Conservatives Have Been Right More Often Than Not?

Conservative policies have on the whole worked — insofar as any set of policies can be said to “work” in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.[1]

When I read the editorial by William Kristol it seemed incredulous to me that anyone living on the planet earth the last few decades could make such a claim. The first thing that I was struck by was the intentional vagueness of his statements. How exactly were the Conservatives right about jihadist, crime. welfare, education, and the family? What specific policies are you referring to Mr. Kristol? It is precisely this type of revisionist history that has kept America from moving into the future. It is these delusional recollections of calling wrong right and losing winning that more and more Americans are repudiating.

Unlike Mr. Kristol who only has fond if somewhat dubious memories of Conservative positions I would like to present the real picture of the Conservative agenda and how it has played out in America and the world. And you can decide for yourselves how right they have been. The problem for Mr. Kristol and the other Conservative apologists is that after you remove the rhetoric and outright falsehoods all you are left with are the facts. And based on the facts I would hardly call the Conservative agenda a ringing success.


The jihadist – I am assuming here that Mr. Kristol is referring to al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups. If this is in fact correct then wasn’t it Reagan who began his administration by trading arms for hostages with one of the current members of the axis of evil? Wasn’t it Reagan and Bush who armed and help form al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan to fight the Russians? And wasn’t it Reagan and the first Bush who armed Saddam Hussein during the 80’s to make war with Iran? The only possible victory during this period was by the first Bush in developing the coalition to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and having the good sense not to occupy Iraq. And let’s not forget the culmination of neo-con policies that led to the number of terrorist attacks increasing during the second Bush years and the creation of al Qaeda in Iraq. Then of course there’s that whole business of transferring attention and resources away from capturing Osama to invading and occupying Iraq. Yes sir, Mr. Kristol the conservatives were definitely right about the jihadists.

Crime – The right in crime I guess would be the ill-fated war on drugs that turned our police officers from members of the community into armed militias taking over the streets of our neighborhoods? Or maybe it’s the crime policies that have sought to privatize our prison system and has led to the largest incarceration percentage in the world? And again these policies culminate in the failed policy of George W. of politicizing the Justice Department so that instead of focusing on crime they were focusing on bogus voter fraud cases attempting to suppress the voting rights of many Americans.

Welfare – Conservatives have always viewed Social Programs as transferring wealth from the rich to the poor. These so-called Christians did not feel an obligation to provide for the neediest of their fellow citizens. They often would resort to racially charged rhetoric about “welfare queens” rather than any real data or facts to back their positions. You see it is easier to shirk your responsibility if you are able to demonize your victims. The problem I have with the Conservatives is not necessarily with their philosophy, but in how they apply it. They expect everyone else to pull themselves up by their boot straps, but then they refuse to provide any boot straps. Of course what Mr. Kristol failed to mention is where would we be today if W. Bush had been able to privatize Social Security?

Education – How the Conservatives could have been right on the department they wanted to abolish is beyond me. Are we to assume that replacing public education with vouchers has been an effective policy? Or how about pricing middle-class and poor children out of college by reducing grants and raising the cost of student loans? The Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind was an attempt to bankrupt public education by creating these standards and then not providing the funding to bring about any real change. It is one thing to identify failing schools; it is another to come up with solutions to failing schools.

It is precisely this selective amnesia by partisan hacks that have prevented this country from advancing past the same cultural arguments for the past 30 years. No, Mr. Kristol the Conservatives have not been right and once you begin to get back on your meds you will be able to see that in fact they have created fear, division, and strife for years to come.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/opinion/26kristol.html?hp

Read more!

War On Drugs VII

The thing that makes the war on drugs so insidious to me as a black man is not the fact that it has increased the number black felons or that it has turned our neighborhoods into war zones. No to me the one factor that has caused the most damage to us as a people is how it has removed us from the process of democracy. I think that this was its original intent and it has not failed to deliver. The United States is the only democracy in the world that does not allow its citizens the right to vote after they have served their sentences. In America, it is once a criminal always a criminal. To understand the racist nature of these laws all one has to do is to examine their historic beginnings.

Felon disenfranchisement was sometimes used as a tool by the states to disenfranchise blacks. Some Southern states passed laws disenfranchising those convicted of what were considered to be "black" crimes, while those convicted of "white" crimes did not lose their right to vote. For example, South Carolina disenfranchised criminals convicted of "thievery, adultery, arson, wife beating, housebreaking, and attempted rape," but not those convicted of murder or fighting. Mississippi modified its broad, earlier law--which disenfranchised convicts of "any crime"--to specifically target "black" crimes.[1]

The laws allowing for the disenfranchisement of criminals can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and first appeared in America as early as the 1600’s. So for anyone looking to disenfranchise a group of citizens the groundwork was already laid. If felons forfeited their constitutional rights all one would have to do is to construct and create laws to make more felons and then through a bias application of the laws exclude the majority population while ensnaring the targeted group. This of course is a broad statement and on its own proves nothing. In order to verify its validity there would have to be a statistical anomaly between the number of people in the criminal justice system from the targeted group and the percentage of that group in the national populace that cannot be explained by happenchance. Is there such an anomaly?

Although the incidence of crimes committed by blacks has not increased, the number of black prisoners has tripled since 1980. Approximately 13% of black males have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions, or around 1.4 million persons (Sentencing Project, 2000). The primary theoretical tool used to explain LFD legislation is the racial threat thesis (Behrens et al., 2003). The idea is that the presence of a high proportion of African Americans creates a threat that can be temporarily reduced by sentencing a large number of blacks to prison...Yet we will demonstrate that through policies that have been explicitly and are now "implicitly racial, state institutions organize and enforce the racial politics of everyday life" (Omi and Winant, 1986: 77).[2]

I would say a tripling of black inmates is such an anomaly. Are we to believe that the increased number of black inmates is due to better police tactics or that more blacks are committing more crimes? No, there has been a concerted effort to marginalize black men and exclude them from the democratic process. In a democracy people must have free access to its instruments to affect effective change in their lives and in the lives of their children. The black man has never been given full access to those instruments. The results of that denial of access can be seen in the deterioration of the black community. If you can’t vote, you have no voice in the direction of your community or its resources. If you can’t vote you can’t elect people who are accountable to your interests. You in effect become invisible. And that is what we have in America millions of invisible black men, who are only seen when their faces are flashed on the television screens on the nightly news. They are never heard from, they have no voices.

I believe that the rise in hip-hop and “gangsta-rap” is a direct consequence of that loss of voice. If your voice is not heard through traditional methods, if your concerns are ignored then you are left with few choices. We have millions of young black men who have never voted and never will vote, ever. They have no concept of the democratic process because it does not apply to them. They have seen no improvements through traditional methods. The violence of the past to acquire the right to vote has no influence on them, they could care less. They don’t care because for many it is a “right” they will never get to exercise.

The following is a representation of Florida, multiply these numbers across the country and you begin to see the pattern.

Recent interest in LFD laws springs in great part from the experience in Florida (Johnson v. Bush). Florida's disenfranchisement law kept in excess of 600,000 citizens with felony convictions from voting in 2000 (Rapoport, 2003), of whom one-third were black (Wagner, 2001). Thus, Uggen and Manza (2002) argue that the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, as well as of several other presidential elections and U.S. Senate elections, would have had different outcomes if disenfranchised ex-felons would have had the vote. Florida's part in the 2000 presidential election has become infamous since the Supreme Court proclaimed George W. Bush as president. Before the election, state officials waged a $4.3 million campaign to purge Florida's felons from the voter rolls (Palm Beach Post, 2001).[3]

You may have noticed that I have not used the “C” word or mentioned Republicans, because it isn’t just them. Unfortunately, there are some Democrats who allow these injustices to take place. It not only helps the Republicans to disenfranchise so many blacks, it also helps some white Democrats as well. If you live in a city with a substantial black population and you are a white politician it would be in your interest to suppress the black vote regardless of your Party affiliation. Remember, all politics are local and in local elections it isn’t always good to have a large bloc of voting blacks, especially if they are independently minded. We all know that these laws are disenfranchising millions of black voters, so why have they not been repealed? This is the question that the Dems have to answer as well as the Republicans.

[1] http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5199005/Felon-disenfranchisement-law-history-policy.html
[2] http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5923399/Lifetime-felony-disenfranchisement-in-Florida.html
[3] http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5923399/Lifetime-felony-disenfranchisement-in-Florida.html

Read more!

Shaker Heights vs. America

In what has become an all too familiar scene for most of America, a man was attacked in his neighborhood by six youths and nearly beaten to death. What makes this case unusual to me is not that the victim was a white middle-aged man or that the accused are six black youths from an inner city. No, what makes this case unusual to me is the location of the case and the responses the case has received. First of all, is the fact that it made the New York Times; it is strange that they would do a story on a random mugging victim in another state. Secondly, is the fact that in an otherwise quiet neighborhood this case would receive the publicity it has gotten. I believe that there are forces at work here that are trying to reinforce the fear and segregation that plagues so much of the American landscape.

SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio — A week after six black teenagers nearly beat her husband to death, Marybeth McDermott looked out her big living room window at the neighborhood she loves, pursed her lips, then looked away.

She has found great friends here in the Ludlow neighborhood, one of the first places in suburban America where blacks and whites came together to live as neighbors. But for the first time in 19 years, Mrs. McDermott has thoughts of leaving.

For many outsiders, the attack on Mr. McDermott is seen as comeuppance for a community that seemed smug about its wealth, security and racial diversity.[1]

Shaker Heights is a suburb in Ohio just outside of Cleveland. The population here compared to most of America would be considered very diverse, it is 60% white and 34% black. Shaker Heights has embraced diversity and integration to the chagrin of many outside residents, who view the city as being a bunch of rich liberals who have no concept of the real world. The real world meaning that different races cannot co-exist together, I mean the nerve of these people thinking they can get away with such blasphemes. Rather than recognizing this for what it was, a random act of violence by some bad youths, the spin is to attack diversity by raising the issues of fear and safety.

Why is it that when something like this happens it is a harbinger of death and mayhem for all white people? Immediately there is a “rethinking” of living patterns and discussions of a black “crime wave” on the rise. Let’s face it folks we live in a violent society and every now and then it spills over to folks who are normally not at risk. For many this will be used as an excuse to reinforce previously held stereotypes and prejudices, but before contacting the realtor here are some statistics that might help to put this all in perspective.

Violent crime is not an equal-opportunity offender. Your chances of being attacked vary tremendously according to your age, race, sex and neighborhood. The risk of becoming a victim of a serious violent crime is nearly four times higher if you are 16 to 19 years old, for example, than 35 to 49; almost three times higher if you are black instead of white; two times if you are male, not female; and again double if you live in a city rather than in a suburb or in the country. Lump several of these risk factors together and the differences become enormous: For instance, the chances of a white woman 65 or older becoming a victim of serious violent crime are just one-seventieth the odds a black male teen faces. -- Your risk of being a victim does not increase as you make more money -- it actually declines. Although our poll shows that people with high incomes are about as afraid of crime as those who are less well off, your odds of being victimized are two to three times lower if you make $50,000 or more a year than if you earn less than $10,000. Ironically, the fact that crime rates are so low among the affluent may partly explain their outsized concern, according to Mark Cohen, a Vanderbilt University professor who specializes in the economics of crime. Says Cohen: "When you don't know what violence really looks like firsthand, you may have an exaggerated fear of it.[2]

For the city of Shaker Heights here is the latest statistic as compiled by the FBI.

The number of violent crimes recorded by the FBI in 2003 was 28. The number of murders and homicides was 0. The violent crime rate was 1 per 1,000 people.[3]

So, why does this story rate the NY Times? The reason is because it plays to the misguided fears of whites and their need to segregate themselves from blacks. The truth of the matter is that a divided country is easier to pillage for the wealthy, by promoting certain stereotypes and playing to certain fears groups who naturally have common interests are kept disconnected. If you are so busy worrying about the “black menace” then you won’t have time to notice the real crook at Enron. Instead of wondering why you have lost spending power, suffer from job insecurity, and have maxed out your credit just to maintain you are looking over your shoulder at the black folks. Today you have a better chance of losing your job or your pension than you have of losing your life to a black person. The folks at Enron stole more in two years than all the black criminals have stolen in your lifetime, yet the myths continue. The paranoia is encouraged and stoked by a steady diet of isolated news stories that are played up to be everyday occurrences.

The saddest part about this story is the responses of some other whites outside this community. In what is on the verge of spite many have spoken out against the diversity that characterizes this community, as if to say, “we told you so” or “you deserve it”. Many would have you believe that segregation promotes safety, the reality is it does not. By segregating ourselves what we do is confine many blacks to a life of inferior housing, which leads to an inferior education, which leads to inferior jobs, which leads to increased crime; all of which leads back to start the process all over again generation after generation.

For many outsiders, the attack on Mr. McDermott is seen as comeuppance for a community that seemed smug about its wealth, security and racial diversity.

“I wonder how much ‘tolerance’ the ‘progressive,’ snooty, pseudo-intellectual limousine liberal, socialists of Shaker Heights will show now that the thugs are in their neighborhood too,” a reader wrote on a Cleveland Plain Dealer blog.

Ludlow residents understand that for a place just seven blocks across, their little neighborhood carries tremendous symbolic weight.

“People in the Cleveland area resent us because we’re a repudiation of everything they believe,” said Brian Walker, 56, who was among the first African-Americans to attend Ludlow school. “We’re proof that white people and black people can live together.”

Rather than flee, Ludlow residents say they plan to stay and organize.[4]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/us/17shaker.html
[2] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/1994/06/01/88911/index.htm
[3] http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/genInfo.php?locIndex=17444
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/us/17shaker.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1200589498-PEqGW3oCenCDODiKPbe1jA

Read more!

“If you knew that happened, would you stay here?”

(This is a follow up to “The Silence is Killing Us”

What I am about to write about has got to be one of the most horrific crimes I have ever heard about and as I was reading it I couldn’t believe it. What this crime says about us as people is startling and damning. How could we have let places in this country get this bad? This neglect of the poor has to stop; this silence to criminals must end.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., July 16 — The single mothers and children who fill most of the apartments at Dunbar Village — a housing project on the poor, black, north side of this city — are used to nightly gunfire. They are used to theft, assault, murder and the indifference of federal and local authorities.

But nothing could have prepared them for the awfulness of the attack that took place last month, which the local prosecutor called “the worst crime I’ve seen in 37 years in the business.

After dark on June 18, the police say, as many as 10 armed assailants repeatedly raped a Haitian immigrant in her apartment at Dunbar Village and then went further, forcing her to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son. They took cellphone pictures of their acts. They burned the woman’s skin and the boy’s eyes with cleaning fluid, forced them to lie naked together in the bathtub, hit them with a broom and a gun and threatened to set them on fire.

Neighbors did not respond to her screams, and no one called the police. The victims ended up walking a mile to the nearest hospital afterward.[1]

Being poor is no excuse for this to happen to you. This should be an outrage to all Americans who value decency. There is so much blame in this story; I don’t know where to start. Should I start with a system that raises teenagers this merciless and depraved, or should I start with the neglect of the city officials elected to serve and protect that turn a blind eye to this neighborhood, or should I start with the neighbors who sit there for three hours listening to this woman and her child screaming and did nothing?

There have been 3 arrests made in this case and they range in age from 14 to 16, these are kids. Where do they get this level of cruelty? It would be just a sad commentary if it was an isolated incident, but these types of crimes are becoming all too common place in our communities. As more and more of these kids gain access to guns, drugs, and “gangsterism” these crimes have escalated. They are happening in all of our Black communities, the value of life in the hood has never been cheaper. It is as though respect for life is missing from a large proportion the current generations. Many of these little thugs and hooligans believe that their drug money and thug lifestyle gives them carte blanche in our neighborhoods and the more we fear them the stronger they become. They rely on silence and fear to perpetrate these atrocities. If this type of behavior was being documented anywhere else in the world, there would be outrage. Yet these types of crimes are committed with impunity against our women and children. Where are our men?

The next obvious question is where are the city officials elected to protect all of its citizens. How the mayor of this city is able to sleep is beyond me, but not just this mayor but a lot of other ones. Have our city officials taken the stance that we should just let the poor, black people kill themselves, so long as it doesn’t spill over into the suburbs. The whole government of this city has let this women and her child down. There is obviously an attitude in this city that contacting the authorities is a waste of time and if this is in fact true then anarchy is not far away. There is a growing belief in many communities that the police will not protect and the DA’s will not convict so what’s the use. Many are living in fear that they will be hung out to dry if they come forward. It is as though the police have conceded parts of our cities to these thugs and that the residents of these neighborhoods are on their own against these gangs. The police chief of this city should resign in disgrace or be fired for allowing this attitude to take place. There is a crisis situation in our neighborhoods that require more than our current political leaders and police officials are doing. This is racism at its worse. You won’t protect the citizenry against these gangs, but you also don’t allow the citizenry to protect themselves.

And finally for the residents that did nothing, you deserve the biggest condemnation. These residents listened to this woman and her son scream for three hours and did nothing. Noone even bothered to call the police while this atrocity was taking place. This isn’t some war torn village this is a city in the richest country in the world and in one of the richest places in that country. What breaks my heart is that these residents have to be so detached from the violence around them that they could witness this attack, not respond and can face themselves in the mirror. Are they so jaded by the lack of concern of others that the screams of a mother and a child go unheeded? What does that say about us as a nation? As a community?

Outside another unit, Calvin Jones, 71, said he would leave with his 13-year-old granddaughter this weekend. They came to Dunbar Village from Gulfport, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Jones said, and now they were going back — though with no home.

“If you knew that happened,” he asked, “would you stay here?”[2]

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/us/19palm.html

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/us/19palm.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

Read more!

The Silence Is Killing Us

TRENTON, July 8 — A woman who was standing 10 feet away when a stray bullet from a gang fight struck 7-year-old Tajahnique Lee in the face told the police she had been too distracted by her young son to see who fired the shots.

A man who was also in the courtyard when that .45-caliber round blew Tajahnique off her bicycle told detectives he had been engrossed in conversation with neighbors and ducked too quickly to notice what had happened.

Indeed, at least 20 people were within sight of the gunfight among well-known members of the Sex Money Murder subset of the Bloods gang 15 months ago, but the case remains unsolved because not a single one will testify or even describe what they saw to investigators. The witnesses include Vera Lee, Tajahnique’s grandmother, who declined to be interviewed for this article. People who have spoken to her about the shooting said she would not talk to the police for fear she would “have to move out of the country.”[1]

I read this story and what it said about the state of my people and my community really hurt my heart. It would be one thing if this was an isolated incident, but it isn’t. This same thing goes on all over in city and towns across America. We have all of these murders and violence being perpetrated against our communities by these thugs and no one says anything. We have a police force that is unwilling and/or unable to stop the violence and our children keep on dying. We have a government that is either indifferent or is impotent to the problem and our children keep on dying. Our communities are becoming war zones right in our midst and we remain silent to the suffering. Our fear is now stronger than our faith. We have been convinced that there is no hope and a community with no hope has no life.

How long will we as a community continue to allow any type of behavior to go on in our neighborhoods? Any and every type of person and predator feeding on our children are allowed access to our community. How many more children have to die before we say enough to these young thugs? They rely on fear to perpetrate their crimes, they rely on good people to turn their backs and pretend they don’t see. This occurs in our neighborhoods because we allow it; do you think this type of thing could happen in the suburbs? No, because those people would rise up in arms and demand the police to protect them and they would not harbor criminals, because its cousin RayRay or baby’s daddys brother. This madness has to stop!

I know you are afraid, but anyone who has not found something worth dying for is not worth living. Aren’t our children worth dying for? If we stand united against these bullies and thugs we will win, the problem is no one wants to stand. It is time that we began to act like men and start standing for what is right. Protecting our homes and our loved ones is right and worth dying for. I guarantee if we begin to stand as one against this senseless violence and these cowards, we will prevail. Nobody wants to die and I enjoy life as much as the next man, but what we have is no longer lives worth living. We can’t even walk down our streets, our kids can’t even play in front of the house anymore, and our elderly are being held hostage in their homes.

Such silence has spread over the last decade in cities across the country, as the proliferation of gangs like the Crips, Bloods and Latin Kings has made witnesses an endangered and elusive component of countless criminal investigations. Criminologists say gang culture has made fair game of brutally punishing anyone who helps the police. What results is a self-perpetuating cycle of intimidation and helplessness: residents refuse to risk their lives by helping a police force that cannot protect them; the authorities say they are powerless to lock up gang members without witnesses willing to testify.

In the area of the Wilson-Haverstick Houses, where Tajahnique’s neighbors routinely encounter gang members in coin laundries and convenience stores, on street corners, at bus stops and occasionally in church, many people say that silence is a survival tactic.

“You just keep to yourself,” said Shaunte Bellamy, who raised her children in the project, explaining that she concerns herself only with what happens inside her own apartment. “If it didn’t happen in 3C, it didn’t happen to me.”[2]

You now have a rapper’s campaign entitled, “Stop Snitchin”, promoting this silence. There was and still is a time when the police unfairly target Black men, but this is not that time. This is about Black men unfairly targeting and holding our communities hostage. This is not about racial profiling, or hip-hop, or any of those other things that have a legitimate concern for our people, this is about thuggish, common criminal activity. Let’s not be fooled, as long as we harbor and protect criminals we will have this type of violence. I am so tired of Black folks complaining about crime and no one willing to do anything about it. If you witness a crime and do not report it, you have lost your right to complain about crime and police.

Shhhhhhhh….Can you hear the silence? It is deafening and it is killing us.

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/nyregion/09taj.html

[2] Ibid

Read more!