Holder-ing A Gun To Their Head

Lost in yesterday's Supreme Court Ruling--one which made Chief Justice Roberts an overnight sensation, and a Democratic Hero, and, for Republicans, the most hated man in America--was the contempt vote that a Republican House brought against Attorney General Eric Holder.

With the scoring threat of the National Rifle Association (NRA) hovering over yesterday's proceedings, it was no surprise that 17 Democrats voted with Republicans to uphold the sanction.

Presumably, had Democrats in swing districts voted against the contempt, they would be placing their own House tenure in jeopardy, as the NRA, with the long memory of elephants, would, during their reelection bid, remind their respective electorate--with one damaging ad after the other--of their unforgivable sin against gun ownership.

Supposedly a non-partisan organization, the group was anything but leading up to the House contempt vote, with the NRA leading the charge on the unsubstantiated claim that the Attorney General was involved in a cover up of misdeeds in the ATF Fast and Furious Operation, insisting that the Obama administration allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico, so that the ensuing violence would so disgust the American citizenry that they would call for a repeal of the Second Amendment.

An outlandish claim on the surface, but one that Republicans believed--once all the facts surfaced--would vindicate their actions and behavior, if only they could get their hands on the Attorney General's internal memos, e-mails and the like, that he refused to surrender to Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Congress holding Attorney General Holder in contempt has no precedence--and neither is there precedence for how this president has been attacked, and continues to be treated by those on the Right. The only explanation for it--according to many non-black pundits--is that the president is black, and the real reason that this kind of racist and racial treatment, far from being generally denounced, is quietly tolerated.

One of Fortune Magazine's reporters investigated the Fast and Furious conspiratorial claim, as well as other claims, revealing that Republican claims of a cover up, and a conspiracy to repeal the Second Amendment, was, itself, fraught with conspiratorial overtones:

Some call it the "parade of ants"; others the "river of iron." The Mexican government has estimated that 2,000 weapons are smuggled daily from the U.S. into Mexico. The ATF is hobbled in its effort to stop this flow. No federal statute outlaws firearms trafficking, so agents must build cases using a patchwork of often toothless laws. For six years, due to Beltway politics, the bureau has gone without permanent leadership, neutered in its fight for funding and authority. The National Rifle Association has so successfully opposed a comprehensive electronic database of gun sales that the ATF's congressional appropriation explicitly prohibits establishing one.

...

The agents faced numerous obstacles in what they dubbed the Fast and Furious case. (They named it after the street-racing movie because the suspects drag raced cars together.) Their greatest difficulty by far, however, was convincing prosecutors that they had sufficient grounds to seize guns and arrest straw purchasers. By June 2010 the agents had sent the U.S. Attorney's office a list of 31 suspects they wanted to arrest, with 46 pages outlining their illegal acts. But for the next seven months prosecutors did not indict a single suspect.

On Dec. 14, 2010, a tragic event rewrote the narrative of the investigation. In a remote stretch of Peck Canyon, Ariz., Mexican bandits attacked an elite U.S. Border Patrol unit and killed an agent named Brian Terry. The attackers fled, leaving behind two semiautomatic rifles. A trace of the guns' serial numbers revealed that the weapons had been purchased 11 months earlier at a Phoenix-area gun store by a Fast and Furious suspect.

...

Conservatives have pummeled the Obama administration, and especially Holder, for more than a year. "Who authorized this program that was so felony stupid that it got people killed?" Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, demanded to know in a hearing in June 2011. He has charged the Justice Department, which oversees the ATF, with having "blood on their hands." Issa and more than 100 other Republican members of Congress have demanded Holder's resignation.

The conflict has escalated dramatically in the past ten days. On June 20, in a day of political brinkmanship, Issa's committee voted along party lines, 23 to 17, to hold Holder in contempt of Congress for allegedly failing to turn over certain subpoenaed documents, which the Justice Department contended could not be released because they related to ongoing criminal investigations. The vote came hours after President Obama asserted executive privilege to block the release of the documents. Holder now faces a vote by the full House of Representatives this week on the contempt motion (though negotiations over the documents continue). Assuming a vote occurs, it will be the first against an attorney general in U.S. history.

As political pressure has mounted, ATF and Justice Department officials have reversed themselves. After initially supporting Group VII agents and denying the allegations, they have since agreed that the ATF purposefully chose not to interdict guns it lawfully could have seized. Holder testified in December that "the use of this misguided tactic is inexcusable, and it must never happen again."

Read the whole story here.

We know this: The NRA, as a chief exponent of gun ownership, makes wide-spread gun distribution possible, by resisting new gun-control laws, and regulations, while threatening reform-minded lawmakers--using a Grover Norquist-like zeal--indirectly (if not directly) supporting gun manufacturers (the volume of guns made), and gun sellers (the volume of guns sold), many of whom have no compunction as to the niceties of the law, nor care who will ultimately end up holding the stock of a rifle, or the grip of a revolver.

Almost from the moment President Obama took the oath of office, word went out that this new president was positioning himself to take away the people's guns and ammunition--and the very fact that he hadn't well into his first term was proof enough that he was lulling the America people to sleep on the issue, only to spring it upon them later during a second term, when he had nothing left to gain by remaining quiescent.  

As nonsensical as this may sound, it did sell guns and ammo by the millions, and provided Republicans with a rallying issue on which to raise money and galvanize their base for the Fall elections--the real reason behind all this. 

One thing Republicans knew, and could count on: Chief Justice Roberts was their man on the Supreme Court (their go-to guy). How could he turn on them by supporting this dreaded law (the Affordable Health Care Act), on which Republicans had placed their political fortunes?

It was their hope that the Supreme Court ruling would become President Obama's political Waterloo, dashing his bid for reelection. 

However, Chief Justice Roberts had other plans. He seemed to know: The Constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act could very well tarnish his Supreme Court legacy--if it was allowed to be decided as had some previous critical rulings, along partisan lines, a 5 - 4 split.

Democrats would be giddy with this Supreme Court opinion--as it seemingly marked a return to sanity and balance on the nation's highest court--were it not for the Court's decision on Citizen's United, and Citizen's United Redux, a Supreme Court decision that I hope to blog about soon.

"That's Not Who We Are!"

Perhaps you've heard it said, too: "That's not who we are...as a nation." I hear this statement often, and usually, after a moment's reflection, I find that, "Yes, that's who we are!"

People who say this are often confusing our constitution with our national character, confusing our stated ideals with what we actually feel about the social issues facing our nation.

As far back as the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson summed up the American ideal by writing, "All people are created equal," later "stylized" by Ben Franklin in the now immortal words of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

And it didn't stop there, but continued: "that they [all men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."

"In 1776, abolitionist Thomas Day responding to the hypocrisy in the Declaration wrote:

"If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.^[13]"

From the time that these words were written, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," the "altering" and "abolishing" part has been the one "Right" that has languished, requiring years of protests and appeals for some in our society to partake of the "among these."

It was Government's stated role to "secure these rights," but, all too often, it was Government, itself, that stood in the way, that became "destructive of these ends," that frustrated the efforts of many in our society struggling to secure that elusive "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

"That's not who we are!" they insist. Not so: We deprived millions of "Liberty," institutionalizing slavery in this country, requiring a bloody civil war to uproot it, and then only partially, as Jim Crow quickly replaced the gains that blacks had achieved with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

In most of the states, we enacted laws to enshrine marriage between a man and a woman, with assurances from presidential-hopeful Willard Romney that he'll seek a Constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriages.

In several states, Republican-led statehouses enacted laws to discourage a woman's legal right to abortions by legislating procedures which have no medical necessity--transadominal and/or transvaginal ultrasounds--invading the doctor-patient prerogative, violating two of the rock-ribbed tenets of Republicanism and conservatism which advocate for "personal freedom," and "small government."

In yet more states, Republican-led statehouses enacted voter identification laws, presumably to thwart voter fraud--which wasn't a problem--but serve merely to suppress voter turnout, and disenfranchise college students and the elderly, two voting demographics for Democrats.

"That's not who we are!" they insist. Not so: We have enacted laws that endanger "Life" rather than support it with the passage of "Castle Laws," and "Stand Your Ground Laws." As a law enforcement student, George Zimmerman knew, when he followed and intimidated Trayvon Martin, that the law was on his side, and that he could take a life with impunity.

The jury is literally out on this one, but the prosecution has a virtual mountain to climb to convict George Zimmerman, as it's his word against the silence of Trayvon Martin, not able to speak now for the lack of a voice.

"That's not who we are!" they insist. Not so: We have enacted laws that define what "Happiness" should be for some in the LGBT community. We have told gays and lesbians that they don't have constitutionally-protected Equal Protection under the law, a clause designed to fulfill the self-evidential statement that "all men are created equal."

"The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that 'no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'^[1] The Equal Protection Clause can be seen as an attempt to secure the promise of the United States' professed commitment to the proposition that 'all men are created equal'^[2]"

To be sure, we can "institute new Government" without bloodshed and a violent overthrow, but it takes men and women of goodwill--men and women not hamstrung by the political exigencies of the times, men and women willing to sacrifice party loyalty, but not their conscience.

In an obvious attempt to even the playing field, to deprive President Obama of a political advantage, Fox News is now casting Obama as a "flip-flopper," arrogating to him a Romney failing. To his credit, Shepard Smith, Fox News anchor, sided with the president, stating that the president is on the "right side of history."

Mysteriously, Fox's attack on the president, that he's waging a "war on marriage," was abandoned abruptly and replaced with a steady beat of Obama as "flip-flopper." However, someone should tell Fox that notorious flip-floppers such as Willard Mitt Romney, flop in order to receive votes, and not as President Obama, whose stance on marriage equality may cost him some votes, and possibly another term as president.

Every day Fox News becomes the butt of the joke, and not fit to call itself a cable news outlet.

On Wednesday, President Obama, seemingly allowing Vice President Biden, and others to pave the way, drove on the left side of the road, rather than in the center, which has long been his custom, on marriage equality, admitting in an interview on Wednesday that same-sex marriage should be legal.

As described by several aides, that quick decision and his subsequent announcement in a hastily scheduled network television interview were thrust on the White House by 48 hours of frenzied will-he-or-won’t-he speculation after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. all but forced the president’s hand by embracing the idea of same-sex unions in a Sunday talk show interview.

Advisers say now that Mr. Obama had intended since early this year to define his position sometime before Democrats nominate him for re-election in September. Yet many of the president’s allies believed he would not do so, trusting instead in his strong support from gay voters for having ended a ban on openly gay people in the military and disavowing a federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Such caution was understandable, the allies said, given the unpredictable fallout the president would face by taking a clear stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day, before what is likely to be a close election. Mr. Obama’s closest advisers say only the timing was in question. Mr. Biden’s unexpected remarks undoubtedly accelerated the timetable.
         
His was a courageous political move by all metrics, a move that Willard will never make as he's too busy lying his way to the presidency. "That's not who we are." Judge for yourself. Some of the many faces of America photographically captured.

With some Catholic Bishops attacking Obama for his extreme secularism (forgetting Jesus' admonition to "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's") [1], and the GOP's autocratic disregard for the U.S. Constitution, and the Rights outlined there--wishing to change some of its provisions, while ignoring others--backed by a Supreme Court who's poised, I believe, to support key provisions of Arizona's "papers please" law, and strike down the mandate in the Patients Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, It's my civic duty to vote for any party other than the Republican party.

The national character isn't too pretty. It's a character that I, as a black man, have had a long acquaintance. If the national character had a face, it would be pox-marked, with hairy moles upon its nose--spewing words that would make my not-so-virginal ears blush.

Despite its current appearance, our national character is still a work in progress, and it's my hope that one day, it will take a long, hard look at its ideals, ideals written upon so many of our nation's prized, and venerated documents, and strive to live up to them, transforming this nation from that of an ugly, "venomous toad," into a story-book prince, where we can truly say when confronted with our shame, "That's not who we are!"

[1] Angrily condemning President Obama for his “radical pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda,” an Illinois bishop likened his leadership to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin last weekend and urged Catholics to vote against him.

“This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries—only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down,” said Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria at a gathering of Catholic men on Saturday, according to LifeSiteNews.com
Read more on Newsmax.com: Bishop Compares Obama Policies to Hitler, Stalin.

Connecting the Dots: Al-Qaeda

From time to time, I will connect dots--using an analytical and intuitive process--to understand current events.


Here's my first blog entry with that goal in mind, which is not to say that I haven't used this process before. For example, I wrote sometime ago:

"A population shift is now taking place in this country, with a rise of Latinos, and a decline of whites.

"The Latino demographic will, in a decade or two, wield most of the political power in this country, with whites falling precipitously to the back of the electoral bus.

"What's needed to offset this shift is a new power dynamic assuring that whites will continue to assert their will over the political and social landscape. [...] 

"How do they preserve their once monopolistic power in the midst of this population shift? Simple. Transfer it to corporations. And this what we're now seeing take place, unabashedly, by the Roberts Supreme Court.

"Corporations, recently raised to the importance, and stature of the individual, can now use their collective power to influence the outcome of elections and the passage of legislation."


From the Rachel Maddow show we find some support for my conclusion, as it's becoming more and more evident that the demographic shift will impact a distribution of power in this country--political and otherwise.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Recently, President Obama signed a compact with Harmid Karzai: "[D]uring an unannounced visit to sign a strategic partnership agreement with President Hamid Karzai that sets the terms for relations after the departure of American troops in 2014. [...]

"But Mr. Obama also spoke of an “enduring partnership” with Afghanistan, invoking the agreement, which pledges American help for a decade in developing the Afghan economy and public institutions, though it makes no concrete financial commitments, which Congress would have to authorize each year."

Some have placed the financial commitment somewhere around $2 billion dollars a year, and that's probably a conservative estimate, and doesn't take into account further payouts to the Pakistanis.

Here's where the dots come together: As long as the US is willing to pump billions of dollars into Afghanistan and Pakistan for the purpose of defeating Al-Qaeda, or tamping Taliban insurgency, these two countries will never address our goals. 

Where's the incentive to  further them, when, to do so, would damage their goal, which is to keep American dollars flooding the two countries?

I can hear someone high up in the Pakistan military remonstrate this way:

"Damn those American's are stupid! Do they really think we're going to kill the golden goose? We need Al-Qaeda! We need a Taliban insurgency! That's why we gave Osama bin Laden sanctuary. That's why we did as little as possible to kill him and to stop the Taliban." 

It appears that President Obama has heard their remonstrations, as well--one of the reasons he upped the number of drone attacks within Pakistan, and  sent Seal Team 6 on a daring mission to examine a compound they believed might house the Chief Terrorist.

"Choose You This day Whom Ye Will Serve...."

Because I had little to add to the dialog, I didn't wade into the Trayvon Martin controversy, as many pundits have already weighed in with their unique and not-so-unique perspectives.

But after reading a prominent black Republican's perspective, I felt that I owed it to my readers to have my say. On his Facebook page, Allen West denounces the actions of law enforcement authorities in Sanford, and takes a cheap shot at those protesting:

I have sat back and allowed myself time to assess the current episode revealing itself in Sanford, Florida involving the shooting of 17-year-old Treyvon Martin. First of all, if all that has been reported is accurate, the Sanford Police Chief should be relieved of his duties due to what appears to be a mishandling of this shooting in its early stages. The US Navy SEALS identified Osama Bin Laden within hours, while this young man laid on a morgue slab for three days. The shooter, Mr Zimmerman, should have been held in custody and certainly should not be walking free, still having a concealed weapons carry permit. From my reading, it seems this young man was pursued and there was no probable cause to engage him, certainly not pursue and shoot him….against the direction of the 911 responder. Let’s all be appalled at this instance not because of race, but because a young American man has lost his life, seemingly, for no reason. I have signed a letter supporting a DOJ investigation. I am not heading to Sanford to shout and scream, because we need the responsible entities and agencies to handle this situation from this point without media bias or undue political influences. This is an outrage.

It is an outrage--and why can't we say it loud; why can't we "shout" it in overwhelming numbers, and "scream," if we must, above the silly din of a Republican primary that's hogging the airwaves?

What West doesn't seem to appreciate is that the Trayvon Martin case would have been swept under the proverbial blue carpet were it not for the shouting and screaming that took place online, in the streets of Sanford, Florida, and other places--student's showing their solidarity by walking out of class, New Yorkers showing their support with a Million Hoodie March, and LeBron Raymone James posing with hoodie-wearing teammates. Were it not for bloggers, and other protesters, MSNBC in all likelihood would have allowed Nancy Grace to run exclusively with the story.

West, as is customary among black Republicans, dismisses the race nexus, reducing it to a footnote in the whole affair, when it's clear from the 9-1-1 call, and the allegations of a police coverup to protect Zimmerman, that race, and racial profiling, played a prominent role, and can't be separated from the incident, as one would egg white from the yoke. Some even insist that the words,"fucking coon," can be heard, at about 1:52 in, on an enhanced version of the tape.

Before I offer my opinions, let me discuss briefly a book that I read many years ago, titled, Contingency Management.

Contingency management says, substantially, all the various styles of management--autocratic, democratic, and participatory, to name a few--are valid, and useful, the effectiveness of each dependent on the situation, and one's ability to choose the right managerial strategy at any given time.

There are those who will swear that one management style is superior to all others, but what I found over the years is that a contingency approach to employee management was not only practical, but an indispensable approach to the art and science of effective management. It was preferable to focusing on just one style to the exclusion of all others, becoming, in time, an integral part of my overall managerial approach.

Similarly, there are those--white and black--who insist tirelessly that we must react to racism, and racial insensitivity, in one way, and one way only.

To that I say poppycock. Respond any way you choose!

Once upon a time in America, blacks chose to meet the horrors of racism with the threat of violence against violence (They called themselves the Black Panthers.), while others believed that a peaceful, non-violent approach would serve our interests best (as advocated by Martin Luther King, Jr.)

During the civil right's struggle, Ebony Magazine ran an article discussing the several "ways" blacks were responding to white racism, asking the question, "Which Way Black America--Separation? Integration? Liberation?"

Although I'm a proponent of change without violence, and civil disobedience, I would never tell blacks how they should respond to racism--individually or collectively.

If you choose to march, and voice your dissent, and your grievance, I say march on. If you choose to express your outrage in a blog entry, I say blog on. If you choose to call nothing racism, and openly oppose black protests--a community's vocal outrage against acts leveled at blacks--I say right on. If you choose to refrain from participating in a society dominated by whites and their ideals, I say resist on. If you choose to attend Harvard, become a lawyer, and the president of the United States, I say carry on.

The insistence of some black Republicans that blacks should downplay race, and never use the term "racism," even when it's blatantly obvious that racism is at the heart of certain behaviors, is to subject themselves to a mental contortion for which there's no recovery, but that's their choice.

And I honor that, just as I honor those who resort to actions that are out of the mainstream, and may run counter to the law, for the purpose of making statements that bring certain conditions into starker relief.

Nevertheless, I do condemn those who appear to use race issues as a way to further their own financial interests, such as the New Black Panthers, an organization who has borrowed the old Panthers' reputation of fierce resistance to racism, as a way to add street cred where it hasn't been earned. The old Panthers have denounced the new Panthers, as the new group seeks to reap where it hasn't sown.

When whites need a black boogieman to thrust a wedge deep into black and white cooperation, to polarize the races for the purpose of frustrating racial unity, the New Black Panthers are at the ready, seemingly prepared to deliver an image in keeping with white stereotypes of the angry, violent, black man, to fuel already feared black stereotypes.

Contingency management embraces all acceptable and responsible managerial styles, denouncing none, or elevating one style over another, or dictating when any style should be used, but yields to circumstances in play, and the manager's judgment to choose a managerial style as the need dictates.

Similarly, blacks have a virtual cornucopia of options from which to choose when deciding how to respond to their perception of racism, to do as Allen West did, sign "a letter supporting a DOJ investigation," downplay the "race" angle, and refrain from shouting and screaming (very dignified and low-key), with the hope that the system will respond appropriately, and justice will prevail, or take a hands-on approach, as it were, march, protest, "shout and scream," blog about it, take photos to highlight it--any action, or speech, or behavior that we feel addresses the grievous circumstances at hand.

Clearly, no responsible response is superior to another. All blacks who take up the cause of redress, and seek to address perceived threats to their life, and to their general well-being, as well as the life and general well-being of other blacks in a nation where racism once flourished, and still persists, have a duty to resist in ways of their choosing.

"Choose you this day whom ye will serve," and which response among many will serve the needs of those in black communities across this land, as we traverse the path that takes us from injustice to justice.

But let it be of your choosing, and not Alan West's choosing, or Bill Cosby's choosing, or....

Dropping Nichols!

I'm not one for name dropping, and could, if I choose to, drop my share of notable names, as I've met many black celebrities over the years.

Although I've never been a star gazer, or a star follower, taking count, I've had the privilege to meet a goodly number of them, which, given my humble beginnings, continues to amaze and please.

And like many other blacks--famous or not so famous, starry or not so stellar--I've waged a number of private, and public, wars against racism and have lived to tell it.

During those years, I never saw racism as an obstruction to my life goals, but merely as another obstacle to overcome. It wasn't that, like the president, I had a fractious congress to stand defiantly in my way, but an assortment of white figures with their own individual agendas, all equally determined to derail my progress.

One of those black notables I met was Nichelle Nichols, Lt. Nyota Uhura of Star Trek. A beautiful black woman with an equally beautiful disposition, and with stunningly beautiful eyes to match.

If the whole of her faded, as the Cheshire Cat faded in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, leaving behind only his toothy grin, Nichelle's eyes, similarly, would remain, many years hence, indelibly etched in memory.

They are just that remarkable--a remarkableness that photographs can never capture, or do justice.

You'd think that a beautiful, talented, black woman, such as Nichelle Nichols, would have escaped the ravages of racism, but alas, she had to face during the early years of her career the indignity of defending her humanity, and her self-worth against relentless forces that assailed her almost daily, not unlike many other black women, and men before and after her.

When television writer and producer Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek" science fiction series debuted on NBC in 1966, the Civil Rights Movement -- under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- was in high gear, fighting the injustices of racial segregation, black economic oppression and discrimination and racial violence against African Americans. [1]

And when Nichols landed the role of communications officer Uhura on the Starship Enterprise (see dual image below of her then and now), she had no idea that this was a breakthrough role for black women.

"It didn't hit me at the time until somebody told me," she told The Huffington Post. "I splashed onto the TV screen at a propitious historical moment. Black people were marching all over the South. Dr. King was leading people to freedom, and here I was, in the 23rd century, fourth in command of the Enterprise."

Nichols vividly recalls how America reacted when her Uhura character first hit the television airwaves.

"Oh, man, there were parts of the South that wouldn't show 'Star Trek' because this was an African American woman in a powerful position, and she wasn't a maid or tap dancer."

[This was not unusual. The South had its own rating system, barring many films that portrayed blacks in roles that showed them as equal to whites, or their better.]

While shooting "Star Trek" episodes in the late 1960s, Nichols didn't feel any discrimination on the set, but felt it in other parts of the studio, especially where she wasn't allowed to enter the studio through a particular gate where the other actors could go through.

"That's right. There were instances where I was turned away from entering the studio at the walk-on gate, and I had to go all the way around to the front gate, sign-in and come back. A guard on the set told me I had no right being there -- that they had replaced a blue-eyed blonde with me," she remembered.

"I went through crap, man. Racism was alive and rampant there. Some people said I wasn't good enough, saying things like, 'I don't know how you got this role.' And they kept waiting for me to complain and raise hell about it, but I decided to ignore it. I never went to Gene [Roddenberry] about it."

[Believe it or not, blacks were often accosted in this manner--as was I--although I made my living outside the movie industry. On many occasions whites would approach me and ask with incredulity, and anger, "How did you get this job?" Now, they weren't asking how they could go about entering the field in which I was employed, but how I managed to land a job that whites were having difficulty landing.

Did all of this make me bitter? At the time it made me angry, but the anger didn't last, and the bitterness that might have consumed me, and perhaps did consume some, faded like the Cheshire Cat, leaving only vague reminders of the flesh-tearing pain that only the sharp claws of hatred can inflict.]

She even said that the show photographer was a racist. "There are more pictures of me behind somebody where you can barely see me, but they also had to take pictures of me singularly."

As blacks, we were so often relegated to the background in this nation's history books, that we wrote our own. Additionally, we were so often forced to sit in the back of the bus, that we grew "tired" and weary of the affront and fought to sit where we pleased. We were told where we could live, what homes we could buy, and in which part of town our kind could reside, but we insisted on living anywhere we chose--anywhere we liked. We were told where we could eat, where we could sit, and where we could drink, but we defied those orders, too--as individuals, and finally collectively.

The Civil Rights movement started long before its often-cited, official start-up date, the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56, long before the Supreme Court decision—Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). It started when Europeans brought the first slaves to this continent in 1565, right up to the Amistad mutiny and beyond--the period that we know as Jim Crow, extending from Reconstruction right through the mid-20th century.

Not to discredit Dr. King's momentous contribution to the Civil Right's movement, but there were black civil rights leaders before Martin Luther King, and after. All blacks who stood up to the dehumanization of racism--in small and large ways--were leaders in their own right, taking, as they did, their first steps against social injustice, which made it possible for others to do the same, as these others followed their example, and waged war, privately, and publicly, singularly and collectively.

To resist racism anywhere is to resist it everywhere, as it resides in our collective consciousness, requiring consent, and room to grow. We defeat it by denying it that consent and growing room, as we would weeds in a garden.

February is Black History Month. In recognition of the month, find below several sites that have brought together resources around people, themes, and events.

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history-month

http://www.africanamericanhistorymonth.gov/

http://www.infoplease.com/black-history-month/

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/black/index.asp

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-History-Month/44836849562

http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/black_history_month.htm


[1]

Yesterday, along with untold others, I learned of Whitney Houston's death. Many are in mourning for this songstress, which some are calling a "songbird." She was that and more. I posted the following on another blog. It pretty much sums up my feelings:

She will be missed. She won't be again, but, then, she will always be. A paradox for some, but for the cognoscenti a truism without contradiction. We're always at choice. She lived as she chose, and died at the time, the place, and in the way of her choosing.

She didn't live in vain, nor die in vain. All who knew her, and knew of her, received a benefit because she lived.

Her music wasn't her life, but it gave life to many. She touched us with her songs, and because of her incomparable voice--and the essence of her that flowed through her--we knew her in ways that are unforgettable, ways that say, "I believe in you and me."

InSandity

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

This nation is in a perpetual loop, in a perpetual tail-chasing posture, a living, concrete example of Einstein's definition of "insanity," as quoted above.

We enter trade agreements that benefit the one percent, or disproportionately benefit those nations with whom we have agreements.

We continue to risk our future to one energy source, fossil fuels, the latest incarnation of that risk, Canadian tar sands, despite grave climate-change concerns, and "earthquakes, in diver places".

I could go on and on, citing one example after the other of this nation's acquiescence to special interest, and its willingness to stay the course--the ship of state veering only when it serves the needs of expediency, or to brandish our bogus American exceptionalism: a self-congratulatory indulgence that could, potentially, list the ship dangerously, inviting the disastrous outcome of this cruise ship.

If you believe the ship of state is listing now, give it another decade or two. What's that old saying, "You ain't seen nothing yet!"

It's not that I harbor pessimism, it's that I see things the way they are, not the way I wish them to be. That's my relative position, not my absolute one. From my absolute position, there's nothing we need do, there's nothing we need say, but focus on what we're being--for it's what we're being that we end up creating.

Regrettably, the sands of time aren't as plentiful as the Canadian tar sands, somber grains gathering ominously along the bottom of our national hourglass, as time runs out on our steadying the ship of state, as it lists starboard, lurching precariously to the Right.

After seeing the video below, I wanted to bring it to your attention, even if you've seen it before, so that we may discuss its proposals on how this nation may avoid walking the plank on one key component of our continued national prosperity--the education of our children, resulting in a well-educated adult population

As part of his 30 Million Jobs Tour, Dylan Ratigan identifies areas of concern--factors that need to be addressed to keep the ship of state from foundering over time, proposing a national initiative, rather than state-sponsored ones, deviating substantially from right-wing solutions that call for the abolition of the Department of Education, and a shift of power to states.

Without a national initiative, Dylan sees a permanent underclass emerging, made up mostly of blacks, Mexican Americans, and other poverty-laden groups, adrift in lifeboats, without land in sight, or rescue-ships on the horizon.

I recommend watching the video. It's not very long, but you may have to endure a short commercial at the beginning. I've appended a transcript of the video, but it won't show the visuals, diagrams that connect the dots, clarifying how we got to this state, and what factors continue to roil the seas upon which this nation must sail, as it struggles to stay on course, and keep the ship's listing to a minimum.

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We're back at chegg. a go-to place for students to develop an efficient way to learn and a cheaper and rational way to use it using it cannology and innovation to bring down the costs students face after they pay tuition. first, the students need to make it through elementary and high school 37 we spend more on education than any other nation. but for all that money, there's little to show for it. worldwide rankings, we're 25th in math. 17th in science. so we're taking a page out of our book "greedy bastards" and connecting the dots to trace the money trail in our schools.

the money trail begins in your own backyard. funding for american schools is based on your property taxes. which means schools in low-income areas get the smallest share of resources. so while there's massive resources allocated to the wealthiest, the poor get the least when it comes to education. i call this reverse hot spotting. because those who need it most aren't getting the resources we need, the poorest are neglected in a way to permanently damage their brain development. we know that a child's brain forms 700 synapses per second. that's 700 times a second to process senses, use language, and develop vocabulary and relational and reasonable skills. if that opportunity is missed, that child will be playing catch up literally for the the rest of their adult lives. the same model is true all the way through high school graduation.

if you're lucky enough to afford it, college would be next. but our universities value prestige over learning and mastery. it's a classic "greedy bastards" behavior. they put prestige and profits over skill mastery. and talk about student loan debt. $830 billion collectively across our nation. the bankers are offering easy credit that traps graduates for decades. it's a debt for diploma system. there are proven solutions to all of this. but the "greedy bastards" are so hell bent on paying off, that they refuse to let anything threaten it. it becomes a vicious and destructive cycle for our country. poverty, which creates low property taxes to fund schools, which means little money for poor schools, leads to limited problem solving skills, limited adapt blt, higher levels of unemployment, which lands those folks back in poverty.

but there's a way to fix it. we must end the reverse hot spotting and overallocate to those most desperately in need of help and start funding schools through a national tax structure. if we use it correctly to overallocate to our problems, we can direct assets to those most in need. as suzie buffett explains, it's been proven to work, but politicians refuse to take notice.

it doesn't work in an election cycle. it's going to take 15 years to show it works. it's not very interesting to the politicians.

another fix, we need to force our universities to stop valuing prestige over learning. it won't be easy. you know how university pride runs deep. we have to stop rewarding test taking abilities and encourage a culture of experimentation which will come with mistakes and failures. but those are exactly what we need to ultimately achieve the skills and mastery needed to learn in the fastest-changing world in the history of human civilization. the khan academy has proven this classroom flip is successful right through the university level. finally, we must call out the universities, which means adopting the first letter of. we must refuse schools. two students on the internet before they apply or pay tuition. this is how vici values can restore values while receiving the modern tools of the digital age.

if you want to take another look at this and connect the dots on your own time, go to "greedy bastards".com. they are explained inside the book itself. we show you how to get results and change things as well. and as martin mentioned last hour, "greedy bastards" is going today bu at number nine on the new york best sellers list. we have you to thank for that. thank you so much for enlisting with us in this mission to change the conversation to issues-based problem solving. next up here, we've talked to people who do it right. there's a prime example of a great idea that may be using the opposite of hot spotting as the quest to bring high speed rail to california jumped the tracks.

"The Road Not Taken"

Robert Frost penned a poem, one of my favorites, that explored the poet's decision to take one road at a fork, and not another.

Whether your life is filled with forks in the road, or not, we can all commiserate with those who have them, as they force introspection, and reflection.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

The latter road, as described in the poem, stands out as one that's rarely taken when two competing positions collide--racism and stupidity, for example--both representing the fork in the road, becoming rivaling perspectives for how an act, a behavior, or an attitude may be viewed by those exposed to the same information and to the same set of facts.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

Although I've privately wrestled with whether a set of facts represented racism or stupidity, I've never agonized over whether I should call a set of facts racist. Whites rarely quibble as to what should be called racist and what should be called stupidity, more inclined to call racially-insensitive acts the result of stupidity than racism.

Agreeing with Frost, these whites almost never reconsider their first position, "the road not taken"--that it's stupidity rather than racism that prompted an action by their fellow whites--postponing indefinitely a more thorough examination: "I kept the first for another day!/ Yet knowing how way leads on to way,/ I doubted if I should ever come back."

Blacks, during their earthly travels, find more forks in their roads, than whites (Is this act born of racism or stupidity?), as whites are usually spared this kind of dilemma; yet, whites never tire of telling us what it is that we should believe--and, oftentimes, what they want us to believe is that "stupidity" explains their white counterparts actions or behavior, and not "racism," the most likely choice, and the most likely characterization of the facts.

When I purchased my current home, my white real-estate salesperson presented such a fork in the road. From a tract of homes, she selected the one that she felt represented our income and our taste.

I did my own research, using the real estate broker's web site as my source, copying relevant information about each home in the tract, the number of rooms, square footage, and lot size.

When I told her that I wanted to see each house in the tract before committing to the one she selected, she turned red, suspiciously eyeing the papers I held in my hand.

"What do you have there?" she asked roughly. Before I could reply, she snatched the papers from my hand, and, while rifling through them, asked, "Where did you get these?"

"From your web page," I said, struggling to stay calm, as I knew, with a little more provocation, I was going to either walk away, or find another salesperson.

Reluctantly, and with great exasperation, she walked me through each house. On one house in the tract, I made an offer. No, it wasn't on the one she had selected, but on the one I felt had a better view of the mountains.

She was livid. "The builder doesn't take offers," she said. I insisted. Her anger boiled over, mainly because, as she pointed out, she had already drawn up the paperwork for the house of her choosing, and now I was having her repeat her effort.

Finally, she relented, saying, "Now I'll have to start all over again."

The builder accepted my offer, which I knew he would, and, by accepting my offer, reduced her commission. This was not my purpose, but I wasn't distressed because of it.

When the house was making its way through escrow, unbeknownst to me, my wife had promised to invite this salesperson to dinner when the sale was finalized. When she restated her invitation, I was standing nearby.

"When we move in," my wife told the white salesperson, "I'm going to have you over for dinner."

"Okay," she said, "but I don't eat innards."

That was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, that and a few other racially-insensitive things she had said and done during our brief relationship, splitting the road into a fork that ran as far as the eye could see.

The fork appeared abruptly: Was this a show of racism on the salesperson's part, or gross stupidity?

The article that spurred this blog entry has already made its rounds on several blogs, with some readers taking one road or the other, as to whether the act of some Georgia school teachers represented racism or stupidity.

Some of the comments came from whites, and some from blacks, which at times took an uncomfortable turn, as racism is not an easy topic for many, although most had an opinion one way or the other, all looking for travelling companions where the road forked, now that they had committed themselves to one road or the other.

The title reads, 'If eight slaves pick 56 oranges...' Georgia school under fire for racist, violent math homework [1]

Parents of elementary school students in Georgia are outraged after their children brought home math homework referencing slavery and beatings.
In an attempt to mix social studies with math, students of Beaver Ridge Elementary school in Norcross were asked to calculate such questions as how many oranges and cotton slaves could pick.

[My first thought: Was the question written with Frederick Douglass in mind?]

'I'm having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem. That hurts,' Terrance Barnett expressed to WSB-TV.

Here's another example from the test:

Whether you find the following to be either "racist" or a show of "stupidity," is fine by me. That's not my argument. You're entitled to your view. My position on this, however, remains the same, as it was formed after much thought, and over many years of reflection and rumination:

Given this nation's racist history, and the fact that blacks have, more often than not, been the hapless recipients of racism, when I hear or see racially-insensitive things, my default position is that they're prompted by racism. I don't accept the burden of determining for others whether these things are racist or not, which fork in the road--racism or stupidity--would better describe, or sum up the facts. That's not my burden. That burden belongs to the other, those who did the racially-insensitive things.

Blacks shouldn't be asked to shoulder this burden, and we shouldn't accept it, if asked.

Let the burden rest with them, and not us. Let those in society who behave racially insensitive, show, prove, demonstrate that a racially-insensitive act is not racism. In the case under review here, we're talking about teachers, for god sake! People who know world history and American history, and the various legacies of race.

Would these teachers have said something similar about Jews caught in the throes of the holocaust? I don't think so. For blacks, the legacy of slavery is what the holocaust is to Jews--highly reprehensible, and highly inhumane.

I always assume that white's racially-insensitive acts, behavior, and attitudes are the result of racism, and not stupidity, refusing to ride the horn of a dilemma, taking the road I've traveled often, when faced with a fork that leads to the left and to the right.

Whites, and some blacks, mostly black conservatives, wouldn't have us call anything racist, occasionally reversing the charge, and leveling it at us for having the temerity to call a thing racist, thereby effectively putting a roadblock at one of the forks, forbidding passage, and making it unpopular to even consider taking the more damning road, where "[t]wo roads diverged in a yellow wood."

On the other hand, Blacks are urged to suspend judgment, not to call a thing racist, when another characterization may be more appropriate, like "stupidity." They're told to exercise restraint, to err on the side of caution, to ignore it, to look the other way--in short, take the high road.

Sure we can take the high road, or the road at the fork that whites would like for us to take, but we don't owe them this. We don't owe anyone anything, in matters of deciding what constitutes racism or not.

At times, I take the road rarely taken, the one with the signpost that read, "STUPIDITY," but I don't feel I'm obligated, or obliged to do so. I could, just as well, turn to the left at the fork, and take the road with the signpost that read, "RACISM."

Occasionally, the stupidity is so glaring, a neon flashing bright red, the only conclusion one can derive is that it's what it seems to be--and that unmistakably. At other times, the road sign identifying the road to the left glows equally bright, pulsating in large block letters the word, RACISM.

I know too much about life, and how it works, to hold anger or animosity towards those who are racist, or those who insist on calling racism stupidity, when all the signs are pointing in the direction of "the road not taken."

I feel an overwhelming pity for those so deluded, as they will, one day, perhaps in another lifetime, stand at the fork of the road where, at times, I stand--definitely more often than I care to say--peering down both roads "where they diverged in a wood."

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


[1] A video accompanies this article.