Category: Race

Orlando Patterson’s quiet revolution

November 4, 2009November 4, 2009 · 9 Comments ·

Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson makes two major claims in this stimulating op-ed piece in the New York Times. First, he suggests that racism has changed its shape without losing its power. This means that a black president must never address the race issue directly.

Patterson understands the historical roots of American racism as well as any living American scholar. Here’s his mini-lecture on the subject:

We became this way because of the peculiar tragedies and triumphs of our past. Race and racism scar all advanced nations, but America is peculiar because slavery thrived internally and race became a defining feature of personal identity.

Slavery was quintessentially an institution of exclusion: the slave first and foremost was someone who did not belong to and had no claims on the public order, nor any legitimate private existence, since both were appropriated by the slaveholder. The Act of Emancipation abolished only the first part of slavery, the master’s ownership; far from removing the concept of the ex-slave as someone who did not belong, it reinforced it. The nightmare of the Jim Crow era then extended and reinforced the public slavery of black Americans right up through the middle of the 20th century.

At the same time, the status of blacks as permanent outsiders made whiteness a treasured personal attribute in a manner inconceivable to Europeans. Whiteness had no real meaning to pre-immigration Swedes or Irishmen because they were all white. But it became meaningful the moment they landed in America, where it was eagerly embraced as a free cultural resource in assimilating to the white republic. In America race had the same significance as gender and age as defining qualities of personhood.

The civil rights movement opened up new opportunities for educated people of color by abolishing “the lingering public culture of slavery”, but while black people have made great strides in the entertainment, athletic and political fields, the social segregation in America has actually deepened. African Americans are still perceived to be “culturally different”, Patterson writes, and “In the disciplined cultural spaces of marriages, homes, neighborhoods, schools and churches, these same differences become the source of Apollonian dread.”

Social isolation means that white Americans have a hard time grasping the individuality of black Americans. As a result, the pathologies of the few are attributed to the many. Although the relationship between social pathology and bad public policy is simply assumed in the academic community, a black president must never appear to be making excuses for absentee dads and street-hardened thugs if he wants white votes.

I’m not sure if Patterson is trying to describe the president’s thinking in this op-ed, or if he is telling Obama how he ought to think. Maybe he’s doing both. Obama, Patterson suggests, must never lecture white America about race. In the wake of the Jeremiah Wright controversy, Obama had to speak out to keep the race issue from derailing his candidacy. But since entering the White House, he has made only one foray into racial politics (his remarks about the Gates-Crowley affair) and Patterson sees that as an unmitigated disaster.

Therefore, the professor says, America’s first black president “will not be leading any national conversations on race, convinced as he must be that they exacerbate rather than illuminate.”

Patterson seems to agree with this stark assessment.

Are white Americans so ignorant and reflexively defensive that they can’t engage in an intelligent give-and-take on the subject of race?

So progressive analysts seem to believe. So it has always been. The NAACP was horrified by Martin Luther King’s practice of non-violent direct action because the strategy invited a violent white backlash. King persisted because he knew the sheer pathology of the typical white reaction to marches, buoycotts and sit-ins exposed the irrational hatred at the heart of racist public policy.

Similarly, the Freedom Rides of 1961 received negative reviews from the mainstream press. It was generally assumed that anyone foolish enough to sit in the front section of a bus in Alabama or Mississippi had only themselves to blame if they received a brutal beating. But every Freedom Rider sent from Jackson to the notorious Parchman prison in the Mississippi Delta weakened the position of Southern politicians. Ultimately, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy pressured the Interstate Commerce Commission into changing the law.

Only after non-violent and inter-racial strategies were abandoned did a conservative backlash against civil rights take hold in America. For an entire decade, the conflict between civil rights and states rights shaped the way Americans thought about the past and the present. The living narratives unleashed by non-violent direct action seized white America by the throat. The strategy was daring, dangerous and uniquely effective. Civil rights activists created a social crisis in America and waited for the truth to surface.

The narrative strategy Friends of Justice employs is rooted in the early civil rights movement. By taking hold of the narrative surrounding actual criminal cases we spark an intense conversation about race and justice. Initially, public officials ignore us. When that doesn’t work they attempt try to spin the story in their own favor. In the resulting clash of narratives the truth ultimately rises to the surface. Not everybody sees it, of course. Some folks remain convinced that Tom Coleman made good cases in Tulia or that the nooses hanging from a tree in Jena held no racial significance. But Jena changed the way school administrators think across America, Tulia led to widespread reforms and the Colomb case (though it gained less publicity than Jena and Tulia) exposed fundamental flaws in federal conspiracy law.

Orlando Patterson hopes Barack Obama can “quietly” reform the criminal justice system. Not by himself, he can’t. Our punitive justice system was shaped by tough-on-crime politicians exploiting and feeding public fears at the top of their lungs. There was nothing subtle or “quiet” about this process. Divisive and damaging narratives about crack babies and inner city thugs built the present system and only healing justice narratives can take it apart.

Conservative politicians could afford to be speak loudly because they reflected the zeitgeist. White people were angry, afraid and in the majority. Progressive leaders must wait for somebody else to change the tenor of the conversation, but if everyone is quiet nothing will change.

White skin is no barrier to reflection and repentance. Given the right environment, all people can learn. But there will be nothing quiet about the process. “You shall know the truth,” Jesus tells us, “and the truth shall set you free.” Politically nuanced fudge phrases are good for winning elections but they will never reveal truth or expose lies.

Orlando Patterson is right about one thing: a sitting president can’t be the standard-bearer for a twenty-first century civil rights movement. Barack Obama shouldn’t take the lead in the conversation about race and justice–but he has already changed the context in which that conversation unfolds. It’s up to the rest of us to speak the loud truth without apology.

Susan Klopfer’s Mississippi

October 13, 2009 · 2 Comments ·

Susan Klopfer, the leading authority on the historiy of the Mississippi civil rights movement is intrigued by the Curtis Flowers story. “Dr. Bean’s group believes that the state’s theory of the murder “… doesn’t fit the actual evidence, and the state manufactured phoney evidence by manipulating, badgering and bribing witnesses,” she writes.

Klopfer’s interest in the Flowers case flows from her fascination with Mississippi history. In a recent interview the journalist and civil rights historian notes that, “In Mississippi, it’s said ‘the past is the present.’ And it was and still is.”

Klopfer is blogging on Friends of Justice and the Flowers case on her Mississippi Sovereignty Commission blog and on a blog inspired by a book she is writing on Emmett Till. Thirty-three years separate the brutal beating of gospel-singing activist Fannie Lou Hamer and the arrest of another gospel-singing native of Montgomery County, Curtis Flowers. Hamer created a national sensation at the 1964 Democratic national convention in Atlantic City by relating the horrific details of her cruel encounter with Winona law enforcement. Lyndon Johnson scheduled an impromptu press conference at the time Hamer was scheduled to speak because he didn’t want “that illiterate woman” antagonizing southern Democrats. But Hamer’s revelations were sp appalling and her delivery so intense that all three major networks carried her remarks in their entirety on the evening news.

I will be writing more about the links between Fannie Lou Hamer and the Flowers story in coming weeks. If you would like a sneak preview check out Ms. Klopfer’s blogging.

Like me, Susan Klopfer is amazed by the culture of silence that persists in Mississippi.

“I was most surprised when discovering the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission,” she recently told a reporter. “It was a spy agency funded by the state from 1955 to 1972 to halt integration. Former military intelligence and FBI agents were hired and they, in turn, used the services of the Klan as enforcers. I was able to go through these papers and trace a money trail to an East Coast foundation that gave money to Mississippi to fight the Civil Rights Act and to fund private, segregated academies in Mississippi. Even today, few Mississippians know this history. I feel very obligated to tell these stories, of true civil rights heroes who have lost their lives.”

The Iowa historian’s master work, Where Rebel’s Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited demonstrates how opposition to the Massive Resistance movement in Mississippi during the 1950s and 60s led inevitably to harassment and, in most cases, financial ruin. One blessed exception to this rule was the publisher of the Petal Paper in Forest County, Mississippi. When the Citizens’ Council tried to run him out of business, P.D. East published an article with the charming title: “Go to Hell in a Bucket!” A 1958 spoof ad began: “Yes, You too can be Superior. Join the Glorious Citizens Clans.”

According to Klopfer, “The ad went on to list various ‘freedoms’ that would accrue to members: ‘Freedom to yell ‘Nigger’ as much as you please without your conscience bothering you! Freedom to wonder who is pocketing the five dollars you join to pay! Freedom to take a profitable part in the South’s fastest growing business: Bigotry! Freedom to be Superior Without a Brain, Character or Principle!’ . . . This Wonderful Offer Open to White Folk Only.'”

P.D. East survived because he had an ardent following outside Mississippi. Few were so fortunate.

Klopfer has a particular interest in the funding behind the Massive Resistance movement. Much of the money driving the Sovereignty Commission and the Citizens’ Councils, she discovered, came from Wycliffe Draper, a wealthy New York racist and anti-Semite. Draper contributed copiously to Mississippi racist from politicians like Theodore G. Bilbo, the notoriously racist Mississippi governor and senator, his successor, Senator James Eastland to organizers like Robert Patterson, the twisted genius behind the Citizens’ Council movement (and, more recently, the Council of Conservative Citizens).

Klopfer’s 2004 interview with Robert Patterson suggests that the Citizens’ Councils didn’t die out when overt racism became unfashionable, they simply went underground.

Mississippi can’t say “no” to racism without saying “no” to its past. There is no operation that would allow a surgeon to cut away the cancer of officially endorsed public racism without killing the patient. Mississippi wasn’t just a state with a lot of racists; Mississippi’s identity was inextricably tied to racism. Opposition to integration was so widespread and entrenched that for generations it was impossible for Mississippians to stand against the juggernaut without courting financial ruin, physical injury, or even death. The legacy is ghastly and has never been renounced, either formally or informally. No Mississippi politician to this day could publicly confront the enormity of the state’s anti-civil rights record without committing political suicide.

In fact, state senator Lydia Chassaniol did no damage to her electoral prospects by openly revealing her membership in a neo-Nazi group like the Council of Conservative Citizens. Until very recently, the groups’ annual event in Black Hawk, Mississippi was considered so mainstream and uncontroversial that leading politicians from both major parties were regular participants. It has even been suggested that Chassaniol’s address to the CCC last summer was a test balloon designed to see if it was safe to get back in the racist water. Apparently it is. Among Mississippi newspapers, only the Greenwood Commonwealth even acknowledged the Senator’s address. Outside Mississippi, the speech failed to stir a ripple of interest.

Thank God for enterprising historians like Susan Klopfer who have the courage to state the obvious.

A nice girl like you . . .

July 16, 2009February 2, 2012 · 16 Comments ·

(This post is part of a series concerning Curtis Flowers, an innocent man convicted of a horrific crime that has divided a small Mississippi town. Information on the Flowers case can be found here.)

Lydia Chassaniol is in trouble. How much trouble remains to be seen, but the Mississippi State Senator (R-Winona) has the regional blogosphere in an uproar.

Remember the mid-to-late 1990s when prominent Mississippi politicians like Bob Barr and Trent Lott got too cozy with the Council of Conservative Citizens? That’s the white separatist hate group the New York Times describes as having “a thinly-veiled white supremacist agenda”. You can buy a “white pride” T-shirt on the CCC website and read headlines like: “The whole world treats Obama as a joke!” and “Mass immigration equals white genocide.”

The CCC platform praises America’s “European” heritage and condemns “mixture of the races”. CCC leaders still like to refer to “Martin Looter Coon” and have described African Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity”. According to Ward Schaefer of the Jackson Free Press, “Columnists in the CofCC’s newsletter have hyperventilated that non-white immigration to the U.S. was transforming the country into a ‘slimy brown mass of glop.'”

You get the picture. (more…)

Empathy and the Law

May 28, 2009May 28, 2009 · 5 Comments ·

President Obama’s remarks about judicial empathy have inspired howls of protest from the right and furrowed the brows of legal traditionalists everywhere.

Sympathy means feeling sorry for another person; empathy means feeling another person’s pain as if it was your own. In a campaign speech in 2007, Obama spelled out the case for judicial empathy: “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

So what could possibly be wrong with that?

Plenty, say the critics. As the image of a blindfolded Lady Justice suggests, the law is supposed to be blind. Judges are to rule strictly on the basis of the evidence before them and “settled law”. In theory, it shouldn’t matter whether the defendant is rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, famous or infamous, black or white, Christian or Muslim–the law treats all defendants and plaintiffs the same.

Judges who feel either empathy or revulsion for the poor wretch quivvering before the bar of justice are departing from the strict canons of judicial objectivity. A judge, the reasoning goes, is a referee who has no interest in the final score; he just wants the players to play by the rules.

So, Texas senator, John Cornyn says that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s choice to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, “must prove her commitment to impartially deciding cases based on the law, rather than based on her own personal politics, feelings, and preferences”.

Is it just me, or does this line of reasoning reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland? The Queen of hearts (a spoof on Queen Victoria) is utterly lacking in empathy: “The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off with his head!’ she said, without even looking round.”

Fortunately for Alice, the kind-hearted King of Hearts quietly commutes every death sentence his tyrannical wife imposes. In the real world, empathy and good judgement are sisters.

Does anyone really believe that Samuel Alito or John Roberts are never influenced by “personal politics or feelings”? Can anyone imagine John Cornyn showing the slightest concern that the two most recent additions to the Supreme Court might allow their conservative political opinions to influence their rulings? Of course not. The men were selected because they shared the president’s conservative values.

David Souter, the justice Sotomayor has been nominated to replace, has outraged ideological conservatives precisely because he refused to be guided by ideology.

Supreme Court justices certainly strive to leave subjective considerations out of the deliberative process; but the same apriori judgments and impulses that shape personal politics and ideological leanings bubble to the surface when legal issues are being weighed. If you believe abortion is always wrong you will ascribe relatively little constitutional weight to a woman’s right to choose. Why did the Supreme Court value the principal of equal access to education over “state’s rights” in 1954? For the same reason that the same court in earlier generations would have made the opposite call.

Empathy shades into bias only when jurists feel the pain of people like them while demonstrating utter disregard for folks on the opposite end of the social spectrum. The opposite of empathy is ignorance not objectivity. Who wants to be judged by a woman who has no sense of who you are, how you feel, how you have struggled and what you value?

In criminal cases built on circumstantial evidence much depends on how you view the defendant. Is this man capable of such a foul deed? This question must be answered, and a lack of empathy ensures a wrong answer.

Empathy generally fits hand-in-glove with the standards of due process. If you feel the humanity of a defendant you will want that person to get a fair, open and constitutional hearing. Corners are cut when nobody in the courtroom gives a damn.

G.K. Chesterton was known for blending morality with good humor (an unusual combination). Exactly 100 years ago, he served as a juror and was not impressed with the professionals in the courtroom. The problem: no empathy.

“Now, it is a terrible business to mark a man out for the vengeance of men,” Cheston observed. “But it is a thing to which a man can grow accustomed, as he can to other terrible things; he can even grow accustomed to the sun. And the horrible thing about all legal officials, even the best, about all judges, magistrates, barristers, detectives, and policemen, is not that they are wicked (some of them are good), not that they are stupid (several of them are quite intelligent), it is simply that they have got used to it. Strictly they do not see the prisoner in the dock; all they see is the usual man in the usual place. They do not see the awful court of judgment; they only see their own workshop.

Unlike legal professionals, Chesterton felt, a good juror empathizes with the victim, the alleged perpetrator and the families of both parties. This doesn’t make them biased. Biased jurors, like biased judges, feel the pain of the victim but give no thought to the humanity of the defendant. Jurors (and judges) get it wrong in capital cases precisely because the facts are so distressing. The blood of the victim calls out for justice with such urgency that no one bothers to ask if the right person has been summoned to the bar of justice. The thought of the crime going unpunished is so disturbing that the humanity of the accused vanishes. The accused must be guilty because the crime is so heinous.

Of course, the desire to punish must be held in abeyance until the guilt-innocence question has been decided. Judges who prejudge a case are tempted to rule for the state at every turn because it hastens the inevitable. Judges without empathy are bad judges.

The empathy debate pits reformers who believe life experience impacts judgement against traditionalists who believe nine white males would be perfectly capable of deciding any legal issue. Was it purely incidental that five of the nine justice who decided the Dred Scott case in 1857 were slave owners? Adding African Americans to the judicial mix would have changed nothing, traditionalists argue. In fact, black judges would have stripped the blindfold from Lady Justice because they identified personally with the travail of American slaves.

George Will dismisses Judge Sotomayor as a conventional liberal: “She embraces identity politics, including the idea of categorical representation: A person is what his or her race, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference is, and members of a particular category can be represented – understood, empathized with – only by persons of the same identity.”

Quite so. None of us are impartial. We enter the world as self-serving tyrants and only painful encounters with other people can change us; that’s why we need religion. Experience gives us the capacity for judgement. Despite the best of intentions and a world of good will, if we know only people who look and think like us we will have a cramped view of the world. As we strive to feel as others feel as others feel we make real moral progress, but our capacity for empathy is tragically limited.

In explaining his vote against John Roberts, then-Senator Barack Obama noted that the well-groomed jurist had “far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak” and “seemed to have consistently sided with those who were dismissive of efforts to eradicate the remnants of racial discrimination in our political process.”

Men like George Will have no problem with “the remnants of racial discrimination”. They assume that standard-issue white American males will make the right call. They can be impartial because they lack empathy.

Teaching our racial history

May 5, 2009May 5, 2009 ·

Leonard Pitts uses a tragic story from Sarasota, FL to decry the growing influence of Neo-Confederate propaganda. With commendable sensitivity, Pitts sifts through a story reminiscent of Jena. There are no heroes and villains in this story, just victims.

Here’s the key insight: “If we were a people with the courage to teach our racial history fearlessly, and the foresight to inculcate in our children a reverence for civil liberties, this tragedy might never have happened.”

Grievance and rage combustible

By LEONARD PITTS JR.

lpitts@miamiherald.com

A few days ago, a high school student in Sarasota failed history and another failed civics. As a result, the one wound up shot in the chest and the other jailed on a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

Here’s the story, as reported by The Sarasota Herald Tribune: On the last Friday in April, an 18-year-old white kid named Daniel Azeff and a friend went riding downtown in a pickup truck, yelling racially disparaging remarks and waving a Confederate battle flag. Azeff’s grandfather, Joseph Fischer, told the paper he has cautioned his grandson repeatedly about his fascination with that dirty banner. Azeff, he said, does not really understand what the flag means.

If so, he’s hardly alone in his ignorance. A generation of apologists for the wannabe nation symbolized by that flag has done an effective job of convincing the gullible and the willfully ignorant that neither the nation, the flag, nor the Civil War in which both were bloodily repudiated, has anything to do with slavery. It’s just ”heritage,” they say, as though heritage were a synonym for ”good.” As though Nazis, white South Africans and Rwandans did not have heritage, too.

For the record: In explaining its decision to secede, South Carolina cited ”an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery.” Georgia noted its grievances against the North ”with reference to the subject of African slavery.” Mississippi said, ”Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.” To which Confederate ”vice president” Alexander Stephens added: “Our new government is founded upon . . . the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.”

So the notion that the Confederacy and its symbols have nothing to with slavery is tiresome, silly and delusional. In choosing to adopt one of those symbols that night, David Azeff took a history test of sorts — and failed.

As noted, Michael Mitchell’s test was in civics. Police say Mitchell, who is 18, black and a student at Sarasota Military Academy, saw Azeff’s flag, took offense and, when the white kid parked and walked down the street, confronted him. Azeff denied being a racist; he was, he said, just exercising his First Amendment rights. Police say the argument escalated, until Mitchell pulled a gun and shot Azeff in the chest.

Thus did Mitchell fail his own test. This is America. Daniel Azeff has a perfect right to express virtually any opinion he chooses, no matter how asinine or provocative, without being shot for it.

Thankfully, Azeff is expected to make a full recovery. Meantime, Mitchell, said to be a good kid who has never been in trouble before, remains jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail. It is difficult not to see a certain symmetry.

That’s not an argument of moral equivalence: Mitchell allegedly pulled a gun, so the moral weight for what happened rests squarely upon his shoulders.

And yet it’s also true that each teenager had what the other lacked. One knew his rights, the other, his history. But neither realized that you cannot fully appreciate the one without understanding the other. So each young man fell into the other’s blind spot.

If we were a people with the courage to teach our racial history fearlessly, and the foresight to inculcate in our children a reverence for civil liberties, this tragedy might never have happened. We are not those people. And because we aren’t, these two boys hurtled toward collision, hopped up on grievances and rage they were ill-equipped to speak — or hear. They took a test that night in Sarasota, and let no one be surprised they failed.

They never had a chance.

The Will to Secede

April 27, 2009December 10, 2009 · 5 Comments ·

(Readers of this post will be interested in the story of Curtis Flowers, a native of Winona, Mississippi who will soon go on trial for the sixth time on the same murder charges.)

According to a Rasmussen poll, only 18% of Texans would vote to secede from the United States of America if the vote were taken today.

An additional 7% would like time to mull it over.

In short, one quarter of the Texas voting population is willing to follow Governor Rick Perry into a new Texas Republic.

My guess is that the overwhelming majority of the secessionist folks are Republicans. Since the solid Republican base has been estimated at about 39% of the electorate it could be argued that Perry’s party is evenly split on the issue.

Maybe the Governor is just talking like a proud Texan. Everybody knows that native Texans feel more tied to their state than to their country. But successionist talk has been a common staple of the Southern neo-Confederate movement since the days of Brown vs. Board. Successionist rhetoric has traditionally been the province of those who long for the restoration of the Confederacy.

I just finished reading Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction: a fascinating study of the most sophisticated strain of Southern racism written by a group of authors, many of them at least loosley affiliated with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Edward Sebesta, a Dallas-based researcher who is probably the national authority on the issue, was part of the editorial team. I had never heard of either Sebesta or neo-Confederates until he contacted me a few weeks ago.

You can find Ed Sebesta’s blog here and his extensive essay on the prevelance of neo-Confederate mythology here. It’s pretty dense stuff, but the Dallas writer breaks some important new ground and deserves a hearing.

Sebesta has coined the term “banal white nationalism” to describe the unexamined assumption, especially common in the South, that America is a white nation, created by white folks primarily for white folks.

Banal white nationalism is contrasted to the kind of explicit white nationalism you will get from hardcore neo-conferate groups like the League of the South, the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

There is nothing faintly banal about these organizations. They are committed to the values of the Old South, they feel utter contempt for the civil rights movement, they associate northerners with godless socialism and the Southland with orthodox Christianity, and they are committed to the principle of white supremacy. If neo-Confederates had their way in this wicked world they would re-establish the Confederacy in a heartbeat. Non-caucasians wouldbe allowed to live in this new-old realm so long as they understood that white is the color of normal.

Failing that, neo-Confederates will settle for “states rights”.

Banal white nationalism is a largely unexamined and unacknowledged creed rooted in the assumption that white people are normal Americans.

White nationalism is shaped by the kind of Confederate mythology usually associated with Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, and D.W. Griffith’s the Birth of a Nation: a highly sentimental and idealized vision of a pristine Southland despoiled by the Yankee invader. In the popular mind, this mythos is wedded to public school mythology about Plymouth Rock Puritans, the heroes of the Revolutionary War, and the glories of Manifest Destiny.

When all of the heroes you read about in the history books are white you naturally assume that America is essentially a white nation. You will continue to think this way even if you are told repeatedly that you live in a pluralistic nation united by a common adherence to the American Constitution.

Stories trump abstractions every time.

I see three varieties of white nationalism.

First, there are crude racists of the KKK variety; the folks that attract attention by dressing funny and mouthing slogans that are no longer palatable in the public square. These are the people Americans love to hate. In fact, they are the only species of racist most people acknowledge.

Then you have the explicit white nationalists who are dedicated to the principle of white supremacy and dream dreams of a new Southern Confederacy. Explicit white nationalists denounce the civil rights movement as a federal conspiracy, lament the profligacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and perpetuate every minority stereotype in the book. However, since they are well educated, write and speak standard English and don’t dress up in funny clothes most white Americans see them as normal Americans no matter how undemocratic and intemperate their rhetoric becomes.

Finally, we have Sebesta’s banal white nationalists, everyday Americans who see white as the color of normal. Although these people tend to be non-ideological, they have imbibed the public school historical mythology and embraced its implications. The television teaches them to honor civil rights icons like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and they willingly comply. Banal white nationalists see American as a white nation that is friendly to racial minorities.

A solid majority of white Americans fall into one of these three categories. Banal white nationalism is dominant in the Northern states. In the Deep South it’s okay to embrace explicit white nationalism so long as you choose your nouns and adjectives with care.

Suppose I am right; what impact would the prevelance of white nationalism have on the behavior of police officers and how would it impact the legal system?

Black defendants would be at a huge disadvantage with white prosecutors, judges and juries. At best, they are seen as resident aliens with only provisional rights.

If the tenets of white nationalism are fundamentally patriarchal, anti-egalitarian (and therefore undemocratic) what is the practical import of the due process protections hallowed by the US Constitution. As a practical matter, do these lofty principle really apply to black and brown people?

Now, where does Governor Rick Perry fall on the ideological continuum I have just described? Does he see America as a gloriously pluralistic mix of color, culture and ethnicity, or is he some species of white nationalist.

In the tradition of the Southern governers who have gone before, Perry is speaking the language of state’s rights. That doesn’t necessarily make him a racist or a white supremacist. There is nothing inherently racist about seeking a balance between federal and state power. But we all know what Southern governers meant by state’s rights in 1860 and 1957, and concerns should be raised when politicians toss around this kind of rhetoric.

When they’re talking secession it just gets worse.

Two points. First, Governor Rick Perry is a proud member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Second, the SCV has been moving in a radical, neo-confederate direction since 2002 and is now run by blatant racists.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Perry can be identified with the SCV’s recent extremism. In the 1990s, the group had a strong anti-racist faction and received commendations from Bill Clinton. Maybe Governor Perry would be shocked if he knew what was going on.

But until the Governor’s allegiance to an increasingly racist organization is clarified friends of justice will be left with an uneasy feeling.

“Can We Talk?”: This Saturday in Austin, TX

May 27, 2008 ·

Here’s a great event coming up this Saturday in Austin, Texas:

BridgeBuilders “Can We Talk?” Guided Conversation on Race in America

Please join us on Saturday, May 31 in a guided conversation on Race in America inspired by the issues raised in Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia. Participants will enjoy dessert and coffee while focusing on specific questions in small table groups, followed by sharing and discussion by the whole group. Mr. Bill Adams, former Rector at St. James Episcopal Church in Austin, and Jennifer and Ashton Cumberbatch, long-time friends of the BridgeBuilders ministry, will be our facilitators for the evening. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for meet and greet and refreshments. The formal program will start at 7:00 p.m. and end at 8:30 p.m. Location: Wesley UMC at 1160 San Bernard. For directions to the church, contact the Wesley church office at 478-7007 or visit the church website (http://www.wesleyunited.org/). BridgeBuilders member churches include Berkeley, St. Luke, St. Peter’s, University, and Wesley UMC.

The final word on Jena (and beyond)

April 7, 2008 · 8 Comments ·

Jena, Louisiana still crops up in the media from time-to-time, usually as shorthand for abiding racism. Darryl Fears’ Washington Post feature on the decline of traditional civil rights groups tips the hat to the Jena phenomenon in its closing paragraphs.

When six black teenagers in Jena, La., were being prosecuted as adults last year in the beating of a white classmate, the local branch of the NAACP played a small role in defending their rights, but it was Color of Change.org that secured their release.

Color of Change deserves the accolade. Under the leadership of James Rucker, COC collected hundreds of thousands of signatures for a Jena petition and hundreds of thousands of dollars for the legal fight (every penny of which landed in the right hands).

Unfortunately, no one has won the release of the Jena 6; Mychal Bell is serving the last few months of his sentence and the other five defendants still face trial.

Moreover, the “local branch of the NAACP” was formed a year ago through the efforts of Friends of Justice, Tory Pegram, then of the La. ACLU, and Jena 6 families led by Caseptla Bailey and Catrina Wallace.

In late January of 2007, ten Jena 6 family members and Alan Bean of Friends of Justice drove to Baton Rouge, La. to meet with NAACP leaders. After waiting for three hours, we finally got five minutes with president Ernest Johnson. His message was simple: create an NAACP branch with 100 dues-paying members and we’ll be there for ya’ll.

We held up our end. The state NAACP waited for the story to go viral on the internet and become a staple item in the mainstream media–then they took an interest.

Darryl Fears is right about the endgame–Color of Change and radio personality Michael Baisden had far more to do with bringing 30,000 people to Jena than old-guard icons like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

But how did James Rucker of COC and Michael Baisden hear about Jena in the first place? Rucker was invited to participate by Tory Pegram (now a Friends of Justice board member). Pegram remembered the great work Color of Change had performed in the wake of Katrina and made the critical call.

Dallas-based Michael Baisden learned about Jena from reading the paper, watching television and surfing the net.

I have no problem with high-profile, high-capacity folks riding to the aid of the grassroots folks who do the heavy lefting early on. But I do have a problem with the self-promoting arrogance media celebrities commonly demonstrated in Jena.

James Rucker is a blessed exception. He came to town and worked with the grassroots people while the story was still catching fire.

Michael Baisden and Al Sharpton rolled into Jena in flashy limousines, grabbed a few soundbites from a compliant media, then headed off to Alexandria for a fundraiser. The next day, when concerned citizens from across the nation flocked to Jena, the big boys bickered backstage about who should command the premier venue.

Catrina Wallace, the brother of Jena 6 defendant Robert Bailey, had organized a Hip-Hop concert for local youth. The La. NAACP, afraid that the rappers might go to cussin’, bumped Catrina’s concert to the sidelines. Finally, the NAACP was dissed and dismissed by Baisden and Sharpton. In the end, there were two rallies: one featuring Baisden, Sharpton and friends; the other highlighting Jesse Jackson and the La. NAACP.

The folks who endured two nights on a bus to get to Jena found themselves wandering from one venue to the other, wondering what was going on. In the end, it didn’t matter. Few were aware of the internecine squabbling and a good time was had by all.

It was all good; but it could have been so much better.

Now, folks are wondering what happened to the Jena movement. We all gathered for a big rally; the House Judiciary Committee held a highly-publicized hearing into the matter; then interest dropped like a rock. What was that all about?

Any “movement” that owes its existence to the undeniable power of celebrity will eventually be done-in by celebrity’s impotent downside.

Michael Baisden was flying by the seat of his pants. He didn’t understand what Jena was all about and he never bothered to talk to those of us who had been living the story for half a year. The story got under The Bad Boy’s skin. He was outraged, and his passion translated powerfully to millions of listeners. Baisden called his “family” to join him in Jena for a big rally. The logistical ramifications were enormous. No one had time to ask what came next.

So nothing came next.

Al Sharpton doesn’t investigate civil rights abuses; he waits for other people to get the story to the media, then he swoops in wagging his finger at the evil doers. But Sharpton never knew what Jena was all about. Everything was reduced to his stock storyline: unequal justice for black folks.

Sharpton concluded that the criminal justice system should either try to noose boys as hate criminals or turn the Jena 6 loose. Like any good controversialist, Al doesn’t do nuance.

Because Sharpton is a media celebrity, his take on Jena became the last word.

Make no mistake; Jena is a story about unequal justice. But what lies at the root of this inequality?

Jena is a story about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children. Jena is about racial insensitivity translating into bizarre public policy. Superintendent Roy Breithaupt should have known that nooses hanging from a schoolyard tree were a sign of fear and deep loathing. Relations between the noose boys and certain black football players were bad and steadily worsening. Everybody knew it. The issues needed to be addressed.

Trying the noose boys as hate criminals would have missed the point. These were kids, after all. They needed to be dealt with firmly, fairly and compassionately. They were not responsible for the legacy of Jim Crow racism, but their minds and hearts had certainly been twisted by it. Nothing short of a full program of education addressing all the historical, ethical, and relational issues the Jim Crow South has left in its weary wake would have been sufficient.

But Mr. Breithaupt wasn’t ready to confront Jena’s history, so he tossed his town’s dirty linen into the clothes hamper and hoped it would disappear.

When the noose incident was dismissed as a childish prank, the black community was outraged and the school was placed on lockdown. Reed Walters was called to an emergency assembly. This was another teachable moment, a second chance for someone in authority to address the key issue. Like the superintendent, Mr. Walters dropped the ball.

In a June hearing at the LaSalle Parish courthouse, Walters was asked if he had waved his pen in the air and told the students that he could make their lives disappear with a stroke of his pen. Walters owned up to the remark without hesitation. He thought the black students were overreacting to the handling of the noose incident and he wanted to give them a reality check. Black and white students, Walters told the court, needed to “work things out by themselves.”

This is America’s problem–we are leaving the children to work things out for themselves. When adolescent males are left to their own devices bones are broken and the blood flows freely. Thus it has every been; thus it will ever be. It’s the male code, and it will be followed with tragic inevitability unless the adults in the room step in and do some teaching.

That, Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Baisden, is what Jena is all about.

The real Jena story could have sparked a productive national debate. In fact, despite all the misplaced emphasis and the hollow theatrics, the real story has been told. It could have been told better, no mistake. But Jena has sparked a boistrous and sustained conversation about how we can break the chain of violence that eventually engulfed Justin Barker and Robert Bailey in Jena.

The most articulate response thus far has come from Marian Wright Edelman’s Children’s Defense Fund, an organization that’s asking the right questions and providing sane and workable answers.

So what’s next for Jena?

It all depends. If Reed Walters takes even one of these cases to trial, Jena will be back in the news. It might not make the front page, but the fires of controversy will be rekindled.

If Reed Walters agrees to a universal settlement involving no additional prison time, there will be a few passing references in the media and the story will quickly fade from view.

Frankly, I’m praying for the second solution because it is in the best interest of the Jena 6, the Barker family and the good people of Jena.

What’s it to be, Mr. Walters? The next move is yours.

But perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Instead of asking “What’s next for Jena?”, we should be asking what’s next for the criminal justice movement. Jena’s name is legion.

Friends of Justice continues to monitor the situation in Jena, but we have moved on. We’re working in Bunkie, Lousiana. We’re playing a bit part in a large coalition working for justice for the Angola 3. And we’re currently researching a case in Little Rock, Arkansas that cuts to the heart of America’s prison problem.

Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentleman, we’re in for a bumpy ride!

Alan Bean

Friends of Justice

The Pen is Mightier than the Noose

November 26, 2007 · 1 Comment ·

I have given only passing attention to the current spate of “Jena sparks noose madness” stories. The more noose stories we see; the more nooses appear. You don’t put out a fire by pumping in more oxygen.

But this noose article in the New Orleans Times-Picaynue moves beyond a knee-jerk, “Look at all them crazy people hanging them nooses!” theme. Lance Hill, director of Tulane University’s Southern Institute for Education and Research, cuts to the heart of the problem:

It’s troublesome that we don’t dig as a nation, we don’t dig much deeper than just the symbolic images and that it just leaves us unprepared for injustices that can be happening right under our nose. We don’t recognize that injustice because it doesn’t have a noose around its neck.

The symbol of a noose hanging from a tree in a segregated school yard is powerful . . . maybe too powerful.

As I have stated ad nauseam, Jena isn’t about a hate crime; it’s about public officials turning a teaching opportunity into a tacit endosrsement of de facto segregation. This is a story bristling with weapons: a noose, a pen, a fist and a tennis shoe. Of the lot, the pen is by far the most dangerous.

The noose hanging phase will only proliferate so long as we respond with wailing, lamentation and calls for aggressive prosecution. No one would ever have heard about Jena, Louisiana if Reed Walters had confronted high school students with a noose instead of a pen. “Look at this thing,” Walters should have said. “It’s a symbol of hatred and mob justice. It’s a sign of craven cowardice. It tells me that some students at this school don’t believe in the basic American values of equality and free association. Well, I’m here to tell you that this ugly rope, and the hatred it symbolizes, will not be tolerated in LaSalle Parish or at this school. Have I made myself understood?”

That speech would have drained all the demonic power out of the noose symbol, and it would have settled the beef between black and white students.

But Reed Walters didn’t deliver that speech, and Justin Barker paid the price. The Department of Justice still insists that there is no connection between the noose incident and the racial charged altercations three months later. The connection is Reed Walters’ pen. With one click of his ball-point, a stupid prank became an act of official oppression. (more…)