who are responsible for fostering the long-awaited economic recovery can similarly place their feet in the shoes of the disadvantaged and otherwise oppressed, then, perhaps, we could begin to usher in the beloved community at last!

FELONY DISENFRANCHISEMENT

2011-01-20T14:25:00.001-08:00

The celerity or alacrity with which Governor Terry Branstad rescinded former Governor Chet Culver’s restoration of voting rights for felons on his inaugural day, demonstrates both fear and animus on the part of the new Governor and his henchmen, namely Secretary of State Albrecht, that defy levelheaded rationality. The adverse racial impact of this rescission is unconscionable—given that Iowa is the top state that disproportionately incarcerates African-Americans and that a quarter of the felons in the state are African-American! Based on these facts alone, the action by Branstad is racist and, thereby, unconstitutional.

Of course, racial discrimination’s burden of proof is made so deliberately insurmountable, that it is ostensibly ridiculous even to make the effort. Perhaps, something can be said about the speed of his action that calls into question his intentions; however, racial discrimination does not singularly point to a person, but, rather, to structures, processes, and policies that have racially disparate effects. In other words, whether or not Branstad is a racist is beside the point; what matters is whether the disproportionate number of ex-felons who will not be able to vote is against the state’s compelling interests with regard to race. The racial impact of his rescissory action is clearly egregious and the style likewise malevolent, but in the final analysis, opponents will have to hang their hat, so to speak, on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

When a citizen is unable to vote, especially one who is a member of an underrepresented category of people, that person is denied equal protection, fairness, and equity under the law—which breaches the Fourteenth Amendment. Because one has committed a felony should not mean that person should lose any citizenship rights. A criminal act has little to do with civil liberties and even less to do with suffrage. The withdrawal of the franchise is a deliberate attempt to wield more power by allowing persons characterized as evil to be further humiliated and treated as less than human beings. No one should be allowed to forfeit the right to vote regardless of the heinousness of the crime committed, for it removes another protection from a full-fledged citizen of the United States. It flies in the face of the letter and spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the denial of the vote from anyone who is a citizen, with special reference to race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Clearly, the denial to ex-felons in Iowa violates this law, for a disproportion of ex-felons is African American! In addition, the stricture that one can only petition for the return of the franchise after all fines and penalties are paid amounts to levying a kind of poll tax upon those who are financially strapped already. Certainly, anything like a poll tax is verboten according to this amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In terms of its racial dimensions, the forfeiture of the ballot for felons and ex-felons disallows them a very significant ally in the battle against further dehumanization. Felons can hardly obtain gainful employment and a decent place to live because they are permanently stigmatized. Denying the right to vote adds insult to injury and relegates them to second class citizenship reminiscent of the early three-fifths rule and the infamous Dred Scott decision. Fortunately, well-meaning people over the past century and a half have recognized the folly of such policies and procedures. Notwithstanding this realization, we find ourselves still battling against the unspeakable elephant in the room, namely racism.

I call upon all people of good will who enjoy representative democracy openly and in unison to demand Branstad reverse his racially tendentious rescission with all deliberate speed!

MALCOM X & MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

2011-01-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

Since my adolescent years, I have undergone persistent criticism over my obvious stronger affinity towards Dr. King than towards Minister Malcolm. Those intermittent attacks upon my intelligence and character, I deemed to derive from impassioned ignorance more than anything else. Sadly, the supporters of Malcolm were most often completely bereft of knowledge about King, save for the ubiquitous “I Have a Dream” mantra that media brokers, political pundits, civic leaders, and the hoi polloi could barely stomach. No one seemed to want to hear about the nonviolent warrior who fought against avariciousness and rugged individualism, jumboism, ghettoization, unsafe working conditions, underemployment, the military draft, escalation of the war in Vietnam, and poverty, in addition to racism. King was no pipe dreamer, as many would claim made the Nobel Peace Prize recondite; rather, King was an enlightened patriot and internationalist who ardently sought after the beloved community.

The above notwithstanding, I want to clear up a few things that have been in discussions of Malcolm and Martin since the mid-1960s. The point of contention centers around what would have happened if they ever met. This question is not a moot point, for it is and should be a matter of the historical record. Herein, I make it plain.

King and X met publicly in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 1964. The occasion was to listen in on a congressional debate over the Civil Rights Bill. Many claim that this encounter was the only time the two have set eyes upon each other and physically shook hands. This point of view is highly suspect, for many go on to say that this meeting was the only time they communicated with each other in their entire lives. Such is simply not the case!

Malcolm and Martin communicated with each other as early as the late 1950’s. In this regard, many scholars attest that they never spoke on the phone or wrote a letter and sent it to each other ever. Clearly, assertions like these are completely untrue. Malcolm and Martin did speak on the phone more than once, and correspondence between the two took place with and without an intervening person. A number of these interactions occurred prior to the beginning of extensive wire tapping of both parties. Consequently, there are no records of how they interfaced prior to the middle of the Kennedy administration.

Both men were warm and personable individuals. Although Malcolm was wolnt openly to criticize King during public addresses, whereas King always refused to do so, they clearly had immense respect for each other. After Malcolm left the nation of Islam, he was ever more amenable to reaching out to his non violent brother. As a matter of fact, Malcolm himself was primarily non violent in private, while in the political arena he shouted invective about self defense and confrontation that kept the media spinning scary tales of proposed violence against whites and against law enforcement officers. And the beat of lies drums on!

During the early stages of the Selma campaign Malcolm chatted with Coretta more than once, and left messages for Martin with her. The ease with which Malcolm and Coretta spoke reveals an intimacy between her husband and Malcolm that could only have been developed through direct contact. It is in shame that we cannot fully recover dates, times, and locations of these exchanges!

What must be stated herein is the stark reality of their lives. They were both assassinated during the very prime of their lives. We will never know nor should we ever speculate, what would have happened had they lived. However, it is clear that the divide that separated their rhetoric was appreciably closing as the battle for full human rights continued to be waged.

In my opinion, it is incumbent upon us to continue that struggle until victory is won!

SACRIFICE FOR THE SICK

2010-12-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

It is a principle of community that each watch out for the other as much as possible—for reasons of safety, childrearing, role modeling, and stability. Oftentimes, people do not want to get involved in the neighborhood, for a focus on community seems to take away from individual concern and prosperity. Because of this tradition of self-centeredness and a combination of anthropophobia (i.e., fear of people) and soteriophobia (fear of dependence on others), the notion of sacrifice for the betterment of neighborhoods and the overall community has been anathema in American traditions in social relations.

Hence, it is no wonder that many people are up in arms that people are required to purchase health insurance, even when they are not sick or have not had any serious ailment. The major individualistic strand in the United States condemns any governmental mandate—alleging that it interferes with human freedom and the right to decide what to do with hard-earned income. Usually, there is little, if any, consideration about how their participation, or sacrifice, might help others challenged by existential circumstances. Those who can easily afford buying health insurance ruthlessly chime in, in opposition to mandate because they are hesitant to support any measure that goes against their frequently rudimentary and erroneous understanding of old-time laissez-faire capitalism and communism. Forcing people to buy into some plan, thought privately run, raises, to them, the specter of socialized medicine, Western society’s perennial nemesis.

When I was in professional school, pursuing a post-baccalaureate in religious and theological studies, I encountered a colleague who argued that the bible commands us to take care of ourselves and not to lift our hands and voices on behalf of the needy. I was both alarmed and appalled, and I genuinely wondered whether I was missing a few pages in my copy of the scriptures or had gotten my hands on an underground, subversive copy somehow! One of the most ubiquitous messages and lessons in the bible is to care for the exploited, marginalized, and oppressed.

By buying into health insurance, the healthy help to drive down the escalating costs of health care and enable those otherwise uninsurable to obtain minimal coverage. Just as we are required to pay taxes on our earnings to subsidize, for example, the military-industrial complex and rarely make any bones about it, we should likewise refuse to rankle over reducing the costs of medical care through buying into health insurance.

Why would anyone with a modicum of decency allow one’s nebulous comprehension of rights and freedoms to trump the receipt of healthcare services to those currently unable to acquire them? Private insurers are looking for the bottom line: money and profits. They do not care whether a person receives insurance, for anyone denied is quickly replaced by another who’s picked up. The cruelty of the market economy is clearly discerned, and the only way to curb its inertial juggernaut is through radical intervention by the public and governmental sectors.

I am not a doomsday theorist. However, it is incumbent upon me to say that the United States cannot continue to survive without changing its economic structure’s reliance on free enterprise market capitalism. For this system disproportionately makes paupers and exculpates imperviousness to the needs of others. An economic approach that works first to ensure fundamental and existential needs are met for everyone, including access to quality health care, would undergird our democratic republic and launch new vistas of opportunity. It would also help us to be perceived better in the world and become a harbinger of efforts for global peace.

Finally, we could become a nation that not only pays lip service to human rights, but also transforms itself from a sad tradition of rugged, dispassionate individualism to the fulfillment of the beloved community and a society of the best possible.

TAX CUTS, PHILANTHROPY, & SOCIAL CHANGE

2010-12-12T17:18:00.000-08:00

Extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest in the United States was an unnecessary concession of the Obama Administration, which is concluding a very disappointing second year in the executive office. These acquiescences on the part of Pres. Obama to the minority party in the two houses of the legislature are poor examples of his campaign promise to begin a new era in the nation’s capital. Being a centrist is nothing new, for Obama has a perfect model in the former president who recently visited with him in the Oval Office, namely William Jefferson Clinton. Universal health care has yet to be realized, and the end to the economic recession is nowhere in sight for the middle and lower classes—not to mention the persistent underclass, for which the current administration seems to have little, if any, regard.

What is the point of allowing the rich not to pay taxes on income that they receive for doing very little, while their workers are being laid off or are making wages that are morally unconscionable in comparison? Who benefits from these tax breaks besides the individuals receiving them? History and common sense show that they do not redound to the favor of the middle and lower classes, not to mention job creation and the general economy. There is no trickle down reality that we are missing here, for it never has and does not exist. Just because a person repeats the lame idea does not make it healthy; the theory was invalid from its propagandistic inception!

Charity is always a good thing, and as many people should engage in it that can afford to make the sacrifice. There are some who can give much more than others’ proportional giving, for they have way more materially than they and their family need or could spend. So, it comes as no surprise that Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and an assortment of multi-billionaires and multi-millionaires have pledged philanthropic donations—as if they are going beyond the call of moral duty to give money they have earned because of cheap labor, tax incentives, subsidies, and the floor of capitalism that inevitably create and divide folks into economic classes. The bottom line is that their largesse will not change a system that produces paupers out of necessity.

Charitable donations are not intended to reform, transform, or revolutionize structures, processes, and policies that discriminate against the middle, working, and lower classes and the poor. In order to improve the life chances of the masses of people who work every day, but cannot easily make ends meet, the market economy on which this country relies has to be seriously changed. This movement towards change may seem as an insuperable challenge, but there is very little alternative to stem the unethical sequestration of the haves and the have-nots. Radical change in our economic structure is not a new idea in theory, but it is very fresh as an action agenda.

What is really at stake is what type of society makes for fairness, equity, and the satisfaction of basic physical and existential needs. It is absurd to think that some inhuman economic forces should be relied upon instead of human intervention to construct our society. We can build a society that guarantees an income for all Americans, affordable housing, exceptional educational resources and facilities, and promise for continued opportunities for the next generation.

Our concentration on the merits of American democracy often avoids identifying and seeking to redress the failures of the republic. We would rather imprison anyone that calls attention to those failures than seek to root out the causes and build a society that make all citizens full participants. Instead of forging the best possible society, we foolishly seek to perpetuate the status quo that is clearly not working.

REFLECTIONS ON THE MIDTERM ELECTION

2010-11-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

Approaching the midterm election, I was very apprehensive. I knew the electorate would regard the economic woes of the past two years as President Obama’s fault—having unfairly developed a convenient amnesia about the erstwhile Bush administration. Admittedly, I have been very disappointed over the bailouts and the stimulus packages, which unsurprisingly did not trickle down to the middle class, let alone to the working class, the impoverished, and the utter indigent. Nevertheless, I still had hope that folks would reason they could not vote for political candidates who to a greater or lesser degree endorse the policies of the executive branch what got us into this mess in the first place.

I was wrong!

Any reference to some halcyon day of peace, contentment, and economic bliss, I have long since realized, is sheer nonsense and fundamentally insulting to those who have been underrepresented and underserved for decades. In my opinion, it is disingenuous to make the claim that tax cuts for the wealthiest in the United States will benefit the rest of the economy and somehow transform paupers into ebullient purchasers. Reducing the taxes of the rich does not redound to the favor of anyone but the rich: it does not create jobs, raise the minimum wage and household income, or change them into philanthropists of the poor. It is a curious form of welfare, and the masquerade continues while millions languish in abject poverty.

We cannot continue in this fashion.

Over the next two years, the U.S. House of Representatives will simply flail in the water, rather than make any significant headway. The economic recession that we are in will scarcely rebound, and they will be the victims of their own criticism of the Obama administration. Regrettably, in politics, what goes around comes around. Hence, in 2012, that biracial man with the big ears and the inveterate mole by his nose will be a picture of health and strength and vision once more!

Hope restored.

In the meantime, we cannot waiver in our persistent fight against the conservative juggernaut seeking to wreak havoc upon the masses without rhyme or reason. Because they will take every opportunity to replace social programs with empty promises about jobs and to replace opportunity with a not-so-subtle diatribe depicting America as some cheery meritocracy. The future of our children prohibits us from such folderol.

And yes, we can!

Don’t get me wrong, I am not predicting Obama’s country will become a sort of panacea; rather I am asserting that the only viable counter to the destruction through the inevitable destruction of the conveyers of conservative politics is an increasingly progressive praxis that puts power in the hands of the people. Obama should forge ahead and run into brick walls as he tries to elevate the middle class, reinvigorate the public schools, frustrate global warming, refuse militarily to police the entire world, and serve the countless numbers suffering at the bottom of the major life indices.

Langston Hughes’ poem, “Let America Be America Again,” was really a revelation of the fact that America had always been a pipe dream for many looking for the promises of freedom and democracy. We are not there yet, and will never be. But we can steadily get closer, if we only have the will.

TICKETING SPEEDING--WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD!

2010-10-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

Over the last three years, I have been cited for speeding more than the previous quarter of a century since I have been driving as an adult! I am not certain what has caused this increase in apprehension, for I am neither alleging that I am a speeder, nor admitting my success at rarely being caught. The last two years have been the worst, and I have seriously considered that my right foot has turned to lead or my sore right knee has finally locked, as the doctor predicted it would nearly ten years ago. I have even contemplated I have acquired some sort of attention deficit recently or am entering the first stages of undiagnosed dementia or senility.

I have felt that certain tickets for disobeying traffic laws are utterly ridiculous. Stopping for three seconds at an intersection when there is a four-way stop and clearly no traffic is clearly one example. Unless there is something radically wrong with a person’s eyesight or hearing, ticketing a driver is ridiculous under these conditions and rather petty. Likewise, when most cars are speeding on an interstate freeway and traffic is running smoothly, singling out a driver and ticketing that individual for speeding is surely wrong.

On one occasion, I was driving ten miles over the speed limit along with three or four other cars. As I approached my exit, of course, I slowed considerably and eventually was moving near single digits as I reached the line of cars towards the end of the ramp awaiting a traffic signal to turn from red to green. When the light changed and it came my turn to move, I turned left at the corner onto the overpass, where I was stopped by a state police officer. After asking me for my license and registration and telling me I was speeding, I asked him why he chose to stop me when I was simply driving along with three-to-four other cars whose drivers were also exceeding the speed limit. His answer was that I decided to get off the freeway.

I was appalled. I was now driving most recently at 10 mph, while the vehicles going ten miles above the speed limit were allowed to continue speeding! It did not make any sense to me, for I was no longer speeding. The state trooper agreed with me, but indicated my easy accessibility, despite my currently snaillike pace, mandated I be cited.

In addition, I mentioned that I was only speeding on that freeway for about five minutes, and prior to that time, approximately another five minutes, I was probably going less than the maximal speed limit. During the ten miles between my home and the interstate, I never exceeded the posted speed limit. So, I asked him what constituted my getting a ticket for speeding. He told me that some aerial radar had clocked me going ten miles over the speed limit during a moment in time, despite the fact that others matched or exceeded my speed, for I was not ahead of the bunch. Needless to say, I was curious as to why I was singled out and why I was ticketed after I had significantly slowed and was awaiting a traffic light to change along with other drivers in their resting vehicles. I told the officer that I could understand it if I was apprehended while speeding, but I was being cited when I was no longer speeding while the other speeders accompanying me were still speeding the last I had looked!

It seems to me that speed limits are designed to promote safety among the concourse of vehicles. They are not primarily instituted as a source of revenue for the locality or state. There was no reason to ticket me in the above example, for I was not endangering anyone and I had stopped speeding anyway—and my speeding had only lasted five minutes of the twenty-five-to-thirty minutes I had been driving that day. I was topped because of convenience, and not because public safety was jeopardized. There was no lesson instructing the public regarding the “folly” of my five minutes of exceeding the speed limit. The ticket did not deter me or anybody else from speeding for a brief period of time with the flow of traffic.

Moreover, I am a teetotaler and I don’t do drugs. I was wide awake, having already been up for a couple hours and was not at all groggy or drowsy. I was alert and hardly distracted by the enjoyable tomfoolery of the syndicated broadcast on my local public radio station. Yes, my cell phone was with me, but merely lying dormant on the passenger seat. I was going to a restaurant to eat before my visit to the cinema to watch a just-out movie. The only thing my stoppage by the state trooper did was compel me to skip the meal and go directly to the theater, as now I was running late!

Although I am oft labeled a civil libertarian, I am far from an anarchist. I believe in certain controls as necessary by government and law enforcement. However, I am opposed to arbitrariness, and attendance to the letter of the law, while the spirit of the law is damned. I would not go so far as to say citing me that day was immoral; but I will insist that it was entirely unnecessary and purposeless, for no one was ever in danger and public safety was never imperiled by my innocuous, momentary speeding on a short stretch of moderately trafficked highway during a splendid Saturday morn.

Raccoon Lampoon

2010-10-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

I wouldn’t call myself a city slicker, but I did grow up in an urban area compressed with people. My developmental years were spent in an eight-story tenement building, one of sixteen, in Fairfield County, Connecticut, which at the time was the most affluent county in the nation. Of course, I knew what road kill was, but I did not encounter it nearly as much as I have in the Midwest. For the most part, I have been spared colliding with stray animals, until Thursday of last week.

Getting off the highway and onto a county road, I had slowed from 65 mph to about 50, when I entered an area that was pitch black. Before I knew it, two dark and thick animals scurried from the wire-fenced median and darted in front of my car. I realized it was impossible for me to stop, so I steeled myself for the bump: more concerned about injuring one or two of God’s creatures than the bloody smudge that might appear on my bumper. What actually occurred was a complete surprise!

You see, I had decided earlier this year to sell my Toyota Camry of eight years to someone in need of a vehicle. I had already determined I wanted to find a new car, one that was cheap and good on mileage and did not have the thrills to which I had grown accustomed with my sleek, six-cylinder sedan. I considered getting a hybrid, but finally settled on a Yaris—the two-door liftback kind. I took the car on the lot, which was white and without any of the electronic gadgetry I enjoyed with my Camry. It took some getting used to, but I was pleased with its simplicity, except for the exterior white.

I am not a small man. Needless to say, I encountered many people who simply got a kick out of me being cramped in the driver’s seat. Having not experienced the Yaris, they were unaware of the deceptively roomy interior. To make a long story short, I suffered from their attempts at humiliation with a secret pride that I had decided to opt for a bare-boned vehicle. No regrets!

Last Thursday night, my vehicular disposition completely changed. I heard a crack, then a thud, as I hit at least one of the animals in front of me and continued on my way to by traditional stop at the gas station a few blocks from where I live. I had thought the crack and the thud were a bit much for two trifling raccoons, but I had no qualms about my obeisance to traffic recommendations regarding deer and pesky vermin. As I exited my car, I cavalierly glanced at the front of my vehicle. Much to my surprise, the bottom of the fender was broken in two and bent inward, where the prongs had punctured the car’s radiator! Fluid from the radiator was pouring out onto the asphalt and the red pool at first made me think that the bloody raccoon was somehow still attached to my car’s underbelly. One of the brave clerks at the convenience store informed this automotive ignoramus that the redness was Freon and that I could probably make it home before damaging my car.

At the collision center where I brought my car, I was told that at least one car each day is brought in with damage from a sturdy, apparently well-fed raccoon. Momentarily relieved, I tried to convince myself that I had not gone wrong in my car selection in the late winter of 2010. After all, the damage was fixable and the bulk of the $1,500 would be covered by my insurance. However, when I was given a raggedy loaner vehicle for a day, because I couldn’t locate a rental car, and then finally found one with only 11,000 miles on it but still a clunker, my heart started to change a tad bit. What if it were a deer? Would my whole car split in two, with me standing on the concrete as if in one of Fred Flintstone’s motor-less contraptions?

Tomorrow, I am meeting with a car salesperson, a friend, to upgrade to some hybrid or other. At the very least, I got a poem out of the ordeal!

There once was a raccoon named Bud,
Who was ye old stick in the mud:
He and his mate, Paris,
Ran front of my Yaris,
And broke it in two with a thud!

NATIVE AMERICAN GARBAGE LEAGUE

2010-08-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

The singular landfill in Hawaii is along the Leeward Coast in Oahu, an area that houses a poor community of indigenous, or native, Hawaiians. So, when you want to relieve your country of inordinate amounts of garbage, why not parallel dump it near an Indian reservation in the United States? Makes perfect sense, right?

Honolulu officials had been contemplatING sending 100,000 tons of plastic-wrapped bales of garbage every year to the state of Washington. Hawaii Waste Systems, a Seattle-based firm, had the audacity to authorize the waste-dumping on land overseen by the Yakama Indian Nation. Needless to say—or it must be said!—the insensitivity to indigenous peoples is alarming and the ostensible imperviousness to issues of environmental justice is simply mind-boggling!

Hawaii’s Big Island has enough land, but there is an ordinance barring any dumping of garbage hailing from outside the island. Heaven forbid if another landfill would block the beautiful scenery that brings in millions of dollars from the tourist industry each year! Rather, since certain folks already are used to being put upon and oppressed, what would be wrong about continuing such discriminatory practices by putting a landfill by or on an Indian reservation?

Congratulations on the restraining order that the tribe won against the U.S. Department of Agriculture before the first bale of garbage would be sent to Washington! After all, the potential dangers to individuals’ health is astronomical, albeit it is not known exactly what type of spillage and corrosive effects could eventuate. The USDA has become a bit notorious regarding some of its decisions as of late. Add this one to the list!

I guess there is a positive side to this near-debacle. A group of citizens, usually ignored, was able to win a federal court case against the USDA! A tribal group empowered and somewhat vindicated in the USA? That’s news! That some people of conscience were able to expose the irony and injustices involved in this transfer of stuff—fantastic! There is still hope in judicial system, despite its unseemly record with regard to natives and people of color. A large percentage of Hawaiians are people of color, but, apparently, those in positions of power could overlook their history and unwittingly, perhaps, make policy discriminatory to their racial ancestry and to other folks of color who have been mistreated and underserved. A bit confusing, to say the least!

Four decades ago, a group of sanitation workers wanted to be treated as adult human beings. Today, sanitation workers are able to make decisions whether other human beings are going to be treated fairly! Ah, the more things change, the more things stay the same!

WHAT'S UP, DOC (LAURA)?

2010-08-20T23:50:00.001-07:00

Dr. Laura Schlessinger knew that she was being provocative with her guest, but she did not care. She ignored the response of the caller who had expressed distaste for the expletive the radio counselor was reiterating. The discussion of interracial marriage, and the specific concern her guest was sharing, did not warrant any reference to using the so-called n-word. Schlessinger’s insistence on recounting her use of the term was indisputably deliberately insulting and insensitive—and she consciously chose to do it. The “it” can only be characterized as hate speech.

Dr. Laura embarked on a commentary completely irrelevant to the issue at hand and definitely beyond her expertise. Bearing the cloak of white privilege and arrogance, she felt at ease remarking on the status of race relations after the election of the country’s first black president. Her ability to control her show, to disconnect from guests, and to make statements as if she is in the know about subjects about which she is substantially ignorant demonstrates the very definition of racism.

Schlessinger wants to have the liberty to be able to use incendiary rhetoric whenever she pleases, even when her words cross over into the area of hate speech. She made the claim that she did not call her guest the n-word; however, the tone of her echoing that word betrays her xenophobia and disrespect for the millions of people who believe that term to be derogatory, explosive, and unconscionable. At sixty-three, having spent over twenty-five years on the air, she is financially solvent and able to quit her show to avoid engaging in the necessary dialogue regarding not only her impertinence, but also her impudence. She is running away from the discussion of her actions, and she has the privilege to eschew any responsibility for her feckless behavior.

In our very racialized society, there probably should remain the perspective that the n-word cannot be spoken in the same manner by African and European Americans. It may be reduced to an unfair double standard, rather than appreciating the historical and social circumstances and contexts that necessitate the distinctions about who can say what at the present time. As a civil libertarian, I am a strong advocate of freedom of speech and antagonistic towards censorship. Nevertheless, I do believe the court of public opinion analyzes what is fitting and proper to attribute to people, and the masses of people need to be ready to censure the remarks of a commentator without embracing the scourge of censoring.

What intensifies the racist juggernaut of Schlessinger’s words is her disparagement of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Her comment about that organization is belittling and, again, demonstrates a depreciation of history and the celebrated role of that organization in concert with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Last year, the NAACP celebrated 100 years since its founding and the wonderful work it has done during that period to oppose the perniciousness of discrimination. Schlessinger took advantage of the recent attacks of the NAACP on conservative politics and media to throw a dart at that esteemed organization.

It is an irony that Dr. Schlessinger’s comments reveal that prejudice, stereotyping, and the paradigm of racism are alive and well in this country—especially when she seemed to be claiming that racism is illusory today and that people are taking advantage of a black president to claim that race is still a problem in the United States. As she departs from the air waves in December, let us be thankful for this lesson she has so graciously taught us!

REMEMBERING LOUIS ARMSTRONG

2010-08-20T16:44:00.001-07:00

Recently, I was driving in my car and happened to pop into the CD player a disc of the greatest hits of Louis Armstrong. I don’t listen to music very much, but when I do, it’s usually some old gospel tunes or rhythm and blues and some pop—all, of course, from the second half of the twentieth century. Usually, I settle for a few recognizable songs, changing the selections like a couch potato with a remote in one’s hand. In a daze as I manipulated local stop signs, detours, and the scourge of young pedestrian traffic, I caught the lyrics to a song called “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue.”

Cold, empty bed,
Springs hard as lead,
Pains in my head,
Feel like old Ned.
What did I do
To be so black and blue?

No joys for me,
No company,
Even the mouse
Ran from my house,
All my life through
I've been so
Black and blue.

I'm so forlorn,
Life's just a thorn,
My heart is torn,
Why was I born?
What did I do to be so
Black and blue?

I'm white inside,
But that don't help my case.
'Cause I can't hide
What is on my face,
Oh! What did I do to be so
Black and blue?

What stopped me, literally, in the middle of the road was the line: “I’m white inside, but that don’t help my case.” I was floored, flabbergasted, flummoxed, and flapping my arms all at once in the little cabin of my vehicle, not knowing exactly what to do. I was aware that many black entertainers had disparaged Satchmo as being an Uncle Tom or too friendly with whites in the heart of Jim Crow America. Nevertheless, I was very fond of Pops, whose ubiquitous sweaty brow and oft caricatured soppy white handkerchief and unique gravely swoon and strong white teeth and bulging brown eyes were the thrill of audiences across the globe. How could this man, whom I was told I could perfectly imitate in high school and college after he had passed away, allow his trumpeter’s lips mouth such an ostensibly self-deprecating line?

I found myself becoming quite angry as I listened to the CD over and over again until I finally made it to a parking space at my place of employment and practically ran to my office to surf the Internet all about this gruesome folly. I had gotten upset because the audience, which I assumed was predominantly white, thunderously applauded the song as if they were impervious to its tragic meaning. I read and reread the entire lyrics and discovered the wonderful story of another musician I had loved in old movies and had just seen recently in Stormy Weather and a documentary about black bands during the Harlem Renaissance, namely Fats Waller.

Waller had a countenance that could just make you break out in instantaneous laughter and you didn’t know why. He was a gifted pianist with a knack for one-liners and for songs that could make you laugh uproariously or cry like a newborn baby! I came to feel that the song must have been partly written in jest, with a tinge of sarcasm or an ironic flair, yet intentionally and glaringly heartrending as a depiction of internalized racism. It was one of those Ah, ha, moments for me that softened my bitterness as I took some time to watch clips of Satch and Fats and Ella and Mahalia and Lena and the Duke and Count and. . . .

It’s no wonder that, during the 1950s and 1960s, the period of the classic Civil Rights Movement, many black musicians joined together to raise money for the cause. They had been and were still enduring a vicious system of structural racism that the ordinary citizen had resigned themselves to and called home. They fought it tooth and nail, and would not let it drag them down into the quagmire of fatalism and self-hatred. Rather, they repeatedly bucked the system and their music, while shortly winning the hearts of their white audiences, continually threw daggers at the heart of bigotry and ignorance.

As I watched the final clip of the aged Louie singing “Mack the Knife,” tears welled up in my eyes and my posture improved and I was compelled within myself to challenge those artists of yesteryear who belittled him as a buffoon, like the character Steppin Fetchit or Buckwheat of The Little Rascals fame. I now saw a very generous man who had lived through a lot and who had become a gentle soul in spite of a system that could make anybody embittered or suicidal or diffident. Mr. Armstrong had straitened my back—disallowing anyone to bring me so low as to feel humiliated, inferior, or broken. What a wonderful world!

MADNESS OVER A MOSQUE

2010-08-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

These are the marvelously prescient words of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, and they cannot be more relevant than today’s headline news. President Barack Obama made the mistake of appearing to support the erection of a mosque two blocks from “ground zero” in New York City. On Friday, August 13, at a White House dinner breaking the sunup-to-sundown fast during Ramadan, Obama spoke on the right of Muslims freely to practice their religion and to build a mosque on private property, even if it is in lower Manhattan. He did not advocate or endorse the building of the proposed worship and community center at the specific location near ground zero, but his hopeful remarks to Muslims a\from home and abroad in the State Dining Room was elevated to a political debate during an intensely contentious mid-term election cycle.

The current location where the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center would be constructed, 45-47 Park Place, is already in use by the Cordoba Initiative, a Muslim outreach group, for Friday prayers. Muslims are already there! And they have been there since late last year. The mission of the CI is, in part, to foster interfaith dialogue and mutual respect for all religions. The head of CI has been commended for his advocacy of religious tolerance and cultural acceptance, and many are aware of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s indefatigable efforts—including a number of Jewish civic leaders and scholars.

Countless politicians seem to think that supporting such a project a couple blocks from Ground Zero is tantamount to forfeiting their election bids. They assume that the issue is too touchy for U.S. citizens, and they denounce the venture because opinion polls signal that many are adamantly opposed to such an establishment.

When Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke out against the Vietnam War and was roundly criticized by a diversity of people, he responded that he was not a “consensus leader” and did not make his decisions based upon public or popular opinion. Rather, he stated, it was better to be a “molder of consensus” than a “searcher for consensus.” Thus, he continued his opposition to the war and his support of the War on Poverty until his death by an assassin’s bullet. Such ethical decision-making is rarely seen or heard of today!

What appears to be infecting rejecters of the Muslim community center is xenophobia about the Islamic faith as well as ignorant misconstruction of the Muslim majority. This fear and misinterpretation calculatedly associate perpetrators of the attack on the World Trade Center with all Muslims. The history of racism in this country, if it teaches anything, is the story of repeatedly prejudging and making assumptions about people without any empirical evidence. It’s like the white lady who runs in and locks her door of her house at dusk because a swarthy man is about to walk pass. That lady should not project her perspective, based on anecdotal material garnered from media and personal experience, onto that man because the perpetrators of evil in those stories and individual encounters were of darker hue. Christians, because they authored the Crusades and were unconscionably lax in responding to Hitler’s genocidal remonstrations, cannot be characterized as violent marauders and anti-Semites based on such historical witnesses. Likewise, the Cordoba Initiative cannot be gainsaid because the planners are of the same faith as the murderers on 9/11!

Denying the Cordoba Initiative its fundamental right to the free exercise of their religious expression by building a vital and vibrant community center is wrong. In this instance, New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is right on target when he stated characterized Obama’s words as a “clarion defense of the freedom of religion.” His words are, indeed, patriotic and aligned well with the U.S. Constitution, unlike Rick Tyler, spokesman for Newt Gingrich, who declared that putting a mosque near Ground Zero would be like “putting a statue of Mussolini or Marx (or Lenin) at Arlington National Cemetery.” Gingrich himself stated something very similar, that the location of a mosque near the World Trade Center should be opposed: “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington” and “we would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor.” These statements are ludicrous, a subtle form of hate speech, and antithetical to the principles of human decency, respect for the facts, and intelligent analysis. Sadly, the Anti-Defamation League, which I highly appreciate, has made Gingrich a strange bedfellow.

It’s nice to see Pres. Obama being a hammer rather than an anvil, a thermostat rather than a thermometer. It’s about time!

BIG BROTHER & ENCRYPTION

2010-08-16T11:37:00.000-07:00

Yes, I own a Blackberry, as do many individuals for personal and professional use. Because the cell-phone business is highly competitive, the fact that numberless people—allegedly ninety percent of the U.S. population—own a cell phone is a bad market reality for the makers of the smartphones, Research in Motion (RIM). Why? Since there is such a glut, a surfeit, of phones in this country, RIM is compelled to go to new markets so that the company can continue to grow, make profits, and stay in front of the competition. It is a necessity to do this expansion in a capitalist economy that is cutthroat, dog-eat-dog, and based on the logic of greed.

Hence, when countries such as Saudi Arabia, India, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and others, including China and Russia, balk at some of the impregnable security RIM has installed in its devices, the art of compromise comes into play. So much so, that the company must resolve the issues these countries have with the encrypted services while still having the go-ahead to enter their telecommunications electronic gadgetry industry.

We in the United States might point the finger at these countries by saying they are too conservative, repressive, and unsophisticated, but we must remember the adage that three fingers are pointing back at us. The nature of the capitalist game is to corner as much of the market niche that is possible and to work indefatigably to that end. In essence, it is to become a monopoly, like Microsoft, Wal-Mart, the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), and Google, to name a few.

A monopoly can be looked at both positively and negatively. On the one hand, cornering a market or being primarily associated with a particular product is usually a marker of success. You have arrived! On the other hand, such “success” stifles competition and enslaves consumers. John Sherman, Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and others are figuratively rolling around in their graves!

One aspect of the ordeal that is admirable, in this blogger’s opinion, is the power demonstrated by the threat of a ban or a boycott. In the commercial world, such threats are anathema and they usually result in repressive actions or compromise battles. At bottom, they are designed to attack sales and profits, and no company chiefs want to stare the potential of losing business and capital based on a disagreement that could be resolved. Would that peoples in the United States utilized the economic boycott in creative ways to encourage more livable wages and fairer employment practices!

In the final analysis, protection smartphone owners with doubly encrypted messaging are something worth keeping. Encroaching upon the expansionistic desires of a market giant is one thing; prohibiting placing a premium on privacy is quite another—especially when the rubric of national security is used. If governments want to spy upon their own people, not to mention other persons in their countries, through cell phones, then they should use their hired help to find ways to outsmart the manufacturers and not try to force these company leaders to deny citizenship rights and liberties to their own citizens.

HIP, HIP, HOORAY! NOW THERE ARE THREE!

2010-08-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

As a pacifist, I appreciated the boldness of the dean of Harvard Law School when she challenged free and full access of U.S. military recruiters on campus because of the unconstitutional “don’t ask, don’t tell” decree. She had guts, and I relished her taking the U.S. Solicitor General position as the mentor for whom she clerked, Thurgood Marshall, had filled more than four decades earlier.

She will definitely add strength to the liberal, i.e., progressive, wing of the U.S. Supreme Court and, at the age of 50, will eventually take the vanguard in the quest finally, to paraphrase a biblical quotation, “to let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24). The fact that Elena Kagan has not served as a judge in the past is, in my opinion, somewhat of an asset, for she will add fresh approaches to debates about issues that are currently quite prosaic in their judicial followership of thinly-veiled ideological stances. It appears also that she will not be so confined to the letter of the law that she will forget the spirit of the law.

What is simply grand about Kagan’s confirmation is that in October of this year, she will sit with two other women—Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor—on the bench, the largest number of that gender ever to serve on the highest court in the land!

Apart from not being a judge in the past, Kagan’s credentials are superb and speak for themselves: Princeton and Oxford Universities and Harvard Law School; clerk for Washington appeals court judge Abner Mikva and Justice Marshall; law professor at University of Chicago; special counsel to then-Sen. Joe Biden; associate counsel to Pres. Bill Clinton; and U.S. Solicitor General. Any remarks about fitness, qualifications, or unpreparedness are sheer poppycock.

EQUITY IN SENTENCING: IT'S ABOUT TIME!

2010-07-28T15:07:00.001-07:00

Certainly, the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 is a step in the right direction! The crackdown on crack cocaine that eventuated in the maltreatment and disparate sentencing of persons of color compared with users of powder cocaine was prima facie racist from its inception. That is why the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project is correct in exhorting the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama to make this new law have retroactive effect. There are countless numbers of African Americans who are in prison for nonviolent offenses because of the presence of crack cocaine in their sentencing. This law is couched in terms of the future, but it should have reparative scope.

The marvelous thing about this new law, if signed by the President, is that it eliminates, for simple possession, mandatory minimums, which have forced the hands of judges who might have given lesser sentences to offenders if they had had the discretion to do so! Judges and juries can look at offenders as individuals and determine what alternatives to incarceration are available and suitable to each case. No longer is being caught possessing equivalent to a prison sentence! Of course, there are a number of drug abusers and traffickers who need to sit behind prison bars for a while, and they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Not the old law, but the new law about to be signed by Obama.

This pending change is a true picture of democracy in action! Individuals, organizations, and institutions have repeatedly argued for the unconstitutionality and racist nature of the double standard with respect to powder and crack cocaine. The debating, petitioning, protesting, and so forth have finally paid off.

However, there are still some problems. The law significantly reduces the disparity between the two forms of cocaine, but it does not eradicate it completely. Furthermore, the law does not get rid of mandatory minimums altogether; rather, it raises the amount of possession that compels judges to levy a five- or ten-year minimum. This quantity disparity notwithstanding, the new law has the potential of reducing the prison population by 3,800, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

With caution, I submit a new day might be coming for the criminal justice system. The attempt to reduce the racial and ethnic minority disparities in sentencing will definitely have a ramifying effect upon law enforcement and indictments as well as on sentencing. The beloved community is not around the corner, so to speak, but finally some justice, fairness, and equity have found their way into the body politic. It’s about time!

AFGHANIZATION

2010-07-21T12:22:00.001-07:00

Some folks seem to be under the impression that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are synonymous. That cannot be further from the truth! The Taliban are Afghan natives, and the members of al-Qaeda are insurgents of various national or cultural stripes. The United States should not be warring against the Taliban; rather, it should diplomatically support the Afghan government to control the cities in the southern and eastern regions so that al-Qaeda will not be able to find succor in those areas.

The sending of more troops to Afghanistan sustains an old policy that historically made little sense and continues to be foolhardy. The United States seeks to be deterministic in world affairs, and the control of the Afghan government has become the goal, it seems, rather than rooting out al-Qaeda and making sure that group does not wreak havoc upon Afghans and others in the area and among our allies. There is much confusion over what to do in the Obama Administration, and this kind of inept handling of complex issues harks back to our involvement in Vietnam.

There is something to be said about participating in conflicts from civil to international wars. What role should the United States play in helping a nation deal with internal strife or supporting one nation against another? When conflicts affect our national security directly, we certainly should be about the business of resolving the crises. However, when the linkages are not that distinct, then we have to evaluate thoroughly whether or not involvement by the United States can be singularly addressed diplomatically and without military utilization. We have such a long history of depending on the military-industrial complex to keep our economy going, and that easy reliance has a way of presaging what we will do in foreign affairs. This fallacious reasoning assails our attending to what is necessary and encourages our nation to continue disproportionately to be amassing arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, to find theaters of war to use them, and to export them while deepening our national debt.

The United States and its allies have done a fine job of disrespecting President Hamid Karzai and trying to make him a puppet of Western hegemony. The people of Afghanistan have shown signs of growing disapproval of our relations with their president, and this feeling, if not fixed, can only lead to the intensification of any disaffection with our presence there. After all, we are occupiers, in a very real sense—believing that the tragedy of September 11, 2001, justifies any military escapade in which we engage.

The U.S. population must express its belief that the people of Afghanistan ought to solve their own problems. We cannot police the whole world! Besides, our oxymoronic “war on terror” is diversionary, at best, for what was required after 9/11 was certainly not declared warfare—whether it’d be in Iraq or Afghanistan—but expert police and intelligence action to thwart any future attempts at symbolic humiliation.

The hope many had for the new Obama Administration was that the failed and feckless policies of the President Bush and his cronies would be superseded by a significantly more thoughtful and effective approach. That some of the same people are surrounding Obama as surrounded Bush is far from consoling. Their hopes are not completely dashed, but how can they be realized when that tired, old adage remains true: “The more things change, the more they stay the same”?

VILSACK, JEALOUS, OBAMA: LEADERS?

2010-07-21T10:43:00.001-07:00

When the Secretary of Agriculture, Thomas Vilsack, was Governor of Iowa, he supported making English the official language of the state. He was not adept at addressing issues of race with sensitivity and sophistication, and this inadequacy has reared its ugly head with regards to the remarks made by Ms. Shirley Sherrod, a staffer at the USDA whom Vilsack fired for alleged racism.

Sherrod was discussing an encounter she had with a white farmer twenty-five years ago and what she learned from that experience. A conservative leader of the Tea Party campaign edited the tape and put the corrupted one on YouTube for the world to see. It made it appear Sherrod was discussing a recent episode and making racist decisions from her position of power and authority.

It’s disappointing that Vilsack was not alone in his hasty dismissal without any effort to investigate the matter. Mr. Benjamin Jealous, head of the NAACP, who’s waged battles against the Tea Party movement, initially concurred with Vilsack and the Obama Administration’s demand for Sherrod’s resignation. However, Jealous eventually acquired the presence of mind to recant that support and encourage Vilsack to reconsider his ridiculous peremptory action. After some embarrassment and concomitant resistance, Vilsack indicated he would investigate the matter further.

This sort of acting before thinking, judging a book only by its cover or deciding without research is the type of anathema that has plagued politics forever. It appears President Obama took lessons from President Clinton, who could not deal circumspectly with the issue of gays in the military, the crackdown on crack cocaine, and the criticisms of his nominee for the Civil Rights Commission, Ms. Lani Guinier, and Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. Obama fired Val Jones for past comments that had nothing to do with his position fostering environmental justice and placed in administrative advisory posts a number of individuals with whom he theoretically disagrees because it makes him appear more moderate. This drive to accommodate to the opposition rather than work diligently to persuade to one’s own side ineluctably leads to overly compromising and to challenging one’s integrity. Like Clinton, Vilsack, Jealous, and Obama have ventured down that road and must do yeoman work for restoration and redemption.

Sherrod’s remarks will in no wise reduce her ability to perform her duties, unless we allow the shenanigans of Fox News and Andrew Breitbart of the Tea Party to infect us with their routine vitriol. The USDA can use in its rural development director position a person of the caliber of Sherrod, who recognized a problem she had nearly three decades ago and learned from that experience to teach others to be inclusive and anti-racist. In all of this, she is the true leader!

ARROGANT DELAYS!

2010-07-12T14:36:00.000-07:00

It takes a lot of gall and moral turpitude to ignore the cries of heads of households and their children for sufficient monies to pay their expenses, keep food on the tables, and maintain their physical and mental health. To filibuster the extension of unemployment benefits during an economic crisis second only to that of the 1930s is antithetical to any code of decency or professional ethics. Couple those misanthropic tendencies with the selfish concern over winning in a political election, and filibustering is downright objectionable!

The economy is not rebounding fast enough, and people are still losing their jobs or had to take jobs, usually part-time ones, in which they are considerably underemployed. This condition does not take into account the many who cannot find work at all as well as those who have become so discouraged that they are not even attempting to look anymore. Rather than search for a solution in some distant tomorrow or completely overlook the dire straits in which people are living, action needs to be taken immediately to ensure these households are getting unemployment benefits to help them to sustain their families and themselves.

I agree with the complaint that government spending is not the only solution to the crisis and that we must assiduously work to find ways to cut the budget. However, when the choice is between increasing our national debt and mollifying the plight of the poor, the favored answer is to relieve the latter’s concerns—hands down! No vaunted or pompous discussion about fiscal responsibility can substitute for the necessity of the country’s attending to the emergent needs of its citizens.

Ultimately, the United States must get out of the business of war and the trillion dollars already spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. The funds directed toward such violent endeavors could be utilized to help us get a better grasp on the socioeconomic causes of poverty, generally, and on how to respond proactively to alleviate the crisis in unemployment and lack of income in the short-term.

To paraphrase Martin Luther as he spoke to the national congress in the city of Worms in 1528: “Here we should stand; we cannot do otherwise, so help us God!”

CORRELATIONS: UNEMPLOYMENT & SOCIAL GRACES

2010-07-08T11:45:00.001-07:00

When the employment rate goes unchanged for months, and the number of individuals still seeking jobs declines, is it not understandable why there is a recourse to activities that are not wholesome, productive, and life-affirming? How arrogant is it to expect people who are scarcely making ends meet for themselves and their families, if at all, to remain psychologically well-adjusted and socially responsible? Who is really at fault when a person under such duress and in the public or domestic arena behaves in ways that are antinomian, violent, and ostensibly misanthropic? In this particular sitz im leben, if you will, how can we rightfully indict and convict only the individual, while the causes of miscreant conduct relate to inadequate income, perennial political powerlessness, availability of unhealthy substances, poor neighborhood schools, and no remedy in sight? These are societal forces that are virtually out of the control of the individual.

Certainly, it is difficult to ascertain how to hold both the individual and the society accountable for civilian and criminal offenses. Some may argue that the judicial system is unable to make this type of accommodation, but I disagree. In the 1980s, that very system was allowed to engage in racial discrimination by counting possession of crack cocaine as worse than the possession of powder cocaine–causing an intensification of the crackdown, so to speak, on urban blacks and incarcerating them in record disparate numbers. That policy was wrong, but it demonstrates that the courts can be made to consider alternate ways of attributing and distributing blame!

Black youth between the ages of sixteen and nineteen have been experiencing massive unemployment to the tune of forty-five percent. What type of nation are we that permits pernicious poverty to permeate the core of tomorrow’s adults? The desperation they must feel, the sense of hopelessness and the realization they may not earn a decent living in the foreseeable future, cannot help but incline them towards misadventures antithetical to community and productivity in order barely to survive and sustain their families. A society that is silent and unhelpful when people are experiencing such dire straits is guilty of tyranny and must be held commensurately responsible. After all, it is execrable our nation tolerates this persistent declination of a part of the population, yet responds to their plight by imprisoning a disproportionate number of their young men.

The sheer numbers of people who are poor and who are locked up show that the problem of social dislocation and illegal activity pervades all of human cultures and groupings. Clearly, there is no genetic predisposition here. What is consonant among these categories of people is the interlocking, interdependent nature of economic depression and lawlessness. Because of this mutuality, we as a society must find a way to penalize structures and processes, policies and services, that conspire to alienate people, who resultantly acquit themselves adversely among their neighbors. The violence to which humans in terrible and urgent circumstances resort are symptomatic of the multiple and cumulative causes wrought upon them in systemic ways.

It is a common ethical question whether prisoners of war are generally excused for giving information to the enemy when they are being tortured and tormented by their captors. Many would claim that autonomy is a prerequisite of moral decision-making, and POWs usually have their liberties severely truncated–thereby exculpating them from blame or guilt. Certainly, groups of people such as unemployed African American youth are held hostage by institutionalized racism and the capitalist juggernaut of class separation, so much so that the prosecution of their lives into violence only mirrors the wreckage wrought upon them by the structural and procedural dynamics in which they live. They are similarly constrained as prisoners of war and cannot be expected to maintain a moral compass executed by those whose incomes are stable, habitats are safe, and participation in the body politic unencumbered.

A society worth its mettle assiduously works to eliminate poverty and to provide equitable opportunities for its members to satisfy their existential needs. In this regard, the probity of our country is, metaphorically, insufficiently ironed. And what we promote, we permit!

WILL THE REAL BYRD PLEASE FLY RIGHT?!

2010-07-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

It is always quite challenging to figure out the trajectory of a person’s life. The choices of what to include/exclude and what to criticize/laud are commonly burdensome and muddled. Arguably, one of the most challenging issues to grapple with is when the recently deceased held a position in one’s past that is morally wrong and still has debilitating effects upon the body politic. Such is the case with the esteemed, legendary, and oftentimes revered legislator, Sen. Robert C. Byrd.

Byrd was a Democrat from the South who endorsed the subjugation of African Americans through Jim Crow Laws: a Dixiecrat. In congruity with this political posture, Byrd shored up his racial bigotry by being a member of the most notorious hate group in the United States, namely, the Ku Klux Klan. How can any individual who believes in the intangible ideal of the so-called American Dream and who holds onto the conviction that a person’s skin color does not determine that person’s character indulge in the activities of racial hatemongers? Either one would have to be unusually forgiving or one would have to be dismissive of the extent of that person’s commitment to the dehumanization of fellow human beings.

In 2001, Byrd used the N-word to discuss his upbringing and he confessed to being a member of the KKK. He indicated both the use of the racially insensitive descriptor and participation in the hate group were mistakes. At the time, Byrd was already an old man at 83. In his mid-to-late twenties, Byrd stumped for membership in the KKK because he believed it promoted traditional American values. In addition, during the same decade of the 1940s, he adamantly opposed desegregation of the armed forces. During the now-celebrated Civil Rights Movement, already well into his forties, he filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This is a man who seemed to be fairly clearheaded about his view of black people as unworthy of first-class citizenship. Before that turbulent decade ended, Byrd stood tall in opposition to the nomination of the first black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, i.e., Thurgood Marshall.

Certainly, individuals can evolve, and the kleagle for the KKK surely did. He supported President Lyndon Johnson’s administration’s escalation of the Vietnam War, but vigorously challenged President George W. Bush’s executive decision to go to war in a country not responsible for the terrorism of September 11, 2001. As a thoroughgoing pacifist, I found myself rooting for such swinging of the U.S. Constitution, albeit unsuccessfully, against the unmitigated gall of Bush’s to arrogate to himself powers of the executive branch of government that do not exist.

When looking back over a person’s life, it is probably best and fairest to take into account major commitments, reforms, regrets, failures, and achievements—for all render the most realistic picture. Those who resort to hagiographic, rosy, and doctored depictions do a disservice to the public—squeamishness aside. Byrd, a boy from a poor Appalachian coal-mining family, orphaned at one, the pork-barrel “dean of the Senate” who served 51 years, as well as three terms in the House of Representatives, was a man with many flaws, great oratorical skills, who brought dignity into the chambers, and, for what it is worth, all irony aside, was dubbed the “conscience of the Senate.”

VIOLENCE BY ANOTHER NAME

2010-07-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

When we think about violence in our society, we are quick to talk about physical violence such as assault, domestic abuse, rape, shooting, stabbing, fisticuffs, terrorism, warfare, and so forth. We have been socialized to think of violence in these terms. In addition, we are also prone immediately to credit such violence to the individual and to absolve communities or systems from any responsibility or accountability whatsoever. We are not astute when it comes to dealing with forms of violence that are covert and subtle, i.e., structural, procedural, and subsidiary. The lack of opportunities, information, community policing, social services, employment, justice in the courts, and so forth invalidate the claim that violence is individual and not societal in nature.

Just because we are unable to find an easy fix to address these deficiencies does not exculpate us from the responsibility. Whereas it is challenging for us not to separate the players in an armed robbery into merely direct perpetrators and victims, that is exactly what we must do in order to execute fairness and equity in the land. We don’t know how to do it, so we lock up the perpetrators, force them sometimes to engage in restorative justice programs, and continue to humiliate them for the rest of their lives–as if their criminal activities happened in a vacuum!

What needs to be done? We need to find ways to prevent violence by teaching alternatives to it as well as by addressing and redressing the multiple and cumulative causes that make resorts to violence seem palpable and necessary. More research should be done in connecting the dots between impoverished neighborhoods and criminal activity disproportionately numbered. Economic strife, political disengagement, familial discord, illness, and other plights conspire to distort the affected person’s thinking and consequently to compel or make easier the engagement of that person in miscreant or illicit activity. These issues–the stressors of the economy, politics, family, and sickness–inevitably point to the involvement of those institutions fundamentally responsible for these poor life changes and bad choices. The heads of local businesses, elected officials, relatives, friends, health care centers. law enforcement personnel, public school principals and teachers, etc., must come together to address the intensification of violence, particularly by youth and young adults, within the community.

There are a few individuals who have been proactive in this type of cause for many years, but many, many more people, from working professionals to unemployed citizens, need to come to the table and enter into the discussions and participate in the action items in order to improve people’s lot and to stem the growing stalk of violence. Summer is upon us and, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stated it was preceded by a winter of delay. We always tend to wait until the last minute to start to get nervous about how the rise in air temperature might affect groups of folks in the public arena. By then, it is too late and many lives have been lost. Having some type of coalition of the above is needed to take a holistic approach to what ails the young ones and contributes to their seasonal blues. The fact of the matter is that the problems are perennial and do not ebb and flow whether the temperature’s 100 degrees or minus 15. Despair is ubiquitous; it is not time sensitive. Every day is replete with moments of seizure to make real the promises of democracy. Carpe Diem! Si Se Puede!

Dr. Benjamin E. Mays said it well in his poem, “God’s Minute.”

I’ve only just a minute,
Only sixty seconds in it.
Forced upon me, can’t refuse it,
Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it,
But it’s up to me to use it.
I must suffer if I lose it,
Give an account if I abuse it,
Just a tiny little minute,
But eternity is in it.

ABSURDITY: DISPROPORTIONATE USE OF FORCE

2010-06-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

There are many countries that intermittently and consistently violate the fundamental human rights of citizens. The United States of America is not exempt from this breach of humanity: American history is replete with such denials and this country continues to wrestle with the manner it will relate to certain categories of people. When our nation criticizes another country for unjust treatment of its populace, it surely must take the brunt of criticisms about its own shortcomings with respect to human rights. But such reciprocity does not affect the validity of the criticisms we make of other countries for its repression. In other words, guilty silence is not an option when a country is clearly trouncing upon the dignity and worth of its citizens.

Were each country to keep silent when another country is unduly repelling its citizenry, we would individually and collectively be endorsing the inhumane treatment of persons. Equally absurd is when a nation seeks to condone its oppression by arguing that it is being singled out by the international community or by another country or by individuals while human rights are being violated all over the planet. The result of such a claim is to stifle any criticism whatsoever, regardless of its validity or veracity. This type of claim is a logical fallacy of the first degree, and it does not excuse the guilty party because of false conversions, equivocations, and hypotheses contrary to the facts.

A major tenet of international relations, from the United Nations Declarations of Human Rights to the classic just war theory, is proportionality. A person or group that has limited means of demonstrating its position should not be overwhelmed by an opposing person or group that has comparatively unlimited means. Simply put, it is not a fair fight. When a citizen throws a rock at a police officer and is met with bullet fire, a serious violation of this principle of reciprocity has occurred. No discussion of security or protection is sufficient to justify such a disproportionate use of force. It might be challenging to find options to deal with pesky opponents, but wiping them out with a use of force that obliterates them is immoral, offensive, and prosecutorial—regardless of the social arena.

What happened in Tiananmen Square where the demonstrator stood in from of a tank is a case in point. The tanker could have bulldozed or blasted the protestor while the world watched, but did not. Doing so would have been inhumane. The demonstrator in Arizona who was gunned down because of hitting a guardsman with a stone clearly breached proportionality. And the killing of defenseless Palestinians by Israeli soldiers is likewise unconscionable. No puerile logical fallacy erases the perniciousness of the atrocity. Period!

POLITICAL SPILLAGE

2010-06-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

The unexpected BP oil spill fiasco of April 20 has placed the Obama Administration in a precarious position. Anything that does not stem the flow of oil, avoid environmental catastrophe, and make the oil company pay for damages would be interpreted as inaction that compares to FEMA and the Bush Administration’s dilatoriness at the brink and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. These two situations were utterly distinct—given that the course of the hurricane was predictable and its potential damage knowable prior to its hitting land. The oil spill was not a natural disaster, but, rather, an accident that caught the country off guard, despite the fact BP had cut corners and was unprepared to act promptly if such an accident were to occur. Hence, the comparisons are unfair and injudicious toward President Obama.

But the political chicanery that is taking place regarding the oil mishap is to be expected, since this year involves an election cycle that will influence the national election campaign two years from now. So, Obama has to appear that he is in control, knows what is going on, cares about what is happening by frequently visiting the scene of the confluence of oil and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and is not going to let BP off the hook, so to speak, in order to salvage the gains the Democratic Party attained in 2008. His speech on Tuesday night, June 15, was such a political move and, on the whole, he succeeded in giving the impression that he was on top of things and was holding BP’s feet to the fire.

The speechifying was typical Obamaesque, but the results are yet to be determined. The plan to make BP set up a fund of $20 billion over the next four years to pay for claims made by citizens and to establish another account to compensate oil rig workers laid off because of the moratorium on deepwater drilling over the next six months has spawned much criticism over government takeover of industry and has also engendered solipsistic remarks about unleashing the juggernaut of socialism. It appears that our government, particularly the executive and legislative branches, is unable to come together amid crises to protect the lives of its citizens and to avert ecological ruin. We are so caught up in our partisanship and our ideology-based, ad hominem attacks that we cannot objectively ascertain the extent of the damage or discern what steps need to be taken to restore the Gulf, the bordering states, and the people adversely affected.

At this writing, the spillage and the political shenanigans continue while lives are deprecated, the Gulf is sullied, the wildlife is being destroyed, and families are hurt and increasingly at risk for further injury. Who’s accountable? We all are. This is not a time of division and cherry picking; it is time for salvific action, resolution, and the establishment of safeguards to ensure this devastation will never occur again!

BENJAMIN L. HOOKS (1925-2010): ADVOCATE FOR THE DISADVANTAGED

2010-04-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

The death of the Rev. Dr. Benjamin L. Hooks is a clarion call to reinvigorate our support for the disadvantaged and underrepresented in our society. Hooks, a lawyer, judge, and executive secretary of the largest civil rights organization in the country, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was a stalwart defender of the so-called least of these and a stanchion against systemic oppression and injustice as well as personal prejudice and xenophobia. His receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award in the land, is a fitting testimonial to his persistent battle to "let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Hooks was born in 1925 in Memphis, Tennessee, to a prosperous family whose livelihood was photography. Hooks was taught hard work, discipline, and self-respect at an early age, and these were demonstrated in his life through academic achievement, military service, ordained ministry, and time on the bench. As he ascended professionally in his life despite the strictures of Jim Crow segregation, he never forgot about folks locked in the poorhouse and suffering the indignities of structural racism and the malaise of social ostracism. That is why he left his position as a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission to become the executive secretary and CEO of the NAACP in 1977. He was able to revitalize the historic organization and had doubled the membership by the time he resigned in 1992.

Not enough has been written about this great man, who did a lot to continue the struggle against inequality while encouraging young African Americans in particular, and all Americans in general, to become the best persons they can be through hard work, discipline, and self-respect. What goes around, comes around. Thank you, Dr. Hooks!

TO NUKE OR NOT TO NUKE?: OBAMA'S SUMMIT

2010-04-12T14:00:00.000-07:00

The words of the prophets Micah and Isaiah reverberate down through the centuries:

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

When I first learned of President Barack Obama’s Nuclear Summit, I was moderately overjoyed. I let out an exhilarated sigh—so relieved was I to discover collaborative, international efforts ostensibly to disarm and extirpate stockpiles of atomic bombs and other weaponry. Time and experience have taught me never to be wholly optimistic about anything in the political arena—particularly with regard to foreign affairs. Sure enough, I was missing a very critical goal of the Summit: to develop an effective approach to ensure that nuclear fissile materials will not ever land in the hands of nations, heads of state, and terrorists determined to wreak havoc on this planet. Whereas I believe the Nuclear Security Summit could be a remarkable and revolutionary opportunity, I am cynical or jaded enough to believe the Summit will be more grandstanding than groundbreaking, more symbolic and gimmicky than substantive and galvanizing.

Just as wealthy people can scarcely be persuaded to relinquish their perceived economic security voluntarily, the leaders of sovereign nations are similarly constrained from reducing nuclear storehouses and other weapons of mass destruction. No citizenry will take the lead in authorizing their official representatives unilaterally to dismantle their nuclear arsenals. It is clear to me that the ultimate goal of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 is to eradicate the stockpiles, and there has been no genuine attempt to act accordingly heretofore by the signatories to that agreement, namely, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, France, and China. Certainly, there have been cuts in nuclear warheads from the end of the Second World War up to now by these countries; however, none of these states is willing to singularly take that step. And this Summit will not be the vehicle through which such a goal will more deliberately be fulfilled.

Perhaps, the holding of such a Summit is placed under the wrong jurisdiction. The United States has disobeyed the Geneva Accords on a regular basis, and the government has often looked upon the United Nations Security Council with disdain. How can we serve as a model for the other countries to stick to some agreement when we have not stuck to our own obligations in the international realm for countless decades and generations? It smacks of arrogance and disregard for law to trample on treaties with one foot and crack down on fellow disobeyers with the other foot, so to speak. The five oldest nations with nuclear weaponry should relinquish their questionable oversight of the NPT and surrender their authority to the Security Council of the United Nations. There is the proper body to levy sanctions upon those who are not in compliance with the spirit of both nuclear disarmament and stoppage of uranium enrichment programs or construction of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

I would like to applaud Obama for launching this renewal of promises made in the past. However, will the group go beyond mere verbal excoriations of Korea, Iran, and Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu withdrew from attendance at the Summit, and insist that they, along with India and Pakistan, join with the other 189 nations that are signatories of the NPT? The Summit will not amount to anything beyond a disingenuous show of cooperation if there is no strengthening of accountability and penalties that would make an impact and matter to those incompliant.

I am aware that my desire for a non-nuclear world is not going to happen in my lifetime. However, as long as my memory cords lengthen and my diaphragm rises and falls, I will work tirelessly to realize a world in which international conflict is resolved by peaceful means and nations will study war no more!

HEALTH INEQUALITIES. WHO CARES?

2010-04-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

Why are American racial and ethnic minorities disproportionately numbered among all the major health issues and diseases in our country? Is it because the stereotypes are true: they are lazy, unintelligent, reckless, and hedonistic? Is it because they are unemployable, uninsurable, and uneducable? Is it because they are ensconced in unhealthy behaviors endemic to their culture and would risk being ostracized were they to contravene or criticize those conventions in any way? Of course, not!

Health care in the United States is another bastion of institutionalized racism. Historically for decades, the health care system was racially segregated and people of color, particularly African Americans, were forced to seek service at a “colored” facility, even if none was nearby and even during emergency situations. Today, we’re not far from that dehumanization. The millions who lack health insurance, many of whom are persons of color, do not have access to the medical care they routinely need and are egregiously treated as second- and third-class citizens. In my opinion, it is unconscionable for a citizen of this country to be denied the fundamental means of survival because they lack participation in a structure that deliberately discriminates against certain categories of people and types of work—never mind those who are temporarily or perpetually jobless!

President Obama’s health care reform was never intended to fix a broken system. Thus, to put it in other words, it was scarcely designed to insure everyone, let alone significantly reduce medical costs. Instead of focusing on those perennially unable to secure basic medical care, Obama and Congresspersons elected to improve the circumstances of middle- and working-class folks, without regard to the most disadvantaged. The probity of a nation is determined by how the poorest are treated or served. The United States has a bad moral record in this regard. It is like everyone complaining about the skyrocketing cost of health care, yet turning blind eyes to millions to whom the doors of hospitals, physician offices, and pharmacies are tightly shut. I know my tendency to advocate for not only socialized medicine, but also completely free health access to all citizens, is far to the left of most people who self-characterize as liberal, but the more moderate stance of a single payer system has also been relegated to the radical junk heap.

There’s a part of me that laughs raucously over the attempts beginning in the 1990s to reduce the racial disparities in the health care system, first by the year 2000 and then by the year 2010. As the Center for Multicultural Education held various health symposiums and even a health conference in 2004, I tried not to be cynical or pessimistic over the possibility of success. I knew realistically that social structures, processes, and policies in the United States were hopelessly and inveterately ill-suited for such an appreciative overhaul. Besides, the goal of reducing health care disparities for minorities was never elevated to a federal endeavor, for we are not equipped, nor do we have the desire or will, to address and redress the plight of the oppressed and the indigent.

April is National Minority Health Month. My laughter is nothing short of cacophonous. Who cares?

Hillary vs. Barack on Health Care

2010-03-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

Putting the First Lady in charge of health care reform in 1993 was a big mistake and set the stage for a Republican resurgence at the mid-term elections. It is probably never wise to place such a hot-button issue into the hands of the spouse of the president of the United States, for it is limiting to the latter's Cabinet and advisers, and makes it quite challenging to oppose whatever type of reform the bed partner would be espousing. Furthermore, it is rather distracting--especially when there are equally important issues with which to deal.

Hillary's plan was quite basic and progressive: develop a National Health Board to oversee the health care industry and improve access to quality health care for most people. However, the prospect of increased government restrictive involvement and monitoring of the health care system simply put conservatives in an uproar as well as sparked the creative development of the "Harry and Louise" commercials. Perceptions that the Clinton National Health Reform Bill, if passed, would levy higher taxes and seemingly more bureaucracy upon the average consumer, employee, or citizen really killed the bill and made room for a Republican takeover. Republicans were not the only ones criticizing the plan; major Democratic Congresspersons were outspoken against Clinton's health care reform initiative--some to the right and some to the left.

The defeat of Clinton's national health care campaign was such a tragedy that the issue did not resurface with some locomotive steam until the presidential race of 2008 and the speedy ascendancy of Barack Obama. During the first few months of his presidency, Obama talked strongly for health reform without really articulating specifically what he was seeking. The initial support for a bill that included a "public option" soon waned after sustained criticism from moderates and the Right. Obama never took up the mantle of a single-payer plan, because such a position would have erroneously been positively associated with the 1993 Clinton Plan. However, only people to the left of Hillary advocated such a position.

Whereas Hillary vehemently attacked the health insurance industry, Barack has been more conciliatory and interested in courting the support from across the political party lines--even if it means considerable compromise. This enervation of his strong campaign voice for health reform could clearly be seen in his importunately pleading first State of the Union Address. During the course of his first presidential year, the Harry and Louise ads resurfaced and the cacophony of Tea Party gatherings parlayed people's fears of the complicated proposals into more national media visibility.

The approach of both Hillary and Barack can be paralleled as to ways not to prosecute national health care reform. The former was too blatant and condescending; the latter has been too mealy-mouthed and consciously sycophantic. In a very real sense, at least symbolically, the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, a consistent advocate for health care reform, spelled the fastening of the window of opportunity afforded to the new president during his honeymoon.

Will we get a bona fide national health care reform legislation during the Obama Administration with at least a public option, if not a single-payer system? Not on your or my life! And that's about the size of it: our lives are cheapened and jeopardized by the failure.

The Nonsense of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

2010-02-15T08:50:00.000-08:00

While an assistant professor of religious studies at Missouri State and pastor of Pitts Chapel United Methodist Church in Springfield, I wrote a piece in The News-Leader entitled, "U.S. Discriminates Against Gays" (1/29/1993, p. 6A). Here is what appeared in print.

"The opposition to the new president's [Bill Clinton's] desire to lift the ban against homosexuals n the military is reminiscent of support of the ridiculous exclusion of African Americans and women from the service ranks in our recent past.

"Whereas the dynamics are somewhat different in each case, the negative responses to the inclusion of others who are characterized or labeled or lumped together as different or strange (or "queer") belong to the same genre: ignorance, stupidity, fear of unfamiliarity and change, and the complex of superiority.

"The question of sexual preference that is posed to a person who would like to enter the armed forces should be abolished--just as the question of race and gender should be. This is to say that a person's sexuality is that person's business and should not be considered as a factor in that person's ability to execute one's duties.

"Because of the stereotypes and prejudices justified by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a homosexual person is regarded as having no other dimensions of personality other than homosexuality.

"It is the result of these biases that might make some homosexuals outspoken and public about their sexual preference, but it does not characterize all who are homosexual in orientation, as it does not characterize all who are heterosexual.

"Given people's prejudices, lifting the ban on homosexuality in the military is not a simple matter. The expectations of those who are homosexual should not be any different than the expectations of those who are not.

"Many persons condemn homosexuality and transfer dislike upon homosexuals because of some biblical understanding of God's hatred of and Paul's distaste for homosexuality. But it is not clear whether the immorality of Sodom of Gomorrah is sexual in natural and whether the criticism of homosexuality therein is the irrefutable divine word or the inexorable contemporaneous cultural prohibitions to which biblical writers were assimilated.

"Nevertheless, denying homosexuals the right to participate in the military is discrimination at its worst and should not be tolerated by people who enjoy the benefits of democracy because they are white, male, and have a sexual orientation or preference that is not gay!"

Seventeen years later, my position has only grown stronger. It is way past the time when this country should remove any barriers to equal opportunity from anyone's path. A person's sexual orientation should not mute, ostracize, or otherwise interfere with that persons access to the structures, processes, and services of the society, and it should not shield anyone from the dislike or uncomfortableness of others. Rather, homosexuals are full citizens and must be accorded all of the rights and privileges granted to other citizens; discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgendered persons along with their allies should not be tolerated one iota in the body politic. Once and for all, we must abolish any forced silence upon homosexuals in the military and remove any and all of the restrictions placed upon them. It is scandalous to our humanity that we have been so hostile, xenophobic, and homophobic in our addressing this issue!

Obama and Health Care

2010-01-29T11:15:00.000-08:00

When it came to health care in Pres. Obama's first "State of the Union" address, I was perched on the edge of my seat. I was hoping he was going to say something that I longed to hear: "let's get busy passing a bill in Congress that has a public option." It did not occur. Instead, he spoke in general terms about "the plan" and asked for both sides of the aisle to initiate some kind of reform since they are so close. No mention of public option for our health care reform. As a matter of fact, the only reference to public and health came when he talked about infectious diseases in foreign countries!

The problem with the current administration as it pertains to health care is the fact that it began on the wrong foot. Obama should have insisted that his Democratic colleagues in Congress write a health care reform bill that incorporated a single-payer plan. Instead, it ratcheted down its progressive agenda, which was so popular during the campaign season, and substituted a feckless and impotent compromise that failed nevertheless to win Republican support! Obama did not have a mandate to kowtow to Republicans, curry their favor, and enervate his legislative agenda. He was not elected to engage in endless concessions to the losing party in order to appear winsome or just to get any old thing passed so he could claim some kind of victory, however disingenuous and insubstantial.

I refrain from being too captious in my remarks about Obama on health care, because I, too, have done some acquiescing. For I have believed at the very least throughout my adult life in some manifestation of socialized medicine, i.e., a government-owned and -sponsored health system in which doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc., are employed and paid by the federal government. In my more prescient moments, I have advocated for a health care system that is not only a right for every citizen, but also free to the consumer. Of course, I have not been naive enough to believe that it would happen in the short run, but I have prophesied that it could happen piecemeal in the long run.

I will continue to speak out for a public option as I did during the early Clinton years, although I articulated a more socialist policy. I look forward to the debate!

Tribute to Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

2010-01-29T10:34:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite teachers cum mentor and friend was Howard Zinn. While in my doctoral program at Boston University in the spring semester of 1986, I took an elective with him entitled "The Politics of History." Each student had to develop a project that showed how a particular aspect of history occurred, how it was covered during the time, and then how it should have been covered. It was an eye-opening experience! He subtly guided us, but we each felt we were completely free to give our perspectives.

I took the course because I knew of his past: that he had taught at Spelman, the historically black college for women in Atlanta; that he had supported young people, teenagers and young adults in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as they waged battle against the Jim Crow laws primarily in the South; that he had been an anarchist for a while, but was earnest about the marginalization of American Indians, Latinos, and African Americans historically and contemporaneously; that he had written the vastly popular text, A People's History of the United States, just a few years earlier; and that many people did not like him because of his polemics against the reactionary nature of our political system and the oppression and exploitation endemic to the capitalist system. During a part of his tenure at B.U., he was denied raises and merit pay as his colleagues because of his candor and his progressivism.

One of the attributes I liked most about Zinn was his stick-to-itiveness, i.e., his unwavering commitment to and solidarity with those discriminated against by the structures, processes, and policies of our society and by ignorant, xenophobic individuals afraid of true justice, equity, and peace. He was what is called an infracaninophile: someone who empathizes with the underdog. In creative ways, he maintained this perspective throughout his adult life, writing for the last time in a recent edition of The Nation (February 1, 2010) his captious views on where the Obama administration is headed.

Regardless of where a person is politically or socioeconomically, Howard Zinn is a stellar role model in trying to forge the best possible society and world. As one of the titles of his books declares, "You can't be neutral on a moving train!" Zinn spoke up when others saw unfairness, but had not the will to seek to change it. Sure, he sometimes waxed radical and revolutionary, but he had a bountiful and courageous heart to compel people to beat their swords into plowshares and the spears into pruninghooks and study war no more. Although critical of pacifists, he became increasingly sympathetic to their cause in the face of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Iraq. In a very real sense, he was a rare prophet in our times--one who would not mince any words that revealed our inhumanity to other human beings.

Howard Zinn will be sorely and profoundly missed in our public discourse. But there are many of his proteges who must now take up his mantle and legacy of progressive and compassionate leadership before, I dare say, it is too late!

BEFORE THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

2010-01-22T06:21:00.000-08:00

A year into the presidency of Barack Obama, I am quite disappointed. Let it be said from the outset that I supported Obama's candidacy the most in the caucus and primary season and promoted him to others after the Democratic National Convention. Also, let me hasten to add that I did not like Obama's inattention to the plight of the poor, his brutality with regards to Afghanistan, i.e., finding and killing Osama bin Laden, and his emphasis on personal response to the near exclusion of speaking out against racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination and xenophobia that still systemically plague the structures, processes, and policies of our society. I lauded his assertiveness with respect to the brokenness of the health care system, and I truly anticipated with some optimism his tackling this goal, which has been a genuine conundrum heretofore among presidents since the first have of the twentieth century.

To be fair, President Obama inherited a lot of difficult problems produced and spurned by the George W. Bush Administration: deep recession, war in Iraq, international scorn of the United States, growing unemployment, clandestine activities, etc. Any person ascending to the White House would have a tough row to hoe. Generally speaking, Obama has held up pretty well considering those scarcely surmountable challenges, but there are some issues regarding tack and substance I am compelled to criticize.

In my opinion, withdrawing from Iraq in a timely manner was something he emphasized during his campaign but never really pursued since taking office. Retaining defense personnel was clue enough that he would relinquish swift accomplishment of that goal and never consider remove U.S. presence entirely from that country. Furthermore, I did not give my endorsement to the belief that withdrawing forces from Iraq automatically meant we should focus on a war against the Taliban and al Quaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I was not an advocate of going into Afghanistan immediately after 9/11. I believe in exhausting all avenues of diplomacy and dialogue, and I adamantly oppose revenge killing of any kind. Besides, now, over eight years after the tragedy of 9/11, the purpose of avenging it no longer seems clear or understandable. What is needed is better security by the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ensure such devastating loss of life does not happen in the United States at the hands of terrorists again. Collaboration with allies and the international community as a whole should work to sabotage any attempt to harm Americans in foreign lands.

The United States and the world could eliminate poverty, hunger, and curable diseases with consistent, concentrated, and continuous effort. The ability is indisputable; the will is curiously questionable. These three interrelated crises are used in dastardly political ways that fly in the face of any propaganda about the goals of peace and goodwill to humanity. It seems we do not want to have a thriving international community where countries are self-sufficient for the most part and no country is belittled, humiliated, or isolated. I am not discussing an unrealistic panacea or utopia, but, rather, a realistic and ethical global society. I do not hear much difference in the language of Obama that defies the traditional folderol about ostensibly protecting national security interests.

A proponent of a universal, government-run, virtually free health care system, I was encouraged by Obama's campaign promise radically to transform the current debacle and provide health insurance and equitable access to quality health care for everyone. Once in office, Obama has kowtowed to the wishes of moderates, independents, and conservatives to the point where he has betrayed his own 2003 endorsement of a type of public option, the single-payer plan. Reform of the health care system as we know it today must include affordable access to quality care for the indigent--without question. Any reform worthy of its name has to overhaul the system so that the 48 million people without access to the best medical care available obtains inexpensive, or even free, ingress into preventive and ongoing care. It appears that if any bill comes out of Congress and placed in the Oval Office, it will be unrecognizable in comparison to Obama's rhetoric since 2003. The mandate given to him to transform the outrageous, intransigent health care industry in this country will not at all be met.

Whereas the Republican victory regarding the Senate seat vacated by the deceased Edward Kennedy was not altogether unexpected and does not foretell the outcomes of the midterm elections this fall, the dissatisfaction over the work of President Obama and his administration cannot help but to play a role in the political arena today. Record-high unemployment, job losses, a Vietnam-like parallel in Afghanistan, and an ineffective Congress must drastically be addressed in order to fulfill the promises the excited populace cheered for in 2008.

Pres. Obama has the opportunity on January 27 to begin to make those necessary changes. He needs to return to the promises he pronounced during his campaign and surrender his efforts to soft-pedal distinctions between the two major political parties. He should, at the very least, stick with his priorities expressed during the lead-up to taking office and claim his place at the vanguard of the movement for fundamental changes in the way we have been doing business. I await his message with hope, and with fear and trepidation.

Dissent vs. Treason

2010-01-04T23:53:00.000-08:00

I do not assert that any form of dissent against one's citizenship country is a direct line to treason. I understand the argument that trying to undermine the legitimacy and existence of the country where one is a citizen is a treasonous act. However, dissenting against the policies and perspectives, the structures and processes, of one's country and seeking to transform them, are honorable endeavors. This viewpoint is not based on the founding of the United States, as some try to claim to appease others and to enervate concerns about treason. Dissent is an invaluable right in a democratic republic, and it is a vital part of civic engagement and the political process.

One of the major problems in our public discourse is that people resort to the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem, especially when they are unable to discover any substantive way to disagree with another person's point of view. Seeking to discredit another individual rather than building a case against what that person asserts or does is simply disingenuous. People are going to engage in that illogical process continually; what we must do is to point out the ignorance, obtuseness, and puerility of it.

There are a number of policies and approaches of the Obama Administration with which I disagree. For example, I am an advocate of pacifism and nonviolent diplomacy in resolving internatonal conflict; consequently, I am opposed to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. In addition, I believe we should address and redress the plight of the poor; consequently, I disagree with claiming merely to attend to the bolstering of the middle class and remaining impervious to the debilitating conditions of the indigent. While I feel strongly about these matters, I am not interested in personally attacking those who disagree with me. Rather, I seek to persuade them of the folly of their thought and action, because my ultimate goal is to have the ends and the means cohere (i.e., use peaceful means to reach peaceful ends) and to elimate homelessness, hunger, lack of shelter, inaccessible health care, inadequate education, unemployment, underemployment, and disease that undermine life chances and cause the resort to crime, violence, drug abuse, sex, and other symptoms, or manifestations, of hopelessness and despair.

When there are meaningful disagreements with the direction of government entities, many recourses abound that can effectuate change and steer trends in a different way. Organizing people in such multiple and variegated efforts is the beauty of democracy. Putting people down, engaging in rumors, deceptions, and lies, and concealing information and facts are anathema to the political process--even though a number of public officials and civic leaders participate in those kinds of activities. In my opinion, people who resort to such dissembling, chicanery, and hyperbole are actually behaving treasonously, and those who do not call them out on the carpet for it may also be treasonably quiescent!

Let's be clear about the nobility of dissent and the ignobility of treason. The ignominy of the latter is just as great as the probity of the former. Not to make this distinction is the kind of silence that is betrayal!

Auld Lang Syne

2010-01-04T23:27:00.000-08:00

The first thing to note is that many people are in error when they refer to the year 2010 as the beginning of a new decade. On the one hand, any year can be characterized as the start, or end for that matter, of a decade. But, if we are referring to the first decade of the twenty-first century, then we need to recognize that said decade technically ends on December 31, 2010, and did not end on December 31, 2009. The decade of the twenty-first century began on January 1, 2001, and not the previous year. The end of the twentieth century occurred at the end of the day on December 31, 2000. So, we have another year to complete the first decade of the twenty-first century.

I try not to make resolutions in a serious way, for I am too conscious of my own shortcomings and of the reality of human limitations. Usually, I write a poem at the end of the year that reflects on what went on and what I hope to do better. But, in a very real sense, each day of my life is an attempt to be a better person and to engage in thoughts and actions that will take me there. In actual fact, it does not have to be when I wake up in the morning that I embark on an effort to best yesterday. Each moment of my life provides the opportunity for improvement. Whether I take advantage of those periods of time is not even something to consider, for success is not a fair or adequate measure. What's more important is that I am disposed towards continually examining my life with a strong inclination towards being a better individual.

The above notwithstanding, I will seek to be more invested in sharing my commentary on current events and engaging in social-ethical analysis of those happenings. As you can see, it has already taken me five days into the new year to commence my commitment. But that should be no surprise, for most of us have probably skimped a little on our resolve. Nevertheless, I urge you, as I urge myself, to keep trying. Practice will never make perfect, but perfection is never the goal. Getting better, however, is always a future possibility--barring a life-threatening catastrophe. Let's progress!

Health Care: A Moral Issue

2009-12-15T06:47:00.000-08:00

It was horrible that the Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate who mildly supported the public option, already embraced by the U.S. House, believed it was compelled to drop that part of their health care proposal because the Senate Republicans and renegade Democrats would not stomach it. Now, it's being said that the extension of Medicare to people between 55 and 64 years old is also dead in the water, so to speak, because some of the same individuals do not wish to swim in that direction.

What is the problem with expanding health care and reforming a failed and failing system in order to increase the number of citizens who have access to quality and affordable medical insurance and care? The spiraling costs of health care have been oppressive for decades, and our governmental leaders have failed to ensure that every person has reasonable opportunity to avail themselves of what is needed to sustain a physically robust lifestyle. I realize some administrations have tried, and some have worked valiantly to curtail the outrageous costs of medical care, health insurance, and prescription medication. With millions of people unable to afford basic care, and in the midst of an economic crisis the rebound from which has not significantly reached the masses of people, the denial of a fundamental existential need such as that which sustains basic health is simply unconscionable and immoral.

A health care bill that does not include a public option mocks real reform. A single-payer system, in my opinion, would be ideal. However, the ostensible compromise of a moderate expansion of Medicare down to those ten years younger than the current insurance allows also caricatures the recognition that our system is broken and excludes countless millions of people. Certainly, in the realm of negotiation, there must be some way that a Democratic Congress and a Democratic administration can compel those who arrogantly oppose real health reform to vote in favor of substantive change in favor of the consumer. Fear of filibusters and other tactics should not change the direction on the moral compass for those who staked their political careers on finally making constructive, innovative, and expansive health care reform the law of the land.

This is a fight that should not be relinquished. The Senate must find a way to get the numbers where they need to be without compromising out the very items that adequately cover the tens of millions who have been categorically locked out of access to quality, affordable care for many decades.

In the Woods: A Pro's Cons

2009-12-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

Whether one is a fan of golf or not or indifferent, it is difficult not to know the name Tiger Woods. He is quite the sports icon, self-marketer, and money-maker. His talents as a professional golfer and athlete are legendary. Many people are celebrity hounds, so to speak, and love to absorb stories about famous people, regardless of their verisimilitude.

What is unfortunate about our hagiography, iconography, and overall fascination with the rich and famous is that we are setting ourselves up for a great fall. Of course, some of us like to see others fall for a variety of reasons. However, when we idolize people for their talents, looks, wealth, and so forth, we oftentimes forget they are human and prone to the same failings and shortcomings of us all. To avoid being devastated by the imperfections, eccentricities, and transgressions of people we adore, we should never ignore the fact that human beings are fallible, limited, and inconsistent and are always works in progress. Sometimes, progress is replaced by regression. We need to find a way to maintain a balance in our perceptions of others.

Another regrettable element in the involuntary exposure of Tiger Woods to such negative press is the lack of honesty in the face of embarrassment in what the very private man briefly, yet repeatedly, related to the media. By "honesty" is not meant that Woods had to make the incident an open book to the media. Rather, simply saying that he did not want to speak about the matter at that time would probably have sufficed. Instead, he elected to engage in some subterfuge, under the guise of his desire for privacy, which resulted in more scrutiny and inquiry than he would have had if clarity and sincerity of expression were employed.

Should Woods' personal idiosyncrasies that opened a window to his humanity cost him the endorsement deals that have helped him to accrue additional millions of dollars? Answering this question is a bit challenging, for the fact of the matter is that he capitalized on his untainted and wholesome public persona by landing and accepting compensation for the use of his name and image. When the name and image that he bartered and sold became soiled and sullied, did he forfeit the benefit of that capitalization? Maybe, and justifiably so. Although the final decision whether or not to continue his contract rests with the companies Woods endorsed, the whole situation should cause all of us to pause and reflect on the ways we are enablers of the I-Can-Do-No-Wrong mentality, of the unwarranted placing of people on pedestals, and of the malicious self-righteousness we harbor when others fail while cutting slack to ourselves when we regularly misstep.

Certainly, we will begin to see a new-and-improved Tiger Woods over the next couple of years. Even his golf game might dramatically improve--a feat that is hard to fathom, save for his recent faux pas. But before he once again ingratiates himself to his fans, let us recognize that the fault is ours to grant unto him an inhuman spot in our hearts. Neither he nor we deserve that!

Option to Opt Out of Public Option? Ridiculous!

2009-11-20T15:58:00.000-08:00

The last time I was infuriated over states' rights was as a child and during subsequent readings about the Civil Rights Era. Many leaders and citizens of southern states wanted to continue to enjoy the system of de facto racial segregation and discrimination despite the passage of Brown versus Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, to please conservative politicians and their ill-advised constituencies, the new Senate proposal on health care reform includes the ability of states to opt out of making available a public option!

This exemption is anathema for those who do not have adequate access to health care, who do not have health insurance, and whose disposable income does not make it feasible to purchase coverage from the private sector. Every state should be required to ensure all of its citizens have viable opportunities to insure themselves.

It is a tragic consequence of American democracy that people are given the liberty to deny others fundamental rights so that a certain standard of living can be maintained and enhanced. Moreover, what's more egregious, if that is even possible, is that success in the political arena nowadays seems to mandate even the mildest of progressives to mouth and support centrist views that not only defy common decency and morality, but also compromise their integrity and the trust that others who voted for them were assiduously promised.

I understand that politics is a game of compromise, but if conservatives and moderates are unwilling to participate in such negotiation, then it is foolhardy for progressives and leftists unilaterally to concede.

It is forty-one years since President Harry S. Truman sought to address the health care debacle. If we do not attend to this matter now in a constructive manner, we cannot wash our hands of the lack of patriotism and care of souls!

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

2009-11-05T15:47:00.000-08:00

Frankly, I was surprised at first to hear that President Barack Obama would be the recipient of this year's Nobel Prize for Peace. Like most people who were similarly stunned, I felt that it was too early to award him with the honor for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." Although it is remarkable that citizens of the United States have put into office a person who is categorized as a member of a sociocultural, racial, and ethnic group once shackled under the iron feet of slavery, I did not believe such an accomplishment was attributable to Obama alone; nor did I feel this feat warranted company with Jane Addams, Ralph Bunche, Albert Einstein, Albert Lutuli, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Nelson Mandela, among others. I just could not see it.

Clearly, the award to Obama is more about potentiality than it is about the phenomenon of his candidacy. Racism in the United States is still our greatest moral dilemma, despite the rapid ascendancy of Obama's public life. The negative effects of American capitalism, i.e., the widening of the gap between the haves and the have-nots, still permeate our economic milieu even in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Heightening our involvement in one theater of war, Afghanistan, and gradually drawing down troops in another, Iraq, have left little incentive really to focus on addressing other hot spots that need diplomatic attention. Certainly, Obama has not had the opportunity to address many of the concerns for which he is being feted on December 10 of this year.

After all, it would be ridiculous to try to award him for not harping on the public option as a necessary component of any health care reform. It is preposterous to compliment him on trying to reach a level of bipartisanship that nullifies the progressive wing of his own core political affiliations. It would be ludicrous to pat him on the back when he has not had the opportunity to work towards a two-state solution in the conflict between Palestine and Israel. And it borders on unconscionable to laud him for Internet savvy, compelling small donations from the indigent, and basking in the sunshine of celebrity. So, it must needs be because the Nobel Committee hopes to influence the trajectory of his presidency by applying the pressure of receipt of such a prestigious gift.

We shall see whether this accolade becomes too great of a burden to bear!

The Horror of Afghanistan

2009-11-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

During then-Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign, I cringed every time I heard him decry U.S. involvement in Iraq, only to raise his voice about righteously going into Afghanistan, crushing Al Quaeda, finding Osama bin Laden, and killing him. The violence in and of his words always haunted me, and still does, because it confirmed my suspicions that our country has to be involved in some kind of warfare in order to survive and thrive. It's a cold war mentality, which was already utterly ridiculous, gone further amuck! Evil is never solely outside ourselves. We as a nation can easily pinpoint when another country or agency is execrable, but we have a very difficult time discerning our own culpability and perniciousness.

Many thoughtful and well-meaning people recognize our mischief-making, imperialism, manipulation and intrusion into the affairs of other countries--how such actions greatly contribute to the way the United States is characterized by other countries. If we are honest with ourselves, we would also understand the relationship of cause and effect or the interplay of means and ends. Violence or retaliation against another nation may sometimes be justifiable, according to some, but it is never perpetrated in a vacuum. The attack against the United States on September 11, 2001, was not prosecuted simply because the people were mad, i.e., crazy. I was not merely because their fanaticism "caused" them to do such a heinous crime. They struck a symbol, in their estimation, of Western imperialistic hegemony. It was stupid, wrong, and inhumane. The egregiousness of their acts that day can never be condoned. The acts could not gain the attention of the world and satisfy the goals of the Muslim rebels. But it was and is the choice of the U.S. government and its people the manner in which they would respond. Thus far, in my opinion, we have chosen wrongly and unethically.

I would like to lift up an individual who I believe could be a model for the Arabic, Muslim, and Western worlds: namely, Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Khan was a member of the Pathan people, many of whom live in Afghanistan. In recent centuries, the Pathan people were considered to be aggressive, violent, and vengeful. Khan gravitated towards the nonviolent revolution being conducted by Gandhi in India, and he became a loyal pupil, taking up the mantle of peacemaking by organizing a nonviolent army of 100,000 men. These nonviolent Muslim Pathans, "Khudai Khidmatgars," committed their lives to the cause of freedom and human dignity. They not only renounced violence, but also surrendered their tack of revenge and retaliation. Khan believed that nonviolence was an ennobling and empowering force that could truly transform lives both individually and collectively. His concern for humanity and peace is likened to that of his mentor, Gandhi, as well as to Buddha, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., St. Francis, and Mother Teresa.

The life of Badshah Khan ("badshah" means "king") compels us to recognize that people can change despite deeply ingrained proclivities. There is no excuse. The United States does not have to insist upon a perpetual search for bin Laden in order to make the world attribute to us super-powerful resolve and revenge. We can focus on more constructive endeavors, many of which would be domestic in nature, to rebuild our reputation as a leading nation that cares for those who are unhealthy, impoverished, and disempowered. Also, we can take measures, many of which would require better policing, in essence, to ensure our borders are protected. In addition, we could develop a more honest way to market, if you will, the positive things our government and its people are doing, so that the world community would be apprised of them.

The first step would be to withdraw from Afghanistan. We can use those excess military coffers to approximate the vision briefly alluded to above--something that will eventuate into the best possible society.

The Public Option

2009-09-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

You cannot have effective and substantive health reform in this country without the inclusion of a public option. It’s the only way that people, who are your average consumers, can have affordable, meaningful, and accountable alternatives available to them in the marketplace. A public option would force insurers to respect consumers, moderate costs, and compete more honestly in the marketplace.

Public insurance is clearly more efficient. Medicare has proven that! It is able to cost less and cover more, as can be seen in every other industrialized nation. And it’s pro-choice, if you will. It doesn’t yet get rid of the mess that is health insurance in the private sector, but it allows folks the select a preference. Besides, it lowers administrative costs and operates outside the need for profit. It forces private insurers to respond in kind or price themselves out of demand. If there’s anything that needs to be done at this time by the government, it is to throw its weight around to ensure quality healthcare for all of its citizens!

Many folks have historically conveniently claimed that the government is spendthrift, burdensome, inefficient, wasteful, and—get this—can’t compete with the private sector. Now, they’re running scared with the idea that a public option will destroy the corporate insurance system—screaming buzzwords like socialism and Afro-Leninism to capitalize on xenophobic ignoramuses. Enough is enough! What business are we about anyway? Are we to care more about corporate interests than we are about what will best serve the masses of people, especially those who can’t navigate the private insurance system for lack of funds or arbitrary qualifications? Right now, business has not proved that it can serve the people better than the people represented by government. And they’re afraid of that challenge!

The public option is not meant to replace or get rid of private insurers; it’s not insisting on a single-payer plan, like it or not. What it does do is provide a crucial counter position to private insurance plans that are becoming increasingly consolidated and eliminating real choice. The bottom line is that if we are seeking to provide affordable quality care to consumers, a public health plan is essential.
We have not yet even talked about the unemployed, who, obviously, cannot rely on an employer largely to assist in the acquisition of health insurance. A public option would not be tied to an employer, and those who find themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder would be able to get the help they need to stand and become more marketable. It seems we would rather embrace a broken system that is clearly failing millions upon millions of people as well as the uninsured, than develop an option that makes affordable, accessible, and quality health care a reality for us all.

What other way is there to curb costs and crooks than to have a federally overseen and controlled health care system? Basically, I believe not to have a public option is immoral and a travesty of justice. The probity, or moral fiber, of a nation is measured by how the poorest are treated. If we are interested in making the United States a stronger nation, we need to ensure that all of its citizens have affordable, unimpeded access to quality health care. Health care is one of our basic existential needs, and as such people should have the right to medical care so that they can continue to be or become regular contributors to the body politic and the entire sociocultural milieu. I have an especial concern for those who are poor and those who have been perennially locked out of the structures, processes, and policies of our democratic republic. They are the ones who are screaming for a public option, and their voices are not really being heard. As a matter of fact, their lives depend upon it, both figuratively and literally! A public option is the only meaningful, ethical, and hospitable way to reform the health system today.

Ahungered and impoverished are the least of these
Let our love for them abound;
And on Jericho’s Road aid the needy. . .
Lift each person off the ground.

As long as there is poverty,
No one can be secure
As long as some are unhealthy,
Nobody can be pure.

As long as my brother’s hungry
And my sis has shoeless feet,
No one can eat comfortably
Or walk the streets complete.

As long as some are ignorant,
Those with knowledge grow wry;
As long as our hearts are distant,
Souls side by side shall die.

As long as people hunger, as long as people thirst,
And ignorance and illness and warfare do their worst;
As long as there’s injustice in any of God’s lands—
We are our neighbor’s keeper, and dare not wash our hands!

Mariachi Music Not Real? Ai Yi Yi Yi!

2009-09-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

During the month of September, folks in the state of Jalisco, particularly, and in Mexico, generally, the music known as Mariachi is celebrated. Its origin, just like the meaning of its name, has been hotly debated over the years, but contemporary mariachi music stems from nineteenth century amalgamations of indigenous folk traditions with articulations from both Spain and Africa. Initially, flutes, drums, and conch-shell horns figured prominently in the musical ensembles in Mexico; eventually, they gave way to importations from Spain of violins, guitars, harps, woodwinds, and brass horns. Some of these European instruments were reconfigured by the criollo and mestizo players. More recently, a deeper toned guitar known as the guitarró n helped form the bass sounds of ensembles, and a five-string guitar called the vihuela and trumpets, another foreign introduction, added depth and richness to the music.

Early in the twentieth century, mariachi started to flourish, especially beginning in the 1930s. With ensembles becoming commercial entities, other dimensions of the tradition started to expand and garner focus, such as the move from workers’ clothing to more expensive, embroidered dress ware and from the footwork known as zapateado to more intricate heel-pounding and shuffling machinations. As a result of increasing commercialization, mariachi music, in a sense, moved away from its folksy, religious, and spiritual roots to reach a wider audience. The songs now lift up the entire gamut of human existence: loving (of course!), political issues, honor and nobility, the reality of death, and rites of passage. And everyone knows “La Cucaracha” to some degree!

I am not a connoisseur of music. I do not read music fluently, and I dabble with but really do not play any instrument. However, I have a fine musical ear, have definite tastes for listening to any kind of music for just about three minutes, and have a clear understanding how music can often tell the story of a particular cultural heritage and traditions. Consequently, though not a music critic, I am keenly aware of the value of peoples’ musical repertoire.

On a few occasions, I have been serenaded by a mariachi band and very easily recognized the power and persuasiveness of its rhythms. There always seems to be a graciousness, a kindness, and a level of hubris, i.e., passion and cultural pride, that accompany the songsters and instrumentalists as they mingle among the listeners. Never has it entered my mind that what I was hearing was not “real” music or that the genre was not worthy of being studied in postsecondary schools.

To make such claims is similar to the denigration of Ebonics, rap, art songs, Spanish that is not Castilian, and the history of underrepresented groups in our body politic. It is a travesty of justice, grossly ignorant, and symbolic of the type of overt cultural discrimination still lingering in the twenty-first century. The rejection of mariachi as a legitimate musical form worthy of study should not be tolerated, and folks need to get together to make sure it is fully received into curricula.

Race in the Obama Era

2009-09-16T04:41:00.000-07:00

Last year, we celebrated the forty-fifth anniversary of the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. On that day, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave one of the greatest speeches in the history of this nation, “I Have a Dream.” In that address in front of the Lincoln Memorial, King elaborated on an aspect of his vision: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” The cataracts of time have allowed people to misconstrue King’s statement as imagining a color-blind society in some future reality. King enjoyed his cultural heritage too much to endorse such a vacuous and myopic idea. What King was saying was not that people would not see race, ethnicity, or cultural background anymore, but, rather, would not prejudge or oppress them as inferior human beings based on these characteristics of appearance and heritage. At the point of his death by an assassin’s bullet, King was acutely aware of the long road ahead yet to realize his dream.

Certainly, there can be no objectively reasonable gainsaying the fact that race, racial prejudice, and racism pervaded the caucuses, primaries, conventions, and general election in 2008, and the short period since the election could not possibly have eliminated these elements. The challenges to President Barack Obama’s nationality, the liberty with which conservative media stars have freely characterized him with racial invective, and the reactions to some of his Cabinet appointees, nominees to the bench, and hires to assist him in foreign and domestic policies are not simply forays from those who disagree with his politics, but, rather, personal attacks that have xenophobia as one of their components.

Obama sought to deflect some of the race baiting and hatred by renouncing support or association with individuals such as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Trinity United Church of Christ pastor emeritus Jeremiah Wright. Continued deliberate alignment with these and other blacks would have scandalized Obama’s attempt to appear moderate and painted him as the stereotypical angry black man. The very fact that Obama was compelled to respond to the racialization of his campaign drives home the point that the United States of America is far from the color-blind society that many claim his very ascendancy to the presidency supposedly proves.

When an esteemed Harvard University professor is humiliated and arrested right outside of his home after displaying legitimate evidence that he indeed lived there, how can we proclaim that we have arrived at a place where race is no longer a relevant social construct, however scientifically flawed it is? Thank God it was a Harvard professor and not a member of the black or Latino hoi polloi, so to speak, who would still be incarcerated for disturbing the peace, interference with official acts, attempted assault on a police officer—you name it! Manning Marable, another esteemed Ivy League professor of African descent, is accurate when he states that African Americans still suffer from “massive unemployment, massive incarceration, and massive disenfranchisement.” Public intellectual and Princeton scholar Cornel West, who can reissue his bestseller of the early 1990s, Race Matters, in the first decade of the twenty-first century and strongly argue why Democracy Matters, continues to report lamentably that he can stand on a corner in New York City and be repeatedly ignored by taxicab drivers. When the first leading African American environmentalist can be railroaded to resign as an adviser to Pres. Obama because his anger understandably got the best of him during the George W. Bush reign, the gravity of the claim that racism is a figment of our pigment’s imagination cannot be overlooked.

Amid the reality of an Obama Administration, we can remark that this nation, which started off with the canard that all men are created equal, has significantly improved in race relations and has removed enough of the shackles of race prejudice to elect a biracial person to the highest office. In a sense, the long night of racism has been imbued with the sunlight of cultural pluralism. This dawning of a new day, however, is still a cautionary tale, for there are a number of genuine impediments to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for many in this country, especially for people of color. The debate over whether or not to have a public or governmental option in the health care system is, indeed, a case in point.

Who, today, needs a public option? Is it not primarily those who have no health insurance and inadequate access to health care? Moreover, who are disparately numbered among the unemployed, emergency room patients, the uninsured, and patrons of free health and urgent care centers? These are the persons for whom a public option, a reduction of health care and prescription drug costs, and increased access to quality medical care would be lifesaving policies, literally! Whereas we may not be able to point the finger at one individual or a group of persons whom we can call racist without reservation, we can precisely pinpoint the perpetuation of institutionalized racism in the structures, processes, and policymaking of our resplendent democratic republic.

In 1953, when Howard Thurman became the first black dean of the chapel at a predominately white postsecondary educational institution, Boston University, the dean of the B.U. School of Theology and the president of the university received innumerable complaints from the white parents of prospective and current undergraduate students there who believed their children were being endangered by some libidinous and swarthy demonic savage. Despite these ridiculous, but serious, claims, the dean and the president prevailed. By his death in 1981, Thurman was regarded as one of the top ten preachers in the twentieth century! Here we are over a half-century later, and parents and conservatives alike protest the appearance of the nation’s president at a school to encourage students to develop good study habits so that they could persist to graduation, make something out of their lives, and give back to their communities and to the country. Does race play a part, however subtle, in the remonstrances against his visit? You bet it does!

We do not have to look far from where we are right now to ascertain that racism is alive and well today. Our greater metropolitan area remains divided along racial lines. Not only is there a chasm between what is known as east and west Waterloo, but also is there perhaps an even greater tale of division between the two cities. Somehow—and we claim we don’t know how—this divide is perpetuated year after year: as new students arrive on the UNI campus, as games between high schools are played, as civic leaders compete over commercial development, as faculty, staff, administrators, principals, teachers, and merit employees are hired, as curricula virtually stagnate, as cultural innovations and downtown renovations stubbornly ignore the contributions and achievements of people of color, and walls of segregation remain strongly intact. Yes, we’ve come a long way in our racial understanding, but we have a long way yet to go in our reach for a society free of racial discrimination.

Fleecy locks and dark complexion

Cannot forfeit nature’s claim:

Skin may differ, but affection

Dwells in black and white the same.

Were I so tall as to reach the pole,

Or to grasp the ocean at a span,

I must be measured by my soul—

The mind is the standard of the man.

Yes, I am happy that Iowa was a springboard for the successful run of Obama for the Democratic Party’s nomination and the general election. I am not ashamed to divulge my having a special sense of racial and ethnic pride when I say President Obama. But without sounding too immodest, I am not so stupid as to believe that his inauguration ushered in a post-racial, color-blind utopia and I just need to get over being so ensconced in the civil rights movement of yesterday and Martin Luther King, Jr., that I am unable to see that we have arrived at the fulfillment of King’s dream. The fact of the matter is that our society is not a dystopia, an imaginary place where people are dehumanized and fearful, but it is certainly still a real place where people are debased, impeded, suppressed, miseducated, overlooked, and misdirected in a way that is not arbitrary, accidental, or unknown, solely on the basis of their race and ethnicity. Although the deliberateness of the structures, processes, and policies cannot always be fingered at specific individuals, the results can be easily identified as well as how to fix them. The question is not whether we have the knowledge or the wherewithal, but, rather, whether we have the will. Clearly, enough of our leaders at all levels of government and location, folks in the public and private sectors, have not had the will.

As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poemed:

Honor to those whose words or deeds

Thus help us in our daily needs,

And by their overflow,

Raise us from what is low!

On talk radio one night recently, I caught a conversation about Obama’s so-called Afro-Leninism, and how he wants to put every major industry and service under the federal government. Despite my immediate reflex disaffection towards such demagoguery, I found myself very disturbed by the use of the descriptor “Afro.” What the host and the caller said about their perception of socialism, which was patently skewed and erroneous, seemed to have nothing to do with the president’s race. Or did it? When the chatter moved to talk about recognizing when Obama’s about to lie or deceive the audience, because his nose gets wider, broader, and thicker, well, then I had my answer. Thousands upon thousands of people listen to this drivel frequently—and not with the disgust I felt for that brief moment in my car, but with derision, agreement, and disrespect. With such folderol in the media, on Capitol Hill, and in the social institutions all around us, race in the Obama era is a classic case of that saying, “the more things change, the more things stay the same.”

Judge Rightly!

2009-09-02T21:36:00.000-07:00

The fact that Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a Latina inevitably circumscribes much of her life experiences and her perceptions, including the legal system. As a person of color in the United States of America, with its history of racism and its ongoing racially discriminatory practices, Sotomayor would be naïve and intellectually shallow not to perceive the influence of this racialization on people and to consider it often in the reflective process. Likewise, with the patriarchal and male-chauvinistic orientation of much of Western society, including the U.S., Sotomayor would be crazy not to have a gendered view of the nation and the world. Race, sex, and gender matter in this country, and it is incumbent upon women of color to take into account these categorizations as they live and move and have their being, so to speak.

Consequently, the hullabaloo made over Sotomayor’s comments about the importance of race and gender—even in judicial decision-making—is preposterous. No one should have to deny one’s experiences and the shaping of one’s essential being, intellectual, emotional, and otherwise, in order to make allegedly objective arguments, rulings, interpretations, and so forth. Besides, we humans are all subjective beings with a bevy of presuppositions, affinities, orientations, etc., and we must try very hard to ascertain what they are and be forthright about them. However, we cannot simply ignore or alter them merely to assimilate to an imaginary “way” that looks eerily like traditional white-male-dominated societal constructs. Needless to say, I was viscerally delighted to discover Sotomayor’s comments about how interrelating and interacting with these man-made characterizations of personhood not only influenced her life significantly, but also helped her to become a wiser and more unique individual. The cacophony over these remarks were simply sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, to coin a phrase. Her words are standard reflections from people who have been unduly and unfairly prejudged and stereotyped.

Labeling Sotomayor’s judicial disposition is challenging, to say the least. Her arguments and opinions demonstrate a pragmatism and a deference to precedence that give the appearance of being a conservative. The majority of her dissenting opinions have conveyed a disposition to be an iconoclast, infracaninophile (supporter of the underdog), and indignant liberal (or civil libertarian). Anyone would be hard pressed to characterize her as a judicial activist. She could be described as someone who might resemble Justice Antonin Scalia in much of her agreement with the majority decisions, yet who is as unpredictable as the person she would be replacing, namely Justice David Souter. Although she may not be the sharpest tack on the judicial board, so to speak, her Princeton undergraduate and Yale Law School education holds her in good stead.

Because of the enigmatic nature of Sotomayor’s judicial record and some of her public addresses, I believed she would definitely be confirmed in due course with some alacrity. Now, it will be nice to see President Barack Obama’s first U.S. Supreme Court nominee succeed and to applaud the rise of the first Latina to that hallowed spot. I am a little chagrinned, though, that it might take a while before we see on the highest bench the likes of Justice Thurgood Marshall, who unashamedly used his life experiences, cultural background, and understanding of the limits of the judicial system arguably to forge a better society for us all!

Universal Health Care

2009-09-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

The puzzle of what to do with skyrocketing healthcare costs, inadequate access to health care, and poor quality medical diagnosis and treatment is not as perplexing as people are alleging. Clearly, we have to curtail costs, which are basically a product of greed, profiteering, and deregulation; we have to make access to quality care unencumbered and seamless for all citizens; and we have to develop teams of medical experts to improve accuracy of diagnoses and concomitant paths to cure or management of disease. These are not a complex set of actions; rather, they comprise fundamental social ethics between and among human beings and the institutions they develop. What is at stake in how we proceed boils down to a simple axiological position, in the form of a question: What type of country do you want the United States of America to be?

I want an America that ensures all citizens have their existential needs met and provides opportunities for them to participate fully in the structures, processes, policymaking, and services of our society. I want an America that bolsters life chances through a comprehensive wellness system that is preventative in its focus and free of charge. I want an America that values the potential of each individual and that manifests this ethic by helping everyone positively to contribute to the body politic. Free access to quality health care from birth is merely one aspect of this overall national endorsement of the person: the short-term expenditure for this new moral posture will have exponential benefits for all inhabitants of this country and will, in turn, redound to increased stability and security of this country in the world arena. I want an America that affirms the importance of each human being and eliminates impediments to citizen-actualization.

My perspective is based on a philosophical axiom I have held since high school: the probity, or moral fiber, of a nation is measured by how it addresses and redresses the plight of the poor. In the United States of America, it is patently clear: we have been grossly unethical with respect to the indigent! The richest country in the world virtually ignores its poor and frequently stereotypes them as reprobates who are solely responsible for their circumstances. But the fact of the matter is we are all interdependent beings, persons-in-community, if you will, and no one lives entirely in a vacuum so much so that he/she singularly, or singlehandedly, creates one's own predicament. We are all, in a sense, contributors to individuals’ adverse situations, including the individuals themselves—speaking of the impoverished—and this culpability mandates our substantive involvement in the effective rectification of their plight.

The costs of medical care, health insurance, and prescription drugs have been allowed to soar while people’s real income has been shrinking. Expecting people to pay for such inflationary increases is absurd, especially when a primary motive for escalating costs is to maintain or expand profit (and to increase the take-home pay of medical professionals). Whereas I am not in favor of escalating the national debt in the process of providing quality health care for every citizen, I do believe there are other aspects of our governmental expenditures, such as excessive support of the military, which can vastly be reduced in favor of instituting a universal health care system.

This universal health care system I am proposing may seem radical or revolutionary. Perhaps, it appears so because the type of America we still idolize and exalt is one that extols rugged individualism, claims we live in a meritocracy, pretends we all have the same life chances, and approbates competition in an unregulated market. A break from this way of thinking is anathema and formidable for many and, thus, we hear only calls for reform and gradual changes, or the mantra of maintaining the status quo, while the conditions of the poor and disadvantaged worsen and an increasing number are mercilessly incapacitated or even die from lack of access to basic medical care.

I understand that change most often occurs very slowly in our country for a variety of reasons, and true structural changes take even longer. However, I choose not to kowtow to institutional gradualism—at least not in my advocacy. In my opinion, every citizen should be guaranteed quality health care that does not rely on a job or an income or contrived competition between the public and private sectors. I believe medical services for all Americans should be free. As aforementioned, this charity will make us a more vital, stronger, more stable, and more participatory and wholesome society than we have ever been! Now, let us as citizens indefatigably work together honestly and sincerely to get rid of wasteful spending, reorder our priorities, and realize this new America.