President Trump: Now What?

So Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States. Imagine that. I didn't think he would pull it off but he did just that. To the extent that you are worried about what a Trump Presidency could accomplish in a wholly negative sense I share those concerns. But I would also question then why should any President have that much power. Since at least WW2 there has been an accelerating bipartisan tendency to concentrate power in the Presidency. People only seem to care about this when it's not their guy in the Big Chair. That is unfortunately just human nature. If people thought about this some more they then might discover that that is one of the exact reasons why the Founders created a form of government where power was split between several competing and independent branches. From my perspective the silver lining in an otherwise gloomy prospect of a Trump Presidency is that perhaps some people on the left will rediscover a fierce commitment to separation of powers, federalism, a Senate filibuster and states rights. It's surreal that before the election people in the media and on the left were warning Trump supporters that they needed to accept the results. Now some Clinton supporters are writing about the need to secede from the nation. This is real. Papers have been filed.

Before the election people in favor of "immigration reform" were smugly reminding opponents that states and municipalities didn't get to make their own immigration law. Only the Federal government could create and enforce immigration law. And if the Federal government didn't want to enforce a particular immigration law there wasn't anything a state or city could do about it. Immigration was Federal policy. We couldn't have fifty states and thousands of cities creating immigration policy. But now some people who said that have seamlessly switched their view and are stating flatly that federal law or not, their particular city or state will resist any enforcement of immigration law that leads to deportation of illegal immigrants. So much for that whole federal supremacy idea, eh? We have people on the left endorsing what amounts to nullification! Apparently people, despite their partisan divides, aren't quite as different as they may think. It's ironic that it took Trump's election to bring that out.

I do believe that Trump is a racist and a bigot. I don't think that everyone who voted for him is one. A vote is a summation of many different values and concerns. Some people argue that all Trump voters are racist and that the Electoral College is racist. In this telling it was the racism of the American voter that cost Clinton the election. Trump certainly used dog whistles and even bullhorns to get the white racist vote. There's no doubt about that. The modern neo-Nazis are excited about Trump's election. Trump is taking advice from Steve Bannon, a man who has made selling racism a successful business model. Post election, we've seen a number of racist incidents. So I definitely understand the concerns. The problem with the "It's all racism!" explanation about Trump's victory is that it overlooks the fact that Trump won over over Midwestern and Pennsylvania white voters who had previously voted for Obama, in some cases twice. I'm not saying that just because you voted for Obama that means you're not racist. But I also doubt that Obama ever won over the hardcore explicitly racist voter. It's a safe bet that the people who were sharing monkey memes, joking about assassination and trading conspiracy theories about Obama's birth probably weren't voting for him. But many other working class and middle class white voters did vote for Obama. Clinton should have done better with those voters.

So in an election where Obama wasn't on the ballot, to blame the Democratic loss on racist white voters seems to violate Occam's Razor. If race is the sole or even primary voter motivation for everyone Obama never would have won relatively non-diverse states like Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio. This leads to the next point. The world is full of racists. I have worked with some in the past. I currently work with some. I have worked for some. You likely have as well. Usually I can't point and shriek "RACIST!!!" until that person either does what I want or stops being racist. That method only works where I have absolute control over that person. This is not the case with political parties. Political parties need voter support. This means that occasionally parties will have to appeal to white voters who are either racist or racist sympathizers. The Democratic party can not allow white people in regions like the Midwest and South to write off the Democrats. Some of those people heard, or were told by Fox News and talk radio, that Democrats don't care about people like you. If Democrats don't consistently challenge that misconception or worse, appear to confirm it, well then they're going to continue to have problems. And Democrats even saw turnout fall among their base.

The Democrats need to face that, President Obama, aside, large portions of their message are simply not resonating with the American electorate. There has been an over emphasis on cultural/social issues at the expense of class/economic ones. The Democrats lost the Presidency and with it the ability to name at least one and perhaps as many as two or three Supreme Court Justices over the next four years. The Republicans hold the Senate and the House. The Republicans hold the majority of state legislatures. The Republicans are the majority of state Governors and Attorneys General. In short at both the state and federal legislative and executive branches the Republicans are ascendant. This dominance is not just a matter of voter suppression or gerrymandering. The idea that changing demographics (the browning of America) would lead to a permanent Democratic majority turned out not to be true--at least in the short run. I think the Democrats forgot that. I think they got too comfortable with the (to them) self-evident horror of a Trump administration and decided that they didn't have to engage certain voters. 

It is tempting (and occasionally even accurate) to chide some white voters as racist and dismiss them as people who simply need to evolve. But if you are trying to win someone's political support, then insulting them or continually telling them that they're yesterday's news is a losing strategy. The Democrats have become too over identified with the coasts and with the cities. When the Democrats ran a lackluster candidate with limited personal charisma and high negatives they got rolled. But all is not lost. The election was very close. Since Truman it has been very unusual for one political party to win three Presidential elections in a row. George Bush last accomplished it in the 1988 election. It's difficult to run as a change candidate after eight years of your party holding the Presidency. That in and of itself was probably enough to make Clinton's campaign challenging, even before all of the noise about emails and deplorables.

The Democrats are not dead. They just smell that way. What they really are is mostly dead. And as Miracle Max would tell you there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. The Democrats need to regroup and rethink both their approach and policy emphasis. What seems eminently reasonable on the coasts may be a harder sell in the Midwest or South. As Senator Sanders is pointing out it's not enough to emphasize sex or racial status as change agents in and of themselves. Those things must be integrated with class and cultural components. This Democratic regrouping is not going to be easy. But it must start with Democrats listening to people they may disagree with or even despise and explaining to them why voting Democratic makes sense. "Racist/Sexist/Homophobic" can't be shorthand for "you're an evil irredeemable person who is not worth engaging". The Democratic regrouping has to include the realization that demographic change won't necessarily be the party salvation. Despite taking a hard line on illegal immigration and insulting Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, the largest Hispanic group in America, Trump got 30% of the Hispanic vote. Romney got 27%. Trump also received a higher level of Black support (8%) than Romney did (6%) despite a long history littered with allegations of housing discrimination and racially tone deaf statements. So the Democrats can't just assume that not being as bad as the Republicans will bring their base out to vote for them. It's time for some soul searching on what it means to be a Democrat. I think the Democratic next moves should include getting rid of the current House leadership and cleaning house at the DNC. Trump can do a lot of short term damage. Trump will be President with all of the power that our constitution and his predecessors have given that position. But the Republicans have only the slimmest Senate majority. This can easily change in 2018. And if Trump is as malevolent and incompetent as advertised he could be a one term President. But first the Democrats have to understand why they've lost so much and change tactics accordingly. 

Cop Assaults Teen Girl in McKinney Texas

All of the facts leading up to this incident are still up for debate. What's not up for debate are the apparently unprofessional, thuggish and dangerous actions of one of the police officers who responded. Knowing how police generally behave and their differing perceptions of threat based on race I'm not really too surprised by anything in the video, though I am angered. I really don't have a whole lot to add about this other than incidents such as these are precisely the reason that police officers ought to be better trained. But if someone is racist and hateful the level of training is meaningless. This is in many ways the historical and apparently current black experience in America in a nutshell. Blackness is considered criminal by definition when it's outside of its "place". In our (not so) post-racial America, black children, white children and hispanic children are apparently having a good time at a pool party. Apparently some white adults are put off by the numbers of black invitees or question whether they are all invitees.  A security guard (white?) starts to evict the black children who were apparently invited. One white woman, who evidently feels that black children should not be at that particular pool party, starts hurling racist insults. When she is called out on this by another black woman, she apparently initiates a physical assault. The police are called. Like most black people, young or old, would do, many of the black children decide that now would be a good time to depart the premises. After all the police are quite comfortable beating or shooting black people. Everyone knows that. What the video seems to show is that one police officer, upset at having fallen down chasing someone, decides to unload his bile on any black teen in the vicinity. He curses and insults them and then takes down a young teen girl, grinding her face in the ground and sitting on her. He also pulls his gun and points it at the children when they protest. These children were treated as if they had just slaughtered nine people. Oh wait, no they weren't. The bikers who actually killed people and exchanged gunshots with the police were treated better than unarmed children committing the felony crime of being black in an area where being black is illegal. The officer has been placed on administrative leave...

WASHINGTON -- When Miles Jai Thomas arrived at a party at the Craig Ranch North Community Pool in McKinney, Texas, on Friday night, the pool was open to everyone -- until a security guard showed up and removed black partygoers from the area. “Then he started making up rules to keep us out,” Thomas, 15, told The Huffington Post.

A white woman at the pool started making racist comments, Thomas said, such as telling black teens at the party to get used to the bars outside the pool because that’s all they were going to see. Grace Stone, 14, who is white, told BuzzFeed News that she and friends objected to an adult woman making racist comments to other teens at the party and that the woman turned violent. This is when, according to Thomas, a 19-year-old black woman told the belligerent white woman to stop fighting with the teenagers. The white woman called the black woman a “young b***h,” then walked up to her. After the young woman said her age out loud, the older woman punched her in the face. Another unidentified white woman jumped in as well before Thomas, who was recording the incident, and his friends went to break it up.

It was after this incident that the cops showed up and “started cursing and yelling at us,” Thomas said. He described an officer manhandling a young girl, as shown in this video embedded above. “So a cop grabbed her arm and flipped her to the ground after she and him were arguing about him cursing at us,” Thomas said. When two teens went toward the cop to help the girl, they were accused of sneaking up on the cop to attack. “So a cop yelled 'get those motherf*****s' and they chased [us] with guns out. That's why in the video I started running,” Thomas said. "I was scared because all I could think was, 'Don't shoot me,'" he said.

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There are a few takeaways here, besides the obvious one that white police officers are often very quick to resort to force or the threat of force with black citizens of any age. If you haven't been living in a cave your whole life you already knew that. The really sad infuriating thing on display here is what the black children learned. They learned that just being in a "white" area when someone thinks you shouldn't be there can be hazardous to your health. They learned that the police really don't care about their constitutional right to assemble or use free speech. Being polite and respectable won't prevent you from being detained or arrested. And the children also learned that no adult will come to their aid. That last thing is a horrible lesson to learn. I don't see where the young woman committed any crime. And I certainly don't see where it was necessary for the cop to body slam her and sit on her. What would you do if that was your daughter, your sister, your wife, your mother, your girlfriend? 
Could you live with yourself if you did nothing? Or if you were the young woman being so treated could you ever look the same way again at the men in your life if they didn't do something? Of course the police would be very happy to shoot anyone they believed was even thinking about "interfering".  It's comforting to imagine that your loved ones would never be in that situation but that is not only foolish, but downright delusional. It's also tempting to believe that this is only a Texas problem but it's not. It's nationwide. But maybe I'm all wrong. Maybe the police were all in fear of their lives from the black kids (and apparently only the black kids), who after all may have had rifles and hand grenades stuffed in their swimwear. Of course, once again I look at the Cliven Bundy situation where police, faced with numerous men who had their own guns and weren't afraid to shoot back, somehow managed to show some restraint. There's probably a lesson to be learned there. 

Things Not To Say To Black People

Sometimes when people complain about 'political correctness" they are really complaining about not being able to openly insult certain people any more without worrying about the insulted person's feelings let alone losing their job. These are the people who get personally offended that at work they can't openly call a black person a n****** when they've already given most people the impression they use the slur pretty routinely with friends and family. So I don't pay a whole lot of attention to some complaints around political correctness. But there are other folks who haven't grown up around different people. As adults they do not routinely work with different people or have any of them within their circle of intimates (neighbors, spouses, in-laws, lovers, close friends, etc). And since they're in the majority they don't really need to know what a minority may consider offensive. So though some people may not mean harm by their statement or question, insult can still be taken. We all have difficulty seeing through other people's perceptions. It's not always easy to determine if someone is saying something from honest well meaning, if clueless curiosity, or instead is expressing racist malice. Often times black people try to discern the difference and decide if the situation is worth verbally chin-checking someone. I generally feel that it is worth the hassle to set someone straight. My experiences have been that when you give some people an inch they take a mile. I have usually regretted it when I've let stuff slide. However there is no right answer to this because we are all different with dissimilar tolerances for what we consider offensive, racist, or just off-color (pun intended). 

Settling conflicts with a co-worker is different from getting into it with your boss or other ranking leaders. Keeping your job or a viable career path could mean keeping your mouth shut. There are some common comments or actions which many black people have heard or experienced. Most of these things are generally considered offensive to a lesser or greater extent. I ran across this video while looking for something else and thought it humorous enough to share. I have experienced some of these comments (and more) at workplaces. Stereotypes stink.

Jon Stewart, Fox News and Ferguson: Race Matters

The all too predictable thing about many conservatives is that whenever there is a situation in which there is an abuse of power by state agents and the alleged victims are Black, conservatives, with very few exceptions, rush to defend the state agents, insult and smear the victim, and go out of their way to do to the alleged victim what a police dog allegedly did to the Michael Brown memorial.  In defending alleged or even proven abusive state agents on hidden or not so hidden tribalistic/racial grounds they often will claim no bias. In their view they are being objective. Obviously conservatives aren't the only people with blind spots and unchallenged assumptions. Liberals, libertarians and people of other political persuasions and ideologies have their own hypocrisies and instances of moral myopia. I just don't care to discuss those today. What I find fascinating about the normal conservative stampede to defend the police, provided the victim is Black, is that these are often the very same people who will work themselves up to a high dudgeon about overreaching government when it comes to the IRS, or Obamacare or bossy TSA agents or the EPA or nosy census questions or Common Core standards or any number of other instances of government bigfooting that usually fall far short of a policeman beating or shooting someone. These folks will wave the Gadsden flag and opine about "freedom loving Americans" but won't criticize police who wrongly harm someone provided that someone doesn't look like them. Such actions say everything about who's considered a "real American" and why the President has been dogged with false claims about his nationality, race and religion.

Ultimately though, we're all in this together regardless of race.  As Angela Davis said it they come for me in the morning they will come for you at night. Police who are comfortable insulting, harassing, abusing, assaulting and killing black people will do the same things to any "unworthy" white people. We've talked about that before. You let some dogs get off leash and they will bite whoever they see.  Unfortunately some conservatives, say Bill O'Reilly, can't see this.  Such conservatives assume that if a black person got hurt, that thug/thugette had it coming. These folks glory in their privilege even as they deny it. In his own inimitable manner Jon Stewart tried to explain this to Fox News watchers/hosts in general and Bill O'Reilly in particular.

Ferguson Video: Michael Brown Shooting

The sobering thing about life today is that so much of what we do for good or for bad is captured by video, whether it be private, business or governmental.

Cell phone video taken by Ferguson resident Piaget Crenshaw and shown by CNN on Monday provides more footage of the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting. Crenshaw described the scene to CNN, in which she said that police officer Darren Wilson shot Brown multiple times after Brown had ceased running and turned around.

“I knew this was not right, I knew police should not even have been chasing this young boy and firing at the same time,” Crenshaw told CNN. “That fact that he got shot in the face, it was something that clicked in me, I thought, somebody else needs to see this. This isn’t right.”

Crenshaw said there was a struggle at the police car in which it seemed Wilson was trying to draw Brown in. Brown took off running, and Crenshaw said Wilson began firing; when Brown turned around, he was shot multiple times. Crenshaw said that her accounting of the incident concurred with what she knew of the autopsy report, which found that Brown had been shot from the front. “When [Brown] turned toward the cop was when he let off the most shots,” Crenshaw said.

Double Standard: Cliven Bundy Standoff and Race

We live in a world in which black men are "accidentally" shot multiple times because police thought that a wallet looked like a gun. We live in a world where black teens climbing trees have guns drawn on them by police who feel threatened or more likely just wanted to put the fear of God into someone they viewed in a negative light, despite their tender age. We live in a world where black people stopped, not arrested but just stopped, by police are more likely to have force used against them. So if some black people who were members of what some people considered to be a fringe religious or political group decided that they weren't going to pay taxes or fees on commercial activity and ignored court orders to do so while continuing to engage in illegal activity and threatening law enforcement officials, well the response would likely be swift and bloody, probably something like this. Most Americans, regardless of where their sympathies lay, would point out that disobeying court orders and drawing down on police officers really isn't very smart unless you're ready to go all out. 

And if you are ready to shed blood well you've either got guts and are quite dedicated or are quite reckless and dumb. If you tell local law enforcement, state police and the United States government to bring it, well don't be surprised or offended when they do indeed bring it. This is obvious to most people, at least when it's black people stirring up a fuss.

But recently in Nevada we saw the spectacle of Cliven Bundy, a rancher, refusing to pay the proper government fees for letting his cattle graze on government land and also refusing to stop his cattle from grazing on government land. He claimed that he and his had been doing it for decades and that he didn't recognize the authority of the Federal government. The proverbial stuff hit the fan after the federal government impounded some of Bundy's cattle.

Flat on his belly in a sniper position, wearing a baseball cap and a flak jacket, a protester aimed his semi-automatic rifle from the edge of an overpass and waited as a crowd below stood its ground against U.S. federal agents in the Nevada desert.

He was part of a 1,000-strong coalition of armed militia-men, cowboys on horseback, gun rights activists and others who rallied to Cliven Bundy's Bunkerville ranch, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, in a stand-off with about a dozen agents from the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The rangers had rounded up hundreds of Bundy's cattle, which had been grazing illegally on federal lands for two decades. Bundy had refused to pay grazing fees, saying he did not recognize the government's authority over the land, a view that attracted vocal support from some right-wing groups.

Citing public safety, the BLM retreated, suspending its operation and even handing back cattle it had already seized. No shots were fired during the stand-off, which Bundy's triumphant supporters swiftly dubbed the "Battle of Bunkerville," but the government's decision to withdraw in the face of armed resistance has alarmed some who worry that it has set a dangerous precedent and emboldened militia groups.

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I can often sympathize in theory with people who think that the federal government and law enforcement in general has become too large and too powerful. Whether it's CPS mandarins seizing children because they disagree with the parents' medical or naming decisions, or alphabet agencies descending on a landowner's property to prevent him making some routine changes there is definitely room to fine tune and/or reduce the authority of the federal and local polity over the individual. Unfortunately many of the people on the right who claim to feel that way virtually never show any sympathy for black people who run afoul of federal or state government law enforcement. Then we usually hear a predictable rant about "law and order", "family breakdown", "the need to support the thin blue line" or any other number of oft racialized tropes. Funny. Remember that Fox news and other right wing outlets had the vapors over members of the New Black Panther Party standing near polling stations. This was spun as voter intimidation and black thugs and threats and AG Holder conspiracy and so on. Yet these same media outlets celebrate white men pointing guns at federal agents. Let that sink in a little won't you? If I am stopped by the police and do not have both hands in sight at all times there's a good chance I might be tased, beaten or worse. Yet a white man and his buddies who were ready to shoot at law enforcement walk away clean.

It's also very important to remember that Bundy is not in fact fighting for the right to do something on his land. No. He doesn't own the land in question. It's federal land. So Bundy is no different than someone who enters a federal park, throws a lot of trash all over the place, refuses to clean up after himself and when told to do so has his friends pull guns on the park rangers. This is not political protest. It's thuggery. How can we tell the difference? Well one of the easiest ways is to look to Kant's categorical imperative. Are Bundy and his right wing supporters willing to: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. 

I doubt it. 

If environmentalists showed up with guns to stop fracking, if Native Americans showed up with guns to stop mining, if Black people showed up with guns to stop police brutality, if Latinos showed up with guns to stop deportations, if feminists showed up with guns to ensure that a defendant accused of rape was convicted regardless of the evidence, the right wing would go ballistic. And police would no doubt call that bet of violence and raise it quite a bit. Nobody considers those sorts of "marginalized" groups to be the proper descendants of American revolutionaries. Believe that. We can't have a system where political decisions are made based on who can put more button men in the street at any given point in time. In the same way I'm critical of people trying to physically prevent deportations, I'm just as critical of Bundy and his supporters. If you don't like the law, work to change it. Convince people that it's wrong. Blanket the media with your arguments. But when you reach for your gun and start claiming you don't recognize the federal government, that my friend is a different conversation. 

The BLM made a big mistake backing down to Bundy and his supporters. It may have been done for political reasons in an election year. It may have been done because some government agent somewhere lacks the normal amount of testosterone. I don't know. But I do know that when you submit to a bully, all you're going to get is more bullying. This is going to give certain people more swagger and recklessness, guaranteed.

Thoughts?

Renisha McBride News: UPDATE Charges made in case

UPDATE: Suspect charged with second degree murder and other charges. Read more after the jump.

On most days I don't like just putting up a news article with minimal analysis but this happens to be one of the days when my boss actually expects me to work. The nerve of that guy never ceases to amaze me. You'd actually think he pays me or something.  And because much like the President I am facing a November 30 deadline on some critical tasks, there must be less blogging and more programming/project managing on my part. So it goes. All the same though I did want to quickly draw your attention to this article below which has some new information about the Renisha McBride situation. The takeaway is that (1) the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office has still not issued an arrest warrant for Ms. McBride's killer and  (2) Ms. McBride was shot in the face, but apparently not from point-blank range. This would to me, seem to be another indication that the young woman was not a threat. There is something wrong in our society where the default is to consider ANY black person a threat. There have been different statements about whether there was an accidental discharge of the shotgun or whether, if charged, the suspect intends to claim self-defense.

FWIW, the Wayne County Prosecutor is a black woman, Kym Worthy, who may have first come to local and perhaps national prominence some years prior when she was the lead prosecuting attorney in the trial of Walter Budzyn and Larry Nevers, two Caucasian cops who beat the black motorist Malice Green to death.  It is unusual that the alleged suspect has not been arrested as of yet so we'll have to see how everything turns out. Wayne County, which if there is a trial is where the trial would be unless it's moved, is about 40% black. Juries tend to have lower black representation than that.
Dearborn Heights, which is where the shooting took place, is a Detroit suburb which is overwhelmingly white.


It was shortly before 1 a.m. Nov. 2 and Renisha McBride was involved in an accident with a parked vehicle in Detroit. More than two hours later and six blocks away, she was shot in the face by a man who told police he thought someone was breaking into his Dearborn Heights home. The 54-year-old homeowner, according to police, said his 12-gauge shotgun discharged accidentally. What happened during the hours between the accident and McBride’s death on the front porch of a home in the 16800 block of West Outer Drive remains a mystery. New details surfaced in the controversial case Monday, raising more questions about the 19-year-old’s death.

The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office is waiting for several items relating to the investigation from the Dearborn Heights Police Department at this time,” the statement from spokeswoman Maria Miller said. Meanwhile, civil rights leaders have called for a thorough investigation of the case. McBride’s death was ruled a homicide by the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office, which released her autopsy report Monday. According to the report, McBride was shot in the face, not the back of the head as her family initially had said. “There was an entrance shotgun wound to the face, with no evidence of close-range discharge of a firearm noted on the skin surrounding this wound,” according to the report.
LINK

DEARBORN HEIGHTS, Mich. -

Theodore Wafer was arraigned Friday afternoon in connection with the shooting death of 19-year-old Renisha McBride. Wafer, 54, is charged with second degree murder, manslaughter and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony in the Nov. 2 shooting McBride. He must pay 10 percent of a $250,000 bond to be freed from jail. Authorities say McBride, of Detroit, drove into a parked car in the city around 1 a.m. After her death, tests determined her blood alcohol level was nearly three times the legal limit for drivers in Michigan, a toxicology report said.

Witnesses said she left on foot, bloodied and disoriented, Worthy said. She ended up on Wafer's porch in neighboring Dearborn Heights at least a couple hours later that morning.

Wafer told investigators that he thought McBride was breaking into his home, and that the shotgun accidentally discharged when he investigated, police said.

After 911 was called at 4:42 a.m., McBride was found dead with large shotgun wound to her face, Worthy said.

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Halloween and Blackface-Just Say No

When I was growing up long ago when dinosaurs walked the earth and Osborne Computers were state of the art products Halloween was something that as far as I could tell was primarily for young children. Because of religious/cultural reasons my family didn't celebrate Halloween so I never dressed up in costume or got to eat candy (another thing which was forbidden). But aside from teachers that would dress up along with their young, pre-high school, students I don't seem to recall a lot of adults or even older teens getting involved in the celebratory atmosphere. They could have been of course since being a kid I wasn't quite privy to much of what was really going on.  And perhaps I was just living in the wrong neighborhood. But that's just not what I recall. These days things are different. Halloween seems to have become much bigger and much more politically and adult oriented. Rather than a child dressing up as Spiderman or a Count Dracula, now children are dressing up as Klansmen. And rather than teens or adults dressing up as television characters or naughty maids, some people just seem to want to go for shock value and dress up in blackface.

Greg Cimeno posted a picture of himself dressed as George Zimmerman, with his friend, William Filene dressed in Blackface wearing a hoodie with a bloody bullet hole in the center of the chest.George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murder after fatally shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin through the heart on February 26, 2012.The girl in the disturbing images, Caitlin Cimeno, also posted the horrifically racist and insensitive picture and described it as “just for fun.”

Blackface has a long history in American and European culture. It's never good. It can't really be separated from ridicule and hatred of blackness itself. For an apparently sizable number of white people, blackness remains something to be mocked. Evidently Halloween has become a time for some folks when they can literally let their hair down and share with the world the racism they've been holding on to all year. When people get called on this as they usually are once the pictures and/or videos leak out there are occasional half-hearted apologies but just as often one is likely to see or hear unrepentant admonishments of other's so-called "political correctness" or ridiculous appeals to "free speech". This last was promulgated by a supposed left-leaning civil liberties loving attorney who really ought to know better. It makes one wonder about the cultural sensitivities extant in this country when Ebay can be shamed into ceasing the sale of Holocaust memorabilia with apparently no pushback from those sordid folks who really really wanted that concentration camp uniform with the ever so slight scent of Zyklon-B but apparently it's an affront to freedom to suggest that people refrain from mocking an entire race of people.

As we've discussed previously all free speech means is that within certain restrictions the government is not able to write a law telling you what you can or can't say, act like or dress like within the boundaries of your own home (or other people's homes). The government shouldn't and can't send you to prison or to re-education camps for having the wrong racial views, as one thoroughly asinine commenter on Turley's site claimed. I don't advocate any such thing. If you want to be a racist or traffic in racist tropes, I say knock yourself out.  It's actually sometimes easier for me to deal with a white person once I am clear beyond all doubt that he or she has nothing but contempt for black people. It's a free country and like everyone else people wearing blackface can say what they like. Free speech however doesn't mean that you are free from other people's criticism of your speech or actions. And it certainly doesn't mean that your employer can't decide that your speech, even if it took place outside of work hours, is something with which it doesn't want to be associated. 

But the deeper question, which people defending blackface depictions can't answer, at least to my satisfaction, is what is so humorous about being black to some white people in the first place? Why is it that some whites or other non-blacks year after year wish to have ghetto parties, or dress like a n***** parties?  What apparently deep itch are they scratching?

A University of Michigan fraternity is under fire after scheduling a “Hood Ratchet” themed party.Theta Xi created a Facebook event for a November 7 party, entitled “World Star Hip[-]Hop Presents: Hood Ratchet Thursday.” “Started from da bottom now we here but now we goin back to da hood again!! [sic]” the since-removed invitation read.The event sparked outrage among minority students by specifically inviting: “rappers, twerkers, gangsters (no bloods allowed), thugs, basketball players, bad b*tches, ratchet p***y.”

Evidently there is something which is self-evidently tremendously humorous about being black. But I'm not getting the joke. Anyone care to explain. Generally speaking, and I've been around a while, I can't recall too many instances where black people have thrown a "Dress up like a white person" party and shown up in whiteface or stereotyped "white" clothing whatever that might be. No this racial mocking seems to mostly go one way. And the fact that it pops up consistently year after year lets even the most clueless observer know that racism is far from a thing of the past. It's part of the country's DNA and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I think that some of this might be reaction to the election and re-election of President Barack Obama. But most of this is just good old fashioned bigotry handed down from mother to daughter and father to son. The issue is that many of the people depicted will be in the future or are currently in positions of power whether we're talking hiring and firing, law enforcement or of course juries. If this is how they see Black people, and they are telling us that it absolutely is, how could any black person expect fair treatment. If you can mock Trayvon's Martin's death and you're on a jury with a black victim or a black defendant, can you really do justice. I doubt it. The reaction to a woman's Boston Marathon Halloween costume and the mainstream collective shrug to blackface/slave costumes tells me all I need to know.

Some whites talk a lot about the alleged racial divisiveness caused by Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or the other bete noire du jour. These blackface pictures are much more racially divisive. I don't think I've ever seen Jesse Jackson in whiteface...

Africa Themed Halloween Party

h/t Rippa

Thoughts?

HBO Game of Thrones: Race and Representation in Fantasy and Sci-Fi

This post was originally supposed to run four to five weeks prior but other events happened and a little thing called paid work reared its ugly head. So it's quite different than the first draft. We've noticed that there seems to be a consistent level of modest interest in the Game of Thrones posts we've done so hopefully this may spark some discussion. It's a long wait until next April when the wolfpack gets its revenge..or not (cue evil laughter).

In case you missed it the character Oberyn Martell aka The Red Viper was recently cast for Season Four of HBO's Game of Thrones. It's difficult to discuss this without too many spoilers but I'll do my best. As always if you've read the books or know exactly what this character does, please keep it to yourself. Let's just say that Oberyn is a fan favorite. He's a Dornish noble who has a serious grudge to settle with the Lannisters. Oberyn Martell has relatives of various complexions. Martin has written in A Storm of Swords that Dorne itself is home to people with differing skin tones and features.                                                                       

The salty Dornishmen were lithe and dark, with smooth olive skin and long black hair streaming in the wind. The sandy Dornishmen were even darker, their faces burned brown by the hot Dornish sun. They wound long bright scarfs around their helms to ward off sunstroke. The stony Dornishmen were biggest and fairest, sons of the Andals and the First Men, brown-haired or blond, with faces that freckled or burned in the sun instead of browning.

This description of the different Dornish phenotypes gave some readers hope that a definitively non-white actor, likely Middle Eastern or North African or perhaps even South Asian or African-American or of other African descent might get a chance to play some Dornish roles and more specifically the role of Oberyn Martell, who is simply put, a bada$$.

But the HBO Game of Thrones producers cast Chilean actor Pedro Pascal to play Oberyn Martell aka "The Red Viper". As you may have noticed Mr. Pascal is relatively light skinned. Some might even call him white. Other writers already had some concerns about Martin's handling of race. When the news of the Martell casting broke a certain faction of Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire fans hit the proverbial roof and were not exactly mollified by Martin's statements on the matter.

So let's talk about the internet controversy about Oberyn. Do you have any thoughts on that?
I commented on my blog. You can find a more studied response there. I made a couple of comments as to what people said about that. I always pictured Oberyn Martell in my head as a — what I call a Mediterranean type. I know people attacked me for that by saying "He's ignorant, he doesn't know that Africa is on the Mediterranean." No, I know Africa is on the Mediterranean. But in common parlance, when you say Mediterranean. you are thinking Greek, Italian, Spanish. When you are thinking Moroccan or Tunisian that’s North African. That’s the way people talk about that. I always pictured the Martells and the salty Dornishman as Mediterraneans, so the casting I think is perfectly appropriate with what I wrote in the books.

I do sympathize. I mean, I understand. Some people have written me some very heartfelt letters, and I've tried to respond to them, about how they wanted to see someone who looked like them in the books, and how they were [disappointed]. They had pictures of the Martells looking like them, and they were disappointed. I understand that, but it still wasn't my intent to make... Even the terminology here is such a land mine. I don't even know what words to use here "black" or "African." I used African at one point, sort of like African American. [But] if you use "African," you are guilty for saying all Africans are the same. I don't know.

I am drawing from history, even though it's fantasy. I've read a lot of history, The War of the Roses, The Hundred Years War. The World back then was very diverse. Culturally it was perhaps more diverse than our world, but travel was very difficult back then. So even though there might have been many different races and ethnicities and peoples, they didn't necessarily mix a great deal. I'm drawing largely on medieval England, medieval Scotland, some extent medieval France. There was an occasional person of color, but certainly not in any great numbers.

This is a TV show based on Martin's fantasy series. Martin said Pascal is close to his concept of Oberyn Martell. Martin has pointed out before art is not a democracy. He alone creates and describes his characters in his books. Benioff and Weiss get to interpret them for their television adaptation. Those are the rules. If you don't like it, go home. Or better yet, create your own best selling stories, have a coke and a smile and shut the f*** up. Pretty simple, right?

Well, yes and no.
Reading the books I never really thought that Oberyn Martell (one depiction to the left) looked much like Isaac Hayes if only because Martin tends to get incredibly, predictably and occasionally offensively specific when describing a black character. His black characters are super dark skinned. IIRC none of them so far have had any POV chapters. And the other characters who do have POV chapters can't go three pages without commenting on how different a black character is. In the book Martin is somewhat coy about how Oberyn Martell looks other than saying he's relatively dark compared to the more northerly Westerosi. Oberyn Martell has relatives of differing complexions. More importantly in the book Martin gives a description of Prince Oberyn from Tyrion's POV that makes it clear that although Oberyn is "dark", he is also clearly within the middle spectrum of Dornish complexions.

The princeling removed his helm. Beneath, his face was lined and saturine, with thin arched brows above large eyes as black and shiny as pools of coal oil. Only a few streaks of silver marred the lustrous black hair that receded down his brow in a widow’s peak as sharply pointed as his noise. A salty Dornishmen for certain. 

But because in America at least, "white" can range from someone as pale and light eyed as Tilda Swinton to someone as dark and dark eyed as Caterina Murino, you would think that the HBO producers might realize that "black" can also include people as light as Wentworth Miller or Jennifer Beals. Both Miller and Beals could easily fit the book's description of two out of the three Dornish types described while someone like Michael Ealy could believably fit into one of the three. Heck, from pure acting ability as well as eye candy for the ladies, Idris Elba could have played Oberyn Martell. He's certainly got the bada$$ intensity for the part. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch and would go a long way towards making the series even more popular among some demographics that might give it a side eye. Oberyn Martell is supposed to be someone that ladies like. A lot. Although Isaac Hayes didn't automatically come to mind for Oberyn Martell or the Dornish people, the musicians of Tinariwen certainly did. But maybe that was just me. 

The issue here is that people want to, need to, desire to engage in stories that involve people who look like them. Maybe not all the time, but definitely some of the time. I think a big part of the reason that a hack like Tyler Perry has been so successful with a large segment of the black community is that he shows black people on screen. It's just that simple. Usually at this point some people of good will and even a few of perhaps not such good will, will question why does race need to be brought into everything? That is the stories being told in A Song of Ice and Fire/A Game of Thrones are indeed universal so why does it matter if most of the characters and so far all of the important characters are Caucasian? Can't we just enjoy the show and books and not worry about real life race issues? I mean it's not like GRRM, Benioff or Weiss are racists like HP Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard. Can't people just stop nitpicking? I mean really come on now!!!

That's a legitimate question, even if it is often used to peremptorily dismiss problematic casting issues. I'll address it by pointing to the long history of whitewashing non-white fictional and even real life characters for Hollywood movies. This was most ridiculous when applied to the EarthSea trilogy by legendary fantasy author Ursula K. LeGuin. LeGuin, who is white, deliberately wrote her books as a corrective to the widespread presumption of default whiteness. In her trilogy, almost all of the protagonists are non-white. But in the film adaptation, this was changed to the reverse, over LeGuin's objections. Whether it's a question of racist Hollywood producers or amoral businessmen/women making sober judgments about what will sell, the fact remains that the predominantly white market seems most comfortable with watching protagonists that look like them, even if the source material must be changed to reflect this. So people claiming that there must be 100% fidelity to source material don't seem to object when the material is changed to their presumed benefit, as it was in the "brown and black people worship their white savior Daenerys" finale. The slaves in the book are literally from every race in the world. But in the TV show no one seemed to notice that making the slaves all people with high levels of melanin might have some unfortunate implications. You almost wonder where people might have gotten the idea of changing source material to fit their own ideas of what is good.

The Oberyn Martell character was and Dorne still is a good opportunity to bring some legitimate (not that different from the book) diversity to the Game of Thrones cast. So while it was nice to hear that the British-Indian actress (and babe) Indira Varna will be playing Ellaria Sand, Oberyn's paramour, I still have to ding the show for missing the opportunity to make a leading House and many of its leaders people of color. 

To quote frequent commenter Webb

Boardwalk Empire on HBO is going to feature a whole story line about HARLEM this season and Black Gangsters Galore!!!
Unlike Game of Thrones...where the only black character of significance last season was named "worm" and really a eunuch with about five lines of dialogue--and then call that diversity?!?!?

Another blogger went in on GRRM here for what they saw as his contradictory statements regarding Dorne. It's a great read and I don't have too much more to add to it. Webb raises a good point though I would note that in the books that Grey Worm, Salladhor Saan and Xaro Xhoan Daxos weren't black. The black characters who have so far been dropped from the TV adaptation were arguably either MORE offensive than Grey Worm or they were relatively minor figures. But the show may have inadvertently(?) created more problems by depicting black men as eunuchs, pirates and greedy merchants. This changes in book five.

The bottom line is that I think that GRRM has the right to create his own fictional world as he sees fit. You have the right to enjoy it or not. I think that GRRM and HBO could have done some things better. I think that people who want to see different or more inclusive images must support the people trying to create those images. That is one reason that I contributed to Barnes-Due crowdsourcing of their film Danger Word.

What do you think?

Is this controversy much ado about nothing?

Are you able to enjoy stories featuring people who don't look like you?

Will the Starks ever get revenge?

Ban the Box Laws-Needed or Not?

Let's say that you were going to hire a babysitter/choose a day care center for your children, nieces and nephews, or other younger relatives. Would you want to know if the person to whom you were entrusting your next generation had spent time in prison for assaulting kids? If you wanted to hire (male) security at a domestic violence/rape crisis center would you think it relevant to know that the 6-4 teddy bear of a man who earnestly says he abhors violence against women just did ten years in federal prison for kidnapping, raping and pimping young girls? If your pre-teen son needs a math tutor would you send him to the home of a math professor who's not only a NAMBLA member but twenty years prior was convicted of child sex abuse? If you run a cash business and need to hire someone to make regular deposits of thousands of dollars to various banks, would you be nonchalant about hiring a woman who was just paroled after serving time for embezzlement and has ties to gangs specializing in armed robbery?

I think that most of you would probably think twice about hiring those people for those positions, if you knew their previous history. It may not be anything personal. You may be making a mistake. But you'd still want to know what they did right? You may not care if the fellow you hired to paint your house has some misdemeanor marijuana convictions. But there are other positions (akin to the above) where greater trust or intimacy is required or the crimes are relevant to the job duties.

The honorable city leaders of Richmond, California have decided that if you're a private city contractor who employs more than nine people you can't ask ANYTHING about an applicant's criminal record, otherwise you'll lose your contract.


So checking into an applicant's criminal past is now illegal. There are exceptions for jobs considered to be "sensitive" or jobs where background checks are required by state or federal law.

RICHMOND, Calif.—City officials in this San Francisco suburb passed an ordinance this past week prohibiting city contractors from ever inquiring about many job applicants' criminal histories. The move in this city of 100,000 people, which is troubled by crime and high unemployment, is part of a growing national trend that supporters say is designed to improve the community's employment prospects amid wider incarceration.

Under the ordinance, approved by the City Council in a 6-1 vote and set to take effect in September, private companies that have city contracts and that employ more than nine people won't be able to ask anything about an applicant's criminal record; otherwise they would lose their city contracts. The ordinance is one of the nation's strictest "ban-the-box" laws, which are so called because many job applications contain a box to check if one has a criminal record. 

"Once we pay our debt, I think the playing field should be fair," said Andres Abarra of Richmond, who was released from San Quentin State Prison in 2006 after serving 16 months for selling heroin. Mr. Abarra, 60 years old, said he lost his first job out of prison, at a warehouse, about a month after a temporary agency hired him. The agency ran a background check and "let me go on the spot," he said. He now works for an advocacy group called Safe Return that campaigned for the ordinance. 

Others say the laws potentially endanger both employers and the public. "We have a responsibility to protect our customers, protect other employees and then the company itself" from potential crime, said Kelly Knott, senior director for government relations of the National Retail Federation, an industry group in Washington, D.C., which hasn't taken a position on ban-the-box laws but has cautioned against federal guidance that could limit how employers use background checks. 

Richmond, with a population of about 100,000, joins 51 other municipalities that have passed similar ordinances, many in the past five years.

I'm not sure that this is a good thing. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand the US and its constituent states put too many people in prison. California is currently being forced by the federal government to release people from prison because of overcrowding. It would be useful both on a macro level both from a humane and a pragmatic perspective to ensure that these people get meaningful employment. That helps reintegrate them into the community and hopefully cut down on recidivism. 

But if at work I sit down at the "wrong" lunch table and a co-worker has a flashback to his San Quentin days and responds accordingly, after I get out of the hospital I might want to discuss with my firm and a civil jury why this savage was hired in the first place. I remember attending a party hosted by a lady quite close to me. Unbeknownst to us both someone else had taken it upon themselves to invite a friend who was just recently released from prison. His crime? Armed robbery and theft. Is that the sort of person you want roaming around your home?

There are some jobs where a criminal record is mostly immaterial to the work being done. There are others where a criminal record is quite relevant. I think that that decision needs to be left up to the employer, with only modest input from the state. I don't think that an arrest record or even a misdemeanor record should be able to be considered. But felonies? A possible employer needs to know about that. It's not like we have a labor shortage in this economy.
Obviously the elephant in the room is race. As we've discussed before the criminal justice system is racially biased at every level. Black people are disproportionately represented in the system. We must take steps to address this and deal with the consequences. This is why I'm against stop-and-frisk, the War on Drugs, racist police, snide bullying prosecutors and judges, armed bureaucrats, no-knock warrants, three strikes laws and a federal criminal code that has expanded almost exponentially since the sixties. I think that once you've served your time you should be able to vote again period. We also know that a white person with a criminal record has an equal or better chance to be hired than a black person without one! And we know that the EEOC is suing two companies for discriminating against black people by utilizing criminal background checks.

All that said, however there is a difference between someone who went to prison for driving without a valid license and someone who went to prison for stabbing someone in the neck. If I'm an employer I need to know the records so I can make the appropriate decisions. In the WSJ article a woman who spent six months in prison for arson states that she campaigned for the new law. Sorry but again, if I am looking to hire someone, I would really like to know if they're going to burn my company down. This is an excellent example of where the individual and group goals may conflict. On a group level I want and need responsible ex-cons to be productive members of society. On an individual level? Ehhh....




What do you think?

Should employers be able to use criminal background checks for applicants?

Should employers be liable if an ex-con they hired engages in criminal activity at work? 

If you believe in background checks for purchasing guns why not a background check for a job?