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Fondest Farewell to George McGovern, My First Political Hero

Rest in Peace, Senator McGovern, my first political hero.

As a junior high school student, I spent hours volunteering at your campaign headquarters after school, cheered like crazy at your campaign rally, and cried inconsolably the night you lost to Richard Nixon, the first (but not the last) time that politics broke my heart.

And you helped me learn my first and, perhaps, most important political lesson.  The morning after the election, bleary- and swollen-eyed, demoralized and frustrated, I refused to go to school because I knew the kids would taunt me over the loss.  My father, the Good Judge, told me, “So WHAT if they laugh?  If they laugh, they’ll only show how ignorant they are.  You have nothing to be ashamed of.  You studied the issues, made up your mind and then fought for something you believed in.  Just because you lost doesn’t mean you were wrong.  Now, you put on your McGovern scarf, go to school and hold your head up high.   And start thinking about how you can make a difference in the next election.”

That McGovern scarf is long gone, but I’m still holding my head up high because you believed in us and I’ve never stopped thinking about how I can make a difference.

You made a difference to me, Senator.  Thank you.

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Debate Apartheid

Imagine what the reaction would be if only black and brown moderators and voters were permitted to ask questions during the presidential debates.

So why has the Commission on Presidential Debates limited all but three of the dozens of questions during the debates to questions from white moderators and voters?

The lack of racial diversity in the presidential debates is very troubling. No black, Hispanic or Asian moderators participated this year and only one black person was permitted to ask a question in the town hall meeting debate.  Two questions came from Latino voters.  All other questioners – whether voters or moderators – were and will be white.

How is it possible that, as our country becomes more and more diverse, only one black person was given an opportunity to ask a question of the candidates?  And why was that one question completely unrepresentative of what the vast majority of black people are thinking in this election – “I voted for you last time, why should I vote for you again?” Considering that 98% of black voters will likely vote for President Obama, this was a very odd choice of question.  It suggests that the President’s failure to secure the support of every single black person in the country is a problem, while Romney’s failure to obtain or even seek the votes of 98% of black Americans is not even worthy of note.  It would have been much more instructive to have a black person ask Mitt Romney to explain why any African American in their right mind should even consider voting for him.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell last night slammed the Debate Commission for limiting the questioners to “undecided voters.” He noted that. not only does this reward unengaged and disinterested voters (how can anyone who is paying attention be undecided at this point?), but it effectively freezes out the voices of African Americans, the vast majority of whom are very decided.

It’s wonderful that we have a black president.  But it’s a shame that, during this year’s presidential debates, President Obama is the only person of color permitted to say anything.

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Who’s Writing This Story?

By Stephanie Jones

Syndicated by the National Newspaper Publishers Association

As a newly-minted (and only Black) lawyer at my law firm years ago, I was assigned to write an appellate brief with a fellow associate.   Because I was the better writer, I drafted the brief and we turned it in to the assigning partner for review.  The partner called in the other associate, a White male, to praise him for his excellent analysis and writing. My colleague told him that I had drafted the brief singlehandedly, but the partner refused to believe him, asking repeatedly whether he was “really sure” that I had actually written it.

Most African Americans in any profession likely have similar stories to tell, stories that demonstrate how regularly, effortlessly and confidently some Whites assume that we cannot measure up to our White co-workers.  And when we unassailably prove ourselves not only equal but superior to the task, our accomplishments are often dismissed as not of our making.

So when Jack Welch sprang forth recently to accuse President Barack Obama of cooking the books to conjure up favorable employment numbers, it had a familiar ring to it:  just as my boss couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that a Black lawyer wrote a stellar brief with no help from her White colleague, Welch’s instinct was to insist that a Black president couldn’t possibly be doing a good job, so empirical proof of progress on his watch must be the result of fraud.  The economy may be improving on President Obama’s watch, but he really didn’t write that . . .

Welch’s baseless rant could easily be written off as an attempt to shock his way back into relevancy – were it not for the fact that his attitude is replicated all over the political space and treated by the media as credible perspectives.  In fact, some of them come from the media.

For example, columnist George Will informed us recently that President Obama’s robust poll numbers have nothing to do with voters’ support for or confidence in him.  No, Mr. Will explained, it’s just that he’s Black and White voters, overcome with “White guilt,” are giving him a pass because they don’t want to fire the first Black president.  In Will’s cramped view, President Obama may be ahead in the polls, but he really didn’t write that . . .

The media highlighted yet another diatribe from Romney surrogate John Sununu about President Obama’s supposed shortcomings, which Sununu always manages to couch in the language of ugly racial stereotypes.  According to Sununu, the president’s lackluster debate performance was both the product and proof of his supposed laziness and stupidity.  Previous presidents have had bad debate performances, but their off nights were just off nights, not evidence of sloth and ignorance.  President Obama had a bad debate performance, so he did write that . . .

And ubiquitous, race-baiting media hound Donald Trump literally accused the President of “not writing that,” repeatedly insisting that it was Bill Ayers, not Barack Obama who wrote the president’s best-selling memoir “Dreams From My Father.”

“Bill Ayers wrote ‘Dreams from My Father.’ I have no doubt about it,” Trump said. “That . . . book was total genius and helped him get elected.  But you can tell Obama wrote [“Audacity of Hope”] because it read like it was written by somebody of average intelligence with a high school education.”

The first book was brilliant, so Barack Obama didn’t really write that.  The second book was just average, so he did write that.

By gently dipping, but not soaking, their words in racist code, these people have managed to regularly inject their poisonous language into the conversation and, with the media’s cooperation, poison the body politic.  To his credit – and much criticism – MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has been among the few White journalists to break ranks and call these comments out for what they are: naked race-baiting for political gain.

“[A]s a White guy, I know when I’m a target,” he said recently. “And when I see racial coding going on out there like this welfare and work thing, I know they’re talking to me. …They’re talking to my family. They’re trying to … get it all heated again and get us to vote race, vote tribe again and the majority tribe wins.”

Matthews is right.  And he refuses to treat such smears in the gingerly, “he-said-she-said” manner that many of his colleagues seem to believe constitutes “balanced” reporting.  He and anyone else who is paying attention know that racism continues to jingle around in America’s pockets like so much small change – and that these comments are part of an ongoing effort by desperate people to scrape together enough dingy coins to buy a few more years of political power before they slip off into the wrong side of history.

But if the media continue giving a platform and a pass to the purveyors of racist stereotypes – even the benign-sounding but insidious “he really didn’t write that” sort – they shouldn’t be surprised to one day find themselves on the wrong side of history with them.


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Ronald Reagan is Your Hero, Not Ours

“I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary!…This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.” Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

“I, too, sing America.” Langston Hughes

If a politician died and no white people wept, would he be painted an American hero?

If he drew throngs of mourners made up almost exclusively of minorities, would the mainstream news media insist that he was universally loved by all Americans?

Would the networks subject their viewers to the 24/7 non-stop hero worship being accorded Ronald Reagan, if all but a tiny handful of the thousands and thousands of Americans paying tribute were brown instead of white?

I think not.

In its eagerness to characterize Ronald Reagan as an American icon based upon the “outpouring” of grief at his passing, the media are ignoring an important yet unavoidable fact: there are hardly any people of color singing Reagan’s praises. For days, we’ve watched eager commentators tell us ad nauseam that the mourners waiting to view Reagan’s casket represent a “cross-section of America.” But if they just turned around, they’d see what we see – a virtually all white tableau snaking behind them. This backdrop sure doesn’t look like the America I know.

How hard is it to notice that, in a city that’s more than 60% black, so few people of color have bothered to wander over to the Capitol to bid farewell to President Reagan? Yes, a few were spotted here and there and, of course, dark faces abounded among the military personnel participating in the solemnities (thanks to our integrated armed forces, there was more color in the Color Guard than in the crowd). Otherwise, it seemed that most of the handful of black folk not decked out in full ceremonial dress were there not to see Reagan but to sell water, snacks and souvenirs to the white folks who were there to see Reagan.

If they bothered to leave their cozy perches on the Capitol lawn and venture a few blocks in any direction, the network reporters might actually pick up a different perspective, a perspective they aren’t getting from the self-selected masses gathered to honor the former president.

To many of us, Ronald Reagan was not a great man. He was not a hero. In fact, many of us have nothing but painful memories of his presidency and what he stood for.

This pain was first inflicted like a punch in the stomach back in 1980 when Ronald Reagan journeyed to Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of three civil rights workers 16 years before, to kick off his general election campaign with a speech endorsing states’ rights.

“I believe in states’ rights,” he said on that August day. “I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment.” He went on to promise to “restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them.”

Black Americans – and those hostile to our interests – knew exactly what he meant. “States’ rights” has long been a code word for segregation, discrimination and massive resistance to the federal government’s efforts to stop southern states from oppressing blacks. States’ rights was the excuse given for denying blacks the right to vote, access to public accommodations, equal protection of the laws. It was such a deeply held principle among some Southerners that they even lynched folks who interfered with it.

And Ronald Reagan turned up in the place where James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were murdered for registering black voters, to affirm his commitment to the principle that led to that and countless other terrorist acts and to promise that he would fight to turn back the clock to the days when local governments had the power to treat minorities any way they damned well pleased. And the 30,000 white folks who crammed the Neshoba County Fairgrounds that day cheered him wildly and then helped send him straight to the White House.

Once there, Ronald Reagan proceeded to do exactly what he had promised, spending the next eight years diligently rolling back important civil rights gains (with the help of Attorney General Ed Meese, an eerie precursor to John Ashcroft). During his tenure, Reagan transformed the War on Poverty into a war on the poor. He divided and agitated Americans by injecting racist stereotypes (remember “welfare queens?”) into the public discourse. He worked to dismantle affirmative action and thwart reasonable civil rights remedies, coddled and abetted South Africa‘s apartheid regime, and appointed federal judges who believe that civil rights laws are valid only when used to protect white men from “reverse discrimination.”

Ronald Reagan was not a hero to minorities, to women, to the poor or to anyone who cares about civil rights and equal opportunity. To us, his administration represented little more than callousness and retrenchment. And now that he’s gone, his partisans, with the enthusiastic assistance of an uncritical media, are orchestrating the transfiguration of this flawed man into an affable, larger-than-life myth. But those of us who bore the brunt of this president’s policies and philosophy and are still trying to clean up his messes know the truth behind the grin. And it still hurts.

So, it’s perfectly understandable that minorities are not falling all over themselves to pay tribute to this man who did so much harm. Nevertheless, the press has virtually ignored the glaring absence of color in the Reagan love-fest. Instead, they are feeding us a bizarre illogical syllogism – because Reagan is loved by all Americans who love him, Reagan is loved by all Americans.

The over-the-top, adoring and revisionist coverage of Ronald Reagan not only brings back the pain he caused so many of us, but is also a jarring reminder of an ugly assumption that underlies it all: white Americans are the “real” Americans while the rest of us still just aren’t heard and still just don’t count. We should either get with the program or get out of the way as “America bids farewell” to its hero, with or without us.

But if the media stop their heavy breathing for a spell, they could hear our silence. If they take a closer look at those standing in line to lionize Ronald Reagan, they’d see us, the darker brothers and sisters who are not there.

And if they ask why, they’ll catch echoes of Frederick Douglass and Langston Hughes in our answer: “This president is your hero, not ours. And we, too, are Americans.”