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Louis Farrakhan, a man for all time

Askia — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:00:37 +0000

Long live the Spirit of the Million Man March! Long life, good health and continued success to Louis Farrakhan, who led those of us who participated in it to an astronomical achievement Oct. 16, 1995, that day 17 years ago.
Now, I wish I could help people who don’t know and admire him, get to know the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, like I know him.
First and foremost, he is not an anti-Semite. He is not a race hater. He does not teach race hatred. He does not teach hatred of Jewish people.
But he is a fearless and uncompromising champion for the upliftment of Black people. Such rigidity as his can easily earn enemies in this world. Just look at the hatred being shown to President Barack Obama, who is a Black man who is a champion of accommodating, compromising leadership, not just for Black people, but for all Americans–the kind of leadership in strength that is required of anyone who would be a political leader in this country. Louis Farrakhan is not that kind of leader.
Second, his name: his friends and admirers refer to him as “The Honorable Minister.” Why shouldn’t Louis Farrakhan wear the title “honorable?”
When he was among us, Mr. Elijah Muhammad wore the title, “honorable.” Minister Malcolm X first started referring to Mr. Muhammad as “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” and it was as appropriate for him as it is for us to introduce a member of a city council, or a justice of the peace, or any elected official as “the honorable so-and-so.” Minister Farrakhan is certainly just as deserving of that same sobriquet.
Mr. Muhammad designated Brother Farrakhan as his minister and “National Spokesman,” and those are the only titles he has claimed as he has restored the work of, and international respect once again for the Nation of Islam, both as a force for good, raising Black people from their lowly status as “the stone that the builders rejected” to becoming “the headstone of the corner.”
Because of their enmity for Min. Farrakhan, White people try to heap contempt on him even in the way they say his name–Fair-a-can–and in the way they bastardize his title, sometimes calling him “Reverend Fair-a-can.” And while the title reverend an honorific title, bestowed on a member of the clergy who is to be “revered,” or who is “worthy of reverence,” Louis Farrakhan is not a member of the clergy, he is a “minister” in the Nation of Islam, as in a “high office of state entrusted with management…”
I have seen Louis Farrakhan in most every imaginable circumstance: at the table of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, even serenading Mr. Muhammad with a concert on his violin. I watched him rebuild the Nation of Islam, literally brick-by-brick beginning in 1978, three years after Mr. Muhammad departed from among us. During his early ministry, he came to Washington and spoke every Wednesday for six months at the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA, to help establish the roots in the District of Columbia.
I saw Louis Farrakhan organize and lead to a deliriously successful conclusion, the Million Man March. He crisscrossed the country, speaking to men-only audiences for months before the march, calling the men to unite, join organizations to do good in our communities, and to take responsibility for ourselves and for the destiny of our people. The men did just that and the March was successful, and it continues to bear fruit among our people. Long Live The Spirit of the Million Man March.
I was blessed to travel with the Minister as a reporter, literally around the world on three Friendship Tours after the MMM. Tours, which took us to dozens of countries on six continents–Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, and North America–as well as to the Caribbean and some of the Pacific Islands. He was greeted like a Head of State and received with honors and pomp and circumstance by none other than South African Nelson Mandela and by Cuban Fidel Castro, among others.
I have seen him in good health and under medical affliction, and now, looking at him seven months from his 80th birthday, I have to agree with an observer, he looks like he’s no more than 55 years old.
And today, without external fanfare he has mobilized the men of the Nation beginning two months ago to go into the streets to redeem our lost people, to increase the peace and to stop the violence among Black people in “da hood.”
I wish all the people who agree with me about the qualities the Minister demonstrates, will also agree that he is a man for all time.

The Debate ‘Rope-a-Dope,’ They hope

Askia — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:56:40 +0000

The origin of the “Rope-a-Dope” was the successful boxing technique employed by Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali, when he knocked out his bigger and stronger opponent George Foreman to regain his title during their 1974 match. In that fight Mr. Ali was literally beaten for the first four rounds, before rallying, taking charge and then knocking out his opponent in the eighth round.
Many supporters of President Barack Obama suggested after his anemic performance in his first debate with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney that Obama’s showing was part of his “rope-a-dope” scheme. At least they hope it was.
Going into the debate Oct. 3, the President enjoyed across-the-board leads both in national public opinion polls, and in polls in key Electoral College battleground states and Gov. Romney needed a proverbial “knock-out” of the incumbent in order to revive his failing chances for victory on Nov. 6. Using tricks and lies, and stage presence, Romney didn’t get a clear knock out per se, but he seemed to get what he needed.
The Rasmussen poll found an approval “bounce” for Romney after the debate. Their tracking poll of the national race, released October 6, showed Romney with 49 percent to Obama’s 47 percent, a reverse from just one day earlier.
“These U.S. presidential elections are in part an exercise in psychological warfare,” Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history at the University of Houston told me. “There are countless voters in this country who have not (made up their minds as to who they’re going to vote for or vote against), in part because they look at elections like sports. They want to be on the winning team.
“Political operatives see it as their mission to create this psychological atmosphere that makes it seem as if their candidate has momentum. I think that the Romney team and the Republican Party operatives did a masterful job in terms of creating this impression that Romney has triumphed in this debate, although if you look at a lot of what he said with a close eye, there are a number of misstatements, there are a number of evasions, some might even say outright prevarications,” said Dr. Horne.
Many of Obama’s supporters expressed surprise, even disappointment that he never mentioned several of the Republican’s glaring weaknesses, including his record at the private equity firm Bain Capital, his vast personal wealth and offshore investments, and most especially his remark that 47 percent of Americans are government dependents who support the President’s welfare-state-like policies and who are unwilling to even attempt to take “personal responsibility” for their own lives.
“The President missed an incredible opportunity to “close the deal” as far as the American voters are concerned,” Dr. Wilmer Leon, assistant professor of political science at Howard University told me. “This was, by many accounts, gonna be Romney’s last stand, his opportunity to re-re-re-start his campaign, and unfortunately the President allowed him to do it.
“Romney did bring his ‘A-game,’ for as good as Romney’s game could be. The President allowed Romney to lie repeatedly, (and) did not forcefully challenge a lot of the assertions that Romney was making that have repeatedly been proven to be false,” Dr. Leon continued.
“The President made very little eye-contact with Romney. He kept looking down at his papers, and that gave the appearance of concession or defeat. The President just really seemed to be disinterested, disconnected, flat, and he just didn’t put the guy away. It almost seems to go back to the President trying to be conciliatory,” said Dr. Leon.
Some said that Obama was intentionally deferential to Romney out of concern that he might otherwise come off as an “angry black man.” Filmmaker Michael Moore: “For the past 2 days the Right has been pounding their “Obama is an angry black man video,” did this affect O that he had to appear timid?” Moore asked via Twitter.
“Within a certain segment of the U.S. population, there were those who were willing, and were hungry, for this idea that Mr. Obama would be put in his place, and of course I’m choosing my words carefully, because I do think there was a kind of antebellum overtone to that kind of notion,” Dr. Horne said of the debate.
“Obama always has to walk a tightrope. If you look at recent history, you may recall that one of his calling cards as he was being catapulted into prominence as a national figure, was that he was a Black man who was slow to anger, who was not aggressive in the way that Black men are perceived to be aggressive, and that he has created this persona of likeability which in the end I think, will serve him well.
“So, I would imagine that Mr. Obama’s handlers are quite sensitive to this perception of being overly aggressive against Mr. Romney’s charges, but I would imagine that in this second and third debate that Mr. Obama is going to re-calibrate because the publicity has been so negative with regard to his performance that it’s going to force a change in how he approaches these upcoming debates, and he’s going to probably risk his likeability quotient in order to challenge Mr. Romney’s evasions and misstatements and prevarications,” Dr. Horne continued.
That would be Rope-a-Dope parts two and three maybe.

Open Letter to the National Association of Black Journalists

Askia — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:34:59 +0000

A recent exchange of comments on the National Association of Black Journalists listserv about the quality of The Black Press provoked me to offer this response, which I now share here.

One Black editor wrote: “…clips from those who worked in black newspapers were often but not always of lower quality. I understand that many of those papers didn’t have the resources but many stories were simply poorly written, full of holes, one-sided or littered with typos…”

In the opinion of another NABJ member: “…The production problems (of) most black-owned newspapers endured. They did not own their presses, so they often leased time from others. This often led to hasty work as clocks ticked [and bills rang up]. Tragic errors and haphazard design followed….” Ahem.

My edited response: “I really must take umbrage at the idea that a well edited, error free Black newspaper is some sort of anomaly, or some dinosaur to be studied only in some museum after it’s long dead.

“Again, I point you to The Washington Informer. Look at it online, for crying out loud. Every week, on time and virtually typo-free, on a “leased press.” And it is not the only one. I also write for The Final Call. I have edited it. I edited its predecessor, Muhammad Speaks IN THE 1970s! Look at The Final Call online. I would not be able to stand among the Men who sell that newspaper every day, door-to-door and on street corners and look them in their eyes if someone in this group or anyone else could pick up ANY copy of that paper and pick it apart finding typos and errors of fact. One of the FC’s reporters and the editor-in-chief were both fired several years ago when a story in the paper was found to be factually unsubstantiated. So, no! It’s not like that, and you of all people should know better.

“We scrupulously proofread our product at Muhammad Speaks and the same is true today of the Final Call. We would not let a product go to the street with The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s name on it with errors in it. Now, The Final Call almost takes that tradition for granted, ever since its debut in 1979. It’s not rocket science. That’s just what professional journalists do, regardless of our platforms. Such excellence is common across the Black Press spectrum. At Muhammad Speaks we owned our own press and for five years we put a quality product on the street, every single week, on time!

“Several times I have been a judge of the annual National Newspaper Publishers Assocciation–The BlackPress of America–Excellence Awards (I was also twice a judge of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards) and routinely have seen high quality entries in each of the NNPA’s 17 categories.

“Raymond Boone, editor of The Richmond Free Press was a Pulitzer judge (and is now possibly even a Pulitzer Board member), whose paper is one of the finest weeklies in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia.

“You insult the work of the high quality Black newspapers in dozens of cities when you suggest that the only militant, remarkably well edited Black paper is now 16 years dead. Look, for example at the NNPA prize winners going back over the years, excellence abounds!

“So please, don’t sell The Black Press short! The ice is just as cold in Black-owned and edited newspapers as it is in White, corporate-owned papers. Period. Ice is ice. Water freezes at 32 degrees on the Southside, just like it does on the Northside. And for any professor at an HBCU to even entertain any other notion is delusional. Do you think recruiters consider students coming out of anywhere in the DMV–Howard in D.C., Morgan State in Md., or Hampton in the Commonwealth of Virginia–equal to those from Georgetown, Univ of Md, or Old Dominion? Don’t make me laugh. They think of our schools just like they (we) think about the “Negro press” until someone shows them otherwise.

“As I suggested in my initial response on this subject, for a group of Black journalists such as NABJ to routinely harbor the self-hating notion that the Black newspaper industry is inferior goes back to the days of the founding of this organization, and this kind of snobbery is why there are not more NABJ members from among the legions of writers in The Black Press.”

A dead campaign which refuses to die

Askia — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:08:06 +0000

Back in early August, one observer remarked that July had been Willard Mitt Romney’s “worst month ever.” Not so.
The GOP presidential nominee then went off to Europe to prove that he was a foreign affairs heavyweight, by his conduct on the world stage. The former leader of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics then proceeded to insult England, this country’s closest ally, by predicting lax security might tarnish the outcome of the 2012 London Olympic Summer Games. Both the British Prime Minister and the Mayor of London gave their guest a tongue-lashing to his face.
Romney then proceeded to Israel, where–while trying to patronize Israelis in order to curry potential favor with Jewish voters back home–he insulted the Palestinian people by declaring that superior Jewish culture, and not billions of dollars worth of foreign and military aid, billions more in guaranteed loans which will never have to be repaid, along with even more billions in contributions from Jewish Americans, is why Israelis are wealthy and why their lazy Arab neighbors are not so wealthy.
From there he hastened on to Poland, where one of his aides managed to insult the Poles. In his three overseas stops, the Romney campaign managed three major-league gaffes. So much for Mitt’s non-existent foreign policy gravitas.
Then, the candidate named as his running mate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a staunchly conservative so-called “deficit hawk,” who proceeded to give the campaign a couple of black-eyes after a succession of untruthful statements, including one whopper in which he claimed to have run a world-class sub-three-hour marathon. His actual best recorded time was more than four hours.
Then, in late August, the Republican National Convention met in Tampa, Fla., and it was lackluster. The Romney campaign got absolutely no post-convention “bounce,” or improved ratings after the convention. In fact, First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention the following week got more repeat viewers according to an online tracking service, than all the Republican speakers combined.
Following that convention, President Barack Obama got a healthy 5 percent bounce in most national opinion polls, as well as healthy leads in key Electoral College “battleground” states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan, which the Republican nominee must win, if he is to become the next president.
And then, and then, Romney took his foot out of his mouth and promptly began to walk on his own tongue when the infamous “47 percent” video was released, wherein Romney declared to a group of wealthy donors who paid $50,000 each to dine with him that 47 percent of the U.S. population, “are with (President Obama), who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them.” Talk about someone who resembles Thurston Howell III, The Millionaire on TV’s “Gilligan’s Island.”
And even though Romney said himself that his point in that video had not been “elegantly stated,” and although his running mate upbraided his boss, calling the statement a “misstep,” there are still some Republicans who denounce the President’s re-election campaign for waging what the GOP calls “class warfare.”
But what beats the band in all of this is that the lifeless Romney campaign is still given a “puncher’s chance” of throwing a lucky punch and knocking out the incumbent, who has so far committed no unforced errors such as Romney has done.
In this contest, former Massachusetts Gov. Romney is as a zombie, unable to be killed, because like a vampire, his campaign is already dead. As in mythology, the only way to permanently dispose of a vampire is to drive a wooden stake through his heart.
So now, the presidential debates are Mitt’s last, best hope for overtaking Pres. Obama’s otherwise seemingly insurmountable lead.
Yet if Gov. Romney is held accountable for only revealing two years worth of tax returns, for example, will his support erode even further?
In the tax returns he’s released his vulture capitalistic ways have been revealed, such as only divesting stock in a Chinese government oil company, and other Chinese properties just last year, while he scolds the President–all of whose investments are in U.S. Treasury Bonds and domestic American companies–for not getting tough enough with China over trade policy.
On top of all his other numerous and readily apparent flaws, Gov. Romney is also clearly a hypocrite who will say anything to knock out the President.
A hypocritical vampire, I might add, who will only go away on Dec. 9–not Nov. 6 Election Day–the day the Electoral College officially chooses the winner of the 2012 presidential race. On second thought, we might have to wait until Jan. 20, 2013, Inauguration Day, to know that a wooden stake has in fact been driven through the heart of the un-dead, vampire presidential campaign of Willard Thurston Howell Mitt Romney, The Millionaire.

Who’s better off than four years ago?

Askia — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:05:17 +0000

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s videotaped remark to wealthy supporters that 47 percent of Americans “believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name it” and that “my job is not to worry about” people who won’t “take personal responsibility” literally went over like a lead balloon. But because of a reservoir of hatred against the entire Black family occupying the White House Gov. Romney still has a puncher’s chance to knock out the incumbent Pres. Barack Obama, win the presidency and lead the country back to the brink of its destruction.
Gov. Romney frequently insists that Pres. Obama can say a lot of things to the American people, but he cannot tell them that they are better off now than they were four years ago. That’s true, but it’s true because four years ago, nearly to the day, the country was teetering on the precipice of financial meltdown. In mid September the Wall Street mega-firm Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, and the country was introduced to the concept of banks that the administration of Pres. George W. (for Worst in History) Bush, and both major party contenders to succeed him agreed were “too big to fail.”
The bank bailout was proposed and eventually approved and more than $700 billion went into the pockets of the greedy mortgage bankers and other so-called financial “experts” who engineered the banking crisis in the first place, with their predatory loans, and their risky “investments”–most folks now call them “bets”–in questionable credit default swaps, derivatives, and other tools that bankers used to make money by buying and selling “money,” and not by making and selling “things” that people need to live their lives.
And how were these rich guys rewarded for nearly bankrupting the country? Were any of them “frog marched” out of their companies? Were any of them humiliated in the town squares in old-fashioned “stocks” where they could not move and where angry citizens could hurl rotten tomatoes at them like in days of yore? Absolutely not. Most of them had contracts providing them with so-called “golden parachutes” so they could land safely with lots of money in the bank, while everyone else faced the wolf at their door.
So, when Gov. Romney asks are folks better off today than they were four years ago, when the economy began to tumble into the dumpster, he scores his political points, because most folks have to say no. When Pres. Obama took office, he reminds us, the country was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month. Millions of jobs were lost. And even as the economy adds an anemic 95,000 jobs per month–all in the private sector, because Tea Party, slash-and-cut politicians are forcing more and more layoffs in the public workforce–the job creation is not enough. At least 14 million people are unemployed. Another 11 million are under-employed.
But the Republicans are asking the wrong question in truth. Because if they asked are CEOs–the lousy managers and culprits who are responsible for the Great Recession–are CEOs better off than they were four years ago, there would be a deafening silence because no one would want to answer that question in truth.
Even as average worker productivity–the amount of “widgets” workers produce in a standard period of time–even as worker productivity has increased exponentially over the last 30 or so years by a whopping 725 percent, worker pay has only increased a meager 5.7 percent. The gap between CEO pay and worker pay has grown from 18-to-1 in 1965, to 237-to-1 in 2011, this according to a report released Sept. 11 this year by the Economic Policy Institute.
So in reality, the “are you better off” question cannot be fairly answered yes by average voters for more than a generation, because wages have frozen, not even keeping up with inflation. But Gov. Romney continues to frame the question in the four-year time frame, in the same way Pres. Ronald Reagan did in his contest against incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter.
But for the crowd, who like Gov. Romney are in the top 1 percent of the population, rather than the bottom 47 percent as he sees them, the folks who like Romney who have wives who help the domestic economy by driving “a couple of Cadillacs;” the crowd who have elevators for their many cars, while the rest of us get the shaft, for that crowd, they are much better off, but unfortunately we’ll not hear the question asked that way.
Framing the question about how are the CEOs doing would, in Gov. Romney’s view, amount to “class warfare,” while blaming 47 percent of the population as moochers and freeloaders is not class warfare. Go figure.

Romney’s Black ‘Leadership Council’

Askia — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:55:09 +0000

I once had a job supervisor who liked to share stories about his past exploits. His first summer job was while he was still in high school. He worked at what was called a “5 & 10 cent store”–they were then like Wal-Mart is today.
On this job he was the only Black person and he knew his place. There were 76 White women and one White man, all of whom he knew, were his bosses. Then one day the store hired another young Black man.
For the rest of the entire summer, he recalled, most of his time on the job was spent quarrelling with the other Black man about which of them was in authority, after the 76 White women and one White man. So it is today.
In early September, on the second day of the Democratic National Convention, the Romney for President campaign announced it had formed a Black Leadership Council made up of 21 council members. “In the months to come, this group will help facilitate dialogue between Mitt Romney and respected leaders who provide unique expertise, experience and knowledge on a range of issues impacting Black American communities,” the campaign said in its announcement.
That’s odd because with only two months until Election Day, there’s precious little time for this group to even get together with their candidate for a photo-op, much less for a dialogue, particularly not with the Romney campaign in a freefall caused by the candidate himself, and his opponent enjoying a post convention “bounce” which has boosted his approval and his ratings in key battleground states which Romney needs if he is to have any chance of winning.
What may be even more peculiar is that most of the members of this council have followed career paths which have conspicuously avoided bringing them together with any other Black people to do anything, especially anything impacting Black American communities. That’s not what Black Republicans do. Black Republicans today parrot the Tea Party line calling for drastic cuts in safety-net, social programs and more tax cuts for the rich.
So now all of a sudden, these Black Lone Rangers are lumped together in the GOP’s ghetto, a “black hole” (no pun intended) from which no light, no sounds, no wisdom, can possibly escape. They are now consigned not to ponder major campaign issues, but to the potential voter pool that everyone knows has already been written off as unattainable and undesirable to any possible Republican White House victory.
But this council does serve a purpose. These names which are virtually unknown among Black folks all come with Black faces, and can therefore flail around the way Allen Keyes and Armstrong Williams (both of whom are conspicuously absent) have done in the past, reciting tired racial bromides about “character, not color,” etc., and so forth.
Also conspicuously absent from this list are Michael Steele, the immediate-past Republican Party Chairman, who has been unceremoniously kicked to the curb by his party, not even receiving a credential to attend their convention in Tampa, a convention which for the most part Steele himself planned and organized before his departure. And where is former Congress member J.C. Watts? The Oklahoma Republican shares football hero status with a couple of the lower-down council members, but he rose to the soaring position of Chair of the House Republican Caucus, when the GOP was in power, making him the fourth most powerful member of the House at that time, retiring in 2003.
The two current Black Congress members who share the title of National Council Chairs with Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll are both damaged goods however. Freshman South Carolina Rep. and bachelor Tim Scott was forced to repay the American Enterprise Institute thousands of dollars when he took a lady friend and lingerie store owner to a legislative forum at a ritzy country club at Sea Island, Ga. His colleague, freshman Florida Rep. Allen West was drummed out of the Army because he unlawfully tortured enemy prisoners in Iraq.
Brother Malcolm X explained the importance of such “councils” a generation ago (paraphrasing): “The White Man only likes to deal with one Black person at a time. So he sets up someone for all the rest of the Blacks to report to.” It’s the classic plantation “straw boss” scenario, the “rattler,” the slave who takes it easy, reporting only to the Big Boss while the other slaves sweat and toil. In this case it’s not one, there are 21.
My guess is that if this group has any future at all, it will be spent–as my former boss spent his first summer at work–quarrelling among themselves as to which of them is in the lead after the thousands of Caucasian male Republicans whose opinions do matter to the GOP.

Blacks bashing Barack

Askia — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:51:48 +0000

President Barack Obama has attracted a number of high profile Black detractors.
As insane and self-hating as it might in truth be, there are certain Black politicians who can be expected to beat-up on the President as he seeks re-election.
Mr. “Nine-nine-nine,” the pizza mogul, Herman Cain has nothing good to say about the White House incumbent.
Cain is joined by Reps. Allen West (R-Fla.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and by former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who was in fact himself thrown under the bus by the GOP after he planned their recent convention in Tampa, and then was not even credentialed to attend.
What is amusing is the fact that a boatload of so-called “progressives” are all on the President like “white on rice,” bashing the man up and down, without offering anyone in the way of an alternative should we heed their anti-Obama messages.
The most prominent Black critics are media personality Tavis Smiley and Princeton professor and “public intellectual” Cornel West. The sad part about these two is that their own objections are rooted in the most trifling and petty personal reasons imaginable.
My friend Tavis–for whom I won multiple national “Salute to Excellence” awards from the National Association of Black Journalists when he had his show on National Public Radio–was first miffed back in 2008 when the President declined his invitation to appear at one of his vaunted town hall meetings during that year’s campaign. Then Senator Obama sent his wife Michelle to represent him. Tavis felt that he had been “dissed” (disrespected) because the President did not show up in person. Classic symptoms of an ego trip by someone who is a legend in his own mind.
Tavis, get over it. Obama did not attend the NAACP convention this year. You don’t see N-Double-A President Ben Jealous sucker-punching the President because he didn’t fit in an appearance before the nation’s oldest and largest Civil Rights organization, do you?
Dr. West’s beef is just as petty. He got “the jaws” when he could not get a VIP invitation to the Inauguration at the last minute for his “Auntee” or some other member of his family. West then remembered that the President loud talked him once in public at some event, walking up to him, asking him why was he (West) speaking against him (the President).
West’s former Princeton U. colleague Melissa Harris-Perry however, is unforgiving of West’s intellectual basis for hatin’ on the President. “…In a self-aggrandizing, victimology sermon deceptively wrapped in the discourse of prophetic witness, Professor West offers thin criticism of President Obama and stunning insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership class that has been largely supplanted in recent years,” she wrote in a scathing article for The Nation. Ouch. That hurts.
Let me be clear. I am not carrying one drop of water for the President’s re-election. On the other hand, I confess, I have not had anything good to say about any of this year’s Republican candidates, and will continue to think about them just about the same way they think about me, but I am not a partisan. I say what Brother Malcolm X once said: “I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I don’t even know if I’m an American.”
What’s more ironic is that now, Black folks are arguing among ourselves again about who is the “blackest,” defined by whether or not we support a man everyone knows was not elected to be our “Moses” to deliver us from “bondage,” but rather to be the POTUS–President Of The United States.
The last time I checked the job description was not rewritten when Pres. Obama took office, in order for him to be our “savior.” Instead–to complete the biblical metaphor–the 44th President sits in the seat occupied by the “Pharaoh” in our past. And at least four or five of the previous 43 president actually owned Black people as slaves. And of course Willard Mitt Romney says he can relate to Black folks if he’s elected because his ancestors once owned slaves.
Mind you, Tavis and Cornell have to stand in line alongside folks from the Tea Party when they want to bash Barack. But at least the Tea Party is hoping their criticism leads to their White GOP candidate winning the presidency Nov. 6.
Meanwhile, we have these Black “West” guys–both Republican Allen West and self-described progressive Cornell West–taking swings at the Black President. Allen says Black voters are on the Democrat “plantation” and that he (Allen) is our liberator who will lead us to freedom if Romney is elected, while Cornell says we’re on the plantation alright, but he doesn’t have any electoral alternative.
Go figure.

The Late Great Congressional Black Caucus

Askia — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:44:34 +0000

Very soon the nation’s capital will witness discussions and debates about the major issues of our day, along with wall-to-wall parties. It will be the 42nd Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus–the “conscience of the Congress.” It may be the last time the CBC can wear that title in truth. What?
That’s right, the CBC is on the cusp of its largest membership ever and for the first time there may be three–count them–three Black Republican members of Congress serving with 44 or more Black Democrats, and one of the Republicans is already planning its destruction.
There have been distinguished Black Republicans in Congress in this modern era. The first Blacks to ever serve in Congress were Reconstruction Republicans. Even in the 20th Century, Chicago’s Oscar DePriest was a Republican.
Blacks were Republicans because Pres. Lincoln freed the slaves, and the Democrats represented the interests of the slave owners.
Then, after Pres. Lyndon Johnson, pressured by the Civil Rights Movement, passed the Voting Rights Act and other important laws, the Republicans then saw and exploited White hatred for Black people with Pres. Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” which flipped the script, replacing White “Dixie-crats” with White Republicans. Black voters then migrated wholesale to the Democratic Party.
The Congressional Black Caucus was founded in 1971 with a handful of Black Democrats in the House ofÂ Representatives. The CBC has grown to 43 members and promises to increase to as many as 46 Black members after the 2012 elections.
Now, for the first time in history, a Black female Republican–Saratoga Springs, Utah Mayor Mia Love–is a shoo-in to be elected, and she promises to join the CBC and wreck it. There are currently two Republican members of Congress: Reps. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Allen West of Florida. West is a member of the CBC, Scott is not.
Before Scott and West were elected in 2010, there have been a handful of Black Republicans in Congress since the 1990s. The most prominent of them was Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma. Watts rose higher than any Black man in Republican history. He became Chair of the House Republican Caucus, the fourth highest position in the party.
Watts resigned from the leadership and retired from Congress without explanation, but I reckon it was because of his frustration at the racism he felt behind closed doors from his fellow Republicans. Watts did not join the CBC, but his contemporary Rep. Gary Franks (R-Conn.) did, but he was marginalized in the organization because of his contrary views. He was not permitted in CBC strategy meetings. He was not even allowed to attend the first 30 minutes of the group’s weekly Wednesday luncheon meetings. But he was alone then.
I thought I was the only one thinking that if Mia Love gets elected this November, beginning with her inauguration in January 2013 she would bring about the subversion of everything for which the CBC stands. But she has already said so publicly. She would not be alone however.
I figure she will persuade Scott to join her and West as members of the CBC. Together the three of them will be able to form a contrarian caucus within the CBC. That is, with three of them working in concert, as White Republicans have done for the last four years, they will oppose anything even mildly progressive the CBC even considers. But I thought she’d keep her scheme a secret until she was ready to attack. I was wrong.
“Yes, yes. I would join the Congressional Black Caucus and try to take that thing apart from the inside out,” Love told the Salt Lake City Deseret News months ago.
If she’s got two other open GOP members of the CBC supporting her, along with conservative Democrats in the CBC like David Scott of Georgia and Greg Meeks of New York, the Democrats will not be able isolate them all. They will get on committees, water down policy positions, and by their infiltration, report back to the White Republicans what the CBC–the “conscience of the Congress”–is planning next.
Love, who is the daughter of Haitian immigrants, has not even been to her motherland since the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 2010, which rocked the country killing 316,000 of her “family” members and ruining the lives of millions more. She has not done anything publicly to raise one dime for innocent Haitian victims, even as dozens of Blacks and Whites with no ties to that land have given millions.
I’m sad to say, Mia will not bring any “Love” to the Congressional Black Caucus when she’s elected in November, only chaos and gridlock. Bye, bye, CBC.

Republican Political delirium is deceptive

Askia — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 14:40:45 +0000

The Republican Party gathered in Tampa for their quadrennial convention this week, and to look at them thumping their chests and dancing and shouting ecstatically, even as Hurricane Isaac walloped them, what we see is not necessarily what we’ll get on Election Day. The same is true of the Democrats, meeting days later in Charlotte, N.C.
Throughout this political season, I’ve watched the Republicans go bonkers whenever anything is uttered by any of their speakers deriding President Barack Obama. It’s Pavlovian. It doesn’t matter what the comment is, if it takes a jab at the President it makes them delirious. It’s like the audiences are not even listening to what is being said, they’re just waiting for the punch line and their cue to literally go “buck wild.”
The television networks oblige, and every night all we see on the screen are the zingers hurled by the candidates at one another. There is no discussion, it’s like ghetto teenagers “Playing the Dozens,” only without the “Yo Mama” jokes. Nothing substantive will be talked about among this country’s political elite until the American electorate rises up and drives a wooden stake through Gov. Myth Romney’s gilded political heart on Nov. 6.
It is then, and only then will the nihilistic Republicans who control the House of Representatives make the compromises that are required of them in the upcoming Lame Duck Congressional session to solve some of the critical issues that are on an automatic Dec. 31 timer, and which cannot wait until the 113th Congress is sworn in January, no matter who controls the majority of both houses.
The two most critical issues are extending or allowing the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, and the budget cutting sequestration that will drive the economy over the financial cliff if they are allowed to make the automatic cuts that are written into law, unless Congress comes up with a better formula of spending cuts coupled with more revenue (read: tax increases) for the government.
Some of the younger people I watch today in both parties are not old enough to have formed any kind of intelligent opinions about any of the issues being discussed. They are just like I was at that age, influenced by family, school buddies, and various other clichÃ©s that filter through the otherwise hormonal urges and appetites that rule at that age.
When I was in high school, I attended California Boys State. Every year the American Legion sponsored those weeklong conclaves in all the states to introduce boys to politics.
When I was at Boys State, I was one of eight Blacks among 800 boys in attendance. We were arbitrarily (not ideologically) divided into two political “parties”–the Whigs and the Tories. I can’t remember which group I was in, all I can recall is that for the previous seven years, that party had lost the elections for Boys Governor and other top offices.
On the night before the election each party had a rally. We were ecstatic. We screamed. We danced. We knew that we were going to break the string on losses our “party” had suffered. The next day the election was held, and just like before we lost. I wouldn’t be surprised if that party is still losing elections at California Boys State.
Look back at every presidential race in the modern (read TV) times. With only a few exceptions–when Gerald Ford fought off an insurgent Ronald Reagan to win the GOP nomination in 1976; when Ford’s successor Jimmy Carter fought off an insurgent Edward Kennedy in 1980 for example. If we look back, except for those campaigns when the eventual losing party was bitterly divided at its convention, we’ll see thousands of delirious partisans thumping their chests and cheering themselves hoarse, as if the self-induced ecstasy that comes from seeing their companions, men and women in star-spangled, red, white and blue stove-pipe hats was enough to win the election by itself. It’s not.
So don’t be swayed looking at the joyous, teary faces of attendees when either Gov. Romney or Pres. Obama speak at their conventions. That’s all fluff and cosmetics for the TV audience. The real thing to pay attention to from Republicans is their national efforts to disenfranchise millions and millions of registered voters at the polls on Election Day with their voter ID laws intended to prevent everyone except White, likely Republican voters from casting a ballot. They say it’s to prevent in-person voter fraud, but that literally never happens! Never.
So, don’t forget on Nov. 6, calmly, determinedly, be sure to vote early and often.

Who’s playing ‘The Race Card’ now?

Askia — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:38:19 +0000

Back in The Day, there was a heated argument over “reverse discrimination.” It started with a California student named Alan Bakke who sued the University of California because he was denied admission to a medical school. He said less-qualified Black students than he were admitted, and that that amounted to discrimination against him.
The Supreme Court agreed and Black enrollment in professional schools all over the country has been steadily declining for more than 30 years now.
Then, White folks started accusing–and some timid Blacks in public life began wilting beneath the charges–Black folks of practicing “racism.” A number of thoughtful Black folks reminded us that while Blacks might be “biased” against people who had oppressed and exploited them unjustly for more than 400 years, Blacks are incapable of being racists in this country because Blacks have no power to put any animus they held against their tormentors into any policies.
Now, in our “post-racial” world with a Black man as President in the land where Black people were held in bondage, sold like chattel, and forced into slavery for 310 years, now Black people are chastened whenever they point out these crimes against humanity and are accused of “playing the race card”–as if life was nothing more than a parlor game, and this “race card” was like some kind of Joker in the deck of life which trumps all other cards.
So Blacks, who are the victims of White racial discrimination in every aspect of life in this country were intimidated to not speak out about their suffering because doing so (playing the race card) made White people uncomfortable.
But our post-racial environment has not stopped the tsunami of ugly, hateful, racist jokes from cascading from every corner of our society against the Black President.
Now, we’ve always had silly little fraternity gags–especially at Halloween parties–where White people dress up in what they fantasize as being the stereotypical Black wardrobe. They cork their faces black, put on exaggerated Afro-style wigs, and wear the most garish costumes imaginable, trying to affect the look of “pimps and ‘ho’es.” But we really didn’t have a lot of high ranking politicians, or prominent newspapers making jokes about the President of the United States having apes and monkeys in his family, until we got a Black president.
But we have seen time and time again, White folks who should know better, saying just anything ugly that comes into their minds about this president. But let a Black person in any position working for Whites say or “Tweet” anything even mildly indelicate about Caucasians, and that person will be on his or her knees before the next morning, or will be unemployed by that next night.
A few months ago, a large-scale study showed that racial attitudes have already played a substantial role in the 2012 campaign during the Republican (read practically all-White) presidential primaries. The study, led by psychologists at the University of Washington, showed that between January and April 2012 eligible voters who favored Whites over blacks–either consciously or unconsciously–also favored Republican candidates relative to Barack Obama.
So, tell me, just who is it playing “the race card” in America? Why, it can’t be all the Republican candidates nationally who tailor their political messages to appeal to that prejudiced White mind, can it? White folks might say they don’t like President Obama because of the economy, or because of this, that, or the other, but the real deal is their conscious or unconscious racial attitudes influencing the way they’ll vote.
“In the study, a majority of White eligible voters showed a pattern labeled ‘automatic white preference’ on a widely used measure of unconscious race bias. Previous studies indicate that close to 75 percent of white Americans show this implicit bias,” Mahzarin Banaji, a psychology professor at Harvard University and one of the study’s collaborators wrote. The Race Card indeed!
So now, here comes Vice President Joseph Biden telling a largely Black group that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney wants to take the government regulatory chains off the robber-barons on Wall Street, which would result in putting poor people “back in chains.” Biden is right. They’ve almost done it already with their payday loans and their automobile title loans with usurious interest rates.
But our poor, innocent Republicans and their Wall Street pals are whining and crying and wetting their beds demanding that the Veep step back from his comments. But he didn’t, and he shouldn’t, because what he said is true.
In a court of law, Truth is an ABSOLUTE defense against libel or slander charges. In this court of public opinion, the truth of Vice President Biden’s comments should carry the day against cheap charges of playing the race card.