A New Normal — an absolutely remarkable article by Ezra Klein

[NYCGirl]

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=06&year=2008&base_name=a_new_normal

Towards the end of the 1967 movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," Dr. John Wane Prentice, played by Sydney Poitier, sits down with his fiance's white father, played by Spencer Tracy. "Have you given any thought to the problems your children will have?" Tracy asks. "Yes, and they'll have some... Joey feels that all of our children will be President of the United States," replies Poitier. "How do you feel about that?" asks Tracy, looking skeptically at the black man in front of him. "I'd settle for Secretary of State," Poitier laughs.

Written in the late-1960s, the exchange was, indeed, laughable. The Civil Rights Act had been passed three years prior. Two years before, the Watts riots had broken out, killing 35. Martin Luther King Jr. would be assassinated a year later. But here we are, almost exactly 40 years after theatergoers heard that exchange. The last two Secretaries of State were African-American and, as of tonight, the next president may well be a black man. John Prentice's children would probably still be in their late-30s. They could still grow up to be cabinet officials or even presidents, but they would not necessarily be trailblazers.

Obama's speech tonight was powerful, but then, most all of his speeches are. This address stood out less than I expected. It took me an hour to realize how extraordinary that was. I had just watched an African-American capture the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America, and it felt...normal. Almost predictable. 50 years ago, African Americans often couldn't vote, and dozens died in the fight to ensure them the franchise. African-Americans couldn't use the same water fountains or rest rooms as white Americans. Black children often couldn't attend the same schools as white children. Employers could discriminate based on race. 50 years ago, African Americans occupied, in effect, a second, and lesser, country. Today, an African-American man may well become the president of the whole country, and it feels almost normal.

It was, to be sure, not entirely unpredicted. On March 31st, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. preached his final Sunday sermon. "We shall overcome," he said, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Four days later, he was murdered. But 40 years later, his dream is more alive than he could have ever imagined. Not only might a black man be president, but at times, many forget to even be surprised by it.

[NYCGirl]

1. kick

[tblue37]

2. Considering the way Republicans use caging lists and other voter suppression

suppression techniques (like allowing so few machines for African American neighborhoods that they ensure long lines, the way GOTV organizations for African American communities were threatened with criinal prosecution, and the way fraudulent felons lists were used to throw legitimate voters off the voter rolls), many African Americans still are not allowed to vote.

And there are still "sundown towns" in this country, so even segregation has not been defeated by law.

But we have made some progress, and if Obama is elected, we will have made even more progress.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Well, one of the reasons it's normal is because Bush & co. are so abnormal.

I've felt, throughout the almost entirely corporate media-stoked 'controversy' of "hard-working white voters" and/or white women voters vs. a black (actually mixed race) candidate, that most Americans really and truly couldn't care less about this phony controvery. The great majority of Americans want RELIEF from this fascist junta--from unjust war and massive looting--and they really do not care whether or not the leader who can provide that relief is white, black, mixed race, female or Martian. Yeah, we've had our bigots from time immemorial, but they only gain cache when "organized money" (as FDR called it) is massively harming and looting us, and using bigotry to distract us from their hands in the till--and worse. And today we have the "and worse" part to the max. That is what Americans care about.

It makes me uneasy and restless to see Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice cited as examples of the success of Martin Luther King's dream. He would be disgusted by these two toadies of the fascist Bushites. They were among the chief enablers of the slaughter of 1.2 million innocent people to get their oil, the torture of thousands, and the wholesale looting of our government treasuries. And if the point is that black people are now equal at being fucking nazis, well, I guess that's true. What an accomplishment!

But I think we need to look deeper than this--at the cynical use of members of our most resonant minority (resonant because of slavery)--African-Americans--and also use of women, and at the willingness of some black leaders and women leaders to be used by the Corporate Rulers to oppress us all. The truth of the matter is that Colin Powell and Condi Rice should be in jail, along with the other war criminals. They are hardly examples of worthy achievement. Ain't it wonderful that black people can lie and commit genocide with the best of Yale!

The article is shallow, and out-of-focus, because of this.

It would be better to investigate how Powell and Rice were recruited by extreme fascists and barely known, or anonymous, billionaires and CEOs, to put a BLACK FACE on their horrors--and how these two wormed, and connived, and back-stabbed, and lied their way into the halls of power, to be thus used. They are NOT examples of the success of the civil rights movement. They are examples of its failure.

Andy Young is another example (once a M.L. King lieutenant--now a corrupt corporate bastard--fallen so low!). Kenneth Blackwell is another--Rovian tool of the theft of black votes in Ohio! And then there's Clarence Thomas! I also think that Hillary Clinton is an example of the FALSE association of women's rights with the agenda of global corporate predators--who would impoverish and enslave us all. I really don't know how sincere Clinton may be, in her own view of women rights. Perhaps she cannot see the contradiction between war and the welfare of women, and between the vast injustice of predatory globalizaton and the rights of women. It really doesn't matter if you have the right to an abortion or to birth control, if you can't afford either one, and your "right to choose" is meaningless if you cannot afford the choice of raising a child. Women's rights and social justice are inextricably linked. Clinton's policies on war and unjust globalization contradict her equal rights policies--and effectively make them moot. And she is most certainly the tool of the war profiteers and the globalists. A lot of women have been fooled into believing that, because she's a woman, she will protect their rights. Some limited rights, yes, within the Corporate Ruler context. But where is the right to be a mother and not have it kill you with poverty and overwork? Where are the values of nurturing, and gentleness, and generosity in our corporate-run world? What is the value of human life in corporate board rooms? As blacks have learned, legal equality is one thing--full, real, meaningful equality is quite another. You can be an equal toady to, or victim of, the Corporate Rulers; but real equality? Never, as long as global corporate predators--who view most of humanity as cannon fodder or slave labor--continue to rule over us.

[crickets]

4. This is one of the many times I'd love to rec a comment.

I don't entirely agree with your premise that the "hard-working white voters" meme was a phony controversy, though certainly the callous political use of bigotry to distract, divide and conquer is not new and has played a part in this primary. Your other points regarding the oppression of Corporate Rule were thought provoking and spot on.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Yes, there is some bigotry among the American people. That cannot be denied.

And there is a long, long-standing problem of prejudice against blacks in particular--that I think even well-intentioned whites have trouble fully comprehending. There IS a struggle going on in this country between the better angels of our nature (our progressive ideals) and the devils of bigotry, fear and hatred. What is so remarkable about this country--with our history of slavery and segregation--are our efforts to make that awful legacy conscious and to overcome it.

It is a scary legacy--as well as a shameful one. The beast of gutter-level mob rule--witchhunts, lynchings, pogroms, anti-communist crusades, slavery, concentration camps, genocide, torture, "disappeareds"--is very scary. How easily society can turn beastial! And how often this has happened with good people remaining SILENT out of fear.

One characteristic of this gutter-level beast is that it can be turned on ANYONE. Currently, brown people from the southern hemisphere are its focus, and gays. But in this country there is also an abiding threat to African-Americans that may go into the background but never goes away.

This is all true. But having been part of this struggle all my life--from my mother's warning, when I was a child, NEVER to use the word "nigger" (because, as my dear old Mom explained, "They don't like to be called that"), to my idealistic actions as a college student (traveling to Alabama to work with Martin Luther King, specifically to broaden the target against civil rights workers, three of whom had been slain the previous summer, and those EYE-OPENING--and soul-opening--experiences of bigotry and poverty, and nobility), to the amazing and historic events of today--a mixed-race, major party candidate for president--I firmly believe that the "better angels of our nature" are by far the PREVALENT view of the American people, although this truth may be hidden by corporate news monopoly "divide and conquer" propaganda, just as the BIG majority of Americans against the Iraq War--60%, just before the invasion--and the whopping, epochal, anti-war majority of today--70%!--is NOT reflected in the corporate "news." It is deliberately hidden or downplayed. Hardly anyone KNOWS about that early 60% anti-war majority even now. It was in ALL the polls. (I took the trouble to find out.) So, too, the desire of the great majority of Americans for justice and fairness, and our revulsion at bigotry, are hidden, when it suits the Corporate Rulers to "divide" us.

I think that this truth about Americans (barring election fraud, or fraudulent shaving of Obama's mandate) is what will emerge in the General Election. Not our bigotry--but rather our tolerance, our maturity, our love of justice.

I'm sure that scumbags like Mark Penn and Terry McAuliffe--whom Clinton very unfortunately employed--were talking racist strategies behind the scenes. I think that's how the phrase "hard-working white voters" came to Clinton's lips (from the back room). But I simply do not believe that she is a racist. I think her error was in being deaf to herself--not hearing herself (how her words might come across)--a serious flaw in a leader, to be sure. And people in tough battles, with a lot of ambition on the line, and great stakes--can lose perspective, as I think happened to some of Clinton's supporters. But I think the contingent of real racists was very MINOR, if it was existent at all, among her active supporters, and only a minor factor to a few voters*. And, as with the war, the corporate 'news' monopolies trumpeted the fascist view way out of proportion to its actual numbers.

We really need to separate out who the American people are, and what we, on the whole, believe and support, from the corporate 'news' monopolies' DEPICTION of us--which, of late, has had the double-whammy of election fraud. They IGNORED the fact that 80% of the votes in the 2004 election were tabulated by rightwing Bushite corporations using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls--and all the other evidence of election theft--and continued to promote the FALSE view that the American people supported Bush/Cheney and their goddamned war. They DEPICT us as pro-war, they collude in a stolen election, and WE believe them! We berate our fellow and sister Americans as stupid, uninformed "sheeple"--which is exactly what Corporate Rulers want us to believe, so that we will accuse and despise each other, and so that the members of the great progressive American MAJORITY will remain isolated, alone, demoralized and disempowered.

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*It makes simply no sense whatever that voters motivated by racism would vote for a woman (--not to mention a woman associated with "liberal" causes, and one who is venomously hated by the right). Racism and fascism go together. Hatred of blacks and hatred of women go together--as a general rule. There might have been some "Limbaugh" voters for Clinton--people who hate both blacks and women--simply out to make trouble. But I think this was a minor factor. I think Clinton voters were attracted by two things--protection of women's rights, and memories of the Bill Clinton prosperity. Also, the historic nature of her candidacy--the first major female candidate for president. But I think a lot of these voters blinded themselves to some hard truths--Clinton's pro-war votes and full support of many Bush outrages, and the "bubble" nature of the Bill Clinton prosperity, built on global corporate predator "free trade," and hanging the poor and the middle class out to dry. In any case, I think racism had almost nothing to do Hillary Clinton's wins--and it is complete media bullshit that it did (and very deliberate and ill-intended bullshit).