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The Pros and Cons of Obamacare

There is a criticism of Barack Obama that I hear levied against him, not primarily from white people or Republicans, but from black people, that I take some issue with. It is the claim that President Obama has not done, or has not tried to do, anything for black people. Some will point out that he has championed immigration reform for Hispanics and gay marriage for gay people, but nothing for us. Those who say so however probably have not considered this point within the context of health care in the African-American community. Some conservative critics of the healthcare overhaul have criticized the reform as a 100% solution to a 10% problem. And they’re right, in a way. It had been widely reported at the beginning of the healthcare debate and before that there were 46 million Americans without health insurance in this country. Really though it was never that bad; 10 million Americans without health insurance are people making above $75,000 a year who did not want insurance. 14 million were eligible for state sponsored care and never enrolled, while 6 million were eligible for insurance through their employer but never took advantage of it (another 5 million are undocumented immigrants, another 5 million are legal immigrants who are not insured for various reasons) thus leaving about 6 million Americans without reasonable access to health insurance. Too big a number to be sure, but a relatively small percentage of the American population. Yet of that 6 million, most are black Americans, making what might be thought of as a 10% problem for the rest of America a 100% problem for us. In seeking to expand healthcare coverage for all Americans, President Obama was not simply doing something for the country at large; he was doing something for the black community.

Yet and still there are serious concerns to be had about the new legislation as it unfolds, as well as things to be grateful for. The number one positive thing which the Affordable Care Act (its legal name) does is expand coverage to millions of Americans who did not have it previously (assuming the unfortunate glitches with the website are eventually worked out). As noted, in the black community that is a particularly big deal. Medicaid expansion, subsidies available to lower income Americans, and coverage mandates for children and young adults up to the age of 26 as well as for people with pre-existing conditions will help secure the healthcare of millions, including those who are economically and physically the most vulnerable among us. This is a victory for the health of the black community, and for all those who were unable to afford care.

For the black middle class however, and for working class black families and others making more than a relatively modest income (above $43,000 a year for individuals and above $92,000 a year for a family of four, though keeping in mind too that for many making less than these levels but still doing relatively well the subsidies available to them are smaller) there is an increased economic burden resulting from the law that needs to be acknowledged. One of the reasons for passing the ACA to begin with was to help control rising premiums, costs that have been straining the budgets of many American families, and black families are no exception. But for most people in this income range, premiums are not only still too high but are still getting higher, especially for those who don’t receive employer based coverage. (A study by the Manhattan Institute has shown that average premiums on the individual market have risen 99% for men since the implementation of the law.) Particularly as minimum coverage requirements are applied to insurance plans on the individual market, and as insurance companies seek to recoup monies spent on guaranteeing coverage for those with preexisting conditions by passing costs on to other consumers, it seems that what we can expect is for middle class premiums generally to continue to rise even as subsidies and Medicaid increase affordability and access to care for poor and for many working class African Americans.

One might say that this is a fair trade off, and maybe it is. But we shouldn’t be quick to give up on making things easier for the middle class. After all, the prosperity of this nation and certainly the future success of the black community are built upon having a thriving middle class, and insuring affordable health coverage for the middle class is a necessary part of that process. To that end there are many more reforms to be considered, from defensive medicine reform, to expanding competition across state lines, to encouraging Health Savings Accounts, etc.

The point is that, in some important areas, we have made progress. But make no mistake: the effort to fix the healthcare system continues.

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Reviving the Inner-City Economy

Urban America, a term almost synonymous with minority and black America, is in crisis. That comes as a surprise to no one, of course. Urban life, inner-city life more particularly, is fraught with perils and starved of opportunity. Many of the themes of these crises are well known to us: high rates of crime, low rates of employment, inadequate access to healthcare, contentious relationships with police officers and governing authorities. The list goes on and on. Solutions to these crises however are not often easy to come across, so let me present a few here.

That an absence of broad-based economic opportunity is fundamental to the struggles of the urban centers of America, whether we are talking Detroit, south-side Chicago, or my own inner city Los Angeles, is hard to argue. Lack of income and financial independence is central to the instability of families and the unraveling of communities. Travel my home streets of Inglewood, Los Angeles and Watts, and in the midst of those who are making it okay, we find depressed and itinerant people struggling with an overburdened public transportation system, unkempt roads, a polluted environment and worn commercial properties serving as the ailing backbone of an economy tenuously held together by EBT.

How to fix the employment crisis? Reforming welfare and unemployment spending to couple these dollars with educational programs and occupational training that can turn the long term unemployed from frustrated recipients of government assistance to skilled and qualified students and trainees is a good place to start. Our current welfare and unemployment programs do little to provide for successful transitioning from dependence to employment. Many people who receive unemployment remain on unemployment for a long time, and by the time their benefits are near discontinuation  they find themselves seeking employment with an unattractive gap on their resumes and a lack of confidence that comes from not having participated in the workplace for an extended period. All of these things plague the inner city unemployed, making them undesirable to employers. Welfare and unemployment reform along these lines would go a long way to solving these problems.

A long way, that is, but not far enough. For while it is vital to incentivize education and training these things can only help black and inner city communities take advantage of the broader opportunities available to them. But if jobs are not prevalent in the inner cities, and they are not, than the urban population has to seek opportunity where it lies, and often it lies very far from our homes in the cities. That requires travel, and because gas is expensive and many poor blacks and Latinos do not have cars, we are left to rely on public transportation systems that are often underfunded, overcrowded, unpleasant and even dangerous. Funding public transport systems whose routes are effectively coordinated to deliver people from the cities safely, comfortably and expeditiously to those areas where job and career opportunities are prevalent is important. This would make it more possible for the unemployed to find jobs, to actually be able to get to those jobs and to get to school and daycare as well. Ultimately, as these measures enhance urban economies these municipalities would have more tax dollars to invest in the communities as a result.

While there is not room here to give a detailed account of the inadequacies of inner city healthcare, both in terms of access and quality, as a fundamental principle it is clear to me that the more we can expand competition between providers, the more affordable care will become a reality for people everywhere, including the urban communities. One step in that direction would be to do as former President Bill Clinton and others have suggested, and allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. Certain features of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act will also help to expand access, such as mandating the coverage of people with pre-existing conditions and extending the time children are available to remain on their parent’s plans. Other elements of the ACA however, including coverage mandates, threaten to raise costs and thereby limit access. On the local level then it is important for community groups to do what they can. (The First Ladies Health Day in Los Angeles, sponsored by Walgreens in association with a wide range of inner city churches, is bringing a diverse array of healthcare services to the urban poor in Los Angeles. It’s a great example of what the community and the business sector can accomplish when working together.)

The inner city suffers from many problems; but a healed economy is the first step in solving many of them. With the right policies in place, inner cities across America can be transformed into citadels of opportunity, empowering black America to take the reigns of its own economic future.

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The Reverend Fred Luter, Jr.

As the black community overwhelmingly celebrates the re-election of our first black President, I’ve been surprised to note how few of us are aware of another groundbreaking rise to higher office achieved by one of our own. This office is pastoral, not political, yet the social implications of this occurrence are perhaps no less significant than that of President Obama’s election to the office of President of the United States. I’m talking about the Reverend Fred Luter, Jr. and his own election as president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Southern Baptist Convention, (S.B.C.), for those who don’t know, is the largest body of Baptists in the entire world. It is the second largest Christian body in the United States with 16 million members, second only to the Catholic Church. Given that most American Christians are Protestant, you could argue that Fred Luter, Jr., a 56-year old black man from New Orleans, stands as the most powerful religious figure in America. This is a significant fact in its own right. But it’s all the more amazing when you consider the history of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The S.B.C. has an old and venerable history in the United States, and particularly in the south. But to say that the S.B.C. has a questionable history with respect to race would be putting it mildly. It became the Southern Baptist Convention in the first place in 1845, having split with the northern Baptists because it refused to prohibit slave holding churches from sending out missionaries. Though the Baptist community even in the south had a history of racial tolerance and acceptance towards blacks throughout the 1700’s (even allowing blacks to be preachers in the south and opposing slavery), the southern Baptists gradually changed their attitude towards slavery as their membership expanded among the elite, wealthy planter class of the Southern Gentry. (Perhaps ironically, conversions of blacks in the south increased significantly as well during this time, especially among the slaves. Black Baptists formed their own organizations after the Civil War, most notably the National Baptist Association.) From that time onward, and even after the Civil War, the attitudes of Southern Baptists with regards to civil rights closely tracked that of white Southerners generally. Conservative Southern Baptists would support Jim Crow laws (though there was a moderate faction that favored desegregation) and were generally not allies of the Civil Rights Movement.

All this of course makes the election of Fred Luter, Jr. to the presidency of the S.B.C. (he was elected unopposed by the delegates at the convention; itself a first in S.B.C. history) all the more striking. A jovial yet fiery personality behind the pulpit, the senior minister of the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans Reverend Luter was born the third of five children and raised by his divorced mother who made ends meet as a seamstress and as a surgical scrub assistant. He turned to God at the age of 21 after a motorcycle accident nearly killed him, leaving him with a head injury and a compound fracture. He began as a street preacher and ultimately found his way to Franklin Avenue in 1983, ultimately leading the growth of the church to 7,000 people prior to Hurricane Katrina in 2005; after which Reverend Luter was noted for his leadership in rebuilding the congregation following unparalleled devastation left in the Hurricane’s wake, rebuilding a crushed and demoralized congregation back up to a membership of 5,000 as of his election to the presidency of S.B.C in June of last year. He finishes his one year term in June of this year.

If it is a testament to the degree to which minds and hearts have changed over the many generations of this country’s racial history unto now that Revered Luter could be elected President of a body of primarily white Christians with roots deep in slavery and segregation, it is also perhaps a testament to the power of the Christian message of love and forgiveness, even when articulated across the boundaries and tensions of the color-line. Reverend Luter recalled having been invited to preach at a Baptist church in Crowley, Louisiana, in the early ’90’s (the first time he preached outside of New Orleans). It was a strictly white congregation, and the pastor who invited Reverend Luter to speak had become nervous about how his congregants would react to a black preacher.

“Just don’t put my picture up,” Luter instructed him, preferring to leave it a surprise. Indeed his audience was silent and tense when Fred Luter astonished them with his presence. But then he spoke of the grace and the goodness of God in the warm, approachable manner for which he is known. Their attitudes changed even that night. One woman from the crowd would approach Reverend Luter afterwards, admitting to him that she had begun by feeling angry that a black man was preaching at her church…and ended by thanking God he came.

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My Message to the GOP

On Tuesday, November 6th an over-confident Republican Party had it’s world shaken and it’s bubble burst when President Barack Obama won re-election in an electoral college landslide and the Democratic party strengthened it’s hold on the Senate in a decisive victory. The GOP did hold onto the House of Representatives, yielding nine seats to the Democrats (black conservative Florida congressman Alan West bids us goodbye) but still retaining a large majority, as well as picking up a governorship in North Carolina. And of course, while President Obama won big in the electoral college he only won in the popular vote by a respectable, but not a dramatic, margin of just under 3 million votes. But given the passions and the critical importance both sides put upon this election, (and given the near certainty with which many GOP elites like Karl Rove and Dick Morris predicted President Obama’s downfall), this election can only be seen as a disaster for the Republican Party.

President Obama’s victory reflects a tireless discipline on the part of he and his campaign to maximize voter turnout in the face of a bad economy,  and aggressively and effectively attacking the opposition, defining Governor Romney more than Romney was able to define himself in the eyes of the American people. The Democratic Party and the Obama team deserves credit for the unparalleled efficiency of their organizing, both this year and in 2008. But there is something else at work in America that accounts for President Obama’s victory, and that should serve as a reality check for the GOP. That is that the demographic makeup of the American electorate is changing, and is changing for good. When all is said and done, Mitt Romney won big with one very broad group of voters and that is white voters; particularly among older whites and male whites at that. Now in the past, seeing as white people represent by far the largest racial group in the country, a presidential candidate who carried a large majority of white voters stood a very good chance of winning the presidency. But since 2004 the white share of the electorate has decreased four percentage points while the minority share has increased about the same amount. President Obama won enormously among blacks (93-6), but also among Hispanics (71-27) and Asians as well. The age and gender gaps favored the president too. He won female and young voters by significant margins. What confused Republican strategists was not that the President won these groups; they always expected him to. What confused Karl Rove and others was that the turnout among these groups was anywhere close to the levels they were at in 2008. The GOP intelligentsia thought that 2008 was an anomaly, that minority voters and young voters would not return to the polls in the record breaking numbers they did in 2008 in 2012, now that the excitement over the Obama candidacy had faded across almost four years of economic struggle and political difficulty. But they were wrong. The Democrats seem to have a new coalition, and if the Republicans cannot make inroads with these groups (all of which represent growing portions of the electorate) they will likely cease to be competitive in the future. Thus begging the question, where does the GOP go from here?

My feeling is that, while I believe the Republican Party is more right than it is wrong on the fiscal and economic issues that are so important to the American people today (Mitt Romney won over Barack Obama in the exit polls on the question of who would best manage the economy) the GOP is nevertheless on the wrong side of many issues that are important to the individual ethnic, gender, and age groups that swung this presidential election and the last to Barack Obama and the Democrats, and threaten to make the political future of America one that might be dominated by the left wing. In short, the problem is that the Republican Party, founded as the party of civil rights, has in recent years abandoned the civil rights argument, and has ceded it almost wholly to the Democrats. I must therefore argue, and insist, that the GOP gets back to it’s roots as not just being the party of Reagan and Goldwater and small government, but the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, King and civil rights.

Many Republicans seem to think that Civil Rights as a legitimate issue set ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in ’64, and that talk of broad civil right’s issues now is just so much race-baiting and class warfare brought about by cynical liberals. And sure, plenty of it is. But there are many civil rights and minority-specific issues that are not. The issue of fair pay for women, for instance, is a legitimate civil rights issue, and the fact that our party and it’s nominee could not get it together to support the Lilly Ledbetter Act (allowing women more time to sue for pay discrimination) is a mark against us that hurt us with the female vote, and rightfully so. We don’t have to infringe upon the civil rights of religious groups (the one group conservatives seem quick to take a civil rights stand on behalf of) as many Democrats see fit to do by demanding that they provide women with contraception against their will, but the issue of fair pay should be a no-brainer. Likewise with Hispanics and immigration reform. George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich were right: we cannot deport 12 million immigrants from this country even if they are illegal. It is neither practical nor humane. Mitt Romney and his notion of “self-deportation,” were wrong. We do not need to do as some Democrats and self-serving business interests would do and imperil our country by advocating an open border. We must secure the border, and as George W. Bush tried to do we must tie that effort to the effort to legalize and integrate the law-abiding illegal immigrants who are already here. Republicans would not work with President Bush on that issue; hopefully they work with President Obama.

With respect to gays I cannot go so far as to say the Republican Party must endorse gay marriage. I define marriage as being between a man and a woman and that is an issue for the conscience of the individual to decide. But there must still be a basic level of respect for gays and for where they are coming from. It was disgraceful to hear a large part of the audience at a Republican Primary debate boo a gay soldier who asked a question of the candidates, even more disheartening to see that not Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich or any of the candidates stood up for him. On the other hand it was good to see that a large number (though still not a majority) of Republicans voted for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which was indeed a genuine civil rights issue for gay Americans. It was a bipartisan victory for America that that was undone. With respect to African-Americans, I don’t expect the Republican Party to undergo a radical transformation on the issue of Affirmative Action, but they can at least not do things to pro-actively hurt their chances with blacks. I did not consider the voter I.D. initiatives to be racist exactly (they’re likely to affect as many whites as blacks ultimately) but they we’re unnecessary and politically motivated, and allowed hysterical commentators on the left to claim that we had reentered the days of Jim Crow.

Ultimately the most important thing the Republican Party can do with respect to restoring it’s reputation among minorities and women is to simply not be afraid to speak directly to the issues that concern them. It is my belief that free market oriented policies are more likely to bring prosperity and social mobility to all Americans, including blacks and Latinos, women and gays, etc. The GOP is good at saying this, but cannot go beyond that to address the other issues beyond jobs and the economy that concern women and minorities. Barack Obama, on the other hand, actively empathizes with all of these groups. Conservatives can call it pandering, but it is better than seeming not to care. And so the issue is as much one of emphasis, tone and awareness as it is one of adopting sensible policies. The Democrats have a bad habit of seeing discrimination when it isn’t there. But Republicans have a bad habit of not seeing discrimination when it is there, and that tarnishes our ability to promote our policies on the wide range of issues where we could do minority and female Americans a lot of good. It’s time for Republicans to take a wider scope. The GOP does not have to abandon it’s principles of smaller government and individual liberty to move forward competitively into the America of the 21rst century. It just has to reclaim it’s old principles of inclusiveness and equal opportunity. Do that, and there’s no political battleground upon which the GOP will not be able to fight in the future.

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The Substance of the Obama-Romney Debate

President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney have now had the first of their much anticipated (by me anyway, and my fellow political junkies) presidential debates. The winner? Well, Governor Romney by a landslide according to the polls and almost all the commentary from Democrats and Republicans, black and white. It is rare when a political party acknowledges it’s own presidential candidate’s defeat. Republicans at least made a cursory effort to suggest George W. Bush won his first (disastrous) debate against John Kerry (it should give hope to Obama supporters to remember that Bush came back to win that election) even if it seemed obvious that they knew otherwise. But every Democrat not working directly for the President seems to have declared their own man the loser; an astounding blow to Obama’s prestige and his intellectual reputation. And I agree; the president lost badly. He was sluggish in his comebacks, listless in his delivery, unable to hold Romney’s gaze and lacking his famous confidence during the most important debate of his career. Romney on the other hand was focused, direct, unhesitating (with better posture no less) and perhaps most importantly, looked directly at the President almost the whole time, conveying a willingness and eagerness to challenge the champion and to take his crown. In other words, Romney came to win, and it seemed like President Obama didn’t even want to play.

But with all this talk of style and delivery (which is very important in politics) it is unfortunate that what is lost in this is a stricter focus on the substance of what the candidates had to say. And on issues of substance, though I agree more with the trend of Mitt Romney’s comments, the truth is that the debate was much closer to even if anyone bothered to pay that close attention. Mitt Romney spoke with force and conviction about his tax plan, and was persuasive in saying that the President had mis-characterized it. Where Obama called it a 5-trillion dollar tax cut skewed towards the rich, Romney claimed adamantly that this was untrue, that by closing loopholes and deductions he would insure that the rich paid the same overall amount of taxes, while the middle class and small businesses would pay less because of reduced rates. To that Obama lamely cited some studies supporting his view and repeated, again without any energy, that that this was “math” and “arithmetic” (quoting Bill Clinton) and that Governor Romney could not do what he said he would do without either raising middle class taxes, or increasing the deficit. All of Romney’s replies to this were forceful and effective…and yet, President Obama was almost certainly correct. There are only so many loopholes and deductions available to be cut, and while they number in the hundreds of billions of dollars, Mitt Romney’s tax cut numbers in the trillions.That is a problem. Romney fills in the blank by saying the difference in revenue will come from growth, but while his approach may well grow the economy (I think it will), it’s a big “if” as to whether he can grow it so much that his tax cuts will essentially pay for themselves. So then what does he do if and when they don’t? Increase taxes? Or let the deficit rise? Obama basically said this, but he did not drive the point home. He hesitated, looked down, speaking without fighting. As a result nobody saw that Obama was on to something. Nobody noticed.

On Medicare the two candidates again made good points, but only one candidate made them effectively. Romney repeated the claim that Obama cuts medicare by 715 billion dollars, and substantiated it by noting that those cuts come directly out of the compensation the government pays to healthcare providers. If Medicare is to pay 3 quarters of a trillion dollars less to providers to care for Medicare patients (keeping in mind that Medicare already pays less to doctors and hospitals than private insurance…that’s my point, not Romney’s) you can expect far fewer medical professionals to care for Medicare patients, hence less Medicare. Romney’s critique was good, and it stuck. Obama’s counter was also good, substantively speaking. Obama made the point that the voucher program Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan support would cause the most vulnerable seniors to remain in traditional Medicare, ultimately crashing the program (because coverage costs would skyrocket and you would have a smaller pool of people paying into the system…again my point, not Obama’s) and leaving everybody therefore to the mercy of skyrocketing insurance premiums that are already killing us now. Obama’s point was good. But it did not stick, because he did not make it stick. Romney went on as if Obama had said nothing at all, and nobody noticed…including, it seemed, the President.

President Obama missed more opportunities than that. Romney scored big on Obama’s wasteful green energy subsidies, a trap Obama stepped into by talking about oil subsidies which is really small ball stuff compared to the overall budget. But Mitt Romney gave Obama a chance to gain those points back and then some. Mitt Romney claimed that people with pre-existing conditions would be covered under his health care policy. Barack Obama pointed out that that is only true for those who already have coverage and that those who don’t still would lack it, but again he did not press the point. The issue of pre-existing conditions is not just a minor policy distinction. Democrats frequently call Mitt Romney a liar. In this case at least, that’s close to being correct. Romney attempted to suggest that his healthcare policy would do what Obamacare does: cover people with pre-existing conditions, when in fact all it would do would leave things the way they already are. Obama’s actually extends coverage to those with pre-existing conditions who do not already have it, giving them protection that Mitt Romney is only pretending to offer. Obama said that, but he should have shouted it! He should have banged his fist on the podium! He should have looked Mitt Romney dead in the eye without flinching, turning away or looking strangely apologetic as he often did, and made it clear that Mitt Romney was flat out wrong. Instead Romney made the case, without saying it in so many words, that Obama was flat out incompetent, and because he seemed to mean it, what he said stuck while Obama’s case fell flat.

Politics is about substance, about policy, about ideas, but it is also about theatrics and performance, because that is the way you communicate and simplify those ideas into things people can understand. Barack Obama’s brilliance as a politician always seemed to be that he understood this better than anyone else. If he’s going to win re-election, it’s a lesson he will have to learn again. Politics is a battle. Be honorable, be honest as possible, but be real. You cannot win the fight if you don’t fight to win. Mitt Romney knows that. Time will tell if Obama remembers.

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The Civil Rights Legacy of George Romney

It is interesting to note that in America’s first election involving a black president that it is not the president who possesses a family legacy in the Civil Rights Movement, but rather his white opponent, former governor Mitt Romney. In the early 1960’s, relatively few prominent politicians took a bold stance in favor of full integration and equal rights between the races. One of the few who did was Republican Governor George Romney, of Michigan.

At the age of sixteen Mitt Romney was going door to door in Detroit on behalf of his father’s gubernatorial re-election campaign, soliciting support not just for his father but for his father’s pro civil rights agenda. It was a hard sell in many cases. While the Republican Party of the sixties was not necessarily anymore opposed to civil rights than was the Democratic Party, if not a bit less so, there were many segregationists in the GOP and in Michigan who were infuriated at George Romney’s support of the movement, and with some justification; many who had voted for him were unaware of his support for the cause until a picture was published of him marching shoulder to shoulder with Detroit NAACP president Edward Turner and hundreds of other whites and blacks through a suburb of Detroit, protesting housing discrimination. (Martin Luther King, Jr., who encouraged Romney to run for president, led a march the following day which Governor Romney declined to attend only on account of it being the sabbath.) He received angry communications from constituents who had voted for him, calling him a “Judas to the people who voted for you, and a “dead-duck” for re-election in ’64. Anger at Romney however did not only come from voters in Detroit; he also experienced it at the hands of the LDS (Mormon) church, of which he was a respected leader. The church itself was segregated at that time, and at least one prominent leader accused Romney of supporting “vicious legislation” vis-a-viz the 1964 Civil Rights Act that seemed to rebuke the churches teachings on black people. While Romney felt religious duty bound him not to criticize the church publicly, he nevertheless believed in a more liberal interpretation of Mormon doctrine with respect to blacks and pushed for that view within the church (a view that ultimately prevailed upon the churches integration in 1978). In the wider world of politics however he was free to speak more boldly, going as far as to refuse to endorse his party’s nominee, Barry Goldwater, for president in ’64 because, as he told Goldwater himself, he feared his campaign would “make an all-out push for the southern segregationist vote in the south,”.

George Romney did more than pay lip service to the issue of Civil Rights. As Governor he enacted controversial policies that benefited the black community in Michigan, and ultimately across the country, though he never achieved the level of success he desired. Taking office as Governor in 1962 Romney declared: “Michigan’s most urgent human rights problem is racial discrimination,” and then promptly set up the first civil rights commission in Michigan’s history. Later on, as Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary Romney crafted the Fair Housing Act, moving new HUD housing programs to become increasingly desegregated, to the increasing anger of some whites. But politics, especially within the Nixon administration, soured Romney on the ability of Government to achieve significant reforms on behalf of civil rights, and Romney increasingly sought to convince the black community that they could turn to the private sector, to businesses and non-profits, to help solve their problems. But blacks were highly skeptical of this approach, and so Romney in time came to seem naive to the black community, just as his zeal for civil rights in the first place increasingly ostracized him from the growing social conservative base of the Republican Party. He retired from politics in 1973, and enjoyed more satisfaction heading up volunteer organizations as a private citizen. He died in 1995.

George Romney was a champion for civil rights, a man who might have been president, who lost more than he gained politically because of his stand. What, if anything, his legacy tells us about Mitt Romney’s character and his commitment to helping the black community as a President of the United States is of course an open question. But it is worth recognizing that there have been politicians in times gone by who took a stand for social justice in America, and that Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, was one of them.

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Radical Reconstruction: A Lost Era

One cannot be an African American without being conscious of the fact that we have inherited a long and bitter history of frustrated attempts to gain equal rights and a level of material parity in this country, a battle that after having overcome slavery and segregation we have gone a long way towards accomplishing, though the struggle to gain a satisfactory station in society remains incomplete. Given that this is the case however, it is curious to note how few of us are aware of the fact that there was a brief moment in history, just after the Civil War, when it seemed that negro Americans were making fast progress towards such equality; a short but real period in the latter third of the nineteenth century when blacks fresh from bondage developed a relatively significant hold on political power in the south.

There are today, if I’m not mistaken, 35 African-American members of Congress, with zero members serving in the United States Senate (the last one to serve in the Senate, if you do not count the brief and controversial appointment of former Illinois attorney general Roland Burris to replace him, is current president Barack Obama). That is in 2012, and of course now we have a black President in Barack Obama. But from 1867 to 1877 (the general period to which the phrase “Radical Reconstruction” refers) there were 16 black members members of congress (keep in mind that the House of Representatives had more than a 140 fewer members total in those years) with two of those serving in the United States Senate. The first black man elected to Congress, Senator Hiram Revels, was elected to the vacated Senate seat of Jefferson Davis, president of the confederacy, out of Mississippi. P.B.S. Pinchback was the first lieutenant-governor of African-American descent, and then briefly the first non-white (technically, though by blood he was mostly white) governor of any state when the governor of Florida had briefly to resign his office because of impeachment proceedings. 265 black electoral delegates were elected during this period, and blacks held hundreds more offices on the state and local level throughout the south during these years. We wouldn’t see anything like that again (and certainly not in the south) until after the Civil Rights movement.

How were these gains possible so soon after slavery, and why did they disappear so quickly? It’s important to realize that after blacks obtained the right to vote with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments they virtually owned the Republican party in the south. Given the fact too that for a time former leaders of the confederacy were prohibited from running for federal office, this allowed newly freed blacks (often under the educated leadership of northern free blacks like Hiram Revels who came to organize in the south) an opportunity to band together politically and win elections, with help from the northern Republican party and organizations like the Union League. Naturally there was a great deal of resentment towards the gains made by the newly freed slaves as well as a great antipathy towards the Republican Party. This anger would give rise to the Ku Klux Klan, who would be responsible for the murders of at least 35 black officials during this time period. Blacks also had an enemy in President Andrew Johnson who, despite being Abraham Lincoln’s vice-president and a southern Democrat who opposed secession on the basis of his dislike of elite plantation owners, nevertheless was greatly prejudiced towards black people, and intent on reinstating confederate leaders to their former positions of political power within the federal government while vetoing civil rights legislation proposed by Republicans. Though this was the case, black Americans were fortunate that Andrew Johnson was a deeply unpopular president who was ultimately impeached by congress. He was succeeded by Ulysses S. Grant, Lincoln’s head general who led the north to victory in the Civil War. Although Grant, prior to the war, had been ambivalent about the cause of freeing the slaves, he as president was intent upon continuing in Lincoln’s footsteps in an effort to preserve and expand the rights of freed slaves. Grant served as president from 1869 to 1877, the golden age of black progress and political power in our history from then to after the Civil Rights Movement.

What happened? A number of things, chief among them the fall and then the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan picked up momentum and confidence during the Johnson administration, responding to the advancement of Negroes into positions of power with, as noted, violence and even murder. But when Grant took office, he with the political backing of the “Radical Republicans” in congress used the law and at times  force to break the Ku Klux Klan, stopping in it’s tracks their growing intimidation of new black voters and leaders…at least for a time. But while Grant arrived at the White House a popular war hero,  his political fortunes diminished by his second term in the wake of corruption scandals in his administration and a quickly souring economy. So too the economy turned the focus of the American people away from the plight of black Americans and allowed for the resurgence of groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Grant, with his much diminished political influence and a terrible economy could not muster the political muscle to again put down the Klan when they re-arose. So began the long dark of disenfranchisement and unchecked persecution that would be with us for another ninety years.

The “Radical Reconstruction” era is in a sense sad to look back on because it shows us what could have been for our people much sooner, if only certain things had been different. History is full of many sadnesses and missed opportunities as we well know. But when we stop to catalog the inspiring lists of black achievements in American history, we would be remiss to overlook this brief, but bright, period in American and African-American history. We have not just now begun to take our rightful place in the leadership and civic structure of this great country…we have just begun again.

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The Fall of Black Music – Part 3

The current state of black music is dismal. That is not an exaggeration. In fact, the current state of American music, by and large, is pretty bad as well. In the past, American popular music and certainly black American music has always been a force for social progress; a continuous and melodic illustration of our truest values and our deepest yearnings. Never before has our music, or America’s music generally, held back social progress. Never before has our music, to any significant degree, served as a vehicle for the celebration of the worst instincts and realities of black America and the black experience. This is a reality of, roughly, the last twenty years in particular. Our great gift to America has become a cancer within ourselves. This needs to change.

The front cover of this April’s edition of The Atlantic Magazine features an article with the headline reading American Mozart: The Genius of Kanye West. I have to admit, seeing this gave me a somewhat depressed feeling. It’s not that Kanye West’s music is, in my opinion, at the heart of our ethnic and national cultural problem (though some of it is). I’ve liked some of his stuff in the past, particularly his earlier things with Twister; Through the Wire (which was uplifting, and like-ably silly) and so forth. But a great deal of it is emblematic of the vacuousness and the mediocrity of our musical culture, if not something quite a bit worse. Take for example one of Kanye West’s breakout hits from way back in 2004, a song called Diamonds from Sierra Leone…

Diamonds from Sierra Leone is sort of a cool song to listen to, minus the fact that, if you chance to pay attention to the lyrics, it has nothing to do with the diamond mines of Sierra Leone. Nothing, no reference to it at all in the original. If you think about it, that alone is astonishing. The imagery of the music video does deal directly with that however, and the video is (again excepting the actual lyrics of the song) poignant because of it. But it’s reflective of the moral confusion of our times that an artist would borrow the name of a subject of such wrenching human tragedy only to use it as the entrance to a song that is in reality both irrelevant to the subject for which it is named, and a self-troubled glorification of the artist himself. In the latter sense then, and it’s coldly ironic, there is some relevance to the matter of the diamond mines of Sierra Leone that Kanye West did not intend. The music video begins with a quote from Mr. West, saying “Little is known of Sierra Leone, and how it connects to the diamonds we own.” Cliche sounding, but very sad, and very true. The song, as noted, then proceeds to do nothing to remedy that sadness, but rather launches into a collage of vanities that I don’t have time to go through here. But in the video a short bit of narration plays before the song, presumably from the voice of one of the slaves from the mines, testifying to the fact that they are forced to slave day in and day out for the icy stone “under the eye of watchful soldiers.” He tells us as we stare at the shirtless figure of a Leonean Rebel as he berates us through the camera, making us, for a moment, the slaves of the mines, that they slaves were forced to kill their own families for the diamonds. Then comes the chilling high-point of the tension, the moment when you see the face of a slave child, and you’re horrified to see the pupils of his eyes wide as saucers because he’s toiled in the mines for so long that his eyes are starved for sunlight. The boys eyes have become something that looks as alien as it does human because that is how his eyes have had to adjust to the unending darkness of the mines.

 

 

The tragedy is real, but the poignancy of it is manipulated in the context of the video into a perverse glorification of Kanye West himself. Explicitly, as the video displays him as some kind of hero of the Leonean slaves, but implicitly just by the odd juxtaposition of this type of imagery to the self-indulgent lyrics of the song, (“You know you can call, you gotta best believe it, the Roc stand tall and you would never believe it”). But though the video shows white westerners obliviously wearing and sharing these ill gotten jewels (and then horrified when the blood from the “blood” diamonds crawls upon their skin before the witness of slave children) so uncaring or unaware are they of the human price of their privilege and their luxury, the truth is that the self-absorption exemplified in Kanye’s lyrics is wholly reflective of the mindset that makes such moral detachment possible. Yes the video at it’s end makes a token request of us to buy non-conflict diamonds, and yes Kanye did make a remix that made an effort at dealing with the substance of this issue directly (an effort that fails entirely at being serious or profound. Jay-Z is on the remix, and his entire verse which comprises half the song is again about “The Roc” and irrelevant to the blood diamonds and the slave children of Sierra Leone. Lupe Fiasco, to his credit at least, made a much more conscientious attempt at dealing with this issue in his song “Conflict Diamonds,” inspired by the Kanye tracks). But while the video shows the children of the mines pulling Kanye from the ground as he leaps out of his European sports car, sending it crashing through what I presume was a Jewelers shop. Though the children run to him and hail him as he play pianos in a cathedral before stone figures of Christ and the angels of God, spitting his irrelevant flows as if they were either poignant or profound, Kanye West (whether he realizes it or not) exploits these children and this travesty more insidiously than the people he portrays. Most people buy and wear these diamonds out of ignorance, reveling in the stones themselves, but Kanye revels in the blood diamonds ability to make him look like something he is not: that is a man using music to fight for a higher cause, as opposed to a man using the suffering of others to glorify himself.

Why make this article about Kanye West? To put a microscope on our cultural problem, one general to America and particular to black America. I agree with President Obama that West is (or frequently can be) a “Jack Ass,” but I also agree with him that West is talented, if not to the extent that he seems to suggest (see the Atlantic article). Kanye West is not a composer. He is not a musician, at least not one of any consequence (neither of course are Jay-Z and P-Diddy). I’m not being insulting, those are just facts. He is a producer; one who cleverly takes music by talented musicians and composers of the past, dissects them, and simply applies his oft vain and otherwise meaningless lyrics to them, albeit to great effect as far as his many fans are concerned. But he’s no Bob Dylan, using art to poignantly decry the injustices of our times. He’s no Mozart of any kind. Duke Ellington was an American Mozart, a composer and musician par excellence like Mozart himself. Neither has anything in common with Kanye West. But you don’t have to be a Mozart to make meaningful music, and you don’t even have to be a great musician. Kanye West’s biggest failing, particular with Diamonds from Sierra Leone (as I said before he has made better songs lyrically at other times) is the failing of our modern music generally and that is the fact that it’s orientation begins and ends with glorification of egoism, of materialism, of image and of the self. The thing that makes Kanye West’s Diamonds from Sierra Leone so galling is the fact that it takes an issue that would call upon us to reject these values to truly acknowledge it and, in the guise of calling us to do so, uses it as a vehicle to celebrate some of the very sins of our nature that causes the world to be such a cruel place to begin with.

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The Cynicism Behind Voter I.D.

I was watching Al Sharpton on his show Politics Nation on MSNBC the other day. He was showing clips from the civil rights movement, still shots of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other images meant to highlight, in particular, the vicious disenfranchisement wrought upon us back then by Jim Crow and the terrible struggle we had to endure to gain the safeguards for our voting rights finally guaranteed to us by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Powerful. Then he proceeded to tie all this to, and seemingly to equate this terrible persecution with, the current controversy over voter I.D. law requirements being debated in states across this country, laws which according to some could prevent up to 5 million Americans, disproportionately minorities, from casting votes this November.

Come on Al, get real for a moment. Voter I.D. is not Jim Crow revived. We’re not dealing with voter intimidation, poll taxes or literacy tests. It’s nothing like that and to try and draw any type of parallel is, well to me anyway, ridiculous. Having said that, we are dealing with a cynical, election year political tactic being waged by Republicans across this country, and this Republican isn’t afraid to call it what it is.

For those who aren’t familiar the simple background is this: in recent months there has been a push in states across this country (overwhelmingly by Republican lawmakers) to enact voter identification requirements to prevent voter fraud. All that means is that, if your state passes such a law in time for the November election this year, you will probably have to present your drivers license or your state I.D. to be able to cast your ballot. For most people that’s not such a big deal. But not everyone has a state I.D. Some college students, for example, going to school out of state are residents of the state they go to school in but do not have an I.D. issued by that state. Some elderly people who are retired and do not drive have no need of a drivers license and there have already been instances of such people not being able to cast a ballot in states where these laws have gone into effect. But the people who would and will lose the most as a result of these laws are poor people who simply do not have I.D. Such people, disproportionately, are black and Latino Americans and that is what the controversy is all about.

Now some call this voter I.D. push racist. I don’t. As many or more poor white people than minorities will probably be adversely affected by this bill. I do however call it a cynical move by the GOP to gain the upper hand in the elections this November, particularly of course to defeat President Obama. The head of the Justice Department (DOJ), Attorney General Eric Holder (the first black attorney general of the United States), has directed his department to block the implementation of these laws in certain states and has referred to the initiatives as being “a solution in search of a problem.” He’s largely right. There is no evidence of any significant level of voter fraud taking place anywhere in this country, making it rather clear then that the motivation for this legislation is political. And that’s the problem. Truthfully, I have no problem with the proposed laws themselves. There is not much voter fraud going on, but to the extent that there is, voter I.D. would prevent it and that’s a good thing. Moreover, there is no compelling legal argument against it, making the injunction by the DOJ itself rather ridiculous. You need I.D. to do a million other things, why not when it comes to voting? But to do this in an election year, so close to the Presidential and congressional elections particularly, rings of political opportunism more than it does concern for the integrity of the vote. The laws could easily be passed so that they would not take effect until the day after this election, thus ensuring that the maximum amount of people would obtain I.D. in order to vote in the following elections in the states in question. Instead Republicans are content to see thousands and potentially millions not vote at all to give them a leg up in this November.

Having said all this, black people should not complain too much, because laws such as this can only hurt us to the extent to which they capitalize on our own apathy. If you don’t have an I.D. and you care about the rights our parents and grandparents fought for us to have, you need to get one if you live in one of these states. Nobody likes to go to the DMV but this is politics. The Democrats are at least as cynical when they allow illegal immigrants to come freely across our border,distorting the constitution to give people the right to vote who aren’t entitled to it because they know who they’ll vote for. These are the imperfections of our system. But there is no excuse for sitting back and not exercising the rights our people fought and died for just because some politicians decided to make it just a little bit harder to do so.

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Defending Black Republicanism (Part 1 of 3)

There is an interesting psychological phenomenon that persists in black politics and in African-American society generally; one that has stubbornly bore down roots since at least the early seventies and beyond. It is a striking manifestation of identity politics that has gone too far for too long, retarding the political, and arguably the socioeconomic, growth of black America. That phenomenon is the near totality of our people’s unyielding devotion to one political party, our correspondingly bitter and intractable opposition to the main alternative,  and the anti-intellectual and, frankly, hurtful dismissiveness with which the large majority of blacks who pay allegiance to one  party treat the small minority who hold with the other. What I am referring to is, of course, the now longstanding black reliance on, and attachment to, the Democratic Party, and our longstanding opposition to, and reviling of, the Republican Party. This, believe it or not, is not a good thing. The potential progress of black America in the twenty-first century will be essentially capped until we outgrow this ideological bigotry.

I say ideological bigotry because that, for far too many black liberals and democrats, is what their opposition to conservatism and Republicans generally, amounts to. You see it expressed in film, stand up comedy and on the street level. Republicans and black Republicans particularly are portrayed as greedy, naive, uncle Toms, etc. That’s no way to characterize people we disagree with. But furthermore this ignores the broader history of the Republican party and the historical relationship it has had with the black community.

Let’s begin with the origins of black animosity towards the Republican party, for which there is a legitimate cause. Only a minority of black people nowadays seem to know or remember the fact that the vast majority of black Americans were Republicans all the way until the late sixties. That ended with the polarizing divisions wrought by the battles of the Civil Rights Movement and then with the adoption of the “Southern Strategy,” a term then popularized by prominent GOP strategist Kevin Phillips, who described it thusly:

“From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that… but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”

There was then in the late sixties a vast constituency swap, whereupon black Republicans almost en masse became Democrats and southern (mostly middle class) white Democrats became Republicans. Given that this were the case one might be tempted to think that the Republican party must have fought tooth and nail against the Civil Rights Act and the movement towards integration, but the truth is far more mixed. The greatest political opposition to the movement came from southern white Democrats, who would eventually become Republicans. At the same time western, mid-western and northern Democrats like John Kennedy, and some southern Democrats (particularly President Lyndon Johnson) were on the side of racial progress and President Johnson in particular showed great courage in pushing the Civil Rights Act through congress. (Johnson knew that to sign the bill would be to, in his own words, “sign away the south for fifty years,” but he did it anyway.) The support of Democrats like Kennedy, Johnson and others in congress and across the country gives Democrats a viable claim to much of the success of the Civil Rights era. Still, in congress roughly 80% of Republicans voted for passage of the bill in both the House and Senate, as opposed to roughly 60% of Democrats in the House and a little less than 70% in the Senate. The triumph of civil rights was a bipartisan triumph therefore, but in congress there was more unified support for these landmark changes among Republicans than Democrats.

There are other positive things to be said about the Democratic Party and it’s historical relationship to African-Americans. Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Justice and a champion of civil liberties, was a black Democrat. Adam Clayton Powell, the first black congressman in New York’s history and the first from any northern state outside Illinois since reconstruction, was a Democrat (served 1945-1971). But Martin Luther King, Jr., the single most important figure in the Civil Rights Movement, was a Republican and an active one at that. He endorsed Richard Nixon for the governorship of California in 1964, something that is not widely known. Furthermore, he encouraged the presidential candidacy of the anti-segregationist Republican governor of Michigan, Governor George Romney, who was of course the father of Mitt Romney, ironically the man who is favored to carry the GOP banner against Barack Obama this year.

Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and although some  have cast doubt upon the legacy of Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator,” the fact remains that he legally freed the slaves and that he  was always an abolitionist, as most Republicans were. Frederick Douglass, (to whom Lincoln bequeathed his iconic walking stick upon his death), was a Republican and even received a vote in the electoral college for the presidency (obviously the first for a black American). Every black elected politician and appointed official was almost certainly Republican during the reconstruction era. That changed after the Civil Rights Movement reached it’s zenith in the sixties of course, and after that a strong faction of segregationists did emerge in the Republican Party because they came from the Democratic party (invited in by cynical GOP strategists and political elites). Even so, it was Ronald Reagan who signed Martin Luther King, Jr. Day into law, and while he probably did not really wish to do so, then Vice-President George H.W. Bush fought hard behind the scenes to see its passage and ultimately both parties voted for it by wide margins.

Black Americans have always had a home in the Republican Party. Those of us who have remained in it or returned to it should be respected, I feel, for to us it is not just the party of Reagan, but the party of Lincoln, of Douglass, of Booker T. Washington, and of King.