The Obama Project@WindonWater.net

Many people are rightfully concerned about the creation of a police state in Arizona (and now, Texas, since apparently, Texas intends to put a similar law in place. MY fear is more long-term, more about the confluence of economic interests and insidious law. In America, we already have an example of a history of laws passing over time that gradually targetted a particular people, in pursuit of the agricultural interests of the south – and that example is what eventually became the legal framework of slavery. Here is a brief overview of some of the issues:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p263.html

Whatever the status of these first Africans to arrive at Jamestown, it is clear that by 1640, at least one African had been declared a slave. This African was ordered by the court “to serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere.”

The grounds for this harsh sentence presumabley (sic) lay in the fact that he was non-Christian rather than in the fact that he was physically dark. But religious beliefs could change, while skin color could not. Within a generation race, not religion, was being made the defining characteristic of enslaved Virginians, The terrible transformation to racial slavery was underway.

emphasis mine

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p270.html

• Philip Cowen Case: At her death in 1664, a Mrs. Amye Beazlye left to her cousin a black servant named Philip Cowen. The will stated that Cowen should work for the cousin for eight years, then be given his freedom and three barrels of corn and a suit of clothes. At the end of the eight years, the cousin extended the contract three years. At the end of those three years, he informed Cowen that another nine years of service was due. In 1675, Cowen petitioned the court for his freedom. The court sided with Cowen, asking the owner to release him from servitude and to pay him the corn and the cost of a suit.

• Fernando Case: A bondservant for life, Fernando petitioned the court in 1667 for his freedom, arguing that, since he was a Christian and had spent several years in England, he should serve no longer than an Englishman was required to serve. The court dismissed the suit. Fernando appealed to a higher court. (Unfortunately, no record of the higher court’s decision exists.)

(there are two other cases at this link)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p262.html

Three servants working for a farmer named Hugh Gwyn ran away to Maryland. Two were white; one was black. They were captured in Maryland and returned to Jamestown, where the court sentenced all three to thirty lashes — a severe punishment even by the standards of 17th-century Virginia. The two white men were sentenced to an additional four years of servitude — one more year for Gwyn followed by three more for the colony. But, in addition to the whipping, the black man, a man named John Punch, was ordered to “serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere.” John Punch no longer had hope for freedom.

That’s the legal background to the gradual erosion of even the limited rights African Americans had at the founding of this nation, until the legal framework was built up to decide, once and for all, that brown people born slaves should remain so their entire lives, and not as people even, but as property. So, a people arrive in the country with iffy legal status are gradually reduced to permanent slave status. But how about people whose legal status is known? How about free blacks?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p325.html

The passage of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, fueled a huge and vastly profitable underground industry that took full advantage of the inferior legal status of free and enslaved blacks. The law made it possible for a white person to claim any black person as a fugitive, and placed the burden of proof on the captive. Free blacks living in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and other cities near the borders of slave states were especially vulnerable, though several well-known cases demonstrate that no state was immune.

Slave speculators (or slavers) — who legally purchased the rights to runaways, captured them, and then resold them at a profit — often seized blacks at random, banking on their inability to prove their status to the satisfaction of a magistrate. In one case, a slave speculator who attempted to seize AME Bishop Richard Allen found himself in debtors’ prison, charged with attempted kidnapping, false accusation and perjury by Allen, who dropped the charges several months later.

I would like to think that we are so far past this as a country that this could never happen to Mexicans in the south, who are working as day laborers in agricultural fields, but since in some cases Mexicans have already seen slavery conditions, and given our low level of sympathy for Mexicans as our suspicions about the legal migrant status is provoked, are they really so far off from the precarious position African Americans were in so long ago?

I don’t think so.

QT

Andrew Sullivan seems to be in a tiff with Glenn Reynolds over a picture of President Obama and Vice President Biden. This is getting some play on both the left and the right. There’s an accusation of racism being floated at Reynolds, though nothing in his post suggests that that is most definitely the cause for Reynold’s complaint. And yet, some of Reynold’s commenters reveal their racialist bent of mind at his prompting – when asked to caption the photo, some commenters cast President Obama in the role of a drug dealer. Ugh. Because a black man, no matter how accomplished, can be ridiculed with drug dealer jokes, right? If there was no racial intent, my bad, but as the saying goes… if it looks like a duck and quacks like one – it just might be a duck.

More disturbing than cranks on the right with their willful viciousness, is the defense from the left. They assert that when one zooms up close, the president looks “uppity” or “condescending” to his white subordinate, and that this must be what got Reynolds riled up. Maybe so. But having looked at the whole picture, and the zoomed up version, I have yet to see any appearance of uppitiness, condescension, drunkenness, or any other such look. I saw the president listening intently to the vice president, from an angle that forces his eyes downward – because the president is in fact, taller than the vice president.

It seems to me that any attempt to see this in any other light is reaching … and the reach is because the president is black.

Editing to add two points: 1 – the controversy hipped me to the flickr stream – which is just AWESOME. So, I’m glad for that… and 2 – I guess it might be helpful if I upload the picture???

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden talk before the start of the Kennedy Center Honors at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., Dec. 6, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

QT

Really – this requires no commentary. It means the world to me to have this bit of history being made.

POLITICO 44: The Obama Presidency. Minute by Minute 5-12-2009.

Quoted in its entirety:

A Turning Point for Voting Rights Law – Room for Debate Blog – NYTimes.com.
The New York Times has created a blog called “Room for Debate” – in which prominant Times contributors debate various thorny issues in the news.  It is a wonderful contribution to the ongoing struggle for genuinely trustworthy, nonpartisan education on various issues, and I heartily recommend it.

This issue relates to the  Voting Rights Act reauthorization – and I’m posting because so far I feel myself unable to follow the argument.  The argument (and therefore presumably, the law itself) seems to hinge on two separate issues, but commentators seem to address only one at a time.  The first is a concern about laws that would prohibit or suppress minority (in general, black in particular) votes, and the second is a concern about districting.  While I can see how they are related – they don’t seem to be the same at all – and it seems therefore that those in favor and those opposed to recertification are talking past each other.

I’ll be digging more into the issue – but if anyone has more to share on the topic, please do!

QT

The Tragedy And Betrayal Of Booker T. Washington – Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Ta-Nehisi’s BEST post ever.  He may not think so, but this is a very cogent piece of writing.  Read it.  A quick sample:

In retrospect, this was a grievous error. In point of fact, whites actually did have an existential objection to black people. Their beef wasn’t that illiterates and moral degenerates might get too much power. Quite the opposite. Their beef was that blacks would prove to not be illiterates and moral degenerates, and thus fully able to compete with them. To see this point illustrated, one need only look at the history of race riots in the South. When white mobs set upon black communities they didn’t simply burn down the “morally degenerate” portions–they attacked the South’s burgeoning black middle and working class and its institutions. They went for the churches, the schools and the businesses. It’s one thing to be opposed to black amorality. It’s quite another to be opposed to black progress. The lesson blacks took post-Atlanta Compromise was that whites had used the former to cover for the latter. These days, it’s popular to bemoan the fact that Washington has fallen into disfavor. But it wasn’t blacks who proved the Atlanta Compromise fraudulent–it was the whites of that era.

There’s been a lot of talk on the left that Michael Steele’s ascension to the head of the Republican party represented a degree of tokenism. I’ve long argued that tokenism or not, the fact of the matter is that years ago (not too many) it wouldn’t have even been possible, and furthermore – the man won by election – not by fiat. And of course, he won because President Barack Obama led the way to making it possible for the a black man to be the recognized leader of a major United States political party. Stomping all over that achievement just because it was republicans and not democrats, doesn’t work for me.

Anyway – here’s a news story that demonstrates even more powerfully, just how much Steele’s election really DOES matter: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18627.html

Michael Steele owes his dramatic victory in the race for Republican National Committee chairman to votes from island territories outside the 50 United States. Now, the question is what else he owes them.

The residents of the five territories, from Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea to the tiny Northern Marianas in the Pacific Ocean, provided Steele with a bloc of 15 votes – one more than his margin of victory – when they swung into his camp late in the balloting last week.

Interesting. 15 votes from the islands. You know what? I’m betting that most of those voters are black and hispanic. Call me crazy, but – I think Mr. Steele has an agenda.

Moreover – the “black vote” is nowhere near as homogenous as people claim. African-Americans form only one part of the “black vote” and I’d argue that it is probably a solid block – maybe about 75% democratic leaning. But Africans and folks from the Carribean are more than likely a bit less homogenous – their experience in America differs significantly from the African American experience, though there are many touchpoints of solidarity, including the confrontation with racism on a daily basis. Hispanics, on the other hand, have never been a solid block – there’s always been a republican set and a democratic set of voters within the Hispanic community.

Anyone really want to shortchange Chairman Steele? I recommend seriously against it.

Remember that saying? That was early hip hop/r & b. Don’t know if white people talked about the flip side – I think the mainstream term was “B” side, from which you also got “B” movies (I think). Anyway…

I quoted on this blog and elsewhere, with some bemusement, about some whites who were clearly either racist, ignorant, or both, but who were voting for Barack Obama. I recalled with a good deal of approval, the Ohio man who thought Obama was a muslim, but was leaning toward voting for him anyway. (And this was BEFORE the financial meltdown!) I quoted somewhere the couple who proudly declared that they were “voting for the n*gg*r”. Change comes slow – and people are who they are. I appreciated all the stories like that. These, after all, are the white folks who won’t be easily integrated – but who will, it seems, be able to live comfortably in a pluralistic world, just the same.

OK, but that’s me looking at white people. What’s on the flip side? As is always true – there is no equivalence here – there is no racism against whites in this video – but having said that – this video is not safe for work…

Jay-Z My President is black Remix LIVE 1-18-09 from pleasedontstare.com on Vimeo.

H/T Ta Nehisi Coates

QT

The opening words of Rev. Lowry’s prayer were the closing stanza of the Black (Negro) National Anthem. Here’s a rendition of the song:

And the lyrics, by James Weldon Johnson: http://www.black-network.com/anthem.htm

QT