Setting The Rules

Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell has a post up over at the Nation about the hearings for Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and the racist and sexist treatment she received from GOP Senators on the committee. The whole post is excellent but there was one thing that she hit on that I hadn't thought about but which struck a chord with me...

Like Eckford, Sotomayor has been praised for her dignity, her stillness, and the evenness of her voice as she responded to hostile mischaracterizations. She managed to laugh off sexist jokes. She didn't flinch when she was repeatedly interrupted. Senator Lindsey Graham warned that her confirmation could only be derailed if she had "a complete meltdown." The rules of the game were set: the Senators could mischaracterize her record, accuse her of racial bias, and mispronounce her name but she could not respond in kind. She could not be hurt or offended or angry. She had to remain a pillar of rationality and neutrality and control.

Now at the time when Graham made that pronoucement about a "complete meltdown" many media outlets painted it as him hinting at voting for her, or that he ws being a realist. But when I heard it I heard something different but I just couldn't put my finger on it. But I think Professor Lacewell knocks it out of the park with this one. The comment was meant to put her in a box lest she do ANYTHING that could be interpreted in any way as a "meltdown". That meant no angry retorts and no showing of emotion or passion. And in many ways it mean she had to "shuck and jive" in order to make it through the process unscathed. Don't misunderstand me, I am a major proponent of you doing what you have to do to get the job done. So I don't have anything bad at all to say about Judge Sotomayor handling herself accordingly. But I wonder just how many women of all colors watched these proceedings and decided to never to support a party that could be so openly sexist as well as racist as they were in questioning her.

Obviously I will not week for the GOP's electoral difficulties arising out of their treatment of Judge Sotomayor. But its just so curious to me how clueless and mindless these old white men continue to be to the world changing around them.


Update: I just wanted to post this TYT YouTube clip of John Roberts and Sam Alito avoiding answering questions during their confirmation to compare and contrast. Check out how Roberts gets a little heated a couple of times. I doubt anyone said he "melted down" back then but you can bet your ass that had Judge Sotomayor had done the same thing that would be all we were hearing about.

Jive Turkeys

The other day I watched this youtube video of Michael Eric Dyson and got more pissed off than I have been in a while at a pundit. It was frustrating as hell to see this guy tossing around 3 dollar words to try to make himself seem credible when really he was talking a whole bunch of nothing. Ta Nehisi Coates eviscerated that fool yesterday in a much more eloquent way than I could muster. And today Melissa Harris-Lacewell went all in on Dyson, Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and Dick Gregory who put out some quasi documentary called "Stand". Once again if it was me I would have probably just called them a bunch of race hustlers trying to get rich on the backs of black folks doing little to nothing to actually help them in their every day lives. But Ms Harris-Lacewell put it in much better terms and stuck the dagger in hard.

But this appropriation misrepresents rather than preserves King's legacy. King was a powerful questioner and, at times, ally of President Johnson because he was at the helm of a massive social movement of men and women who were shut out of the ordinary political process. It was not King's intellectual capacity or verbal dexterity that made him an effective advocate for racial issues; it was his own accountability to that movement.

This is not true of Smiley and his "soul patrol," who are mostly public personalities and tenured professors largely unaccountable to the black constituency. King's meager income, though supplemented by the lecture circuit, was grounded in the voluntary contributions of black churchgoers.

Smiley is backed by powerful corporations, like Wal-Mart and Nationwide, that have troubled relationships with these communities. The college profs on the bus are comfortably supported by well-endowed universities. This does not invalidate their views on race, but it does make the analogy with King a poor fit.

Further, Smiley and his "soul patrol" seemed to have missed the intervening 40 years between the era of King and the election of Obama. African-Americans are no longer fully disfranchised subjects of an oppressive state.

African-Americans are now citizens capable of running for office, holding officials accountable through democratic elections, publicly expressing divergent political preferences and, most importantly, engaging the full spectrum of American political issues, not only narrowly racial ones. The era of racial brokerage politics, when the voices of a few men stood in for the entire race, is now over. And thank goodness it is over. Black politics is growing up.

The men of "Stand" yearned for an imagined racial past. By their accounting, this racial past had better music, more charismatic leaders and a more-involved black church.

Their romanticism ignores the cultural contributions of contemporary black youth, forgets the dangerous limitations of charismatic leadership and revises the fraught, complicated relationship of black churches to struggles for racial equality. And these men ignored the democratizing effect of new media forms, which revolutionized the 2008 election.

Black people were not duped by some slick, media-generated candidate. African-Americans were co-authors of the Obama campaign. Through social networks, YouTube videos, political blogs and new-media echo chambers, black people were equal partners in shaping the candidate and his campaign. There was no need for the entrenched pundit class to tell black voters what to think or how to behave; they figured it out for themselves.

Still, there is plenty to criticize in the young Obama administration: the refusal to prosecute those implicated in the torture memos, civilian casualties caused by drone attacks, bank bailouts and inadequate defense of gay rights to name a few. But black communities are already engaged in these critiques and many others. Black local organizers, elected officials, bloggers, pundits and columnists have taken substantive, specific positions on a broad range of issues.

In black communities, nonprofit organizations continue to work for justice, and charities still try to fill the gap during tough economic times. African-Americans are engaged as mature citizens ought to be: in both discourse and action.

This political maturity is precisely the source of the black public intellectual crisis: What do Smiley and the Soul Patrol add to this process? Their bus never stopped at a Habitat for Humanity site to build a home or at a soup kitchen to serve the hungry. Their dialogue centered more on the relative merits of Aretha vs. Beyonce than on meaningful political issues.

Though they spoke with elders, their self-congratulatory revelry never paused to engage any elected officials, issues specialists or local activists. And while they talked a great deal about women, they never spoke to a woman.

"Stand" was sad because I still believe in a role for black public intellectuals. Scholars and journalists often have a particular capacity for curiosity, questioning and issue synthesis that has real value in public discourse. It was painfully clear that this particular accountability crusade is not informed by any of those skills. Instead, it seems determined to stand in the way of the maturation of African-American politics in order to maintain personal power.

My hope is that some day soon we can push these carnival barkers from the stage as "voices of the black community". We need new and better advocates for us who care about more than book sales and speakers fees. Who is ready to step up to the plate?

Uncommon Courage

If you are like me and watch "The Rachel Maddow Show" on a regular basis, then you probably are familiar with Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell. She is a frequent guests and she gives very informed and many times witty takes on racial issues as they relate to politics. Well today she has a very powerful, moving, courageous, and just about any other positive adjective you can think of post up at "The Nation" about the assassination of Dr George Tiller over the weekend. On Monday there Rachel had Dr. Susan Wicklund on TRMS who had this to say.

We have to get women to start standing behind us as providers. We need the 45 million women who have had abortions in this country Roe versus Wade to stand beside us as providers and clinics now and come out of your homes, come out of your comfort zone and talk about it. Make everyone know how common this is.

At the time I thought to myself that Dr. Wicklund was absolutely right, but what she was asking of many of these women might be too much for them to bear. Well Ms. Lacewell shows that there are women out there willing to tell their story in order to push back against the anti choice crowd.

Forty years ago my mother was part of the movement of individuals who helped desperate women find safe ways to terminate their pregnancies. This network provided safe houses, transportation, and follow-up support for women who had to cross state lines to obtain abortions. She was willing to risk her life and livelihood to protect women's reproductive choices.

Nearly twenty years ago my older sister was diagnosed with cancer during the second trimester of her pregnancy. Her religious commitments led her to refuse her doctor's advice to terminate. She risked her life to ensure that she would not have an abortion. She and my niece are both healthy.

When we were 14-year-old, high school freshmen my friend decided to have the baby of a boy she'd had sex with only once. It changed her life forever, but she graduated from school and made a life for herself and daughter. In my twenties I stood by dear friends who simply could not afford emotionally or financially to carry their pregnancies to term. Their decisions to seek abortions were difficult and painful, but they faced them courageously.

I'm a 35-year-old, educated, black, divorced mother. Like so many other women my age I have faced my own tough reproductive choices. I've had a child, an abortion, and hysterectomy. I love and respect women who have chosen many different paths. Their stories and my own are part of the reason that I am a committed supporter of reproductive rights.

The murder of George Tiller is personal to me. It is not just a matter of politics or policy. I am an aunt to three teenage girls and the mother to a daughter. It is critical to me that their health, safety, and choices are protected.

I HIGHLY recommend reading the full text of her post because it definitely deserves your attention. I can't imagine how much courage it took for Professor Harris-Lacewell to tell her story but I hope she is an inspiration to other women who have a similar story to tell.