Kenneth Foster is Going to Die

"A person is criminally responsible for an offense committed by the conduct of another if, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators; [then] all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed, though having no intent to commit it, [or] if the offense was committed in furtherance of the unlawful purpose and was one that should have been anticipated as a result of the carrying out of the conspiracy."
--Law of Parties, 1974

"When they said the truth would set you free, that didn't mean these doors would pop open and you'd walk out. You better start to recognize this thing called the soul. Although to me this is just a small part of this reality. Believe me; I've got more. Start to look through the fabrications and distorted truths. Truth is like light; you must be accustomed to it gradually. Otherwise, it dazzles you. There are no new truths in what I speak, only truths that have not yet been recognized."
--Kenneth Foster

On August 15, 1996, 19-year-old Kenneth Foster and three friends were driving around San Antonio. One of the friends, Mauriceo Brown, was carrying a gun, and he and another passenger robbed two people at gunpoint, despite Foster's misgivings. Later that night, Mauriceo gets into a shouting match with a woman and her boyfriend. Mauriceo gets out of the car and argues with the man, Michael LaHood Jr. He then shot and killed LaHood in self-defense, he said.

"Eighty feet away, Foster heard the gunshot and began to drive away, but his other friends convinced him to wait for Brown, according to testimonies. Brown then re-entered Foster's car, and they left the scene, only to be apprehended later that night.

Foster was tried alongside Brown for the murder of LaHood, thanks to the Law of Parties. He was sentenced to death in 1997, and his execution date is set for Aug. 30 (Viewpoint: Stop Kenneth Foster's execution)."

The Law of Parties states that if, in the course of committing or even knowing about a potential felony, another felony is committed, then everyone who knew about the original crime is guilty of both crimes. Imagine a bank robbery, someone is killed, everyone robbing the bank is guilty. It's a common law, can't imagine how it applies here, but in less than a month an innocent man is going to be killed.

The situation is compounded by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which was passed by Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing. The law makes it incredibly difficult for individuals on death row to appeal their cases to federal courts. It was passed by "triangulation" Bill as he ran for re-election and it's a bad law. "The act reduced the statute of limitations for convicts to file federal writs of habeas corpus to six months after their state appeals ran out, effectively sealing off the possibility of extensive investigation or inquiry into misconduct by lawyers and law enforcement. The AEDPA also weakens the ability for federal courts to hear state cases: For instance, a district court must issue a "certificate of appealability" for a federal judge to hear the case. In essence, the state judges have to assert their colleagues' ineptitude to assure a federal appeal for a prisoner (Viewpoint: Stop Kenneth Foster's execution)."

This execution must not happen check out these websites to find out how to help.
www.freekenneth.com


Texas Moratorium Network

Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.

Al Qaeda in Iraq

Interesting piece by the Public Editor in NYTimes. Points out that the US has been disproportionately IDing Al Qaedea as the perpetrators of violence in Iraq in an effort to boost support for the war.

As domestic support for the war in Iraq continues to melt away, President Bush and the United States military in Baghdad are increasingly pointing to a single villain on the battlefield: Al Qaeda.

Bush mentioned the terrorist group 27 times in a recent speech on Iraq at the Naval War College... The Associated Press reported last month that although some 30 groups have claimed credit for attacks on United States and Iraqi government targets, press releases from the American military focus overwhelmingly on Al Qaeda.

Why Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story. So is the question of how well their version of events squares with the facts of a murky and rapidly changing situation on the ground (Seeing Al Qaeda Around Every Corner).

The article goes on to, quite rightly, point out that the "Al Qadea" that the Bush Administration identifies in Iraq is not, and has never been, the Osama bin Laden "Al Qaeda" that attacked the US on 9-11. The Iraq Al Qaeda didn't exist before the war, it was created by the war and is more-or-less independent of Bin Laden's Al Qaeda.

And in using the language of the administration, the newspaper has also failed at times to distinguish between Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an Iraqi group that didn’t even exist until after the American invasion.

There is plenty of evidence that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is but one of the challenges facing the United States military and that overemphasizing it distorts the true picture of what is happening there. While a president running out of time and policy options may want to talk about a single enemy that Americans hate and fear in the hope of uniting the country behind him, journalists have the obligation to ask tough questions about the accuracy of his statements.

Middle East experts with whom I talked in recent days said that the heavy focus on Al Qaeda obscures a much more complicated situation on the ground — and perhaps a much more dangerous one around the world (Seeing Al Qaeda Around Every Corner).

And all this in the context of the President's description of Al Qaeda as the "smallest" threat in Iraq (President Outlines Strategy for Victory in Iraq).

The New Cold War

"I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."

This is a statement that George W. Bush made in 2001 after his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia. They used to say that the Republicans wouldn't allow Newt Gingrich to meet with Bill Clinton alone when Gingrich was Speaker and Clinton was President because no matter how dedicated Gingrich was to opposing the President a single hour alone with Mr. Clinton could leave Gingrich happily agreeing to whatever the President proposed. Clinton was smarter than Gingrich. When I first read the above quote the first thing that lept to mind was, Putin is smarter than Bush. Not much of a revelation, but it's something to think about as I consider the last 6 years since that meeting.

Putin is stepping down, there will be a new election in 2008, and that is the impetus of this reflection. Viktor Gerashchenko, a banker and former chairman of Yukos oil company, has become the voice of the opposition, however, that oppposition is so fractured that barring a miracle Putin's pick will likely succeed him as President. Who that heir might be is anyone's guess, remember that Yelstin picked Putin out of the blue, to the surprise of nearly everyone.

Putin becamse President of Russia on December 31, 1999, before that he was the head of the KGB-esque Federal Security Service (FSB). Putin wasn't the head of the FSB very long at all, in fact he was appointed in July of 1998 when Yeltsin fired Nikolai Kovalyov for no apparent reason. Before being named to head the FSB, Putin served a five year term in East Berlin for the KGB from 1985 to 1990. After the break-up of the Soviet Union he returned to his native St. Petersburg and worked primarily as an advisor to the mayor, Anatoly A. Sobchak. Sobchak was Putin's law school professor and leader of the early Russian democracy movement. Putin served as Deputy Mayor and First Vice Mayor and was placed in charge of international relations. As the New York Times describes, Putin "reportedly became known as the city administration's 'gray cardinal,' an indispensable adviser regarded with respect and a touch of fear (Gray Eminence Compels Respect and Even Fear). Putin was a supporter of Yeltsin and went to Moscow where he worked with Anatoly B. Chubais (one-time head of Russia's privitization program, this was the guy who make billionaires out of thugs) and headed an internal auditing department that was in charge of dealing with Russia's 89 regions. He became part of Yeltsin's inner circle which included Gen. Aleksandr I. Lebed, financier Boris A. Berezovsky, and Minister of the Interior Sergei V. Stepashin. Then in 1998 he was named to head the FSB.

Shortly after being named to head the FSB, Yeltsin supporter, oil tycoon, and head of the largest TV station, Boris A. Berezovsky claimed that the FSB had tried to assassinate him. Berezovsky was an outspoken proponent of market liberalization and supported both Yeltsin and Putin for president. Berezovsky was forced into exile because he was charged with corruption, but likely has more to do with his growing opposition to the state taking over all Russian media (Russian Billionaire's Bitter Feud With Putin A Plot Line in Poisoning). However, The Times reported that Putin secretly visited Berezovsky illegally while he was in exile and vacationing in Spain (Leader's Secret Holidays to Spain). Since then he has become a business partner of Neil Bush (George W. Bush's little brother), claimed to be organizing a revolution from exile in London ('I am Plotting a New Russian Revolution'), and has become a central character in the Ludlum-esque political scandal involving the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium-210 (Russian Billionaire's Bitter Feud With Putin A Plot Line in Poisoning). Berezovsky claimed that Litvinenko saved his life during an assassination attempt in the 1990s, and saw Litvinenko the day he became ill (November 1). Police reportedly found radiation in Berezovsky's office. Berezovsky claimed that Putin murdered his old friend. Putin's administration claims Berezovsky poisoned him in an attempt to smear Putin in order to engineer his "new Russian revolution". Berezovsky claims he became disillusioned by Putin's autocratic policies, and Putin's representatives claim that Berezovsky was angry that Putin refused to be his 'puppet'. Litvinenko was a former FSB operative who accused the FSB of engineering the Moscow apartment bombings in 1999 that killed 300 people and were blamed on Chechen radicals. These bombings led the Russians into the Second Chechen War and helped bring Putin to power (he was named head of the FSB in July of 1998, the bombings happened in August and September 1999, and Putin was named Prime Minister in August 1999 and replaced Yeltsin in December). Litvinenko also claimed that Putin ordered him to assassinate Berezovsky. The Washington Post describes the feud between Putin and Berezovsky as having grown to "shakesperean proportions" and notes that "he is the only one in London who appears to have tighter security than the royal family" (Russian Billionaire's Bitter Feud With Putin A Plot Line in Poisoning).

Did Putin orchestrate the assassination of Litvinenko? Was he killed to send a message to Berezovsky? Was Litvinenko correct in his accusation that Putin orchestrated the bombings of the two apartment buildings in Moscow to serve as a pretense for the Second Chechen War? Or, did Berezovsky orchestrate the elaborate death of Litvinenko to smear Putin as part of his "new Russian revolution"? I don't know, but what I do know is that under Putin military expenditures has tripled (Russia Plans Sharp Military Spending Hike). And, Russia has recently announced a $200 billion investment in their military over 8 years with the stated goal of exceeding the Soviet army in combat readiness (Big rise in Russian military spending raises fears of new challenge to west). According to Moscow, the jump in military spending is in response to the Bush administration's investment in deep penetration low-yield nuclear weapons, aka "bunker busters", which could target Russian missile control centers located in mountains, and their investment in US missile defense. Russian planners are also building up their offensive military capabilities with regard to space warfare. In response to America's development of the reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV), Russia is now attempting to develop it's own stratospheric military arsenal. You might say, US missile defense doesn't work and the HCV isn't much more than a drawing and a dream, well, both China and Russia, like the US operate on the assumption that the possible is real and you should create deterrants and contingency plans accordingly, so as the Bush administration broke the bank funding his flights of fantasy he created an arms race the scale of which has been absent since Reagan. And, maybe that's appropriate, as the '80s become vintage and retro recalls the depths of that decade, perhaps it's fitting that our foreign policy seem similar yet slightly less-than, like a copy of a copy. Bush fancies himself a "Reagan-esque" president. Reagan was never an anyone-esque president, neither was Roosevelt or Lincoln. Bush is just a sad retro throw-back, too bad he's become the single biggest threat to our future.

Be Brave. Be Loud. Be Outspoken.

F*ck Those Guys

Maybe you've heard about Lilly Ledbetter, as in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. You see, Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Gadsden, Alabama. When she was hired her pay was in line with her male colleagues, but over the years the smaller raises that she ALWAYS received created a significant pay gap, and in case you're saying "so what?" pay gaps are illegal, not to mention sexist and immoral. After years of the discriminatory pay, Ms. Ledbetter discovered her employer's duplicitousness and filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). A jury sided with Ms. Ledbetter and found that Goodyear had violated her civil rights. This decision was upheld by the court of appeals and was recently decided upon by the Supreme Court you know the one, the gender and racially conscious body made up of 7 white men and one woman and one black guy (it's Clarence Thomas, so I'm not sure he even counts).

Goodyear and it's supporters in such justice-oriented organization as the National Federation of Independent Business Legal Foundation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce believed that the complaint with the EEOC and the subsequent jury award had violated the statute of limitations since her last discriminatory raise was before the 180 day limit. In previous cases the EEOC, the Courts of Appeal, and the Supreme Court ruled that each pay check based on discrimination violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Well, not any more, thanks to your favorite five male Justices (Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts) a long standing precedent of civil rights law has been destroyed and an important protection for all of us has disappeared.

As the nation debated when life began, very few people actually saw that the Supreme Court rules on more than abortion cases (although they also upheld an amazingly offensive Partial-Birth Abortion Ban). Perhaps it's fitting that the last defender (ok, the last quasi-sometimes-defender) of our rights has been turned into a political arm of the ultra-conservative Republican Party. We are living in a time of unprecedented corporate power, a new Gilded Age, and now we have our Gilded Age Supreme Court.

However, the decision was 5-4, and that means there were 4 sane voices. These four voices were represented in the oral dissent of Justice Ginsburg, the court's only female. This was Justice Ginsburg's second oral dissent this year, which marks the first time in her career that she gave to oral dissents in one year. She is often regarded as a collegial member who is often focused more on etiquette and backroom chats than the spectacle of oral dissents (oral dissents are regarded as theatrical indulgences and are rarely used). Justice Ginsburg's new found boldness is profiled in the New York Times, Oral Dissents Give Ginsburg a New Voice on Court.

Newt Gingrich Thinks He Can Be President

So, Newt Gingrich thinks he can be President. Newt Gingrich is out of his mind.

First, let's get one thing straight, 1994 was not a revolution. The midterm elections saw a paltry 38.8% nationwide turnout, and the Republicans only received 19% of the eligible vote. The number of Dems voting declined across much of the nation, while Republican turnout increased. The nation saw a 21% drop in the reported participation rates of those with incomes of $15,000 and lower, while there was a 33% increase in the share of the vote cast by those whose incomes were $50,000 and over. African Americans turnout saw a decline of 2 percentage points and turnout among young people declined to 14.5% of eligible voters. And men only slightly increased their share of the electorate (disproving the "angry white guy" myth). The 54 seat pickup for Republicans in the House and 8 seat pickup in the Senate has been seen as the culmination of a decades long realignment in the states of the old Confederacy. Even as Democrats had a significant registration advantage (37.8% to 22.4%) the region had been voting for Republican Presidential candidates since Nixon. This "realignment" has often been cast as a revolt at the base of the Democratic Party because of the "race issue," i.e. the Democratic support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act which essentially destroyed much of the legal infrastructure of Jim Crow. This "southern strategy" mythology has been widely discredited, in fact there was little or no significant shift at the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder from support for the Dems to the GOP. Once again, the myth of the disaffected, poor, angry white man was true in anecdote only. The real "realignment" happened much further up the economic ladder. Which makes it not much of a realignment since Americans with upper incomes typically vote Republican. The depressed turnout among Democratic loyalists (the poor, the young, and black folks) accounts for the 1994 turnout. The questions that remain are: 1. What drove down Democratic turnout? 2. What drove up Republican voter turnout? and 3. How many registered Democrats voted for Republicans? Gingrich likes to sell his "revolution" narrative over the "realignment" narrative and the "turnout" narrative, because it portrays him as savior of the Republican Party. The fact that the Republican majority lasted from 1994 to 2006 has as much to do with the privileges of incumbency and gerrymandering as a lasting electoral realignment, let alone a revolution. The presidential and congressional elections of 1996 demonstrate that the post-World War II southern economic development revitalized a southern Republican party, but still didn't signal a "revolution" by any means. The Presidential vote in Kentucky, Virginia, and Georgia were all within 2 percentage points. The 1998 House elections saw a nation wide pick-up of 5 seats for the Democrats (reaction against the "overreaching" by Congressional Republicans during impeachment, likely because they began believing their own "revolution" mythology). The 1998 Senate remained unchanged, divided 55 to 45 in the hands of Republicans. The 2000 election once again saw a South that was closely divided, and in that way more similar to the nation as a whole than different. The South is not an ideologically distinct and homogeneous region, at least not any more.

If anything was revolutionary about 1994 it was the revolutionary nature of the new Congressional Republicans, especially the leadership. 1994 saw the elevation of Newt Gingrich to the Speaker's chair and Tom DeLay to Majority Whip. Under their leadership the power of committee/subcommittee chairs was dramatically weakened and centralized power under their leadership. A six-year chairmanship limit was imposed on the committees, and the 1970 "subcommittee bill of rights" was repealed. Gingrich also bypassed the system of seniority appointments to chairmanships by appointing Gingrich loyalists to chair the influential Appropriations, Judiciary, and Commerce Committees (Appropriations is all about money and Judiciary and Commerce are all about regulations, these are the money committees).

Gingrich likes to sell himself as a savior but is not a savior. He is a strange little man. He likes to write obnoxious historical "what-if" fiction. The whole genre is annoying speculations about different historical possibilities. For example, in his 1995 novel, 1945, Gingrich imagines that Hitler was in a plane crash and spent several months in a coma. So, he never attacked the US and is now set out to attack post-Churchill England and cripple the US by attacking Oak Ridge, the location of the development of the atomic bomb. More recently he wrote Gettysburg, which imagines a Civil War where the Confederacy wins the battle of Gettysburg, and strangely portrays the Confederacy as a group of disciplined citizen-soldiers led by wise and honorable gentlemen and the Union as a bunch of ruffians led by "hot-tempered and vindictive" leaders.

Perhaps his most bizarre public speech, his videotaped "Renewing American Civilization." Names the five pillars of American civilization as 1. The Historic Lessons of American Civilization, 2. Personal Strength, 3. Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise, 4. The Spirit of Invention and Discovery, and 5. Quality as Defined by Deming. How 1-4 are not lessons of American Civilization is beyond me, and how he came up with these 5 still baffles me. Gingrich likes enumerated lists, like when he lists the 5 reasons to study American history: 1. History is a Collective History, 2. American History is the History of our Civilization (REALLY???), 3. There is an American Exceptionalism that can be Best Understood Through History, 4. History is a Resource to be Learned from and Used, and 5. There are Techniques that can help you Learn Problem-Solving from Historical Experience. As Joan Didion states, "the attempt to track from one to five... leaves the tracker fretful, uneasy, uncertain just whose synapses are misfiring." Gingrich's writing abounds with enumerated lists, just as he did on a recent episode of Meet the Press where he enumerated the six (yes, only six) steps to save Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: But specifically, how would you win the war in Iraq militarily?

MR. GINGRICH: First of all, you, you would empower General Petraeus. You’d pass the supplemental immediately. You’d give him the money. Second, you would encourage the Iraqis to triple the size of their regular army. Third, you would, you would encourage the development of a, of a military tribunal system to lock people up the way Abraham Lincoln would’ve done it. Fourth, you would establish a nationwide ID card with biometrics so you can actually track everybody in the country. Fifth, you would make sure that the State Department actually staffed the embassy with people in favor of winning the war and you actually had your fully, fully equipped intelligence and economic development teams. Six, you would say to the Iranians, “If you don’t cut off everything you’re doing, we’ll begin to bring enormous pressure to bear with you,” if necessary, blockading the flow of gasoline into Iran, which has to import 40 percent of its gasoline because it only has one refinery in the entire country.

To describe Gingrich's thinking as schematic is an understatement as he declares there to be "Seven key aspects" and "nine vision-level principles" of his second pillar of American Civilization, "Personal Strength." There are also "five core principles" of "Quality as defined by Deming" (Pillar 5). There are "three big concepts" of Pillar Three (Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise) as well as "five enemies of entrepreneurial free enterprise." And finally, the "seven welfare state cripplers of progress" under Pillar Four (Spirit of Invention and Discovery), one of which is simply described as "Ignorance." Then in his Window of Opportunity, he gives us the truly astounding list of the "great force changing our world is a synergism of essentially six parts." Only six, not seven, not five, six. When discussing health care he described the "eight areas of necessary change," on arms control, he gives us the "seven imperatives that will help the free world survive in the age of nuclear weapons." Then there are two initiatives, "three broad strategic options for the next generation," and finally, "six realistic goals which would increase our children's chances of living in a world without nuclear war." There is also Gingrich's most famous list, the Contract with America. On the first day of the session Gingrich promised to pass eight reforms and to in the following 100 days to bring another ten bills to a vote.

So what? I can hear you ask, he likes lists, who doesn't? It's an easy way to organize information and it shows that he is an action oriented person. This list-making reflects the memo-world of management with it's enumerated "action items" and other jargon-laden garbage. Not only does it show a lack of big-picture holistic thinking, they do nothing to advance discussions on the most important issues facing our nation and sometimes they slide into nonsense. For example, in To Renew America, he proposes several interesting questions like, "Why not aspire to build a real Jurassic Park?" Then he waxes poetic on the possibilities of space honeymoons, actually saying "imagine weightlessness and its effects and you will understand some of the attractions." What does that even mean? Earlier in Window of Opportunity, he writes, "one reason I am convinced space travel will be a growth industry is because I represent the Atlanta airport, which provides 35,000 aviation-related jobs in the Atlanta area."

His two early political screeds, Window of Opportunity and To Renew America are filled with these lackluster enumerated lists and flights of fantasy and seem to make sense when we consider that Mr. Gingrich manages his days by breaking them into 15 minute increments (I seriously wonder if Gingrich himself isn't some sort of Nick Hornby character, think "top fives" from High Fidelity and Will from About a Boy who states, "I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes. Full hours can be a little bit intimidating and most activities take about half an hour.") The truth is Mr. Gingrich got the idea of 15-minute activity blocks from Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive. His favorite thing to do in an activity block? Read biographies, the bottom rung of the history ladder, no wonder he imagines himself to be a savior and revolutionary, he still thinks history is made by "great men" who have biographies written about them which tend to ignore the social and economic forces that shape history.

Let's just get this straight, Newt Gingrich has lost his damn mind. According to Mr. Gingrich, Forrest Gump proved that "the counterculture destroys human beings and basic values." I always thought that it simply proved that life was a lot like a box of chocolates. Then last month in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women he argued that English should be the official language of the United States, beating out such aspirants as Esperanto and Tagalog. In this speech he called Spanish the "language of the ghetto." Then in his non-apology he blaimed his "word choice was poor" and that he had been taking Spanish classes for some time. The man is insane. At a recent event hosted by the Federalist Leadership Center and the Lincoln Club of Orange County Mr. Gingrich estimated that he had around 25 ideas a minute. A journalist covering the event for the Red County Magazine believed him and wrote an article calling him a one man think-tank. In the ensuing interview Newt once again turns to his favorite past-time, enumerated lists. Citing three lessons from history that are important for us all to think about; 1. Intelligence can fail, 2. You may not understand the culture of your opponent, and 3. Technology matters (for what isn't clear). Then he outlines his four critical components of healthcare reform, which he says should be visualized as a box with four quadrants (WTF?!). The first quadrant is financing. Another quadrant focuses on "the need for individual responsibility" (like for not getting sick? like not working in a coal mine?). The third quadrant addresses "issues related to society and culture" (I don't know what that means, oh wait, I bet he's talking about the sexual habits of non-whites, how silly of me). The fourth quadrant addresses "the healthcare system itself" (now my brain hurts). On immigration he suggests a two fold enumerated list (sorry, no awesome boxes with quadrants this time) that is comprised of the visionary suggestions: Control the Border and Enforce the Law. Holy shit, he's done it, he's solved the immigration "problem". From there he follows with an another list that includes among other things national id cards with biometrics that will be organized and managed by credit card companies. Up until now I kind of thought Mr. Gingrich was like that adorably idiotic uncle that everyone humors, but now I realize he's simply the stupidest man alive.

Bill's Back and Better than Ever

Bill Moyers is back on PBS with his classic Bill Moyers Journal. The first episode aired tonight and he takes on the press and the shameful lack of integrity and "truthiness" that has besmurched (yes, besmurched) journalism during the run-up to the War in Iraq. Now, Moyers is not the first member of the fourth estate to attempt to explain how journalists got it so incredibly wrong, but he is the best. In fact, Moyers is far and away the best journalist working in America, and he isn't even a practicing journalist anymore. The truth is not all journalists got it wrong, the heroes of Moyers' documentary are the Kinght Ridder team of Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel. Landay and Strobel weren't alone in their reporting, but their tireless and largely ignored reporting demonstrates that even as the majority of "mainstream" (read: corporate) journalists went from being watchdogs to lapdogs there was still real journalism going on.

A couple things struck me as I watched the report. First, if Iraq had worked (I don't think it ever could have, but if it did) would all the lies have been ignored and justified by the success of the mission? Silly question, I know the answer, as do you, but I was momentarily saddened by the obvious truth that facts don't matter.

Second, I was also momentarily hopeful. "This is the kind of thing that needs to happen to change things, maybe the Times will see the error of their ways, maybe the Post will see the structural flaws that led it down this path." But, the report ends by reminding us that it's business as usual across the media spectrum. There are no liberal voices on television. The Cross Fire-esque he-said, she-said nature of modern journalism (read: stenographers for hire) is still dominating journalism, especially television journalism (but not only). And, most of the incredibly wrong journalists and pundits still comprise the starting line-up of opinion making journalism. It's amazing. Get the biggest story of our lifetimes wrong and you keep your job. I guess someone has to make the case for Iran, if it's not them then someone else.

Third, I had to wonder how long news will continue to exist in its present form. Newspapers, magazines, and television news (with the notable exception of certain alternative and public sources) are mostly owned by corporations with, as Dan Rather pointed out on the program, "big needs, legislative needs, repertory needs in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that's the case." News doesn't make money. That's the line, it just costs money. But is that true? NO!!! But it's repeated so often it sounds true and it justifies massize layoffs, which lead to more profits, and an excuse for the stenography that bills itself as journalism. And stenography is what they want, and that's all they want. Stenographers with the stamp of objectivity. The Bush Administration and the Iraqi National Congress used the press in the most obvious ways, and they went along with it, happily. Journalism and reporting are not the same things. We have lots of professional readers stalking the airwaves of television journalism. They report. They read. The question is, who is writing what they read? We need journalists not just reporters and stenographers, but should we be hopeful? What is the alternative? More public money to support journalism? Non-profit newspapers? Citizen journalism via blogs and the Internet?

Fourth, I was shocked at how much of the lack of true journalism was the result of the uninterest of the public, the incest of Washington elite journalism, and pure, pathetic laziness. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, told a story about how the Post had a "Truth Squad", "We used to do at the Post something called truth squading. --President would make a speech. We used to do it with Ronald Reagan the first five or six months because he would make so many-- factual errors, particularly in his press conference." The Post stopped the "truth squad" not because of pressure from the White House, but because Americans thought it was in bad taste. As Pincus recalled, "And after-- two or three weeks of it-- the public at large, would say, 'Why don't you leave the man alone? He's trying to be honest. He makes mistakes. So what?' and we stopped doing it." What replaced the "truth squad"?

BILL MOYERS: You stopped being the truth squad.

WALTER PINCUS: We stopped truth squading every sort of press conference, or truth squading. And we left it then-- to the democrats. In other words, it's up to the democrats to catch people, not us.

BILL MOYERS: So if the democrats challenged-- a statement from the president, you could-- quote both sides.

WALTER PINCUS: We then quote-- both sides. Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: Now, that's called objectivity by many standards isn't it?

WALTER PINCUS: Well, that's-- objectivity if you think there are only two sides. and if you're not interested in-- the facts. And the facts are separate from, you know, what one side says about the other.

I can remember when criticizing Bush got you silenced, fired, or ridiculed (think Phil Donahue, the Dixie Chicks. every Democrat save Joe Lieberman). Now, it's hip to hate Bush. It's hip for Keith Olbermann to stick it to the man, or Stephen Colbert to openly mock him. Journalists weren't tougher on the President because no one wanted them to be.

The incestious relationship between government, corporations and the Washington Press corps is stunning. These people live toghether in a bubble. That's one reason that Knight Ridder was successful at seeing through the spin and lies, they were outside of DC. But this meant that they were largely ignored by the "opinion making" journalists, columnists, and pundits that dominate the corporate media. As Walter Pincus stated, "The administration can withstand the Knight Ridder critique because it-- it wasn't reverberating inside Washington. And therefore people weren't picking it up."

Another shocking source of this stenography-as-journalism is just straight up laziness. As Dan Rather said in the report, "Reporting is hard. The substitute for reporting far too often has become let's just ring up an expert. Let's see. These are experts on-- international armaments. And I'll just go down the list here and check Richard Perle... This is journalism on the cheap if it's journalism at all. Just pick up the phone, call an expert, bring an expert into the studio. Easy. Not time consuming. Doesn't take resources. And-- if you-- if you're lucky and good with your list of people, you get an articulate person who will kind of spark up the broadcast." No one in the report exemplified this better than journalist(?) and host of Meet the Press, Tim Russert, "What my concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them." "I wish my phone had rung," are you serious? That's journalism? Waiting for someone to call you and tell you a big story? That's the laziest and stupidest thing I have ever heard.

Now, it's more than just journalistic laziness, there is a huge and perverse incentive structure to just report. Being first, "scooping" a big story is the goal for everyone, and in an age of 24 hour media filling the hours of the day means repetition and much more reporting than investigating. It's the structure of the media more than laziness or incestious relationships. The corporate dominated media that care more about bottom lines than "truthiness", the passive public that cares more about American Idol than the American Constitution, a self-reinforcing Beltway groupthink that listens more to the Times' Judith Miller than Knight Ridder's Jonathan Landay, and a culture within journalism that cares more about filling the hours of the day and scooping a story than actually investigating the truthfulness of public pronouncements. All these things are created. Thus is not the world, thus have we made it. But, what is the incentive to change? I got nothing. Perhaps it's the lack of incentive to change that will lead people away from our current form of journalism for something different. Maybe that's the incentive, change or disappear.

Check out the Show at Bill Moyers Journal at PBS.com

Also check out the Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) coverage of the Iraq Pre-War Intel

Iran-Contra Redux

If you haven't read Seymour Hersh's most recent piece in the New Yorker then you must do so immediately (The Redirection). If you don't know what Iran-Contra is, then you should write a letter to your high school social studies teacher and insult them. Iran-Contra was an illegal, blackbag operation that utilized Olie North's lack of ethics to illegally sell weapons to Iran through Israel and then funneled the money garnered from the arms sales to the fascist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The Contras were also very much part of a large CIA-run drug smuggling ring that brought crack-cocaine to America, gang wars to LA, and may have even included Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton (The Dark Alliance, Mysterious Mena: CIA Discloses, Leach Disposes).

According to Hersch, the veterans of Iran-Contra got together to discuss the lessons learned from Iran-Contra. Their chief lesson, run everything out of the Veep's office and not the CIA or the DoD. Well, they put that lesson to good use and now you have blackbag operations within the Veep's office. Using tens of millions of dollars from undisclosed sources (likely missing Iraqi oil money, Saudi money, and miscellaneous siphoned cash from our $416 billion already spent) the US government funneled cash to aid the adminsitration's choosen group of electors during the January 30 Iraqi election. This slate, led by the now Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, won on 14% of the returns, but it proved enough to prevent the sectarian Shi'ite parties from winning a clear mandate. On top of the financial support, there is also evidence that the election results were simply falsified to swing more support for Allawi et al. Cash was also funneled to the Lebanese Sunni-dominated government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, which, in turn, distributed that money to Sunni extremist groups.

So, the US is fighting a "Global War on Terror" against Sunni terrorist organizations tied to Al Qaeda and it's supporting such groups in Lebanon. The US is also fixing Iraqi elections to support Shi'ite parties and accusing "Iran" of supporting different Iraqi Shi'ite political parties and "insurrgents". The US is trying to rollback the Sunni organization in Palestine, Hamas, and Shi'ite organization in Lebanon, Hezbollah. The US is planning an attack on Iran, and actually crossing the border into Syria and Iran. Wow. And this is what we know about. Imagine what we don't know about.

Will the Real Obama Please Stand Up?

"Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely..." and with those words the most extraordinary political talent in a generation introduced himself to America.

I remember when I first heard about Barack Obama. It was 2 A.M. and I was watching one of Stu Rothenberg's seminars at American University about handicapping races. At the end he paused and he said that there was a little known candidate in a tight race for the Democratic nomination for an Illinois Senate seat, he was running third, but Rothenberg told his students, that he hadn't seen a politician with this much talent, ever. He told them to remember the name, Barack Obama. So, I got involved in following the race through whatever news I could get, it wasn't a lot. I wrote a research paper on the race for a class while an undergrad at Michigan, and while I was writing it Obama won the primary after the front-runner dropped out due to a sex scandal (Blair Hull). Obama began a campaign against the self-proclaimed pious, daily-church-going-Catholic, millionaire-ex-investment-banker-turned-high-school-teacher-of-black-kids, celebrity-husband-of-actress-Jerri-Ryan, Jack Ryan. Mr. Ryan, although a self-declared pious man, began the campaign, in classic Chicago fashion, from the gutter, hiring a guy to follow Obama around with a camera firing insults at him. Things looked extremely tight until Mr. Ryan was forced to drop out because of a sex scandal. Then the nearly dead Illinois Republican Party asked Alan Keyes to run against Obama, there is no punch line, that's what really happened. Needless to say Obama won, ignited a huge following across the state, and after giving the 2004 Keynote Address at the Democratic National Convention became a household name.

I was personally on the bandwagon. Obama was the biracial son of a Kenyan-born economist and a Kansas-born anthropologist, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, educated at Occidental then Columbia, and a graduate of Harvard Law School (magna cum laude), where he was elected to the position of editor of the Harvard Law Review, the most prestigious position within any law school on the planet, and to top it off, the first black to hold the position. Between Columbia and Harvard he worked within the business community and as a community organizer in Chicago, part of a Gamaliel organized alliance of churches. During this time he embraced the Christian faith and was baptized. While interning for a summer during his study at Harvard he interned at Sidney & Austin corporate law firm and met Michelle Robinson, his current wife. After Harvard instead of taking any number of prestigious and well-paying corporate jobs or clerking jobs he returned to Chicago and led a massive voter registration drive for the 1992 Presidential and Senate elections that delivered Bill Clinton to the White House and Carol Mosely Braun to the Senate. He then took a job at Miner, Barnhill & Galland in the civil rights division and taught constitutional law at University of Chicago. In 1996 he ran for Illinois' State Senate from the 13th District (Chicago's South Side). While in the State Senate he helped author an Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit, a bill requiring police interrogations be video tapped, a laudable effort to amend the Illinois state constitution to define healthcare as a right and guarantee full coverage within 5 years, and he led efforts to crackdown on predatory lending. He ran against Rep. Bobby Rush in 2000 and was humiliatingly defeated 61% to 30%. Then in 2004 he ran for the US Senate and won.
During the campaign he sounded like a true progressive and when the build-up to the war in Iraq began he spoke out eloquently against what he called a "stupid war".

Once in the Senate he hired some very interesting staffers including, former Dashcle chief-of-staff, Karen Kornbluh, an economist who is directly tied to Robert Rubin to serve as policy advisor, and Samanth Power, a Pulitzer-winning human rights author. Again and again he worked both sides of the left and center-left spectrum. He worked in corporate law and civil rights law. He worked as a investment banker in the business community and as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago. He hired Samantha Power and a leading proponent of Rubinomics. He was praised by the DLC but asked that his name be removed from their list of "New Democrats" (Obama to Have Name Removed From DLC List). He has been praised as a "Hamiltonian" by Republican NYT columnist David Brooks (Run, Barack, Run). He is a blank slate to so many that he seems to be everyone's savior. He is the consumate pragmatic politician, seeing both sides and never taking a stand.

A recent NYT article about Obama's time at Harvard Law mentions his seeming "fair-mindedness". "He proved deft at navigating an institution scorched with ideological battles, many of which revolved around race. He developed a leadership style based more on furthering consensus than on imposing his own ideas. Surrounded by students who enjoyed the sound of their own voices, Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once" (In Law School, Obama Found Political Voice). Perhaps this explains his on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand approach to political issues that has allowed so many to project so much onto him in such a short period of time. But, campaigns are about definition and it will be soon time for Obama to take some stands. I, for one, hope they are as politically astute and courageous as his stand on the Iraq War, however, I have my doubts.

For starters, Obama supported neoconservative Joe Lieberman's "independent" Senate race against anti-war Democrat Ned Lamont (Obama Endorses Lieberman for Senate). Obama even requested that Lieberman be assigned his "Senate Mentor" (Joe Lieberman: Barack Obama's Mentor in the Senate). Then there is Obama's hiring of a protege of Robert Rubin and his support of the Brookings Insitute's Hamilton Project, a corporate-funded neoliberal think tank founded by Rubin himself (Mr. Obama Goes to Washington). There was the "distancing" Obama attempted after Dick Durbin's courageous likening of Guantanamo Bay to Nazis or Stalin-era camps (Obama's Game), and his pre-emptive critique of an Alito filibuster (Alito Filibuster Won't Work, Obama Says).

He told Joe Klein that he hadn't even thought about Al Gore's well-publicized "carbon tax" even as he wouldn't shut up about Ethanol and energy independence (The Fresh Face). Speaking of Ethanol, Obama's defining cause of his short term in the US Senate has been energy, particularly the manufacture and use of E85 fuels and their corresponding flexfuel cars, trucks, and SUVs. In this Obama looks less like a true fresh face, but the same-old tired political message dressed up in a new suit. Agribusiness and the auto industry loves E85 (named for the 85% Ethanol levels). Agribusiness because it makes them mountains of profits, and the auto industry because it allows them to look green while still manufacturing the low-gas-mileage autos that can run on either E85 or regular gasoline. Besides, every report ever made shows that there is likley little or no net environmental benefit to ethanol after you factor in the manufacturing and transportation costs (Barack Obama, Inc.). Instead of delivering a truly progressive and visionary energy agenda he is dressing up ethanol in military fatigues, talking about how our national security relies on decreasing energy dependence, meaning we need more ethanol. I wonder if it is just a coincidence that one of the companies making the most profit off of E85 is Archer Daniels Midland Corporation, an Illinois based agribusiness behemoth? Obama has since worked with Republicans on a bill to raise fuel economy standards 4% annually, a truly modest proposal, but one made before the Democrats won back the Senate. As with the Democratic Party as a whole, Obama will hopefully be judged by what he does now. As he said, "most of the legislation I’ve proposed will be more modest in its goals than it would be if I were in the majority party" (Barack Obama, Inc.).

I still have my doubts. Although Obama has made ethics reform another priority of his Senate identity, he hasn't blushed, even for a moment, at pork barelling. Obama helped to get Illinois $6.2 billion in pork in the infamous 2005 transportation bill (including the Prairie Parkway--that mess of a brand new road that was supposed to make Hastert a rich man). He also supported the corporate backed class action lawsuit "tort reform" bill that made it harder to get corporate accountability.

Perhaps worst of all for me personally he dismissed my personal hero, Paul Wellstone, as a gad-fly. He seems to be positioning himself as a progressive centrist who is not beholden to anyone and willing to "speak honestly" to liberals. Like his wholly inappropriate blog posting surrounding the Roberts nomination (Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party). Obama is about positioning himself constantly. Nothing new you might say. Ok, I agree, but let's please remember that and stop annointing Obama as a wunderkind or messiah. Obama is not a movement, hell, he's not even a leader. Sure, he supports some progressive issues, but we cannot stop pushing him, because he is, exclusively a politician. Don't forget that.

Be Brave. Be Kind. Be Loving.

Swift Boating Osama, I mean Obama

As you have probably heard the smearing of Barack Obama is in full swing. There was the Hussein flap. His middle name is Hussein. Clearly he hates America. Yes, that's right, we've taken to pointing out the obvious. Nice.

Then there was the madrassa allegation. When he was a boy he lived in Indonesia and attended an Islamic school for two years and a Catholic school for two years. Clearly he is a Muslim Manchurian Candidate, and we must be vigilent for a Muslim invasion, perhaps a law making Islam the national religion should Osama take office. Never mind it wasn't a Wahhabi school (the ones that Bush's dear friends the Saudi's have been funding and have been responsible for the spread of radical violent Islam throughout Central Asia--The Saudi Connection, U.S. Ties to Saudi Elite May Be Hurting War on Terrorism, Bush Advisers Cashed in on Saudi Gravy Train) or that he WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD. Clearly the radical right is justified to worry that a seven year old was brainwashed trained, in two years to become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, a brilliant and progressive politician and orator, and a professor of constitutional law, you know that document that the Bush Administration keeps forgetting about.

Read this
Smearing Barack Obama
and this
Obama Smeared As Former ‘Madrassa’ Student, Possible Covert Muslim Extremist

"What is the cause of the crisis in black education?" Part II: I-Pods and Kicks???

Brangelina, Madonna, Bono, and now Oprah, apparently Africa is the cause de jure of American noblesse oblige.

In case you didn't know, Oprah recently opened a $40 million girls school forty miles outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is supposedly set on 22 "lush" acres and includes over 28 buildings. "The complex features oversize rooms done in tasteful beiges and browns with splashes of color, 200-thread-count sheets, a yoga studio, a beauty salon, indoor and outdoor theaters, hundreds of pieces of original tribal art and sidewalks speckled with colorful tiles" (Oprah Goes to School). There has been wide spread criticism of this decision by many who call for Oprah to make those kinds of investments in a US public school, or maybe give out scholarships instead of Pontiacs. In defense of her decision, Oprah oppinned the cultural priorities of inner-city youth:

"I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there," she says. "If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school" (Oprah Goes to School).

I'm not here to criticize Oprah's decision to fund a school in South Africa, I could. I don't know where I would begin though, perhaps with the insinuation that all students value things over knowledge. I don't buy that. I teach high school in the "inner city" (actually it's more like the outer city, Chicago's hella big), but I know that Oprah could have found a couple hundred kids in my school alone that might have been "worthy". Or, maybe I could start with the hypocrisy of criticizing kids for caring about material possessions...has she ever watched her own show? Givin' away cars and shit like that, it's not like Oprah contributes to the embrace of conspicious consumption or mass marketed lies. No, not Oprah, those make-over shows are about self-esteem, not wardrobe enlargement or retail therapy or advertisment based notions of the 'good life'. Or, how 'bout the fact that if you google "Oprah" and "Ipod" you are directed to Oprah.com and a page entitled "Oprah's favorite things"? Who is she to criticize poor kids for fetishizing material goods when it is something every American does. It's just that when a rich white kid fetishizes a pair of kicks, he just buys 'em and takes 'em for granted, part of that great American tradition of entitlement. Her statement insinuates that this is some kind of abnormal "mentality" found among urban youth, and we all know what "urban youth" is code for. Worst of all it reinforces a racist perspective that white people love to use to justify continued inequality, namely that it's a matter of behavior, culture, and upbringing that results in the American "underclass".

I could say all that, but that's not what I'm here to do. First, I think it's great that Oprah is using her money in a way that could help some young women in South Africa (she could build like 15 of those schools and not notice it, but let's leave that alone). Second, while she is demonstrating charity and not solidarity I think that charity shouldn't be criticized, I think it should be the start of a long conversation about how for charity to exist there must be continued and substantial economic, social, and political injustice, and what is more helpful is a deeper analysis of the roots of that injustice, a richer and fuller expansion of one's own consciousness. And finally, Oprah is a victim of the all-to-common fundamental attribution fallacy.

You may be asking yourself, if he's not going to criticize Oprah what is he writing about? Well, the truth is, while I don't agree with Oprah, I think her statement is the beginning of understanding part of the truth behind the "crisis in black education".

I was talking to a friend and he pointed out that he felt that Brown v. Board may have actually damaged black education and black entrepreneurialism. This is not a new argument. Brown "integrated" black students into schools that stripped them of the cultural capital that allowed black people to survive in the face of oppression and violence for hundreds of years. In the face of such hatred the black community turned to itself for sustenance. Sure, poverty and violence ravaged that community, but that community took care of itself and it survived. The fact a black culture even exists in America is a testament to the tenacious will and passion that this community possesses. And, integration began to rob that community of the capital that segregation created. The white dominator culture had institutions that did not transmit that cultural capital, and it was and is an inheritance lost. This is not to say that my friend or I blame Brown for anything at all, it is only to say that a cost of integration may have been the loss of a central pillar of the black community and the black culture, namely the black school. And that cultural pillar was replaced by one that, he believed (as do I), robbed black folks of a certain amount of their cultural capital. A similar argument is made about Latinos in the amazing book, Substractive Schooling by Angela Valenzuela.

However, while I think that narrative is true, it only goes so far. The schools are not truly to blame. I think that the material-obsessed, consumer culture of late American capitalism holds most of the blame. Marx proposed a base/superstructure analysis of culture and ideology. The 'superstructure' that constructs ideology, culture, and consciousness is built upon the 'base' of capitalism. This capitalist superstructure creates a 'false consciousness' of commodity fetishizing, or in other words, it leads to the 'thingification' of everything. Blacks were denied full access to this superstructure, the white dominator culture, so they constructed folk cultures, sub-cultures, and counter-cultures to survive (they also internalized much of the dominator culture, which will be the subject of a later post). So, when the 1960s came these various black cultural traditions came under attack not only by the integration of black folks into schools, but by their integration into the newly created mass marketing bonanza coupled with a period of economic prosperity, the result of technological innovation, militaristic Keyensianism, and an empire-like control of global politics and economics. This prosperity created the a black middle class and some say the civil rights movement, but it was still unavailable to most blacks. The great American boom also created the great American unquenchable thirst for stuff, a thirst that influenced the black community as much as it did the white community, the only difference is that the white community belonged and the black did not, economically, socially, politically, and culturally. The cultural and psychological impact of the American thirst for material possessions on an entire group of people denied access to the means to pursue that thirst is unknowable.

Mass marketing makes all Americans feel like they are missing something, that they are not full without whatever it is that is being sold to them, but blacks cannot even have full access to the commodity market because of their inheritance of oppression. And blacks cannot simply buy their way into the American identity; even after the most conspicious consumption they are still told that they are missing something, the correct pigment. Something that the market has noticed.

In speaking about the reason for the growing despair and nihilism in the black community, Dr. Cornel West, wrote,

What has changed? What went wrong? The bitter irony of integration? The cumulative effects of a genocidal conspiracy? The virtual collapse of rising expectations after the optimistic sixties? None of this fully understands why teh cultural structures that once sustained black life in American are no longer able to fend off the nihilistic threat. I believe that two significant reasons why the threat is more powerful now than ever before are the saturation of market forces and market moralities in black life and the present crisis in black leadership. The recent market-driven sharttering of black civil societies--black families, neighborhoods, schools, churches, mosques--leaves more and more black people vulnerable to daily lives endured with little sense of self and fragile existential moorings.

Black people have always been in America's wilderness in search of a promised land. Yet many black folk now reside in a jungle ruled by a cutthroat market morality devoid of any faith in deliverance or hope for freedom. Contrary to the superficial claims of conservative behaviorists, these jungles are not primarily the result of pathological behavior. Rather, this behavior is the tragic response of a people bereft of resources in confronting the workings of U.S. capitalist society. Saying this is is not the same as asserting that individual black people are not responsible for their actions--black murderers and rapists should go to jail. But it must be recognized that the nihilistic threat contributes to criminal behavior. It is a threat that feeds on poverty and shattered cultural institutions and grows more powerful as the armors to ward against it are weakened.

But why is this shattering of black civil society occuring? What has led to the weakening of black cultural institutions in asphalt jungles? Corporate market insitutions have contributed greatly to their collapse. By corporate market institutions I mean that complex set of interlocking enterprises that have a disproportionate influence on how are society is run and how our culture is shaped. Needless to say, the primary motivation of these institutions is to make profits, and their basic strategy is to convince the public to consume. These institutions have helped create a seductive way of life, a culture of consumption that capitalizes on every opportunity to make money. Market calculations and cost-benefit analyses hold sway in almost every sphere of U.S. society.

The common denominator of these calculations and analyses is usually the provision, expansion, and intensification of pleasure. Pleasure is a multivalent term; it means different things to many people. In the American way of life pleasure involves comfort, convenience, and sexual stimulation. Pleasure, so defined, has little to do with the past and views the future as no more than repetition of a hedonistically driven present. This market morality stigmatizes others as objects for personal pleasure or bodily stimulation. Conservative behaviorists have alleged that traditional morality has been undermined by radical feminists and the cultural radicals of the sixties. But it is clear that corporate market institutions have greatly contributed to undermining traditional morality in order to stay in business and make a profit. The reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in teh culture industries--television, radio, video, music--in which gestures of sexual foreplay and orgiastic pleasure flood the marketplace.

Like all Americans, African-Americans are influenced greatly by the images of comfort, convenience, machismo, femininity, violence, and sexual stimulation that bombard consumers. These seductive images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out nonmarket values--love, care, service to others--handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward off self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America (Race Matters).

West suggests that the psychological damage of American-style material thirst and denial of access to material sustenance is self-contempt and self-hatred. The love of material success and hate of self within the black community is so pervasive. Look toward hip hop, a lifestyle built upon hundreds of years of black culture but obsessed with black-on-black violence and hyper-consumption. The anger endemic to hip hop seems to come from that all-too-obvious truth that "they have been betrayed by those who came before them. That they are at best tolerated in schools, feared on the streets, and almost inevitably destined for the hell holes of prison (Homeland and Hip Hop by Immortal Technique and Mumia Abu Jamal).

So, when Oprah speaks of I-pods and kicks crowding out chemistry and physics, I'm not all that sure she isn't absolutely correct. However, to lay the cause there and stop, to declare frustration at those who have been victimized, is at both times honest and dishonest. But, mostly it's just sad. She too is a victim of the dominator culture of consumption and market morality, I mean she just recently topped Forbes list of the world's richest female entertainers, and we all know that Oprah is more than an entertainer, she's a walking, talking transnational corporation. She's a brand more than a person. Talk about a victim of market morality, she is, in the eyes of the world, less person than thing.

While Oprah may be right and she may also be wrong, she is, at least, understood. And that, that is something.

Be Brave. Be Tenacious. Be Understanding.

Distraction or Destruction???

Yeah so the title is a little annoying, but whatever. As I wrote a few days ago the Bushies seem to be escalating not just in Iraq but toward Iran. Now, Sec. Gates confirms that the aircraft carrier and the PATRIOT missiles are, in fact, aimed at intimidating Iran (Iran Target of US Gulf Military Moves, Gate Says). NSA Hadley is quoted as saying "the US was 'going to need to deal with what Iran is doing inside Iraq'." The Dark-Lord Veep Baldy McBalderson evidently "accused Iran of 'fishing in troubled waters inside Iraq'". Sally Hemmings, I mean Condoleeza Rice said, "I think there is plenty of evidence that there is Iranian involvement with these networks that are making high-explosive IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and that are endangering our troops, and that's going to be dealt with" (Bush's New Iran Policy-No Evidence of IED Charge). She has yet to provide any evidence, but that's not really her style, so nothing too surprising there.

The real question seems to be is this for real or is this a slight-of-hand? "Look at Iran, they are the reason Iraq is a failed state..." Truth is the end of that sentence is the key, they can either say, "...it's not our fault but there is nothing we can do because the American public (losers and francophile cowards that they are) won't let us win so we have no choice but to leave" or it can end with "...that's exactly why we need to bomb them." Is it wait and see? Well, there is a march on Washington the weekend of January 27, maybe a large energetic and mobilized anti-war movement can make the former more likely than the latter.

Be Brave. Be Kind. Be Loving.

What Dr. King Means to Me

Few people know this but Dr. King's holiday was long in coming. Four days after Dr. King's death John Conyers, that esteemed representative of Detroit, took to the floor of the US House of Representatives and demanded America to pay tribute to one of its true heroes. We had days dedicated to colonizers and conquerors, to slave owners and middling political talents, but here was the opportunity to create a day for a true hero. A man with the courage to point out to America its unfinished journey, its unfulfilled promise, not with anger or revenge, but loving kindness. Now anger and revenge would have made sense. But Dr. King was not that kind of person. He believed that to use the tactics of violence and revenge would lessen his own humanity and therefore make any victory hollow. That was not a popular position. At the time of his death, Dr. King was easily the most hated man in America.

Now, Representative Conyers demanded a holiday for Dr. King in 1968, but Dr. King's birthday was not declared an official holiday of the United States for another 15 years. Fifteen years. That's not to say that it went unnoticed during that time. In fact, Dr. King's birthday is the only national holiday to be born out of a grassroots struggle--a grassroots union struggle.

Dr. King was no stranger to the struggles of working people, in fact he understood that the oppression of blacks and the oppression of the working class were two faces of the same monster. After Dr. King and the "Civil Rights Movement" claimed victory through the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act he moved into a small apartment in a housing development in the Greater Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago to begin his Poor People's Movement. The intersection of race and class was never so obvious in the North, and in July of 1965 Dr. King joined AlRaby and the CCCO's Chicago Project. Dr. King once spoke of racism in Chicago as some of the most overtly violent that he had ever encountered. Dr. King had high hopes for his Poor People's Movement but it did not capture the imagination of the Corporate Media and therefore the American public like the Civil Rights Movement had. Dr. King continued to fight for working people and on the eve of his death visited Memphis to join in a sanitation workers strike. There he delivered his final address just a day before his assassination (I've Been to the Mountain Top).

Dr. King's dedication to working class struggles was very well known if not by bourgeious America, then at least by the working class themselves. And it did not go unrecognized. On the first anniversary of his birth managers in a GM plant in New York threatened to disciplined a small group of workers who refused to work. They backed down when a much larger group walked off the job in protest a few days later. Again in New York, thousands of hospital workers walked off the job demanding better pay, better benefits, and a paid holiday on Dr. King's birthday. 25,000 more hospital workers and 80,000 dressmakers won similar demands in that first year after Dr. King's assassination.

Unions provided the financial and social capital to extend the movement nationwide. That support was coordinated by DWA leader Robinson, a close friend of the King family. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, invited Robinson and Conyers to kick off the campaign for a national holiday at a 1969 birthday rally at the new King center in Atlanta. At the rally, Conyers recounted his bill's defeat in Congress and expressed hope for more support the following year. Robinson called for direct action, declaring, "We don't want anyone to believe we hope Congress will do this. We're just sayin', Us black people in America just ain't gonna work on that day anymore." (Working Class Hero)

And they didn't. While the bill languished in Congress, working people stepped up and refused to work on Dr. King's birthday. Working class people, especially working class blacks, but also allies in the white and Latino communities made Dr. King's birthday a national holiday regardless of what the US Congress had to say.

Fifteen years passed, a President's endorsement came and went, and the King Center had to struggle to assemble the largest petition drive in US history, six million signitures in all, before Dr. King was honored with an official day commemorating his legacy.

Fifteen years. What was it that Dr. King represented that could organize people for fifteen years to jeopardize their jobs to ensure that he was honored? What was it that he represented that forced people like Jesse Helms well into the 1980s to call him unpatriotic, a traitor, a communist on the floor of the Senate? What is it that Dr. King means to us?

The champion of the better angels of our nature. There are few days when right and wrong are so clearly obvious. Dr. King represents courage most fundamentally to state what is right and what is wrong plainly and then to throw our bodies upon the wheels and gears of the machine of the wrong and to bring it to a halt. He reminds me of the Buddha's comment on work, "Your work is to discover your work and then with all your hear to give yourself to it." Dr. King represents the courage of compassion, nonviolence, and loving kindness in the face of violent oppression and the darkest urges toward violent vengance and bitter despair.

Dr. King was a human being, he was flawed, he was unfaithful to his wife, a victim of human weakness. This, I believe, only serves to make his legacy more important, he was a person. As complicated and as basic as that, he was a person. He struggled in the spotlight and in his heart and no figure has ever been more interrogated while he did so than Dr. King. Twenty-four hour surveillance courtesy of that same US government that refused for 15 years to honor him with a day off of work. That same US government that recently colonized his wife's funeral, demanding that Harry Belafonte, a man who had paid for Dr. King's bail from the Birmingham City jail (as he did with many other civil rights activists), who funded the march on Washington in 1963, who financed the freedom rides, who was blacklisted because of it all, and who paid for Dr. King's funeral, be disinvited.

Talking about Dr. King is interesting today. All day I looked for memoriums, the History Channel had one half hour on Dr. King as a holiday. They had four hours of "Consipracy?" and four hours of UFOs, but only one half hour for Dr. King. It was cable access that came through finally with a day of videos of lectures and discussions about black America.

As a white man, explaining what Dr. King means to me must be understood through my efforts at honestly interrogating my privilege and the truth of history, the gifts of black folk and the costs of white supremacy. This is one journey that remains unfinished and if you read this will be one that I continuously return.

Be Brave. Be Kind. Be Loving.

Surge...Escalation...You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

The "surge" will not work. It's truly amazing how quickly escalation has overshadowed the Iraq Study Group Report which calls for diplomatic engagement with Iran. That's not in keeping with Bush & Co.'s plans for Iran. They are going to attack Iran.

Just a few days ago the US raided an Iranian consulate in Kurdistan and arrested six Iranians (US Attack Draws Iranian Anger). Juan Cole hypothesizes that Iran may have been funneling weapons to the Kurdish military with the agreement that they share with the Badr Corps with whom they have long-standing ties--a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing (Did the US Just Provoke Iran?).

Then there is the appointment of Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell. McConnell replaces Negroponte because of what appears to be a two-year fight between the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Vice-President over a forth coming National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. McConnell has been said to have a "Rummyesque" relationship with the Vice President and will probably go along with whatever the Veep says (Bush's New Intel Chief Could Overhype Danger of Iran).

In 2005 an incomplete National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was leaked and it stated that Iran was at least 10 years away from getting a nuclear weapon (Iran is Judged 10 Years from Nuclear Bomb). This was in direct contradiction to White House assertions on the progress of the Iranian nuclear program. Negroponte defended the published findings, however, the Department of Defense--on orders from the Vice President's office--created an Iranian Directorate, an action which reminded many of the "Office of Special Plans" which manipulated intelligence and strong-armed justabout everyone into a war with Iraq (Pentagon Confirms Iranian Directorate as Officials Raise New Concerns About War).

Then there is the appointment of Admiral William Fallon to head up the US Central Command, which means he is the new number one in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fallon has little experience with ground wars, and instead is an expert in naval aviation (Official Bio of Admiral William Fallon).

Oh, and he sent an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf and deployed Patriot antimissile batteries as well.

And, he said this during his surge speech, "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

I smell a Spanish American War/US Mexican War/Vietnam War style fake-attack-creates-real-war-justification situation beginning to materialize. If not that, perhaps Cambodia style bombing runs into Iran to destroy "support networks." Israel recently warned aloud that it will attack Iran if it does not abandon its nuclear weapons program (Focus: Mission Iran).

I know that you might be saying, ok, but the public would never go along with another war. Maybe. You might also be saying, a war with Iran will take a lot more than some Patriot missiles, an aircraft carrier, and an Israeli bombing run. Maybe. But think how the public debate has shifted so completely from the Iraq Study Group's recommendation of engagement to one of how and when Iran will be attacked. The Washington Posts' Blog "The Note" wondered aloud if President Bush had issued an executive order to attack Iran (Did the President Declare "Secret War" Against Syria and Iran?).

The public doesn't need to go along with another war for one to begin. Just think of all that "who cares that the war was wrong, we're there now, so we gotta do it right" kind of rhetoric, if war begins, the fight is on whether we want it or not. But, your points are well taken, sabre rattling to change the subject might be all we are seeing, but sabre rattling is not innocent it does more to destroy any chance of victory in Iraq and to harden the us vs. them mentality of what the President calls an increasingly inappropriately titled "War on Terror."

"What is the cause of the crisis in black education?" Part I: Interrogating our Pernicious Racial Mythologies

I was in class last night and my prof. asked us pointedly "what is the cause of the crisis in black education?"

The writing is on the wall he said, HBCUs are seeing declining enrollment, they're having to turn to Whites and Asians to fill classes. There are statistics that show that Black and Latino boys have a 50-50 chance of graduating from high school. Universities across the nation are seeing lower enrollment numbers from Blacks and Latinos. My professor said he could keep on listing "facts". The "crisis" of the black family, surging single mother households, studies showing that "pairing up" is a biological imperative for a reason. His course description even includes the following phrase, "Today, nearly fifty years after his [WEBDuBois ] death, we face a national crisis in American education, with African Americans and Latinos dropping out of school at alarming rates."

This is a familiar narrative--Single Black Mothers (SBMs) raisin' their kids without "baby daddies," 50% of Black and Latinos not graduating from high school, the Young Black Angry "Super-Predators" and Black-on-Black crime. The interesting thing about an accepted narrative is it's rarely interrogated. For example, the 50-50 odds of graduating high school is from the Department of Education and is almost never questioned in the Corporate Media (or the Alternative Press for that matter). However, this "fact" differs substantially from tons of other "facts," including the highly respected National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) which gives far different numbers. The NELS is more accurate because it is a longitudinal study, i.e. it follows the same kids. The other stats look at the how many freshman graduate in 4 years, not taking into account the "freshman bulge". The "freshman bulge" does not refer to weight gain, but instead refers to the fact that many freshman are held back because of the pernicious phenomenon of social promotion throughout US elementary schools. The NELS shows that about 75% of blacks and Latinos graduate from high school. Of those blacks that do dropout, about 1/4 receive their GED, and about 10% of Latino dropouts get their GED (Rethinking High School Graduation Rates and Trends). Don't read me wrong, this isn't "ok," but it's also not the 50-50 you hear about. The Corporate Media seems to have a reverse "talented tenth" philosophy of racial representations. Middle Class blacks are nearly invisible in most of the Corporate Media ether. Blacks are dropouts, welfare queens, and super-predators.

How about that welfare queens pernicious fallacy? Black women are baby making machines, and have many "baby daddies," right? Wrong. Fertility rates among black women are almost the same as that of white women:

"For every 1000 white women 15-44 there are 66.5 live births, while for every 1000 black women that age there are 71.7.

"Indeed, the fertility rate for black women has fallen by more than half in the last forty years, such that the gap between black and white fertility has been slashed by nearly 80%, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The birthrate for unmarried black women--especially vilified by racist rhetoric--is at a forty-year low and the rate of babies born to black teenshasn ’t gone up one iota since 1920" (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).

What about teenage ne'r-do-wells and their babies? Well, "six-tenths of one percent of black babies are born to women under the age of fifteen, and the birthrate for black teens 15-19 has dropped by a third since 1991. Overall, more than eight in ten black babies are born to mothers in their twenties or older, and the teen birthrate has fallen faster among black youth than any other racial group over the last decade" (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).

Well, surely the "sky-rocketing" out-of-wedlock births is proof of the "crisis" that we all know is plaguing "Black America," right? 0 for 4 so far...

The reason for the increase in the share of black children born out-of-wedlock in recent decades is that two-parent black couples are having fewer children than ever, meaning that a growing share of the children who are born in the black community will be out-of-wedlock, even though sexual behaviorhasn ’t changed, and fertility rates among single black women have been falling.

Indeed, eighty percent of the increase in out-of-wedlock childbirths in the black community is because of the falloff in children born to intact black families: a falloff that has been even steeper than the decline among single moms.

Additionally, the apparent “increase” in out-of-wedlock children in single mother homes within the black community, and generally, is the result of the Census Bureau changing the methods used for counting such families in the first place.

Whereas single moms with kids who lived in extended family settings (such as living with their own parents) were historically not counted as separate family units, since the early 1980’s they have been. So even though such families may have existed for many years prior to the accounting switch, they would not have appeared in statistical data until more recently.

Putting aside the issue of just how “harmful” single-parent homes are (and evidence indicates that with the exception of the smaller income base thereisn ’t much difference between such homes and “intact” families, and indeed children in intact families are often less confident and well-adjusted), clearly the problems for black folks in this country are not the result of childbirth patterns (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).

Then you have the "super-predator" mythology. This story holds that violent crime in America is the result of a generation of Angry Young Black Super-predators. The narrative began with the "crack epidemic" of the 1980s. From 1985 to 1990 the corporate Media was in an orgiastic feeding frenzy over the idea of a "crack epidemic." Dan Rather crawled through a "crack house." Hell, "crack house" became part of our national lexicon. So did "crack babies," and no wonder, with this hellish prediction from columnist Charles Krauthammer , “a cohort of babies is now being born whose future is closed to them from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe deprivation. And all of this is being biologically determined from birth." Of course that's not true, but the "crack epidemic" was a Corporate Media wet dream and just three years after crack hit the streets in 1984 (courtesy of the CIA) the Corporate Media had written over 1000 stories on a surging "crack epidemic" (Crack Babies Talk Back).

The crack-epidemic "accompanied" a steep rise in homicide rates in the black community. "Between 1984 and 1994, the homicide rate for black males aged 14 to 17 more than doubled, and the homicide rate for black males aged 18 to 24 increased nearly as much. During this period, the black community also experienced an increase in fetal death rates, low birth-weight babies, weapons arrests, and the number of children in foster care" (How Bad was Crack Cocaine?). University of Chicago economists Steven Levitt and Kevin Murphy have attempted to study the impact of crack cocaine on American communities during and after this "epidemic," and what they have found is truly food for thought. "Rather than the drug use itself, the greatest social costs of crack are associated with prohibition-related violence" (How Bad was Crack Cocaine?). This means that the true costs of the crack epidemic come not from the drug but from the Drug War. This "war" has led to the massive incarceration of non-violent drug offenders (many black and brown) and countless acts of police brutality and human rights violations within urban neighborhoods. According to the Department of Justice's Household Survey "'most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998.' And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%" (Drug War Facts).

Well, the crack epidemic that invaded Black America actually claimed more white users in 1998, "an estimated 971 thousand Americans used crack cocaine in 1998. Of those, 462 thousand were White, 324 thousand were Black, and 157 thousand were Hispanic" (Drug War Facts). The chief thing the crack epidemic did was reinforce an already existing myth that black men are violent and should be behind bars even as they represented a significantly smaller number of drug users, even within the crack market.

As the decade of crack ended a new spectre emerged to reinforce and justify absurdly high incarceration rates and gestapo-inspired, police-state policies like the CRASH units ofLos Angeles and the unrestricted violence of prison guards. In 1996, Rep. Bill McCollum warned the House of Representatives to "brace yourself for the coming generation of `super-predators'" (No Minor Matter). These super-predators were predicted by conservative pop-criminologists throughout the late 1990s. For example, James Q. Wilson, one of the hippest pop-criminologists of the late 1990s wrote in 1995 that "the first decade of the next century will see 30,000 more young muggers, killers, and thieves than we have now. Get ready'" (No Minor Matter). And former-White House head of the Office of Faith Based Initiatives and inventor of the 'super-predator' moniker warned ominously that "By the year 2010, there will be approximately 270,000 more juvenile super-predators on the streets than there were in 1990" (No Minor Matter). Well, they were all wrong. Violent crime decreased dramatically from 1995 to 2005. The National Crime Victimization Survey and Uniform Crime Reports records that serious violent crime has decreased from a twenty year high in 1993 to a thirty year low in 2004 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Four Measures of Serious Violent Crime).

Finally, there is the myth that blacks are lazy welfare junkies who do not wanna work but would rather "hang" on the "corners".

Yet the truth is that welfare dependence is hardly the norm--for black women or anyone else receiving public assistance. Even before the passage of punitive welfare reform, six in ten welfare families were leaving the rolls within two years, debunking the notion of long-term dependency as the norm for welfare recipients.

Indeed, two-thirds of women who receive welfare as children will never receive aid as adults and 81% whose mothers received AFDC for long periods never receive aid as adults. In other words, the notion ofintergenerational welfare dependence so commonly accepted is a false one.

Instead of welfare, the poor prefer work, yet often there are not enough jobs to go around that pay wages at or above the poverty line. In Central Harlem, one study found that there were fourteen applicants for every job opening in the area.

Nationally, in times of recession, there may be as many as seven to ten people out of work for every job opening above the poverty line. And since the Federal Reserve’s policy is to raise interest rates whenever unemployment drops below four percent--thereby freezing new hires--millions will be jobless, poor, and need welfare no matter their work ethic, solely because of this one monetary policy intended to keep wages and prices low.

Indeed, experience from around the country demonstrates that low-income people of color have work ethics that are no different from whites and those above the poverty line. In the early 1990’s, when a handful oflongshore jobs opened up in Los Angeles, 50,000 blacks and Latinos--mostly low income--showed up to apply.

In Cleveland, 15,000 unemployed welfare mothers and teenagers of color stood in the rain for four hours to get one of the minimum-wage temporary jobs cleaning up public parks.

In Chicago, 15,000 mostly low-income applicants of color applied for less than 4,000 temporary jobs.

In Baltimore, 75 openings at the Social Security Administration were met with 26,000 applications, mostly from blacks, and heavily from low-income citizens.

Far from relying on taxpayers for their livelihood, only one in ten blacks receive any form of cash welfare, and only about one in six receives food stamps. In fact, blacks who are eligible for the Food Stamp program are actually less likely than similar whites to apply for and receive such assistance.

As for black single moms, although they are twice as likely as white single moms to be in poverty, they are no more likely than white single moms to receive public assistance. What’s more, three out of four single black moms have jobs, further dispelling the notion that single mothers in the black community mostly choose to “live off welfare” (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).

What is especially interesting about this is that the accepted narrative is not only wrong but that it is wrong in a really predictable way. Blacks are portrayed in ways that reinforce the idea that their behaviorally or culturally abnormal and that that is the reason for any lasting racial inequality. Of course, that's if you believe there is lasting racial inequality, which it turns out, the majority of whites do not believe.

In 2001 the Washington Post, the Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University conducted a national survey that found that "whether out of hostility, indifference or simple lack of knowledge, large numbers of white Americans incorrectly believe that blacks are as well off as whites in terms of their jobs, incomes, schooling and health care" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).

How does this happen??? Blacks are at the same time welfare-queens, super-predators, crack-baby-raising, ghetto-dwelling, high school dropouts, AND they are "as well off as well off as whites in terms of their jobs, incomes, schooling and health care." You gotta respect racism for its tenaciousness in the face of common sense. What's funny is that none of these things are true.

Not only are blacks not the ugly stereotype that is often seen in the Corporate Media, they also have not made the gains that whites claim.

"Blacks are far more likely to be without health insurance than whites. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey found that blacks were nearly twice as likely as whites to be without health insurance" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).

"About one in six blacks -- 17 percent -- have completed college, compared with 28 percent of all whites. And 88 percent of all whites are high school graduates, compared with 79 percent of all blacks 25 years old or older" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).

"Blacks are about twice as likely as whites -- 23 versus 12 percent -- to hold lower-paying, less prestigious service jobs. Blacks also are more than twice as likely to be unemployed; in May, the jobless rate for blacks stood at 8 percent, compared with 3.8 percent among whites" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).

"A 1997 report found that the median income of young two-parent black families had fallen by nearly half since 1973. What’s more, even black women who 'played by the rules,' and had no kids out-of-wedlock, saw their incomes fall 32% from 1972-1989, and have been unable to regain the lost ground since" (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).

"Substantial differences persist between black and white earnings. The median household income for whites was $44,366 in 1999, compared with $27,910 for blacks. Fewer than three in 10 whites earn less than $25,000; nearly half of all blacks in 1999 earned less than that. And the poverty rate for African Americans is more than double the white rate" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).

"Blacks were twice as likely to have reported having difficulties recently paying their rent or mortgage and about half as likely as whites to have money invested in stocks, bonds or mutual funds" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).

As I wrote at the beginning of this post, my professor asked us pointedly, "what is the cause of the crisis in black education?" A classmate, a teacher in an urban school that is predominantly poor and working class (as well as black and Latino--what a shocking coincidence!) responded that it was "their mentality." Pushed on whose mentality she was referring to, she paused and sheepishlyresponded, "black people...not that I am a racist..."

"Not that I am a racist." That's when my hand shot up, cause let's face it, when you say something that needs to be followed with "not that I am a racist," odds are, you probably are. "Nothing personal, and I don't mean to attack you at all, but you are a racist. It's important that we admit it. I am too. I'm no member of the Klan, but I am a product of an American society that divides access to power, privilege, and opportunity along the line of race, always has, and always will. And no matter your good intentions, just living here means you breath in the smog of racism and it does affect you. So, I know you think you're being honest and I agree with you that you are. It took guts to say what you said, to admit that you think black people have some anti-educational mentality. But, that does make you a racist, and if we are here to grow and we are here be honest then let's start now by admitting that whether we like it or not we white people are almost surely racists, it's just some of us are in recovery. It's like AA, the first thing you have to do is admitt you have a problem, that's the first step."

That's what I should have said.

Stay tuned for the next installment of our ongoing docu-blog-drama "what is the cause of the crisis in black education?"