Reaction in France

France is reacting overwhelmingly positively to the American election, but the French political class is also doing some introspection.  The youth, children of immigrants, are saying things like "I'm going to put my picture on my CV now" [In France, one attaches a portrait to a CV].  Not all are optimistic, but, still they see the elections as a positive step.

Recent French elections have some strong parallels with Nixonian and post-Nixonian identity politics.  Sarkozy, for one, managed to send out clearly racist messages while sounding the alarm about "personal responsibility," "delinquance," etc.  It is/was classic dog-whistle politics.  Like some American administrations, though, he as been innovative in not always promoting the elite-school technocrats but rather universitaires and minorities.  His actions, like George Bush appointing Powell or Rice, show the cognitive dissonance of his public policies and personal ones.

The Good Fight and the Pedagogical Moment

Donna Brazile, who appears on our talk shows all too often repeating Washington Conventional Wisdom--you know, the WCW that we should invade Iraq, the sage opion that the smart people of Wall Street know what they're doing and should be trusted, the wisdom that trickle down economics works, you know that conventional wisdom--well, the real Donna broke through today, and she got to the heart of the matter.  She said that she sensed something deeply troubling in the Republican ranks, something truly wicked, something beyond the pale, something truly, deeply, madly racist.

Indeed, we have:

Sit down, boy.

Then there are the enlightened souls screaming, at the planned mention of Barack Hussein Obama (emphasis on Hussein), "terrorist," "kill him," and "traitor."

Update, and thanks to youtube, you can see these Republican supporters talking about Obama's "bloodline," his "muslim background," and say that he's a "one-man terror cell": (h/t digby)



Nevermind that Sarah Palin's husband was/is a member of a separatist/secessionist group.  (Though we should remember that abortion clinic bombers and militia members and the various Timothy McVeigh's of the world are never anti-American, they're anti-government.  I repeat: these killers are never anti-American, they're anti-government.)

So we have people like Sarah, people like John conducting, orchestrating events attended entirely or almost entirely by white people and, let's be honest, encouraging their crowds to jeer at the mention of the name Hussein.  This is not about policy or politics.  It's not even about personality, though some in the punditry might use such terminology to gloss over the situation.  This is about hate, this is about wanting to kill, imprison or humiliate someone because they have a different name, a different color skin.  Go ahead, say it--growl it, scream it: "Hussein."  This name, apparently, is supposed to make you mad.

While it is perhaps true that John and Sarah may not hear the remarks from the podium, they have by now heard of them.  They know this is happening.  We thus have what might be called "a teachable moment."  One of these prospective "leaders" of the United States could and should plan on interrupting their speech when they or one of their entourages hears the epithet.  They should interrupt their speech and show themselves to be above this and to signal to these crowds that its wrong, just plain wrong, plain un-Christian to act in such ways.

This won't happen.  As Digby says:

"This is the kind of thing that really makes me fear for Obama. They are already screaming "terrorist" at Palin's rallies and shouting "kill him." The whole "Obama is a muslim" thing is bizarre, but with his name and childhood spent partly in a Muslim country --- and the fact that he's black, which makes everyone flash on Louis Farrakhan --- makes the right wing lizard brain twitch uncontrollably. They will use this, I have no doubt. There is an entire wingnut industry devoted to stirring up tensions in the middle east and another on devoted to character assassination of Democrats. Obama brings them together in serendipitous loathing and paranoia. It's going to be ugly."

Ugly.

Or, as Josh Marshall quips:

"Shorter McCain Campaign: He's definitely black; probably Muslim; and maybe a terrorist."

So, Donna, thanks for the reminder.   Now do this on teevee!

Zirin does it again.

Thank you David Zirin.  It's rare that I post links almost entirely, but you say it all:

Zirin:

Let's start with an email I received this morning from Kap Fulton:

"Who are Justin, Josh, Lance, Ryan, Dan, Grady, Chase, and Evan?

A. Roll call for a second grade class in at a suburban Ohio elementary school
B. The most popular boys names in Denver, CO
C. Characters from the new 90210
D. Bud Selig's attempt at diversity: one Canadian."
If you answered D, take a bow. Yes, Justin Morneau, (the Canadian), Josh Hamilton, Lance Berkman, Ryan Braun, Dan Uggla, Grady Sizemore, Chase Utley, and Evan Longoria were the contestants in this year's Home Run Derby on the eve of the 2008 All Star Game, and it was quite the Caucasian ovation (although, as I've learned since posting this column, Grady Sizemore's father is African American). Granted, the big time rainbow coalition of home run boppers like David Ortiz, Alex Rodriguez, and Ryan Howard declined to participate, but it was still bizarre and even a touch disturbing to see a home run derby that looked a lot like a contest out of 1946, before Jackie Robinson integrated the game. The vibe wasn't helped when one of the announcers celebrated Josh Hamilton's record setting derby barrage, by exclaiming, "This is a bad night to be an atheist!" (Please may God have better things to do than watch - and intervene in - the Home Run Derby.)
Yet an all-white derby complete with hallelujahs and hosannas might be appropriate for All-Star festivities drenched in nostalgia for its host site Yankee Stadium. The 85-year-old ballpark is of course known as "the house that Ruth built," a testimony to the dominance of Babe Ruth in the 1920s, when the game was segregated and Ruth never had to face great Negro League pitchers like Satchel Paige or Smokey Joe Williams. In the All-Star game itself, the only African American to suit up was Milton Bradley, a player excoriated four years back for saying, "White people never want to see race-with anything. But there's race involved in baseball. That's why there's less than 9 percent African-American representation in the game."
The numbers back up Bradley's frustration.  In the 2008 Racial and Gender Report Card, Richard Lapchick, Nikki Bowey and Ray Mathew wrote,
"The game has the lowest percentage (8.2) of African-Americans in the two decades that we have published the Report Card. That number is less than half what it was in 1997 on the 50th anniversary of [Jackie] Robinson's debut with the Dodgers, when African-Americans made up 17 percent of the players, and less than the percentage of blacks in the general population of the U.S. (12.3 percent)."
Ironically this is occurring while baseball has gone global, with 29% of all Major Leaguers born in Latin America, with impact players from Asia making their mark as well. The number of white players has remained remarkably constant with the numbers at 58-60%. (86% of college baseball players are white.)
The debate about why the number of African American players has plummeted has been explored aplenty. The predominant argument is that baseball has an "image problem" in black America. It has no cultural cache and therefore young athletic black men gravitate toward basketball and football. I think this gets the argument completely backward, (although it can't help baseball's image in the black community that Barry Bonds can't find a team while all manner of proven juicers grace major league rosters). To make this an argument about whether or not baseball is "cool" is like saying there aren't any prominent African American harpsichord players because the harpsichord just isn't funky fresh. While it's true that if you poll an inner city classroom, and ask how many young people want to be baseball players you may get the same number that want to play the harpsichord. But is this a question of what is "cool" or is this about actual access, choices, and opportunity? Baseball requires equipment, investment, and infrastructure. But baseball owners have chosen to make this investment beyond the border where players can be developed signed and discarded on the cheap. This game of baseball that was so closely associated with the black freedom struggle in the days of Jackie Robinson has been removed physically from our cities, and is now as culturally alien in many areas as the steeplechase. I recently spoke with sports sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards and he put it very sharply.
"Forty percent of baseball is foreign born, they've gone global, globalization in sports follows globalization in corporations with the same outcome. There are off-shoring the jobs... Blacks are going to be displaced. The reality is that because of deterioration of education in the community, because of the violence in the community, we're disqualifying, jailing and burying our potential boxers, wide receivers, and baseball players. When you see that happening, then you understand that the Black athlete is really just a canary in the mineshaft because what they're really telling us is something happening in the African-American community. They're merely a canary in the mine shaft saying we have serious problems of survival."
If baseball is sincere about seeing the game return to the cities and if they don't want home run derbies whiter than the Republican National Convention, they are going to need to do more than offer meager urban academy programs. Major League Baseball might have to use its political clout to make sure our cities aren't hollowed out husks. They might have to forgo public stadium funding for a different set of priorities that pours money in instead of vacuuming it out.

Be sure to go to his page for some interesting comments.

Racisme, SOS.

A bloody pigs head, swastikas, a dead (Muslim) soldier. A sad day.

On a trouvé la tête ensanglantée d’un porc sur une tombe. Et sur la stèle de pierre blanche, recouvrant le nom du soldat Younès Ben Mohamed et l’inscription «mort pour la France le 16 janvier 1916», le mot «HALAL» (sic). Quand les journalistes, les anciens combattants et les représentants musulmans sont arrivés sur les lieux, il restait une tache de sang de l’animal sur la stèle. Une croix gammée, pas loin. Entre autres, un profanateur a inscrit une injure à l’islam, qu’il a traduite en chti sur les stèles suivantes.

If you're wondering what chti is, it's the local dialect in Picardy. Read about it on wikipedia.

David Zirin

Every few days I wonder which David Zirin article I should link to. Here's his latest on the new stadium for the Washington Nationals:

While Boswell and Fisher were given prime column real estate to gush [about the Nationals in the Washington Post], columnist Sally Jenkins didn't even get a corner of comics page. It's understandable why Jenkins, the 2002 AP sports columnist of the year, didn't get to play. Four years ago, she refused to gush: "While you're celebrating the deal to bring baseball back to Washington, understand just what it is you're getting: a large publicly financed stadium and potential sinkhole to house a team that's not very good, both of which may cost you more than you bargained for and be of questionable benefit to anybody except the wealthy owners and players. But tell that to baseball romantics, or the mayor and his people, and they act like you just called their baby ugly. It's lovely to have baseball in Washington again. But the deal that brings the Montreal Expos to Washington is an ugly baby."

Jenkins words have come to pass. But this isn't just an "ugly baby", it's Rosemary's baby. It's $611 million of tax payer money in a city that has become a ground zero of economic segregation and gentrification. $611 million over majority opposition of taxpayers and even the city council. $611 million in a city set to close down a staggering twenty-four public schools.

That's $611 million, a mere five months after a mayor commissioned study found that the District's poverty rate was the highest it had been in a decade and African-American unemployment was 51 percent. That's $611 million, in a city where the libraries shut down early and the Metro rusts over. That's a living, throbbing, reminder that the vote-deprived District of Columbia doesn't even rest on the pretense of democracy. This isn't just taxation without representation. It's a monument of avarice that will clear the working poor out of the Southeast corner of the city as surely as if they just dispensed with the baseball and used a bulldozer. This is sports as ethnic and economic cleansing, as Hurricane Katrina, as Shock Doctrine, as Green Zone. Fittingly, Fisher wrote, President George W. Bush came out to throw the first pitch. Fittingly, he was roundly booed. He stood tall on the mound nonetheless, proudly oblivious, taking center stage yet again in what can only be described as occupied territory. (Source)

Indeed. Who else is going to remind us of this? Something tells me all those really "tough" guys on ESPN will forget to mention the booing, the real price tag, the oppression and the repression in our dilapidated capital. It baffles me how the owners could suck some 600 million out of a city that has nothing but problems. Actually, it doesn't baffle me, it just continues to shock me in spite of my repeated exposure to the crimes of the elite.

No, there was nothing organic or natural about this return of baseball, a sport increasingly reliant on fans that are white and immigrant labor that is not. Baseball, a miror image of our politics and racial divides.

Obama's Speech

h/t Obeygiant

It is rare that I link to the speeches of politicians in a positive way, but I think the rare occasion has arisen with Obama's discourse yesterday on race. Of course the media think he did not distance himself enough from Wright, and, of course, the media are wrong on at least two counts: 1) They cannot acknowledge the existence and need for resistance within poor and oppressed communities (because the media is blind to institutional oppression); and 2) because they do not hold other candidates to the same standard. Think: McCain and Haggee, Bush and any number of racist kooks. Anyway, read the words:

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.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. (Link)

Prisons or schools

With California poised to spend more on prisons than on schools for the first time in state history, I thought it a good time to debunk that old left-wing talking point about choosing between prisons or schools.

As the San Quentin website tells us, you can have prison and school. Indeed, here are just a few of the possible opportunities you will have once you enroll in its exciting combination of practical training with liberal arts (Religion, Languages) education:

• PIA: Furniture manufacturing, mattress manufacturing.

• Vocational: Dry cleaning, electrical, graphic arts and printing, landscaping, machine shop, plumbing, sheet metal.

• Academic: Adult Basic Education, High School/GED, Pre-Release, English as a Second Language, Literacy Program.

• Other: Community Service Crews, Youth Diversion, Religious, Arts in Corrections, Victim Awareness, Drug Treatment/Diversion, Joint Venture, Computers for Schools, Eyeglass recycling, Bicycle repair.

San Quentin has some 5000 "students," each on an individually costumized track, and with some 2000 staff and adminstrators, you know that you will not be neglected.

I also see that Arnold is bringing out a new license plate with the DMV: "California: The Prison and Education State."

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this state? (Answer: Republicans, Lobbyists, Media, Democrats--in that order.)