Nation-Building

There's really no better term for Pat Robertson than "Christian extremist" - there's not much point in going over his long history of public outbursts of intolerance, racism, and hatred, except in noting that ordinary Christians (and evangelicals in particular) bear as much responsibility for his ravings as ordinary muslims do for the sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki. That is to say, none. But Robertson's recent comments about Haiti were particularly cruel and (if I may offer my opinion) un-Christian, even by his standards. During his televised 700 Club program, he said, "Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about. They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.' True story. And so the devil said, 'Ok it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. The...

Jerome quotes approvingly of a piece in the LA Times which argues that Obama made a huge mistake by giving his speech on race, because it didn't evaporate the Wright controversy, it just exacerbated attitudes against Obama on the matter: I waited in vain for our hybrid presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there is no such thing as "race," that we all belong to the same race -- the human race. I waited for him to mesmerize us with a singular and focused appeal to hold all candidates to the same standards no matter their race or their sex or their age. But instead Obama gave us a full measure of racial rhetoric about how some of us with an "untrained ear" -- meaning whites and Asians and Latinos -- don't understand and can't relate to the so-called black experience. ...I expected Obama, who up to now had been steering a perfect course away from the racial boxes of the past, to challenge racial labels and so-called black experiences. We...

The complete text of today's speech by Barack Obama is reprinted here below the fold. It's a wonderful speech, that calls all of America together and repudiates the race card even as it insists that the grievances of black America - and white America - are founded in legitimate concerns. It repudiates the anger of Black America as expressed by Rev. Wright but refuses to disown him in a cynical political ploy. It truly is what America needs to hear. And it is absolutely required reading in full, by Obama's supporters and his detractors alike.   OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION Tuesday, March 18th, 2008/ 10:17:53 ET Philadelphia, Pennsylvania �We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.� Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America�s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean t...

Several people in the last thread and via (thoughtful) email pointed me in the direction of more information regarding the Jena 6, which have served to substantially cool my earlier anger about the issue. The most relevant item is this opinion piece by sports columnist Jason Whitlock (whom as everyone noted, irrelevantly, is also African-American). What is notable is that Whitlock takes a very Cosby-esque turn of analysis: The fact that we waited to love Mychal Bell until after he’d thrown away a Division I football scholarship and nine months of his life is just as heinous as the grossly excessive attempted-murder charges that originally landed him in jail. Reed Walters, the Jena district attorney, is being accused of racism because he didn’t show Bell compassion when the teenager was brought before the court for the third time on assault charges in a two-year span. Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble? [...] Here is another undeniable, statistical...

Today is the 50th anniversary of Little Rock. Above is the famous photo by Will Counts (above), the caption to which reads: Elizabeth Eckford, followed and taunted by an angry crowd after she was denied entrance to Little Rock Central High School, September 4, 1957. The girl in the light dress behind her is Hazel Bryan. Will Counts/Arkansas History Commission. Vanity Fair has an indepth article on the lives of those two women , which makes for a fascinating tale of racism and redemption in its own right. And yet, the story doesn't quite have a happy ending: Central High School looks as imposing as ever, but over the past 50 years, its innards have changed unimaginably: the school is now more than half black. It's all misleading, of course, because Central is really two different schools, separate and unequal, under one roof. The blacks go to different classes, sit on separate sides of the cafeteria, have different, and far lower, levels of performance and expectations. There...

I knew nothing - absolutely nothing - about this story until I listened to this report on NPR . So a bunch of black ruffians beat a white kid nearly to death? No, actually the victim had superficial injuries and went to a party later that evening. The black students were unprovoked and this was out of the blue? No, actually it was the culmination of a year of racial tension that began when white students hung nooses on a tree to intimdate black students. HUNG. NOOSES. FROM. TREES. And loony lefty liberals are making a false analogy to the days of Jim Crow? No, The first to go to court was Mychal Bell, the team's star running and defensive back. Bell's court-appointed lawyer refused to mount any defense at all, instead resting his case immediately after two days of government presentation. An all-white jury found Bell guilty. A talented athlete, Bell had a real shot at a Division I football scholarship. He now faces up to 22 years in prison. The other five black students await t...