CW Political and Social Thought

The Lynching of Mary Turner in My Hometown in 1918

"Her body was cut open and her infant fell to the ground with a little cry, to be crushed to death by the heel of one of the white men present."  - On the lynching of Mary Turner

For the last year or so, I have been researching my family's history in Virginia and southern Georgia. For the most part, this journey has been very rewarding, finding a newspaper article on my great, great, great grandfather who was born into slavery in the 1850s, discovering an extended relative who was one of the first Black principals in Central Virginia, and uncovering Native American ancestors. Unfortunately, I have also confronted the brutality and racism that defined the world in which they lived. Such was the case in Valdosta, GA in 1918.

Lynching has a long and a very depressing history, the history of which I can't even begin to describe in this entry. What I can say, however, is that experts have approximated that the number of African Americans who were lynched between the 1890s and 1930s averaged 103 per year and were often perpetuated by lynch mobs. As early as 1880, Brooks County, a county formed in 1858 from a portion of Valdosta, had developed a reputation for racial violence.

Brooks County, named after South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks, established a reputation second to none in Georgia for race violence. During the era of lynching, 1880-1930, the county established a ...reputation for mob violence on an unprecedented scale; there were at least twenty-four confirmed victims of lynchings. In December 1894, a mob lynched five men in a single incident. Lynchings were carried out on a regular basis, with mobs taking lives in August 1898, January 1901, July 1909, June 1911, March 1913, November 1917, and May 1918. There were more lynchings in Brooks than any county in Georgia; Fitzhugh Brundage has suggested that the county was the most mob-prone county in the entire South.( n10) It should come as no surprise, then, that the single lynching incident that claimed the most number of lives in Georgia, in May 1918, occurred in that county. ("Killing Them by the Wholesale" by Christopher Meyers)

It was in this historical context that Mary Turner, eight-months pregnant, became one of the most gruesome cases of lynching, racism and lawlessness in the United States. Responding to her husband's lynching, which supposedly involved his complicity with the murder of a white man, papers reported that Turner's statement about her husband's lynching being "unjust" "only inflamed" the white mob which had already claimed eight Black lives. Descriptions of Mary Turner's lynching are some of the hardest writings to stomach.

"The mob tied her ankles together and hung her to a tree head down and gasoline from automobiles was poured over her. Turner's clothing was burned off of her body. A member of the mob produced a sharp knife and her stomach was laid open; her unborn child fell to the ground. Hundreds of bullets were then fired into Turner until she was barely recognizable as a human being. Both Turner and her child were buried about ten feet from the tree, the grave marked by a whiskey bottle with a cigar placed in the neck." (Meyers)

"Mary Turner was pregnant and was hung by her feet. Gasoline was thrown on her clothing and it was set on fire. Her body was cut open and her infant fell to the ground with a little cry, to be crushed to death by the heel of one of the white men present. The mother's body was then riddled with bullets." [1]

The white residents of Valdosta, Georgia decided to teach her a lesson for being uppity enough to be vocal about her pain. A mob found her tied her upside down to a tree, doused her with gasoline and burned her alive. One of the crowd members took a knife and split her belly open letting the baby fall out. Another member of the crowd smashed the baby’s head with his foot. Then the crowd took out their guns and filled the burning body of Mary Turner with bullets. The Associated Press wrote that Mary Turner had made unwise remarks about the execution of her husband. [2]

"...a man stepped forward with a pocketknife and ripped open her abdomen in a crude Caesarean operation. 'Out tumbled the prematurely born child,'" White wrote. "'Two feeble cries it gave - and received for the answer the heel of a stalwart man, as life was ground out of the tiny form. [3]

Gladly, Valdosta has come a long way from Mary Turner, but unfortunately, two recent story coming out of Valdosta show me how far Valdosta still has to go.

Valdosta Court Refuses to Admit Muslim Woman for "Security Reasons"

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today criticized officials in the Valdosta, Georgia, municipal court for denying a Muslim woman entrance to the courtroom because she refused to remove her head scarf. 20-year-old Aniisa Karim had come to court to challenge a speeding ticket, but was denied entry on the basis of security concerns, security guards told her....Read More

White Students Hang Black Doll From Tree

Three white students painted a doll black and hanged it from a schoolyard tree, prompting calls from parents and the local NAACP that the FBI should investigate the act as a hate crime....Read More

Reconsidering the Clinton Presidency

This excerpt on the Clinton presidency is from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

"The eight-year presidential term of Bill Clinton, personable, articulate graduate of Yale Law School, a Rhodes Scholar, and former governor of Arkansas, began with a hope that a bright, young person would bring to the country what he promised: "change." But Clinton's presidency ended with no chance that it would, as he had wished, make his mark in history as one of the nation's great presidents.

His last year in office was marked by sensational scandals surrounding his personal life. More important, he left no legacy of bold innovation in domestic policy or departure from traditional nationalist foreign policy. At home, he surrendered again and again to caution and conservatism, signing legislation that was more pleasing to the Republican Party and big business than to those Democrats who still recalled the bold programs of Franklin Roosevelt. Abroad, there were futile shows of military braggadocio, and subservience to what President Dwight Eisenhower had once warned against: "the military-industrial complex."

On 1992 and 1996 "Victories"
Clinton had barely won election both times. In 1992, with 45 percent of the voting population staying away from the polls, he only received 43 percent of the votes, the senior Bush getting 38 percent, while 19 percent of the voters showed their distaste for both parties by voting for a third-party candidate, Ross Perot. In 1996, with half the population not voting, Clinton won 49 percent of the votes against a lackluster Republican candidate, Robert Dole…

By the time King was assassinated in 1968, he had come to believe that out economic system was fundamentally unjust and needed radical transformation. He spoke of "the evils of capitalism" and asked for "a radical redistribution of economic and political power." On the other hand, as major corporations gave money to the Democratic Party on an unprecedented scale, Clinton demonstrated clearly his total confidence in "the market system" and "private enterprise." During his 1992 campaign, the chief executive officer of Martin Marietta Corporation (which held huge and lucrative government contracts for military production) noted: "I think the Democrats are moving more toward business and business is moving more toward the Democrats."…

Martin Luther King's reaction to the buildup of military power had been the same as his reaction to the Vietnam War: "This madness must cease." And. "...the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together..."

Clinton was willing to recall King's "dream" of racial equality, but not his dream of a society rejecting violence. Even though the Soviet Union was no longer a military threat, he insisted that the United States must keep its armed forces dispersed around the globe, prepare for "two regional wars," and maintain the military budget at cold war levels.

On Clinton's Political Philosophy
Despite his lofty rhetoric, Clinton showed, in his eight years in office, that he, like other politicians, was more interested in electoral victory than in social change. To get more votes, he decided he must move the party closer to the center. This meant doing just enough for blacks, women, and working people to keep their support, while trying to win over white conservative voters with a program of toughness on crime, stern measures on welfare, and a strong military. …Clinton in office followed this plan quite scrupulously. He made a few Cabinet appointments that suggested support for labor and for social welfare programs, and appointed a black pro-labor man as head of the National Labor Relations Board. But his key appointments to the Treasury and Commerce Departments were wealthy corporate lawyers, and his foreign policy staff- the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the CIA, the National Security Adviser-were traditional players on the bipartisan cold war team…

On Judicial Appointments
He showed the same timidity in the two appointments he made to the Supreme Court, making sure that Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer would be moderate enough to be acceptably to Republicans as well as Democrats. He was not willing to fight for a strong liberal to follow in the footsteps of Thurgood Marshall or William Brennan, who had recently left the Court. Breyer and Ginsburg both defended the constitutionality of capital punishment, and upheld drastic restrictions on the use of habeas corpus. Both voted with the most conservative judges on the Court to uphold the “constitutional right” of Boston’s Patrick’s Day parade organizers to exclude gay marchers.

In choosing judges for the lower federal courts, Clinton showed himself no more likely to appoint liberals than the Republican Gerald Ford had in the seventies. According to a three-year study published in the Fordham Law Review in early 1996, Clinton’s appointments made “liberal” decisions in less than half their cases. The New York Times noted that while Reagan and Bush had been willing to fight for judges who would reflect their philosophies, “Mr. Clinton, in contrast, has been quick to drop judicial candidates if there is even a hint of controversy.”

On 'Law and Order'
Clinton was eager to show he was “tough” on matters of “law and order.” Running for President in 1992 while still Governor of Arkansas, he flew back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded man on death row. And early in his administration, in April 1993, he and Attorney General Janet Reno approved an FBI attack on a group of religious zealots who were armed and ensconced in a building complex in Waco, Texas. Instead of waiting for negotiations to bring about a solution, the FBI attacked with rifle fire, tanks, and gas, resulting in a fire that swept through the compound, killing at least 86 men, women, and children...Clinton and Reno gave feeble excuses for what clearly what a reckless decision to launch a military attack on a group of men, women, and children. Reno at one time talked of children being molested, which was totally unsubstantiated, and even if true could hardly justify the massacre that took place…Timothy McVeigh, who some years after the Waco tragedy was convicted of bombing the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which cost about 168 lives, had visited the Waco site twice. Later, according to an FBI affidavit, McVeigh was “extremely agitated” about the government’s assault on Waco…

The “Crime Bill” of 1996, which both Republicans and Democrats in Congress voted for overwhelmingly, and which Clinton endorsed with enthusiasm, dealt with the problem of crime by emphasizing punishment, not prevention. It extended the death penalty to a whole range of criminal offenses and provided $8 billion for the building of new prisons… But, as criminologist Todd Clear wrote in the New York Times (“Tougher is Dumber”) about the new crime bill, harsher sentencing had added 1 million people to the prison population, giving the United States the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and yet violent crime continued to increase…

On Clinton's  Use  of Immigration Issue
Those holding political power- whether Clinton or his Republican predecessors- had something in common. They sought to keep their power by diverting the anger of citizens to groups without the resources to defend themselves…Immigrants were a convenient object of attack, because as nonvoters their interests could be safely ignored. It was easy for politicians to play upon the xenophobia that has erupted from time to time in American history: the anti-Irish prejudices of the mid-nineteenth century; the continual violence against Chinese who has been brought in to work on the railroads; the hostility toward immigrants from eastern and southern Europe that led to the restrictive immigration laws of the 1920s…Both major political parties joined to pass legislation, which Clinton signed, to welfare benefits (food stamps, payments to elderly and disabled people) not only illegal but legal immigrants….In early 1996, Congress and the President joined to pass an “Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,” allowing deportation of any immigrant ever convicted of a crime, no matter how long ago or how serious. Lawful permanent residents who had married Americans and now had children were not exempt…

On Clinton's Use of Welfare Issue
In the summer of 1996 (apparently seeking the support of “centrist” voters for the coming election), created under the New Deal, of financial help to poor families with dependent children….The aim of the welfare cuts was to save $50 billion over a five-year period. Even the New York Times, a supporter of Clinton during the election, said that the provisions of the new law “have nothing to do with creating but everything to do with balancing the budget by cutting programs for the poor.” There was a simple but overwhelming problem with cutting off benefits to the poor to force them to find jobs. There were not jobs available for all those who would lose their benefits…. What the Clinton administration steadfastly refused to do was to establish government programs to create jobs, as had been done in the New Deal era, when billions were spent to give employment to several million people, from construction workers and engineers to artists and writers…Both parties were misreading public opinion, and the press was often complicit in this. When, in the midyear election of 1994, only 37 percent of the electorate went to the polls, and slightly more than half voted Republican, the media reported this as a “revolution.”…But in the story below that headline, a New York Times/CBS News public opinion survey found that 65% of those polled said that “it is the responsibility of government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves…

The Implications of a Balanced Budget
Reduction of the annual deficit to achieve a “balanced budget” became an obsession of the Clinton administration. But since Clinton did not want to raise taxes on the wealthy, or to cut funds for the military, the only alternative was to sacrifice the poor, the children, the aged – to spend less for health care, for food stamps, for education, for single mothers. Two examples of this appeared early in Clinton’s second administration, in the spring of 1997: From the New York Times, May 8, 1997: ‘A major element of President Clinton’s education plan- a proposal to spend $5 billion to repair the nation’s crumbling schools- was among the items quietly killed in last week’s agreement to balance the federal budget…” From the Boston Globe, May 22, 1997: “After White House intervention, the Senate yesterday…rejected a proposal…to extend health insurance to the nation’s 10.5 million uninsured children…Seven lawmakers switched their votes…after senior White House officials…called and said the amendment would imperil the delicate budget agreement.”…

Military Spending Under Clinton
The concern about balancing the budget did not extend to military spending…In Clinton’s presidency, the government continued to spend at least $250 billion a year to maintain the military machine. He was accepting the Republican claim that the nation must be ready to fight “two regional wars” simultaneously, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. At that time, Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, had said, “The threats have become so remote, so remote that they are difficult to discern.” General Colin Powell spoke similarly (repored in Defense News, April 8, 1991): “I’m running out of demons. I’m running out of villains. I’m down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.”…

In the summer of 2000, the New York Times reported that in the previous year the United States had sold over $11 billion of arms, one-third of all weapons sold worldwide. Two-thirds of all arms were sold to poor countries. In the 1999 the Clinton administration lifted a ban on advanced weapons to Latin America. The Times called it “a victory for the big military contractors, like Lockheed-Martin Corporation and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.”….

On Excesses of Baghdad bombings
He had been in office barely six months when he sent the Air Force to drop bombs on Baghdad, presumably in retaliation for an assassination plot against George Bush on the occasion of his visit to Kuwait. The evidence for such a plot was very weak, coming as it did from the notoriously corrupt Kuwaiti police, and Clinton did not wait for the results of the trial supposed to take place in Kuwait of those accused of the plot…The Boston Globe reported: “Since the raid, President Clinton and other officials have boasted of crippling Iraq’s intelligence capacity and of sending a powerful message that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had better behave.” It turned out later that there was no significant damage, if any, to Iraqi intelligence facilities and the New York Times commented…

On Clinton's Hypocrisy on Human Rights
Clinton’s foreign policy had very much the traditional bipartisan emphasis on maintaining friendly relations with whatever governments were in power, and promoting profitable trade with them, whatever their record in protecting human rights. This aid to Indonesia continued, despite that country’s record of mass murder (perhaps 200,000 killed out of a population of 700,000) in the invasion and occupation of East Timor….Human rights clearly came second to business profit in U.S. foreign policy…This criticism was borne out by the Clinton administration’s bizarre approaches to two nations, China and Cuba, both of which considered themselves “communist.” China had massacred protesting students in Beijing in 1991 and put dissenters in prison. Yet the United States continued to give China economic aid and certain trade privileges (“most favored nation” status) for the sake of U.S. business interests. Cuba had imprisoned critics of the regime, but had no bloody record of suppression, as did communist China or other governments in the world that received U.S. aid…

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, both dominated by the United States, adopted a hard-nosed banker’s approach to debt-ridden Third World countries. They insisted that these poor nations allocate a good part of their meager resources to repaying their loans to the rich countries, at the cost of cutting social services to their already-desperate populations….

On Clinton's  Preservation of Class Structure
The United States was the richest country in the world, with 5% of the earth’s population yet consuming 30% of what was produced…As a result of changes in the tax structure, by 1995 that richest 1 percent had gained over $1 trillion and now owned over 40 percent of the nation’s wealth…Meanwhile, 40 million people were without health insurance (the number having risen by 33 percent in the nineties) and infants died of sickness and malnutrition at a rate higher than that of any other industrialized country. There seemed to be unlimited funds for the military, but people who performed vital human services, in health and education, had to struggle to barely survive…According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1998, one of every three working people in the United States had jobs paying at or below the federal poverty level…For people of color, the statistics were especially troubling. Black infants died at twice the rate of white children, and the life expectancy of a black man in Harlem, according to a United Nations report, was 46 years, less than that in Cambodia or the Sudan…

However, the military budget kept increasing, even after the fall of the supposed target of the military budget, and by the end of Clinton’s term was about $300 billion a year…

On Clinton's Prison Policy
The response of the government to such signs of desperation, anger, and alienation has been, historically, quite predictable: Build more jails, lock up more people, execute more prisoners…And so, by the end of the Clinton administration, the United States had more of its population in- prison per capita- a total of two million people- than any other country in the world, with the possible exception of China.

A Minority Perspective of Larry Sabato's A More Perfect Constitution

In A More Perfect Constitution, Larry Sabato proposes twenty-three constitutional amendments, which in most experts' opinions look good on paper, but have very little chance of passage either through Congress or state initiative. That is not to say, however, that these proposals are not worth considering because, after all, Sabato is not just trying to modify our political structure so that it more accurately reflects the Founding Father's intentions for the role of Congress and the President, but also advances a creative plan to rid our system of the many malevolent forces that have dampened the spirit of democracy like partisan redistricting, presidential imperialism, and front-loading, a phenomenon which in the case of Iowa and New Hampshire has led to "a mere 1.4 percent of the U.S. population" basically determining who the presidential party nominees will be. In essence, "two small, heavily white, disproportionately rural sates have a hammerlock on the making of the president." His ideas range from increasing the size of the House to 1,000, to non-partisan redistricting to allowing foreign-born U.S. citizens the right to run for the presidency. No doubt, his proposals generated a lot of discussion at the National Constitutional Convention and serve as a starting point for reforming our Constitution, but, and this is a big but, Sabato gives no serious attention to the pressing need of minority representation.

Here are some facts at a glance
 

To his credit, Sabato does provide for the possibility that congressional districts could be drawn so as to create ethnic and racial districts and that the largest and medium states could have more senate seats, but I question whether he is really concerned about creating a more racially pluralistic Congress as much as he is about promoting the status quo, which by Harvard Law Professor Lani Guinier's account would represent a case of the tyranny of the majority. I don't mean to imply that this as an ad hominem attack against Sabato, rather it is an attempt to raise awareness of the most glaring omission from his book.  As Sabato never directly addresses the subject of minority representation or rather underrepresentation, I tried to get a sense of his opinion on the matter from various points throughout his book. Here are a few of them.

"The stormy modern subjects of abortion, gay rights, the death penalty, gun control, and the like, often threaten to generate their own form of civil war between the Democratic Blue states and the Republican Red states. Opinion is intensely divided on all of them, and they are best fought out on the political landscape, in the legislatures and election campaigns, until such time (if ever) that there is a national near-consensus on them. For now, these issues almost always generate more heat than light, and their introduction int0 the new Constitutional Convention would be poison, bitterly dividing delegates, soaking up disproportionate debate time and making compromise on other critical topics.  (Page  15)

Now, if Sabato is concerned about  less dramatic  constitutional proceedings, then certainly any discussion of racism and white privilege would be included in his "stormy modern subjects".

"While much remains to be done, great progress has been made in diversifying Congress over the past half century..." (Page 22)

Sabato then goes into listing the gender and racial makeup of Congress. Needless to say, Sabato is more interested in glorifying historical progress than advocating for structural features that might guarantee  that women and minorities are never so outnumbered by white men.

"The D.C. city council and electorate might be willing to accept a compromise of one senator in order to finally achieve some voting representation. Whether in a Constitutional Convention or the new Senate itself, this is a possible way out of this dilemma that is deeply troubling to many people: the unfair lack of voting representation for over a half a million Americans who pay taxes, often serve in the armed forces, and sometimes die for the country. That the District's population is heavily minority (about 60 percent African American and 10 percent other minorities) adds to the discomfort in the existing disenfranchisement" (Page 28)

This is really the only time in his book that Sabato addresses minority representation head-on, though D.C. residents' frustration in not having a voting member of the House or any member of Senate is not really a matter of worthwhile debate since "taxation without representation" is a founding principle of our government.

"Computer geographic software may be advanced enough by the 2010 census to aid significantly the compactness standard without doing any harm to minority representation." (Page 36)

Unfortunately, Sabato assumes that the present status of minority representation is an acceptable one.

"The overwhelming advantages conferred by incumbency and partisan redistricting can only be counteracted by a mandated maximum on office-holding, say term limit supporters. In addition, new ideas and fresh blood, perhaps greater representation for historically underrepresented women and minorities are guaranteed with term limits." (Page 41)

Then.

"While some variation in the characteristics of legislators is recorded here and there, term limits have not fundamentally changed the composition of legislatures" (Page 51)

"As the power of each member of the Court and the Court as a whole, has grown in recent decades, so too has the need for greater diversity and representation in the membership on the Court. ...The additional three members would permit greater diversity in race, gender, ethnicity, religion, age, and background, and ideological leanings." (117)

At first glance, this excerpt appears to be some sort of recognition of the importance of minority representation, but Sabato does not seem to expound on the nature of minority representation. In other words, would a Supreme Court with African American justices with the conservative leanings of Clarence Thomas be a reasonable level of diversity? I don't know. He does not discuss that in-depth, but I suspect that given the level of attention and detail in his book to the exactness of minority representation, the quality of minority representation matters very little.

I must admit however that I find Sabato's position at times confusing, particularly in his recognition of a problem that is endemic to the minority population.

"In the alternative scenario, where the benefits of a particular policy are clear but very diffuse among a large section of the population, Oslon maintains that it is very difficult for an advocacy group to organize. In this circumstance, the broad affected group may assume that reason will naturally prevail or that other members of the group will take the lead. This is the legendary logic of "let George do it," and with juxtaposed with the notion of politicians as rational election-seekers, it has major consequences..."   

This particular paragraph discussed a collective action problem as it related to a mandatory balanced budget. Certainly, the observations of Oslon ring true in terms of minority politics. That being the case, why wouldn't certain constitutional measures be taken as with a balanced budget to mandate minority representation?

In any case, I am very disappointed that Sabato would call for a constitutional convention for the purposes of considering his amendments, which do little to challenge notions of white supremacy and tyranny in American national politics.

Pictures by Eugene Resnick from the National Constitutional Convention

From Top to Bottom (Geraldine Ferraro, Panel One (Moderator: Bob Schieffer, Fred Barnes, Rob Bishop, Donna Brazile, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Jamie Raskin, Lowell Weicker), Donna Brazile and Eleanor Holmes Norton, Norton and Senator Raskin, Justice Alito, and former Senator Bob Dole)

My Appearance Before Charlottesville City Council

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

What does it mean to live in a just society? Does having the right to vote define justice? Does an equal applicability of the laws constitute justice? Certainly. But what about less technical issues? What about the nature of representation? Is a system whereby the majority determines all the rules just? If you find yourself in the majority, then perhaps this last question poses no great challenge, however, if you find yourself in the minority, then such a system appears to be only somewhat democratic. Ultimately, these rules are not just those agreed upon through legislative process, but include civil obligations, social attitudes, and standards of  objectivity. In other words, justice should not be politicized, as some objective limited to the state, but necessarily is a mandate to the people. Since the people are the antecedent of the state, then the burden of creating a just society in contingent upon the strong will of the people. Not a segment of the people. Not the majority of the people. The whole of the people. Here begins the critique of popular American thought. Unfortunately, the point has been missed by most Americans that democracy is the most ideal and least achievable practical form of  government. No doubt, the creation of rules is a necessary and proper first step, but the American project has basically stopped there.  The bifurcation and stalemate of our political  and moral energy attest to the disinterest in maximizing the input of diverse views and opinions. Nowhere has the abandonment of the democratic ideal been more tyrannical than with the white majority's firm belief in creating rules and institutions that deprive the minority population of real power and influence....

And old habits die hard.

***********************************************************
My Speech Before the Charlottesville City Council
Monday, October 15, 2007

"I stand here tonight to give my support to the representatives here as well as those citizens who have expressed their support through petition in denouncing the historical inaccuracy and offensive depiction of Sacagawea  and more broadly Native Americans. I believe that there is no argument that can be formulated that sufficiently counters the objections that we have made. Some critics ground their argument in a perversion of fact by supposing that Sacagawea is somehow reacting to having finally arrived at the Pacific Ocean, but I think that this supposition is  implausible.

This fundamental truth manifests itself through depictions of Native Americans elsewhere in public statues in Charlottesville. The George Rogers Clark statue on West Main Street conveys a violent confrontation between European-Americans and the indigenous people of North America. To sum up that scene, the Native Americans are being shot at and trampled as they try to resist foreign invasion. Perhaps if people took the opportunity to look at the back of the statue, which features a European-American about to ambush and indeed kill unarmed Native Americans, then the message of that statue and the message of the Lewis and Clark statue would be realized. Just as the George Rogers Clark statue symbolizes the conquering of a land and the conquering of a people, so does Sacagawea cowering at the feet of Lewis and Clark mean to symbolize the beginning of the end of the Native American civilization.

For these reasons, I support the hundreds of citizens who would like for this statue to be corrected through some means that gives dignity to the Native American peoples and truth to American history.

If I may leave you with this, what if every Native American in these statues was replaced by an African American? What if, instead of Sacagawea, that statue depicted York, a Black enslaved person who also went on that expedition? Would you feel different?"

Watch Clip Here. After player buffers, fast forward to the 10 min mark.

We Can No Longer Ignore the Issue of Race

I talk a lot about racism on my website, but never did I think that someone could be tortured, held in captivity, sexually abused, humiliated, and be forced to eat dog and rat feces all because they were black. In commenting on Megan Williams' ordeal in West Virginia authorities are saying this...

"At one point, an assailant cut the woman's ankle with a knife and used the N-word in telling her she was victimized because she is black, authorities said. They said the young was also forced to eat dog feces..."

"Her captors, all of them white, choked her with a cable cord and stabbed her in the leg while calling her a racial slur, poured hot water over her and made her drink from a toilet, according to criminal complaints."

I have said time and time again that the white population in this country does not want to talk about race because they are afraid of what they might see in the mirror. Whites like to think and would like for everyone else to think that the United States is the freest nation in the world, but it is the freest nation in the world if you are Caucasian. If you are Black, even educated, you face a lifetime struggle in fighting for your rights to be heard, represented, and respected. I can't say that I am altogether surprised by what happened to Megan Williams, though the manner in which she was treated was comparable to being a slave in the deepest part of the Deep South.

As long as whites treat the issue of race as being a 'Black problem', they will never truly understand democracy, humanity, and freedom because in order for their freedom, humanity, and justice to be realized they must release themselves of their own white supremacy and hatred against everyone who is not white.

I am not just talking about the more overt forms as with Megan Williams, but I am talking about the subtle forms, like using affirmative action as a scapegoat for their own desire to preserve the greatest gifts of this country for whites. Affirmative action is not an automatic ticket to higher education or employment, nor should it be, but the mere use of race as one factor is being manipulated to mean that minorities can't even get into a college without allegations of not working hard enough, being smart enough, or deserving enough. Whites also have a way of ignoring minorities in how they contribute to the character of this nation.

They don't care much about Black history or culture, neither does their ignorance excite them to put up a book, or watch a movie, or start a conversation with a person of color. I once discussed this issue with a white student who was entering into the teaching field with a focus on American history. In encouraging him to read various books on minority history, he dismissed my gesture by saying that he does not have have time being that he's a new teacher, but as soon as he's comfortable in his subject matter, he'll "look into it". This is the nature of being white in America. 

Whites are so secured in their notion that this nation belongs to them that any other groups' attempt to claim ownership is disposable, sneered at, and ridiculed.

To them, the notion that Blacks have made an indelible mark on this country seems fabricated, if not down right stupid. If my remarks seem hyperbolic, then just a white person, "What does it feel like to be white."  More than likely they will look confounded, but deep inside they will know that whiteness in this country is power: power to dominate, power to inflict, and power to conquer.

It is with this power that  those white West Virginians virtually enslaved Megan Williams.

Here are the facts as reported in various news stories

1. 20-year-old Charleston, W.Va., resident Megan Williams, a black woman, was allegedly abducted, held captive for at least a week and tortured by six white individuals from Logan County, W.Va. Black Missing

2. A prosecutor said police are investigating the possibility that the victim was lured to the house where she was attacked by a man she met on the internet, but Carmen Williams insisted that wasn’t the case. “This wasn’t from the Internet,” she said. ABC NEWS

3. On September 12, 2007 six white residents of Logan County were arrested and charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, malicious wounding, and battery against Megan Williams, who is Black and Mentally Challenged. It is also reported that the defendants allegedly repeatedly used racial slurs while forcing Megan to eat human feces, rat feces, and drink urine while trapped at the Logan County, West Virginia residence. Send 2  Press

4. Frankie Brewster, 49, and her son Bobby Brewster, 24, are accused of kidnapping, sexual assault and malicious wounding. Karen Burton, 46, George Messer, 27, Alisha Burton, 23 and Danny Combs, 20, are charged with sexual assault and malicious wounding. SKY.COM

5. Authorities say they held a 20-year-old black woman for about a week at their mobile home, where she was tortured, sexually assaulted and forced to eat rat droppings. Court TV

I'll Take on the Whole United States If I Have To

We have frequently printed the word Democracy, yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.
~Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas (1871)

To be an Afro-American, or an American black, is to be in the situation, intolerably exaggerated, of all those who have ever found themselves part of a civilization which they could in no wise honorably defend-which they were compelled, indeed, endlessly to attack and condemn-and who yet spoke out of the most passionate love, hoping to make the kingdom new, to make it honorably and worthy of life.
~James Baldwin, No Name in the Street (1972)

I have been regularly contributing to a forum on possible constitutional amendments. Here is my latest post.

The last gentleman's comment illustrates my point. He does not want to see the importance of race because doing so would challenge his privileged status as a (presumably) white male. Moreover, how dare he use Oprah and Bill Cosby as indicators that Black people have somehow overcome! He has no clue what it means to be minority in this country. Even for minorities like myself who graduated in the top of their class in high school, attended a prestigious university, and managed to overcome the odds, we are subjected to the white supremacist notions that our people are never good enough and that white folks are always a "little bit" better. Though I took more A.P. courses than any other kid in my class, my white peers in high school gossiped behind my back and said that I was only admitted to U.Va. because I was black. This is the reality of being a minority. We constantly have to break people's stereotypes of who they assume we are. I make a concerted effort not to let my hair grow too long, my pants be too low, or my speech too 'black' for fear that someone may stereotype me. White supremacist ideology has gone unchecked for much too long. We can't even imagine the damage that has been done and the millions of Americans, white and Black alike, who have bought into this.

Related Links
My Posts on A More Perfect Constitution

What Would Be Your Constitutional Amendment?

Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia is leading an effort to generate discussion for calling a constitutional convention. In his latest book, A More Perfect Constitution, he is advancing 23 proposals that will "consider the very real possibility: that the failure of the nation to update the Constitution and the structure of government it originally bequeathed to is is at the root of our current political dysfunction."  I challenged him on one glaring omission in an e-mail I sent to him and he encouraged me to make that correspondence public.

September 27th, 7:03 p.m.

Professor Sabato,
I can't say how excited I am that the Center for Politics is calling for a constitutional convention. I have discussed this issue many times with my peers and my professors since I came to U.Va. On the issue of the number of representatives in Congress, I am so baffled that the world's third largest nation has less national representatives than France, Britain, and many other western democracies. A professor of mine, who actually teaches American constitutionalism, in fact justified these numbers by saying that adding more representatives would lead to more instability or turnover, but my question is, "What is so bad about forcing those in power to share power?" And if we were willing to continually expand the size of Congress well into the twentieth century, why should we stop now given how diverse and complex our nation has become? This is one of many important issues that I am glad that you are addressing.

But I have to say this Professor Sabato, I am troubled by the absence of any clear message about race in your proposals. For Americans and white Americans especially, race has always have been the pink elephant in the room that no one is willing to talk about and when we do, it's explosive, divisive, and sometimes very violent. Here I am thinking about: the Founding Father's compromise on slavery, the denial, which only in the recent past began to abate, that Blacks were negatively impacted by slavery and the support for the theory that slavery in fact 'modernized' African Americans, the idea that race is not as important in the post Civil Rights era, so on and so forth. Will we continue to pretend that the United States is a just and equal society for all when Black kids, and sadly now Hispanic kids suffer immensely and disproportionately from unequal education, unequal access, unequal chance, and, dare I say, unequal citizenship. I believe it was Al Sharpton who put it best, "When America catches a cold, Black America gets the flu."

It is to the white majority's advantage to not bring up race, so I am not really surprised that your proposals make no explicit statement in this regard. It is to the advantage of minorities and particularly African Americans, whose ancestors by and large did not choose to immigrate to the United States, why this question of race still must be kept on the table, because honestly Professor Sabato it's not just about the racial bias of our justice system, our educational system, or our political system. It is about the totality of being a minority in this country, from the small things like all the white male statues in Charlottesville to Hurricane Katrina. Moreover, American society does not accept African Americans on their own terms. When American history is taught there is no effort to define African Americans independently of their relationship to whites. There is no talk of the culture that my enslaved ancestors created; the music, the institutions, and the religion.  Instead we hear of the "master" and his objectified 'slave'. I have a picture of one of my great, great, great grandfathers who was born into slavery in the 1850s and who lived well into his 90s. I would never call him a slave. Though his society thought that he was an object to be traded, I believe that he was a human being who never deserved to be treated like chattel. I prefer the term enslaved person because this captures his humanity and his dignity.

But the fact that even now we treat Black folks who were victims of that good ole American institution as just people who did as they were told and that's it, shows me that we still got a long way to go. The greatest two moments of revelation came to me when a white friend of mine, who graduated from college, had no clue who Frederick Douglas was and when a Black friend of mine didn't know if Clarence Thomas or 'that other Black judge' was the 'Republican, like the conservative one'. I believe that calling a constitutional convention is a very good idea, but I believe that now is our opportunity for us to get it right.  Racial inequality and injustice will not be tolerated and we must make every effort to raise African Americans and all minorities, their history, their culture, and importance to a level that is honorable and just.

Respectfully Yours,
CW

September 27th, 7:10 p.m. A reply to Professor Sabato's reply.

Professor Sabato,
The constitutional amendment that I have in mind would spell out our values in terms of racial equality. I know that constitutional amendments tend to be rather short and sometimes vague, but I think that Virginia's resolution on slavery is what I have in mind, especially the message of reconciliation. I don't understand why we must think so technically on this issue. It's our constitution for God's sake! I think that such an amendment should assert a commitment to making sure that no one race is left in the cold or sleeps near the fire. That all Americans, poor, rich, Black, White and everything in between deserve a society that is just and equal, not just in terms of rules, which themselves have yet to be realized, but in terms of intangibles. Racial minorities deserve the same right to claim ownership of American history, culture, and politics, as well as the right to believe in the U.S.'s commitment to our foundational principles. As such, racial minorities must be given representation and recognition in ways that are politically, educationally, and culturally proportionate.

Professor Sabato, if the United States could say this I would be very proud to be an African American, but I know that as long as people like a white liberal friend of mine, believe that this is a 'white country', we can't close the books on what W.E.B. DuBois called 'double consciousness'.

Black Folks Really Get on My Nerves

Black folks really got some nerves. We'll march until the cows come home in protest against a white person who has done some immoral or unlawful crime against a Black person as in Jena, but when our community is at fault for being the criminal and victim, mum's the word. Whatever happened to marching against thugs, which of course the Jena 6 were not, who ruin our communities, kill our children, and somehow make it fashionable and cool to become part of this prison culture? Whatever happen to making our Black parents accountable for not teaching their children what it means to dress honorably, to talk intelligently, and to be respected? I am not saying that Black folks should not be in Jena right now (because they absolutely should), but they need to get their head out of the clouds. When it comes to more pervasive questions...

Can parents feed and shelter their children?
Will a Black child fall victim to the streets?
Why are Black people half of all homicide victims and criminals?
Do Black folks live in safe and uplifting communities?
Will Black children learn of their people's history?
Do Black people care enough about their history?
Why Do Black people vote in such low numbers especial given our minority status?

What do they have to say to that?  I don't see any Black people marching over these issues and it's a shame!

Here's something to march about!

• From 1976-2005, 94% of black victims were killed by blacks [3]
• Thirteen percent of all adult Black men- 1.4 million - are disenfranchised (which is related to the first point), representing one-third of the total disenfranchised population and reflecting a rate of disenfranchisement  that is seven times the national average. [4] 
• The prevalence of diabetes among African Americans is about 70% higher than among white Americans. [1] 
• Infant morality rates for African Americans are twice as that of the white population [2]