Because Sometimes Things Are Forgotten That Shouldn’t Be

This is a completely personal anecdote, so take it for what it's worth. This is about a defining moment for me in my education as an egalitarian. Equality is something we talk about, we assume to be the case for everyone, and never really question. Here, it's the air we breathe. It's not true. We are not all equal. And in spite of our all our lip service to the idea of equality under the law or the equality of opportunity, we all know, if we're honest, that we're still trying to get to that level. Probably it's a function of how well we think our lives are at any given moment. "If I'm doing all right, there's no problem. What are those people over there complaining about? I don't see anything wrong with my life." Well. This is about gender equality. It's one of the most under-considered things in our present world. I saw a PBS special last week about early television and on it Angie Dickinson was talking about her series Police Woman. Breakthrough television. It had been the first dramatic tv show since the mid-60s to be headed by a female in prime time. It was shortly before Charlie's Angels and a decade after both Honey West and The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. During the interview, Dickinson commented that the feminists had been angry with her because she hadn't used the show as a statement for the cause. She defended herself by declaring that she was feminine not a feminist---as if being a feminist were somehow a bad thing, a dirty word, a slur. [More . . . ]

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Raging Revisionist Republican Racism Ramping Up for 2012 Races

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) has made efforts to reconcile his past strong support for segregationist organizations with statements that such organizations as the Citizens’ Councils and more recently the Council of Conservative Citizens in Yazoo City and Mississippi are “town leaders” and just “business organizations.” Those same folks started the segregated Carroll Academy in Yazoo City Mississippi, where Gov. Barbour’s kids went to school. Governor Barbour was mentioned in a recent Weekly Standard article as a possible GOP nominee to run for president against President Barack Obama in 2012. Governor Barbour said of racism and segregation in Yazoo City, Mississippi as he grew up there in the 1960’s; “I just don’t remember it being that bad.” That Governor Barbour should have sentimental recollections of the most racist, segregationist organizations in his hometown isn’t surprising. In the recent Weekly Standard article Barbour says he went to hear a speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but, didn’t hear anything because he was “distracted by girls.” Farther North, Republican US House member Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had this to say about America, the US Constitution, Bill of Rights and slavery during the early American years; “…the very founders that wrote these documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the united States.” Congresswoman Bachmann apparently is unaware that many of the Founding Fathers were slave owners and that Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the US Constitution declared slaves to be 3/5 of a person for the census and purposes of apportionment of US House seats, tax disbursements and the Electoral College. Slavery and involuntary servitude, except prison slavery, were abolished by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution adopted on December 18, 1865. Before the 2008 election, Rep. Bachmann also called for investigation of then Senator Obama and his supporters as “Anti-American.” [More . . . ]

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The Rich

In the February 2011 edition of Harper's Magazine (in an article titled "Easy Chair: Servile Disobedience"), Thomas Frank offers a sharp challenge for The Rich. Now he's not talking about all those who are rich. I assume he's focusing on The Rich who proudly own and control Congress. There's something different about those rich people…

One 2009 study in Psychological Science found that, in conversations with strangers, higher-status people tend to do more doodling and fidgeting and also to use fewer "engagement cues"-looking at the other person, laughing, and nodding their heads. A 2010 paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that "lower-class individuals" turned out to be better performers on measures of such a "prosocial" virtues as generosity, charity, and helpfulness. A third study found that those of higher status were noticeably worse in assessing the emotions of others or figuring out what facial expressions meant. All of which is to say, The Rich are different from you and me. They are ruder and less generous. They don't get what others are thinking. And apparently they don't really care. If you stop and think about it for a second, you understand that all of this makes sense. People don't craft poisoned collateralized debt obligations by calling on what they learned in Sunday school.… [T]he billionaires with the strongest sense of class solidarity have another plan for the disposable income: activating their lobbyists in Washington, building grassroots movements to march on their behalf, and using their media properties to run experiments on human credulity. Even their giving is a form of taking. For example, Charles Koch, of Wichita oil fame, recently circulated to his "network of business and philanthropic leaders" an invitation to a meeting at which-if their last meeting's agenda is any indication-they will discuss strategies for beating back environmentalism and the "threat" of financial regulation. This is a kind of philanthropy that pays dividends.… Americans are born to serve and assist the wealthy; it is our inalienable duty.… We cater to the wealthy in our work lives and we glorify them in our leisure.… We take up collections for the public schools because we feel the fortunes of the rich ought to go unencumbered by that burden.
Frank's article should be read out loud, word by word to be fully appreciated. It paints a somber picture of America's class struggle, but the first step toward change is forcing one to open one's eyes. I only hope that we are in the midst of a mere class struggle and not at the end of a great experiment that culminated with Citizen's United. I can just imagine many wealthy politically active people protesting, "The fact that I am rich didn't make anyone else poor." That argument still works for me for those people who are not showering Washington DC with big money in return for special privileges that siphon off my tax dollars and impinge on my civil rights. Who can any longer contest with a serious face that The Rich, including big corporate interests (telecoms, health insurers, military contractors and bankers), can get whatever they want from Congress. Where is this lesson in grade school government textbooks?

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The Hellhound and HeLa: Recent American Historical Writing At Its Best

The last really good history I read was "Hellhound On His Trail, " which follows James Earl Ray's path from his childhood in Alton, Illinois through a violent intersection with the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and continues to follow Ray's trajectory with his quizzical recantations of his "life's purpose." With the same cool hand, Sides sketches the strengths and inadequacies of Dr. King's inner circle and paints larger atmospheric strokes with newspaper headlines on the increasing violence in response to desegregation and the influence of war in Vietnam on national sentiment about federal involvement in heretofore state affairs. By themselves, vignettes about Ray's lackluster career as a petty criminal, his stunted attempts at artistic grandeur and addiction to prostitutes would simply depress the reader. Here, the intentional failures and manipulations of Hoover's FBI and first-hand accounts of Ray's behavior appear like birds descending on a tragic town, flickering across the broader canvas creating momentum and dread. Awful as the true subject of this thriller may be, I found myself disappointed to reach the end.

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The Past As Spin

Representative Michelle Bachman is the national voice of The Tea Party. Recently, in speaking to a group of Iowans, she made some claims about American history that would be laughable if they had not come from someone who likes to style herself an authority of Constitutional matters. She claimed that the glory of our country is that color and language didn’t matter, nor did class or parentage, that once people got here, “we were all the same.” Wishful thinking at best. Certainly that was the idea behind the Declaration of Independence, with its grand opening phrases, but like all such ambitions, it took reality a long, long time to catch up—and it still hasn’t. The fact is, despite our stated political and social goals, immigrants have always had difficulty upon arriving here, some more than others, and those already here have always resented new arrivals. And even for those who were already living here, equality was simply not a reality. African slaves aside, women did not achieve equality until…well, some would say they’re still trying to achieve it, but just for one metric, they didn’t get the vote until 1921. People who owned no property were barred from the vote for a good portion of the 19th Century and other barriers were put up here and there, time and again, such as literacy tests. Anything to keep certain groups from being able to vote against the self-selected “true” Americans. She went further, though, and suggested that slavery was an unfortunate holdover from colonial times and that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was gone from the United States.” She cited John Quincey Adams, who was a staunch campaigner against slavery. The problem, though, is that he was not a Founder. He was the son of one. [More . . . ]

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