Tag Archives: politics

For me, it’s not enough to vote, or to share social media posts, for the causes I care about or the candidates most qualified to make good of those causes.

It matters to call, text, knock on doors, enter data on the people I’ve contacted, and do it all again every day until your candidate is elected or loses.

It matters to connect and work with every person who wishes to contribute a small chunk of their lives to this campaign.

And it matters, after the campaign is over, to want for more, for better, for yourself, for your neighbors, for your world.

Whatever happens, here’s to the next campaign.

African-Americans Who’ve Ran for Governor

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

To date, I’ve been able to find 8 major-party nominees of African descent for governor of a U.S. state, over the spread of 6 states:

  • Douglas Wilder (Virginia Democratic nominee 1989, elected 1990-1994)
  • Deval Patrick (Massachusetts Democratic nominee 2006, elected 2007-2015)
  • Johnny DuPree (Mississippi Democratic nominee 2011, first AA nominee since Reconstruction)
  • Robert Gray (Mississippi Democratic nominee 2015)
  • Cleo Fields (Louisiana Democratic candidate 1995, Louisiana has no primary system)
  • Bill Jefferson (Louisiana Democratic candidate 1999)
  • Theo Mitchell (South Carolina Democratic candidate 1990)
  • Anthony Brown (Maryland Democratic nominee 2014)

Compare this to:

  • 36 elected governors of Irish descent
  • 21 elected governors of Ashkenazi Jewish decent

Not bad for two other ethnicities who were once considered non-white by White America.

But it’s emblematic of how adrift Democrats are at the moment in the South, and just how much we have failed in representing and accommodating one of the most and longest-politically-disadvantaged ethnic groups in this country.

Building on the #WEBDuBois quote Edric just posted:

Reading DuBois’ critique of both parties in 1956, one has to understand what the parties represented in that period. The Democrats were still a very racist political party which appealed to the White working class. The Republicans, by comparison, were mostly indistinguishable from the Democrats except in their Lincolnian heritage and their more concrete adherence to free-market ideals. Republicans in the South were struggling to arise as an appreciable political force, becoming plastered in its declining years as the “Negro Party”.

Fast-forward to today. The Republicans are dominant in the South and are a very racist, white-identity-obsessed party. The Democrats in the South are struggling to arise as an appreciable political force, and are now becoming consigned to “Negro Party”, permanent-minority status. Outside of the South, the parties are more apart than ever before, except on many of the matters which DuBois touches on in this letter. Some things have never changed, and some things have changed party affiliation.

8 years ago today, #BarackObama was elected president of the United States.

I remember that he had the wind at his back during that campaign. His campaign, his presidency and his brand has changed the trajectory of the Democratic Party in the post-LBJ era.

I think Hillary Clinton will lead under this reality as she tries to leave her own mark. I don’t think we’ll go back to the 1990’s. I don’t think it will be possible. Our expectations are greater than back then, and Obama has made good on too many of them for us to revert back to that period.

The Congressional Black Caucus and the 1994 Crime Bill

Politics, Uncategorized, , , ,

You know what I’m missing about the #1994CrimeBill?

An actual rebuttal to all the 23 Congressional Black Caucus members who voted for it and all the African-American non/ex-politicians who defend it to this day.

I have read so many defenses and criticisms of the bill from White folks during 2015-2016, but they all center the Clinton family in their explications. Even Michelle Alexander’s rage piece against the crime bill in “The Nation” magazine during the primary centered the Clintons.

What about the African-Americans themselves? Where was our political agency at that time? What benefits did many of us, the Kweisi Mfume-Sanford Bishop school of 23, see in supporting the bill, versus the John Lewis-Jesse Jackson school of 11 who voted No? Why do many African-Americans today still support the bill and its harsher terms of law in the context of its time, and is there a proper rebuttal to *their* supportive arguments?

In the end, this became an election year attack line, and not a moment for reconciling the past with the present. I think those who demand the lessening of mass incarceration missed a grand opportunity for change because the conversation about the 1994 Crime Bill went nowhere this year.

When Republicans Stopped Wanting Our Vote

Politics, Uncategorized, , , , ,

From a comment I posted to John Jackson’s thread last October 15, copypasted and edited here from my other profile because it bears repeating in public:

“If the GOP were the more effective alternative for African-American voters to the racist Southern Democrats in the post-WWII South, why did people like Fannie Lou Hamer attempt to integrate the Mississippi Democrats (who were atop an effective one-party state since Reconstruction) and not the recently-reestablished Mississippi GOP (re-born 1956)? Why did her MFDP become the focus of attention in the 1964 Democratic Convention when they sought a seat at the Mississippi delegation table, when the free-market GOP championing Barry Goldwater was available that year?

In relation to what [some guy] said earlier, where were all this “free stuff” that Democrats were handing out for the 90+ years that Democrats had one-party rule throughout the South, and were Southern White people being given this free stuff that Black people were clearly prohibited from accessing? Southern White people, with high rates of regional illiteracy and racial privilege, “pulled the lever” for Democratic governors for over 4 generations, and never pulled that lever for a GOP governor, so what changed?

That’s what I’m curious about. What changed in the South that Democrats went from being “my (racist) grandpapy’s party” to being the party of “free stuff”, from a racist kleptocratic party in the South to the “socialist party” in opposition for the next century? Was it FDR’s New Deal? Truman’s integration of the military? Johnson’s ban on bigoted poll taxes, or his promotion of the Great Society? I don’t think that it is the viability or non-viability of the GOP’s free-market policy or its anathema to “free stuff” that is the issue. Otherwise, many would have been more attracted to the GOP as a party on a Booker T. Washington/Marcus Garvey/Malcolm X “do for self” black-nationalist pro-business basis.

But that didn’t happen, and so you didn’t have traditional Black Republicans get into federal office after Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, who was the last gasp of the type of Black GOPer who was promoted aggressively by the Radical Republicans to Southern statewide office in Reconstruction. Now it’s all “bootstrap”, “anti-big-gov” and militarist types like J.C. Watts, Mia Love, Allen West and Tim Scott since the civil-rights movement era. What happened, and why can’t the GOP relate to the Black Nationalist “do for self” trend in the same way that the Democrats have been able to relate (somewhat) to the Black social-democratic tendency?”

In state government, there is an inherent bigotry against cities, even the biggest ones.

States, which are rurally-biased, can take away the incorporation of a city at any time unless prevented by a state constitution. States are the middle-men between the city and the federal government.

The biggest cities in our country should have the opportunity to secede from state governments and govern themselves separately under federal law.

The first thing that came to mind when reading about Clinton’s public vs. private position?

Abortion and reproductive rights. Also, marriage equality and civil unions.

We praise male politicians for putting their private, religious positions (especially Catholics, Mormons and Muslims) on the shelf when making public policy positions on the “sins” of abortion and marriage equality.

We’ve been doing that for much of the history of this “culture war”, even when their fellow parishioners demonize these politicians as “liars” and “frauds” for not being “true Catholics/Mormons/Muslims/Jews/etc. (TM).”

It’s More than Identity for Us

Politics, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

You know what I felt to be racist about 2008? It wasn’t that so many chose to vote for Obama or McCain based on their skin color.

It’s that so many in the GOP went out of their way to denounce Obama’s presence in the race overall, and dismissed his eligibility based on his ethnicity and insinuations about his ethnicity in ways that McCain did not face.

You know what I feel to be misogynist about 2012? It isn’t that so many choose to vote for Clinton or Trump based on their gender.

It’s that so many in the GOP have gone out of their way to denounce Clinton’s presence in the race overall, and dismiss her eligibility based on her gender and insinuations about her gender in ways that Trump has not faced.

So I don’t mind that African-Americans turned out much more for Obama, and I don’t mind that women will turn out much more for Clinton. Not one bit.

I do mind that anyone would be institutionally denounced in their candidacy based on their ethnic or gender background, especially by those whose ancestors have been privileged with citizenship and social credibility for the entirety of this country’s history.

Ultimately, over 50% of the population voted for Obama based on his background and his credibility. The same will happen for Clinton.

If GOP voters are concerned that so many would vote for a Democratic candidate based often on their background while their similarly-originated candidates don’t do anywhere near so well, they are not doing anywhere near enough to bring in candidates with both a relatable background and a believable credibility for office. Try harder.

One more time, with feeling:

I don’t believe that political calculation is wrong.

If you change your position in your campaign for political office, you better hope that it’s the better one. Because it will be the job of the activist to either hold you to it or bring you down on it.

I don’t think Trump is wrong to change his opinion from last year on Canada’s single-payer healthcare. I think he’s grievously wrong for having the wrong position on it, and for flat-out lying about Canada in the process.

I don’t think Clinton is wrong to change her position on fracking. I think it’s good that she has changed it to a nuanced opposition, but she may have been misinformed about its supposed benefits in the first place.