^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

Jack Kerwick, guest columnist for the new About.com: U.S. Conservative Politics site, is about half right. He's not crazy about the word "racism," and thinks that anyone interested in having a multiracial discussion about race issues should declare a moratorium on the word first. His article reflects the ambiguity that many whites feel about the word "racism," an ambiguity that some people of color share, and an ambiguity that rests partly in the fact that race itself is a nonsense idea and it's very hard to create a really useful vocabulary around a nonsense idea. Race is a vehicle for oppression, a pseudoscientific way of color-coding caste bias to benefit the glorified con artists who invented it, and the terminology we use to talk about race now will probably sound ridiculous in 500 years. Race itself is racist. The fact that race exists at all, in any significant way, is a pretty good indicator that we live in a racist culture--because any non-racist culture would have little use for such a vague, clumsy, and culturally loaded taxonomy of family and cultural heritage.

In lesbian and gay rights activism, there are two wonderful words to refer, separately, to anti-gay motivation, also known as homophobia, and anti-gay systems or behavior, also known as heterosexism. You can do heterosexist things without homophobic motives, like eHarmony does--matching only opposite-sex couples because those are the only kinds of relationships that their matchmaking formula has been written to address. You can also do anti-heterosexist things with homophobic motives, such as supporting a local lesbian and gay matchmaking service because you have an irrational fear that your neighbor is coming on to you and you want to throw him off your scent.

But racism and sexism, as terms, don't really work that way. You can do racist or sexist things with no intention of doing so, or you can have private racist or sexist motivations. This double-sided aspect of racism is one that many whites, including but certainly not limited to white conservatives, can't get their heads around. Racist behavior, in the eyes of some whites, is behavior that is motivated by intentional racism--say, a philosophical belief in white supremacy. It makes sense that whites would see racism this way, since if you're a white person trying not to do racist things, not having a racist ideology is a good first step.

People of color tend to experience, and therefore define, racism a little bit differently. Whites who specifically and deliberately and openly buy into a philosophy of white supremacy are a pain but they aren't usually the biggest problem, because they don't tend to have much power these days. But institutional racism has a lot of power, often putting white kids in better schools and more economically stable families and one day into better career tracks with a higher annual salary, leading towards a retirement and a higher life expectancy to match. That reality is much more oppressively racist than some lunatic on the street corner ranting about "children of Ham." Read more...

^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

Nicole Paultre-Bell and her mother await the verdict. Photo: Pool / Getty Images.

Three men left a bachelor party. A group of armed assailants ran towards them. The driver, whose wedding was scheduled for the next morning, attempted to flee the apparent carjackers. The assailants fired 50 bullets, killing the driver and injuring his two passengers.

The driver was unarmed. His passengers were unarmed. These facts are not in dispute.

The assailants, it was later revealed, were plainclothes officers of the New York Police Department. They were attempting to investigate rumors of prostitution at the club. They thought they heard someone say "gun." They claim that they verbally identified themselves as they ran up to the car, drew their own guns, and fired them. It wouldn't have necessarily mattered if they did. Carjackers shout things--crazy things--all the time to get the attention of the driver.

Maybe the driver should have taken a calculated gamble and just let them have the car, but most carjackers don't spray cars with bullets. They steal cars. Murder charges, clearly identifiable bullet damage in their stolen automobiles--it's not good business for carjackers. NYPD officers don't have to worry so much about murder charges because NYPD officers are never charged with murder for killing black or Latino suspects on the streets. It's rare that they're charged with anything at all. The occasional shooting death of an unarmed brown or black man, like the human sacrifice performed by ancient fertility cults, is viewed as a blood tax.

The three killers, charged with manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and assault, asked for a bench trial--a trial by judge instead of by jury, the right of every criminal defendant. Surely they knew that a jury might deadlock and result in a mistrial, then perhaps a retrial. They wanted an acquittal on a first pass. They got one.

I'd barely followed this case after the indictment was announced because I took it for granted that the officers would be convicted of something. Generally speaking, shooting three unarmed people and killing one of them results in a conviction if it goes to trial. But this, I should have reminded myself, is the NYPD.

I don't pretend to know what the shooters were thinking. I've never been in their shoes. I assume it's a difficult, dangerous job. I assume they were genuinely frightened, that they genuinely felt that their lives might be at risk. But then the same can probably be said of most killers on America's urban streets, who more often than not are involved in dangerous drug-related disputes, disputes that fall outside of the magisterium of the police and the law-abiding world that police represent. Those shootings bulk up the homicide statistics of every major city in the United States.

No, I'm not a police officer. I have the luxury of sitting here in my chair knowing that I can call 911 at any time and count on the protection of police officers. Police officers have a very difficult job. They should receive a six-figure salary instead of the minimal salary that they presently receive. But they should receive that salary in money, not in acquittals.

I wonder what would happen if we showed civilians the same deference that the State of New York has shown to these police officers--where "I was scared" is an excuse for drawing firearms and firing indiscriminately into an occupied vehicle. My suspicion is that more people, people from every walk of life, would die. Those are sacrifices that we are not willing, as a culture, to make.

But apparently killing a Sean Bell, every now and then, is okay. Through the officers, white Americans who endorse the shoot-first policy, but know that it will never affect them personally, put these young men on altars and drive daggers through their hearts. And for another year, we have good crops.

The Department of Justice has the opportunity to pursue federal civil rights charges against the officers. It should. The New York Police Department is still conducting an internal investigation to determine what, if any, disciplinary action the officers might receive. It must. Sean Bell's widow, who was at least allowed to take his name, has filed a wrongful death suit against the officers. It was, by any reasonable standard, a wrongful death. And it was also, if we are to reject the logic of human sacrifice, a federal civil rights violation--and at least an example of reckless endangerment, if not manslaughter. Police are taught better ways to stop an occupied vehicle than perforating it with dozens of bullets.

But if the majority of Americans are comfortable letting Sean Bell's killers take his life with no legal consequences, because they're willing to pay that price to live in a "safer" country, then each American should at least hang a plaque on the living room wall. And every time another young unarmed man dies in New York or Los Angeles because police have been given a general license to kill, they should be required to engrave that name on their plaques. It should be a really big plaque, because this happens quite often. (Sean Bell's story made national headlines not because he was an unarmed black man who was shot to death by police, but because he was an unarmed black man who was shot to death by police the night before his wedding.) And at the top, every plaque should read: "IN LOVING MEMORY OF THE INNOCENT PEOPLE WE KILLED IN THE NAME OF OUR OWN SAFETY."

It's the least we can do.

See also:

• Summary of the Sean Bell Shooting and NYPD Trial

^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

I just ran across the required reading section at The Angry Black Woman, and stumbled across her post on white liberal guilt--the debilitating fear that many whites have of saying or doing something that might come across as racist.

I'm not immune. I'm a white guy and I live in a 73% black city. Being thought of as a racist would be profoundly damaging to my social life, my career, and my activism work. But the truth is that if you write and talk about race--and I write and talk about race a lot--then you're always at risk of stepping in it, because race isn't just a "touchy" subject. It's an incredibly complicated subject that no one person can ever completely comprehend.

I don't remember ever being called a racist in person, but I've occasionally said things that came across the wrong way and had to backtrack. I'm not just talking about the everyday experience of having whites on the Internet accuse me of "reverse racism," but also about times in my life when I tried to say something interesting or helpful and stepped in it.

And I've learned from my mistakes, so here are five thoughts I'd offer to any white person who is legitimately paralyzed with fear that something s/he one day says or does might be seen as racist:

- First, don't be paralyzed. Seriously. Whites tend to resolve the difficult problem of talking about race by pretending that race doesn't exist at all. Pay attention to what people of color tell you about racism. Learn from it. Let yourself care about it. Talk about it. As whites we materially benefit from racism, so we have a moral obligation to confront it.

- Remember that racism is much, much bigger than you. Racism is an institutional problem, not something that has been invented by people who are alive today. It pervades American culture. So if you accidentally say something racist in a culture that's already racist, the problem isn't that you're creating racist sentiments. It's that you're failing to filter out the racist sentiments you've been fed.

- If what you say sounds racist, apologize for it. There seems to be this weird idea floating around that if you didn't mean to say something racist, it wasn't actually a racist remark. Sorry, no. You can, in fact, accidentally make a racist remark. Practice these words (or something to this effect that sounds more like you): "Yeah, that wasn't what I meant to say; I worded it wrong. I'm sorry." Unless you're dealing with somebody who already hates your guts, a simple verbal gaffe is probably not going to be perceived as a Freudian slip as long as you apologize for it. But if you defend it, the perception may be that your statement wasn't really a slip-up because you consider it worth defending.

- Don't buy into the "race hysteria" myth. Race is a touchy subject, sure, but people of color who are your friends probably aren't going to suddenly forget who you are just because you accidentally said something offensive. If any do, it's a safe bet that there's more going on there than an isolated verbal slip-up.

- Relax. Again, we live in a racist culture. Whatever you might one day say by accident, it's a safe bet that people of color in your life have heard people say far worse things on purpose.

In closing, I'd like to go back to a blog entry I posted in October regarding various highly-publicized instances in which white celebrities had made offensive remarks (see "All Apologies"):

None of this is to say that this will earn the offenders forgiveness, but that shouldn't be their primary objective anyway. The proper response for any ethical human being, upon discovering that they have caused harm, is to try to make up for it.

This is something that I have only slowly learned about racism controversies. Most of the time the controversy isn't about who is and who isn't a racist, as if this were some kind of sociopolitical remake of Where's Waldo. It's about recognizing the damage we do, and refusing to profit from it, and correcting it, and moving forward.

As long as you're more concerned about the harm your words can do to others than you are with the harm your words can do to your reputation, odds are excellent that you will always be able to address your verbal gaffes in an intelligent way. In personal communication, as in most areas of life, genuine empathy and concern for others tends to shine through--but when you're only thinking about yourself, people can usually pick up on that, too.

See also:

• All Apologies

^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

Newsweek health writer Dean Ornish thinks so--and the data is on his side:

In the past decade more than 100 studies have been published documenting the harmful effects of racial discrimination on a variety of health measures in African-American men and women.

For example, a recent study that followed nearly 60,000 African-American women for six years found that women who reported on-the-job racial discrimination had a 32 percent higher risk of breast cancer than others who did not. Women who said they faced racial discrimination on the job, in housing and from the police were 48 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than those who reported no incidents of major discrimination.

Another study of African-American women found that those who reported chronic emotional stress due to their experience of racism had more severely blocked carotid arteries (which supply blood to the brain) than those who did not. In yet another study perceived racism was associated with a significantly increased risk of uterine fibroids in black women, and this was unrelated to differences in health care utilization.

And then there are the effects of racially-correlated inequalities in health care access--the topic of Unnatural Causes, a seven-part, 14-hour documentary currently airing on PBS. Low-income black men have a median life expectancy of 67--a decade below the national average.

So what can be done about this? Ornish emphasizes the need to dismantle active racism, and to generally treat each other in a kinder way in our day-to-day lives. This is good advice, I believe, and should be taken to heart--but it doesn't address the core problem of racism, because white folks who make intentionally life harder for people of color are generally not the same white folks who ask themselves what they can do to make life easier for people of color. The EEOC has made some progress in fighting overt employment discrimination, but there's a limit to what can be accomplished by civil rights laws--particularly when the most significant problems impacting the health of people of color have more to do with institutional racism than personal racism.

So a systematic, institutional solution is needed. And as Brian Smedley points out, we're not talking about a revolution here--even mainstream, bipartisan policy proposals can have a dramatic impact on racism-related health disparities:

If we believe – as most Americans do – that the United States should be a place where everyone has a fair chance to achieve their full potential, then we can focus on achievable policy solutions. These include things like providing access to high-quality early child education programs for all children, reforming school financing to equalize the quality of education in K through 12th grade, and reducing financial barriers to college. We should also support living wage policies, so that no one who works full-time is forced to live in poverty, and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit program. We should provide job training so that more people can participate in high-growth jobs, such as in the technology industry. We should invest in affordable housing and fix the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. We should support housing mobility programs, so that people in low-opportunity communities can move to better neighborhoods, and invest in jobs and schools in low-opportunity communities so that they become attractive places to live and work.

And if we're willing to go a step further, universal health care must be a priority. Studies have consistently shown that about half of all uninsured Americans are black or Latino, when black and Latino Americans barely make up one quarter of the U.S. population.

There are ways to address the overall impact of racism on health and life expectancy, but most of them are inconvenient for Americans who already enjoy high standards of health care. These Americans need to be made more aware of the severity of the problem. A low-income black or Latino man who dies in 2008 due to racially-correlated health care disparities may not be as obvious a victim as a black or Latino man lynched in an earlier era, but he's just as dead.

See also:

• Institutional Racism

^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

Photo: William Thomas Cain / Getty Images.

The most significant problem the punditocracy faces in analyzing Obama's speech is that it analyzes itself. Like his writing, it's blunt, introspective, and at times painfully honest. Like so much of what Barack Obama has said, it sounds too direct, too decent, to have come out of the mouth of a politician.

Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend put it best for me:

When I read it I wept. The tears were of sheer relief ...

People who know me well are quite aware that I'm not one prone to great waves of emotion; I'm Ms. Even Keel to most. The emotion was because there I sat, reading elements of wisdom about our desperate need for engagement on the topic of race that I have written about on this blog for years. At times I have almost pleaded with readers to feel safe to open up to discuss the difficult issues of difference -- putting up posts with a dearth of comments because few were willing to put themselves out there ...

Because of that, in Obama's speech I was reading the words of a man that gets it, regardless of the fact that he is a candidate for President of the United States of America that resonate with me on this issue. That he is thisclose to becoming president of this country -- and to risk it all by cracking open this door on a painful area of this country -- is something I thought I would never see. He is giving voice to a healthier view on race relations that needs to be embraced from a stage where it's hard to argue that it is not an issue worth tackling.

The topic of this site, race relations, is so often used as a vehicle and a vessel for condemnation, and we should condemn remarks such as those made in recent months by Don Imus, Duane "Dog" Chapman, and so forth. But the remarks are not proof of anything except that we live in a culture that is tragically afflicted by this ridiculous pseudoscientific concept that we call race, and the relentlessly evil racial hierarchy that comes packaged with it. Don Imus did not invent racism or misogyny. Duane Chapman did not invent the N-word. Behavior like theirs explodes like bubbles in a pot of boiling water--but all of the water is boiling, not just the bubbles. In a non-racist society, there would be no reason to care whether or not people made racist remarks because those remarks would have no power to cause damage or inflict pain.

If you have not already read or heard the speech on race that Obama delivered Tuesday, please do so now. Whether you like Barack Obama or not, he has said some things that badly needed to be said. He's lancing the boil--and, as Pam Spaulding likes to say, touching the third rail--of race politics in America.

Here are a few remarks that especially stood out for me:

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe ...

We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now ...

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.

Note that he refuses to condemn Jeremiah Wright. Note that he refuses to condemn Geraldine Ferraro. Note that he places the focus not on the bubbles that occasionally rise to the surface of the boiling water, but on the fact that the water is boiling in the first place. We live in a racist culture. Our culture has a racist history. With apologies to Billy Joel, we--Geraldine Ferraro, Jeremiah Wright, Duane Chapman, Don Imus, all of us--didn't start the fire. It was already burning. He didn't pretend the remarks weren't offensive, but he also didn't pretend that they came out of nowhere.

Politicians who comment on race almost never get this. They seem scared to. They're afraid of touching the third rail. They're afraid of saying the wrong thing and being thought of as racists. So they step back. Obama, in the middle of a heated presidential campaign, isn't stepping back. Make no mistake: He is taking a huge risk by making a speech about race at this point in the campaign, when nearly all of the remaining Democratic primary voters are white. For whatever reason--maybe personal integrity, maybe to prepare for the long march to November--he has chosen to take on this issue directly and settle it now.

I suspect that every white American has at some point or another wondered: Why haven't black folks achieved demographic parity with whites? You won't run into very many whites who answer this question by saying that whites are genetically superior to blacks, but my experience is that most whites don't have a direct answer to this question at all, which is almost worse.

Some will say "culture," but culture always comes from somewhere. It doesn't just arise out of a vacuum. Some will say "poverty," but poverty always comes from somewhere, too. In the end, explaining racial disparities means either asserting that some people deserve to have more social power than others on account of their race, or asserting that they don't and that their disproportionate level of social power is unjust. Because who we are ultimately boils down to biology and environment, addressing racial disparities means either asserting philosophical racism or confronting institutional racism. The disparities have to come from somewhere. Either they're within us, or they're imposed on us. Either they're just, or they're unjust.

Obama explains the root causes of these disparities as concisely as anyone ever has:

... [W]e do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

And my experience has also been that many black folks look at these disparities and ask themselves: Why don't white folks get it? Why are they complicit in this system? Do they think this is how things are supposed to be? Obama has an answer for this, too:

Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze ... And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years.

And immediately after he says this, Obama puts his own candidacy in context:

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

In his race speech, Obama didn't sell his candidacy as a snake oil solution to American racism. He didn't excoriate Geraldine Ferraro or throw his former pastor under the bus. He didn't sugarcoat the reality of institutional racism. And he categorically refused to use his racial identity as a weapon against either of his opponents:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

Obama's speech powerfully defied expectations. He isn't interested in being a racial candidate, but he obviously isn't interested in being a post-racial candidate--in "transcending race"--either. He's simply being Barack Obama, and whether he becomes the 44th President of the United States or not, this speech will be remembered long after we have forgotten about the gaffes of Ferraro and Wright.

See also:

• Transcript: Barack Obama's Speech on Race and Faith (Deborah White / About.com: U.S. Liberal Politics)

^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

Photo: J.D. Pooley / Getty Images.

In "Hillary Clinton vs. The Black Candidate," I wrote about what I perceived to be the Clinton campaign's attempts to inject race into the presidential election. Is she still at it? Many bloggers say yes. I'm not sure I agree--the race identity strategy seems to have been an experiment that failed, judging by the 11 consecutive losses she suffered after South Carolina--but the evidence is worth a look.

Point 1: Skin Shading

The June 27th, 1994 issue of Time magazine featured a color-saturated, artificially darkened image of O.J. Simpson's mug shot. The photographer would later say that he had intended to make the image "more artful, more compelling," but this had the not inconsequential effect of making Simpson's substantially darker than it actually was. Color bias remains a serious problem--in the United States and internationally--so the prospect of making a black man's skin darker should be weighed carefully, particularly when one is attempting to portray him in a negative light.

In a recent television ad criticizing Obama, the Clinton campaign artificially darkened his skin. While the ad in general had a darkened color hue, the similarities with the Time magazine cover incident are notable.

Did the Clinton campaign intend to use color bias against Obama? It's hard to say. Color hue manipulation can be done by a small staff, quietly, with no explicit indication that exploitation of color bias is the intended goal. A Clinton spokesman dismissed the shading accusation as "bogus," stating that "ads look different" depending on the media through which they are viewed. But a side-by-side comparison clearly shows that the frame was artificially darkened.

Point 2: The Farrakhan Factor

In the most recent debate between Clinton and Obama, the moderator brought up, and Clinton used, the issue of Louis Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama. Farrakhan is a divisive figure to say the least--leader of the Nation of Islam (which teaches that blacks are a superior race and that humanity was created by black scientists), antisemite, and organizer of the impressive and monumental Million Man March of 1995.

Russert grilled Obama on the endorsement, at which point Obama reminded Russert that he had "consistently denounced" Farrakhan's antisemitic remarks. Clinton responded:

CLINTON: I just want to add something here, because I faced a similar situation when I ran for the Senate in 2000 in New York. And in New York, there are more than the two parties, Democratic and Republican. And one of the parties at that time, the Independence Party, was under the control of people who were anti-Semitic, anti- Israel. And I made it very clear that I did not want their support. I rejected it. I said that it would not be anything I would be comfortable with. And it looked as though I might pay a price for that. But I would not be associated with people who said such inflammatory and untrue charges against either Israel or Jewish people in our country.

And, you know, I was willing to take that stand, and, you know, fortunately the people of New York supported me and I won. But at the time, I thought it was more important to stand on principle and to reject the kind of conditions that went with support like that.

RUSSERT: Are you suggesting Senator Obama is not standing on principle?

CLINTON: No. I'm just saying that you asked specifically if he would reject it. And there's a difference between denouncing and rejecting. And I think when it comes to this sort of, you know, inflammatory -- I have no doubt that everything that Barack just said is absolutely sincere. But I just think, we've got to be even stronger. We cannot let anyone in any way say these things because of the implications that they have, which can be so far reaching.

OBAMA: Tim, I have to say I don't see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. There's no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word "reject" Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word "denounce," then I'm happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Good. Good. Excellent.

(The transcript places "(APPLAUSE)" after the Clinton remark, but at the actual debate the applause began prior to her remark and continued through it.)

There are several dynamics at work here:

1. Clinton has the opportunity to state her opposition to antisemitism, and actively compete with Obama for Jewish support.
2. Clinton has the opportunity to subtly remind viewers, if she so chooses, that Obama is black.
3. Some viewers will also think of email campaigns against Obama, which center on false claims that he is secretly a Muslim and/or a black nationalist.

Obama decisively won the exchange with his "I don't see a difference between denouncing and rejecting" remark--the audience cheered, and Clinton backed away from her criticism--but how many of the above motives, if any, were relevant to the exchange?

Point 3: The Somali Photos

Last October, an article in The Guardian described Matt Drudge as "one of Hillary Clinton's best-kept secrets"--and that "the Clinton campaign had grown adept at using the Drudge Report to leak news that could steal the thunder from rivals."

It is customary for diplomats to wear clothing indigenous to the region they are visiting, and Obama was photographed doing so while visiting rural Kenya, his father's country, in traditional Somali garb. According to the Drudge Report, the Clinton campaign had leaked this photograph to them for dissemination.

The Clinton campaign has denied leaking the photograph, but added that "[i]f Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed." It is not clear why the Obama campaign should be ashamed for acknowledging racism and xenophobia, which obviously do exist and obviously can be factors in elections. Nor is the Clinton campaign's denial entirely plausible, given its previous history of leaking material to Drudge.

Point 4: PajamaGate

Law blogger Ann Althouse suggests that a recent Clinton advertisement, which featured an African-American child whose pajamas (reading "GOOD NIGHT") were arranged for several seconds in such a way as to present the letters N-I-G prominently on the screen, may have represented an attempt to use subliminal advertising against Obama. I find this idea a little harder to swallow than the others, but it's making rounds on the blogosphere, so it's worth noting.

Does Any of This Matter?

The key question for me is not "Did Hillary Clinton intend to do any of these things?," but rather "Did they benefit her campaign?" The answer is, frankly, not at all clear. She broke Obama's momentum a little bit with her narrow primary victories in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas, but has long been on track to do that anyway. And the cost-benefit ratio of using these strategies in a national Democratic primary is not particularly compelling--they might appeal to white racists, sure, but they're just as likely to turn off people of color and antiracist whites. Not to mention the fact that all of these strategies (with the exception of the Farrakhan issue in the debates) would require the coordination of multiple people--any one of whom could leak the strategy and immediately doom the Clinton campaign by doing so.

So while I wouldn't put much past the Clinton campaign after what happened in South Carolina, I don't think the skin shading or pajama word search represent intentional attempts to use racism to influence the campaign. Nor do I think that drawing out the Farrakhan issue was anything more than an attempt to appeal to Jewish voters concerned about antisemitism--though the fact that Russert pressed the issue as hard as he did in the first place is more troubling, since Obama had done nothing to court Farrakhan's support. The Somali photo leak theory, on the other hand, sounds very credible--much more credible than the idea that Drudge would lie about a source to harm a candidate with whom he has had such a mutually beneficial working relationship over the past six months.

See also:

• Hillary Clinton vs. The Black Candidate
• Solidarity and Treason

^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

Mississippi's State Senate District 4 includes parts of Alcorn, Tippah, and Tishomingo counties. It's primarily white; in the pre-Reagan era, it went mainly for conservative white Democrats, or "Dixiecrats," of the Strom Thurmond mold. In more recent years, it has gone mainly to white Republicans.

Last November, it went to a black Democrat named Eric Powell.

Alabama's State House District 12 includes the city of Cullman. It's 96% white and has traditionally followed similar voting patterns as Mississippi's State Senate District 4: Dixiecrats, then Republicans.

In a special election last month, it went to a black Democrat named Larry Fields.

Things are changing in the South--but it isn't exactly a matter of racism vanishing so much as it is a matter of racism becoming more complex, as the New York Times reports. With respect to Fields, for example, some of the local remarks indicate an interesting dynamic that's beginning to develop:

"He’s a dadgum good fellow," said W. F. Davis, a retired boilermaker, at Jack's, a roadside restaurant here, as Mr. Fields basked in congratulations nearby. "He’s always been one of us."

The distinction between "one of us" and something else, of course, is always present in a county where Mr. Fields still sees Confederate flags dotting the landscape.

"There’s two different races, in that race," explained James Rice, a white resident describing black people, as Mr. Fields affably worked voters at Jack's. "You got some that don’t want to be nothing, and you got some that want to help. You don’t find too many like James Fields."

I'm not going to single Mr. Rice out for saying this; he's articulating a sentiment that is common among among both blacks and whites. Several months ago (see "Beyond Black and White"), I wrote:

According to a recent Pew study, 37 percent of African Americans and 44 percent of African Americans aged 18-29 believe that there is no single "black" race--and 61 percent of African Americans believe that the cultural gulf between low-income blacks and the black middle class has widened.

What Mr. Rice is essentially talking about, in other words, is the divide between low-income blacks and the black middle class. He doesn't have much respect for the former, but he doesn't discriminate against the latter. So does his statement really reflect racism, or just classism? And to what degree does racism simply reflect the color-coding of class bias?

Racism as we know it certainly originated as classism. When the transsaharan slave trade began in the 7th century, there was no racial hierarchy to speak of with respect to sub-Saharan Africans. Blacks were imported as available labor under the same terms that they might have been in ancient Rome--as if they were members of a conquered nation. By the time the transatlantic slave trade began in the 15th century, the association had been made between visible subsaharan African ancestry and servitude. By the 18th century whites had come to believe that sub-Saharan Africans were born to be slaves, and organized their ideas of race accordingly. But it all began with imported labor, and the association of a certain class of laborer with physical characteristics most common among those of sub-Saharan ancestry. It all began, in other words, with classism.

Likewise, classism has always played a role in racist ideology. The characters of Sidney Poitier--Dr. John Prentice in Look Who's Coming to Dinner, Detective Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night--broadened white public understanding of African Americans by creating heroic black men with as much power and authority as white men. He became, in white parlance of the time, "a credit to his race." This wasn't always exactly a blessing; Poitier would later write of the challenges he found himself facing "in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people." But it challenged many whites to look past their negative impressions of African Americans and realize how strange it was to say that white folks could be as strong as Prentice or Tibbs, but black folks could not.

Still, most black folks aren't and weren't like John Prentice or Virgil Tibbs. (Most white folks aren't and weren't, either.) And in the world of the white voters described above, most black folks aren't like Larry Fields. Like the heroes of Sidney Poitier before him, he has strengths that give him a post-racial quality. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Sidney Poitier did a lot of good with his film career, too. But we shouldn't see this as a sign that racism is dying, because racism is decomposing before it dies, as social diseases tend to do. And what we are perhaps witnessing is its breakdown into its more fundamental elements--classism and race:class correlation.

The New York Times story begins:

"Really, I never realize he’s black," said a white woman in a restaurant, smiling.

"He's black?" asked Lou Bradford, a white Cullman police officer, jokingly.

"You know, I don’t even see him as black," said another of Mr. Fields's new white constituents, Perry Ray, the mayor of one of the county's villages, Dodge City.

Larry Fields is changing his white voters' impression of what it means to be a black man. This is commendable, and it will no doubt have a major effect on the culture of his district. But we can tell there's work to do by the fact that his candidacy is seen as one that transcends race, rather than one that simply acknowledges it. Nobody should have to forget he's black.

See also:

• Beyond Black and White
• Racism and Electability

^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

Photo: David McNew / Getty Images.

The Clinton-Obama race for the Democratic presidential nomination, which promises to finally end the white male monopoly on major-party presidential nominations, is inspiring in many ways--and depressing in others. Nothing sums up the limitations of the so-called race versus gender debate better than the conundrum faced by black women.

Because the logic is inescapable:

• If all women who vote against Hillary Clinton display a lack of solidarity with other women, and
• If all African Americans who vote against Barack Obama display a lack of solidarity with other African Americans, then
• This leaves no way that a black woman can vote and not be guilty of betraying either her race or her gender.

This is an excellent example of the way that women, and people of color, are marginalized from these debates.

See also New York NOW president Marcia Pappas' response to Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who endorsed Barack Obama:

Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard ...

We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not "this" one) ...

This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women's voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who "know what’s best for us."

Nowhere in Pappas' letter is the existence of black women, who make up 51 percent of African Americans, acknowledged. Pappas' letter paints the picture of a conflict between white women and men. People of color are simply not part of the discussion.

And it is not hard to imagine that a nearly identical letter couldn't be written and directed against Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), who had endorsed Clinton. Perhaps something like this:

African Americans have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Nelson's endorsement of Barack Obama's opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit African Americans hard ...

We are repaid with his abandonment! He's picking the new white over us. He's joined the list of progressive white men who can't or won't handle the prospect of a black president who is Barack Obama (they will of course say they support a black president, just not "this" one) ...

This latest move by Nelson is so telling about the status of and respect for civil rights, the voices of people of color, racial justice and our ability - indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first African American after centuries of whites who "know what's best for us."

Or we could focus on the fact that John McCain, if elected, would be the oldest candidate to become president in U.S. history. Perhaps this would work as a press release:

Seniors have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Cochran's endorsement of John McCain's opponent in the Republican presidential primary campaign has really hit seniors hard ...

We are repaid with his abandonment! He's picking the new, young candidate over us. He's joined the list of progressive middle-aged senators who can't or won't handle the prospect of a president over 70 who is John McCain (they will of course say they support a septuagenarian president, just not "this" one) ...

This latest move by Cochran is so telling about the status of and respect for the elderly, the voices of seniors, anti-ageism and our ability - indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President who is the first true senior after centuries of younger candidates who "know what's best for us."

I could go on. Bill Richardson would have been the first Latino major-party presidential nominee; my endorsement was more or less split between Richardson and Obama (I have personally supported Obama since January 2007 but wrote that Richardson had a better civil liberties platform), which I suppose must mean that I'm a half-committed antiracist misogynist who discriminates against the elderly.

Reality check: When the first black president is elected, it will not end racism in America. When the first woman is elected president, it will not end sexism in America. These problems are too deep to be solved by one election. It's hard to imagine how significant it could be for kids who aren't white males to finally be able to look up at the television screen and see a commander-in-chief who breaks the mold. Electing Clinton or Obama will change this country, no question.

But does either candidate really represent the majority of women or African Americans? Does either candidate really stand, in any compelling way, as an example of the marginalized and oppressed? They are both privileged national celebrities who have had so many opportunities in life that they are actually running for president. How can any commentator have the unmitigated gall to say that anyone who doesn't vote for Hillary Clinton is, by virtue of her gender, somehow harming the women in this country who make 77 cents on the dollar relative to men? Or women who are most subject to domestic violence and sexual assault? Or women who struggle with low access to birth control or high infant mortality, who are forced by inadequate health care to have miscarriages and prevented by law from having affordable access to abortion? Hillary Clinton is not the face of oppressed womanhood in America.

Nor does Barack Obama's life show much evidence of dreams deferred. He graduated from Harvard Law School, wrote a bestselling memoir, was elected to the U.S. Senate, and is now the frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Does his life story--can the life story of any presidential candidate--really represent those who have been most affected by racial injustice?

Electing Barack Obama could have a profound impact on the self-image of many black youths, not all of them male, but it will not end racism. Electing Hillary Clinton could have a profound impact on the self-image of many young women, not all of them white, but it will not end sexism. The stakes of this election are very high--but in terms of race and gender, I believe they've been overstated. There is no shortcut to moral progress. The hard work of social justice will still need to be done, and the grim realities of our institutionally racist and sexist country will still exist, long after the next president is inaugurated. Our own conduct and our own moral values--not the race or gender of our favorite presidential candidate--will determine whether or not we are guilty of the "ultimate betrayal."

See also:

• Hillary Clinton vs. "The Black Candidate"
• Racism and Electability
• Iowa: What Does It Mean?

We're looking for passionate and enthusiastic individual to be the Guide to the Race Relations site of About.com!

What sort of information do we want the new Guide to provide?
Well, we're looking for someone to help keep the public informed about major race issues, mainly in the United States but with relevant coverage from throughout the world. Since we are not a breaking news service, content should primarily provide deep background and perspective on major race-related issues and current events. The site should also be action-oriented in giving readers constructive ways in which they can get involved.

What sort of person are we looking for to be the new Guide to Race Relations?
Our ideal candidate:

• A journalist or author who has written extensively on the subject
• A social worker or other professional working in the field of race relations counseling
• An experienced member or leader from an advocacy group who can address a broad spectrum of issues evenhandedly

If this sounds like you, and you've got excellent writing skills and the desire to reach and teach a broad audience through your writing, why not go over to our application site to learn more about our hiring program and submit an application?

^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

Photo: Doug Benc / Getty Images.

As a lifelong Mississippian, I've tried for years to understand why white people in my home state--people who were, by all accounts, decent people in most respects--were complicit for so long in the evil system of mandatory racial segregation.

What I've come to believe is that the old race politics weren't about competing philosophies of race; they were about whites exploiting institutional racism in order to make sure they had food on their table and toys for their children in a poor state with scarce resources. They were about whites feeling safe. They were about whites pursuing personal happiness at the expense of total strangers--and accepting fairy tales of racial supremacy that helped them sleep at night. It wasn't personal. Whites just wanted things to turn out as well as possible for themselves, their families, and the ethnically homogenous people with whom they socialized.

I believe the segregationist politicians probably blocked black voter participation because they wanted to win elections, and because they knew they couldn't do that if they offended white constituents or allowed black constituents to vote them out of office. I believe most segregationist pastors ran all-white churches not because they were fanatically committed to a theology of racial division, regardless of what they might have claimed from the pulpit, but rather because they knew their pledges would go up if they played the segregationist game, and that their pledges would go down if they didn't.

And any whites who woke up to what was going on around them only had to look around at the sheer ubiquitousness of Southern segregation to realize that it was beyond their power to transform. "Lord," the old prayer goes, "grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change." And they could find that serenity in the white families, white churches, white politicians, and other white institutions with which they were surrounded. It's no wonder, really, that Southern whites supported segregation. Sure, we can ask ourselves why millions allowed this to happen--but for the individual whites who comprised those millions, segregation must have seemed as inevitable as it was convenient.

I believe that institutional racism, like all institutional evils, is rooted in banality. My experience has been that black folks generally understand this and white folks generally don't. White folks are more likely to look back on the Klan and other hate groups and see that we've moved beyond the philosophy expressed by these groups. When white folks occasionally say something that suggests they still buy into the old philosophies, people of all racial backgrounds are offended--but the more comfortable approach, the more white approach, is to assume that as long as we're not one of those philosophical racists, we're fine.

The truth is that racism is about what happens to people of color, not about what white people say or think. It isn't about us. If white people didn't already live at the top of a racist caste system in America, they could impotently rant in favor of white supremacist ideology all day long and it wouldn't hurt a soul. The reason it hurts--the reason we should be condemning it--is because the lies whites tell each other about non-whites are little excuses that whites use to feel more comfortable about the material benefits that institutional racism has given them. The cure for racism, in other words, is not the unachievable goal of white ideological perfection. It's the very achievable but inconvenient goal of social justice.

That's what I believe, anyway.

So having said that--having explained what the most insidious form of racism is, as far as I'm concerned--let me explain why the recent tone of Hillary Clinton's campaign has made this white Southerner's blood boil. Read more...