Blacks and Hispanics, friends or frienemies?

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., greets people during a campaign stop at Sombrero Festival following a prayer meeting with Hispanic Evangelical ministers Friday, Feb. 29, 2008, in Brownsville, Texas. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

When I lived in California the black and brown divide was discussed pretty regularly. As the largest minority group in the state, Hispanics (primarily Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans) were sewing their political oats while the second largest minority group, African Americans, historically had the ear of the Democratic party.

I befriended a black minister while I was in Bakersfield and while discussing the Civil Rights movement and listening to recordings of Martin Luther King, Jr's speeches he went off on a tangent about the burgeoning Mexican American population. Complaining how he worked in a grocery when he was younger, but now those jobs were primarily staffed with immigrants. And he bemoaned that jobs blacks used to get call for bilingual people to work there. He saw the Hispanic boom as a scourge. They were the competition for union and lower wage jobs and in his eyes were encroaching on the benefits he and other blacks fought for in the 1960s.

So he was pissed.

I met a lot of black people like that in California. Some of them were more anti-immigrant than the white Republicans I met.

This is pretty classic. Traditionally blacks and the immigrant group of the month have fought over jobs. First it was free blacks and the Irish. Then blacks and the Italians. Then the Germans, Asians and now the Latinos. This fight keeps wages low, because immigrants are often coming from poorer areas and the lower American wage is a step up from what they were making in their home country. This benefits big business, the US economy and the government. It doesn't help black people any, as the burgeoning new minority usually gets accepted into the white majority over time.

I've long argued that it's unlikely that there will be a "Hispanic" take over as Pat Buchanan and other people fear. Eventually the lighter Hispanics will be considered white and the darker ones will be in the low wage pit with the poorer blacks.

American has a racial divide and a class divide. No one likes to talk about it. But the Irish, Italians and even the Okies who moved to California during the Dust Bowl were not considered "white" when they first came to this country. But somehow, as time passed and they assimilated into the mainstream, those "not white" labels went away and the once hated Okies now run most of the San Joaquin Valley. That is the reality. No matter what anyone says the Hispanics will eventually assimilate into American society. A majority of them already have. History has set the precedent.

But in the meantime, Snob reader Von Butler sent me a Wall Street Journal story about Latino-Black relations in Texas. The story focused on how Mexican-Americans in Texas were coming around to Obama (apparently not enough for yesterdays vote), but the story was interesting otherwise.

"The idea that Latinos and African-Americans are divided is an old way of thinking," says Carol Alvarado, a Clinton supporter running for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives from Houston. "We have come together on bond referendums, on immigration. On things that matter to African-Americans and things that matter to our people."

Still, most analysts say that support for Sen. Obama is growing among Hispanics, and that would mark a sea change for two groups that have had their share of friction. Blacks and Latinos have competed for political spoils in cities, much as former waves of newcomers did. But the racial divide between black and brown has always been complicated by other variables, including competition for low-wage jobs, affirmative action and high rates of crime.

Lately that has begun to change, in Texas and elsewhere. In many big cities, virtually all the population growth in traditionally African-American voting districts now comes from newly arrived immigrants, mainly from Latin America. And that isn't leading only to tension.

Blacks and Latinos are forming political coalitions to achieve mutual goals. Last year, blacks and Latinos in Texas bonded to defeat a Republican proposal for strict voter identification. In Texas, Latinos make up almost 36% of the population, blacks about 12%; nationally, Latinos are 15% and blacks are 12%.

The article revealed how blacks and Mexican-Americans had joined together to create a coalition against the white Republican majority in Texas. This makes me hopeful, but the article didn't address the notion that it's easy for two put-upon minority groups to join up against a common foe, but how would they vote when they're picking among their own, fellow Democrats?

Also interesting in the piece, it directly refers to my description of California racial politics where the black and brown still duke it out on a semi-regular from political to street gang warfare.

Compared with California, where bitterness between blacks and browns has seethed since the 1990s riots in Los Angeles, interminority relations in Texas are fairly benign. Texans looking at California race relations are turned off by the angry anti-Mexican rhetoric of talk radio, both black and white, and horrified by tales of gang violence. Newspaper stories of Mexicans dueling with blacks in East Los Angeles and of Latino gangs keeping African-Americans off certain commercial boulevards sound here like accounts from a foreign land.

Roberto Alonzo, the 51-year-old son of Mexican-American farm workers, represents Oak Cliff in the Texas House of Representatives and has built a career serving African-American and Latino constituents. He's lobbied for pay raises for parole-board employees who supervise ex-convicts, a measure popular with both constituencies. He's fought for scholarships to train bilingual educators to work in schools with mostly Latino students. That cash trickles down to Latino families looking for help sending their children to college. Mr. Alonzo's efforts also aid Texas's historically black colleges, which now rely heavily on Latino applicants, with 6,000 Latinos enrolled in those colleges in 2005.

"We have a history of working together," says Mr. Alonzo, speaking from the portico of a law office where a get-out-the-vote barbecue was held last month. The mostly Latino crowd featured a few African-American families, some sporting union logos. Campaign buttons and stickers revealed an even split between Obama and Clinton supporters.

This makes me hopeful that in other areas of the country coalitions can be formed between blacks and Latinos despite the low wage job fight created by the American capitalist power structure. To not take it out on each other (which is what that power structure wants you to do) and work together to change the system and get better jobs and better wages for everyone. With black activists and politicians in tune with the American political power structure and Mexican-Americans numbers and will power the black and brown could be a force to be reckoned with - blacks at 12 percent of the US population and Hispanic Americans at 15 percent.

That's 27 percent of pure muscle if we could all agree on something. The problem is, we don't. Many Cuban Americans vote Republican out of their hard line on Cuba. Other groups are more unpredictable. Blacks often appear to be monolithic in their voting patterns. And its only that way because of shared suffering and oppression for more than 150 years. Misery loves company and for a long time that was all black folks had.

But can an anti-immigrant Right that often is disparaging to blacks create a bond. To paraphrase Captain and Tennnile, will bigots keep us together?

Over the years, affirmative action stirred competition between blacks and browns as they often competed for the same slots. Alfredo Blanco, 56, is a machinist with the Teamsters union in Houston, and an adamant Clinton supporter. His union leadership supports Sen. Obama, but he doesn't. When it comes to government jobs, he complains, "Blacks get into places we're not allowed to get in."

But for many Latinos and blacks, political anger against Republicans trumps any lingering racial resentment, especially in the wake of redistricting in the state.

"We witnessed the re-segregation of Texas. It was raw and it was brutal," recalls Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas and 2002 Democratic candidate for Senate. Mr. Kirk, an African-American, ran with Hispanic banker Tony Sanchez of Laredo, the party's candidate for governor. Both Democrats lost in 2002, a year when Republicans made gains across the country in the run-up to the Iraq war. However, both candidates showed they could draw sweeping majorities from each other's core constituencies. Almost 820,000 Latinos cast votes in Texas that year, with nearly 80% supporting Ron Kirk. On the black side, nearly 90% of African-American voters cast their ballots for Mr. Sanchez.

Since then Texas Democrats have begun a comeback. The Supreme Court ruled one of the congressional districts redesigned under the DeLay maneuver, the 23rd represented by Republican Henry Bonilla, was illegally altered to dilute Latino voter strength in San Antonio and along the border. After some nips and tucks to balance its precincts, the 23rd went Democratic in 2006. Democrats that year also took back some of the legislative seats lost in the 2002 Republican landslide.

Since 2002, a Republican majority in the Texas House of Representatives -- 88 of 150 seats -- has dropped to 79 seats, putting a Democratic majority within reach this year if the party can win five more seats this year.

Many Latinos and blacks say Sen. Obama's ability to mobilize young voters and African-American voters will increase November turnout across the state, giving the party a real shot at taking back the Texas House.

"Obama is the one bringing in the new Democrats," says Mr. Alonzo, who calculates as many as three Republican seats in the Texas House may be vulnerable to a Democratic challenger in November, just in suburban Dallas.

We shall see.

(Thanks Vonn for the link!)

PS. I seriously have issues with the terms Hispanic or Latino.

I try to use them sparingly. They're made up terms created by white Americans that Spanish speaking Americans had no say in. Personally, I would prefer if we referred to them by either their country of origin or as South Americans and Central Americas. Mexicans should be called Mexicans if US citizens are uncomfortable with referring to them as North Americans as, I hate to burst bigots bubbles, Mexico is part of North American making their people Americans. Just like the Central Americans are Americans and the South Americans are Americans. So are the Canadians. I'm rather militant about this and I know Mexican Americans and other Latin Americans are conflicted about which term to use while hating them both at the same time.

It's like "colored" and "Negro."

Central and South America and Mexico along with the Caribbean are filled with such diverse people and cultures it seems ridiculous to put them all in the same basket. The Brazilians speak Portuguese, for goodness sake. Are they "Hispanic?" We don't do this to Europeans. We didn't make up a term, like Eurasians. (And Europe should not count as a continent, it's fricking part of Asia. It's not like South American and Africa who are barely touching their neighboring continents.)

When we talk about people from Europe we always refer to them by their home country. I don't know why this is so impossible to do with Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and other Spanish speaking Americans can't be referred to by their home countries.

They are not a monolith.

Super Tuesday Part II Watching

With 11:34 PM UPDATE!

I'm in the midst of live blogging for my new gig and I'm listening to Hillary Clinton's victory speech in Ohio and I started snickering when the crowd chanted "Yes, she will," later followed by Hillary shouting at them, "Yes, we will!"

What is this? Is this Democratic race turning into the 1980s Cola wars where everyone's co-opting everyone else's brands? Coke and Pepsi cans are in the same color scheme but Pepsi has a blue stripe? Coke creates New Coke because they think people prefer the sweeter taste of Pepsi, which almost leads to the collapse of the Coca-Cola corporation?

I get that she's happy she won Ohio. Great. But can't you bother to come up with your own damn slogans? I know that none of the one's Mark Penn came up with were very "sexy," but maybe you should consider Tina Fey's "Bitches get stuff done" brand.

Or "Clinton: You Already Know What You're Getting Into."

Or my personal favorite, "Paybacks' A Bitch and I'm One Too!"

You don't even have to give me credit, Hillary.

Side note: Michelle and Barack have come out to concede Ohio. He's doing the "Yes we can" thing. While I'm somewhat disappointed that the Ohio loss means that I have to watch more and more rounds of "who's a sexist/who's a bigot," everyone's-pissed-off-all-the-time drama, I have to say for the second time today, Michelle looks resplendent. She's wearing a black dress with a short, long-sleeved jacket with a sharp, just-below-the-knee length dress with a split in the front. Fierce.

Must. Find. Pictures.

UPDATE: Found them!

These pictures, from Reuters and AP, aren't the best. Probably because they were just posted half an hour ago. But they'll do until better, higher quality one's pop-up on the net.

Michelle Obama Watch

Oh my goodness! Michelle-maniacs, did ya'll see her on the stump in Houston yesterday? Not only was she hitting them out of the park with her Obama presidency sales pitch she was, as Tyra Banks would say, "fierce!"

One. I love, love, love her hair this way. Much more than the killer flip she normally rocks. It's sleek and matches the simplicity of this suit. It looks like it was designed by her favorite Chicago area haberdasher Maria Pinto. It has her style of graceful minimalism. It's all so simple, yet rendered utterly fabulous by the little flare at her waist and the use of a zipper instead of buttons or hook and eye closures.

I totally want that suit. If she makes it to the White House designer Maria Pinto is going to hit the big time because women, especially hard workin', church-loving black women are going to want those suits. Hell, they want them now. I can see the pastor's wife now going, "I gotta get me one of them Michelle Obama's. If I was dressing up to meet Jesus, that's the suit I want to be wearing."

Saturday Night Live's "Obama problem"

I almost went to bed without watching it, but I decided to catch SNL last night to see what they would do with their usual political sketch at the start, but the writer's must have went on strike again because it was like watching reruns.

I'm not going repeat why Fred Armisen's Obama bugs me on a multitude of levels. But this sketch was just flat out lazy writing.

I get it, SNL. Obama is hard to make fun of, but your logic seems to be fatally flawed. You take the most natural and charming of politicians and turn him into a robotic parrot a la Al Gore circa 2000? And sure, sometimes the press can be a huge dick to Hillary but I don't recall a racially tinged bomb the size of Farrakhan being lobbed at her during that latest debate they spoofed. Tim Russert didn't exactly lick Obama to death with the tongues of kittens. To be forced to account for the anti-semite from the Million Man March who's been out of the limelight for nearly two decades is pretty jack assy.

I'd like Timmy to account for when he decided "Meet the Press" was about him playing gotcha for 45 minutes. But let's put that aside and deal with the fact that SNL has turn into the comedic version of FOX News were you are so obviously in the tank for one candidate and one candidate alone. I realize I shouldn't expect parity from my political comedy, but I also expect some funny. SNL has delivered on nada. My favorite satirical show, "The Daily Show," has found ways to poke fun at both Hillary and Obama. Granted, they don't have some pale dude in "Obama-face," but they manage to get along fine.

I'm aware that pre-strike, SNL did skits joking about the press already picking Hillary as the nominee. But these skits weren't very good either. A matter of fact the only skit with Hillary in it that got to the core of the Clintons' White House lust was an opener where Hillary discusses her inevitability to the point that it's absurd with her talking about her reelection in 2012 and the possible repealing of the federal law that only allows presidents to have two terms.

It was the one and only time Amy Poehler's Hillary was funny, because I don't care what anyone thinks, Poehler's Hillary Clinton is almost as bad as Armisen's Obama, and Armisen's Obama is abysmal.

I get it SNL writers. You think Hillary's getting a raw deal by the press. But her last name is Clinton? Did we expect anything less than 24-hour-Clinton-Watch? When she was succeeding the media stared on in wonderment, proclaiming that no one would be able to stop her. Then Obama cold-cocked the Clinton's in Iowa and later South Carolina and the media obsessed over where Clinton went wrong.

The press chatter about Obama too, but they don't go into as much depth and tend to just write him off with, "he's an inspiring black guy who gives good speeches who's winning the black vote. He's from Illinois and he hasn't been in the senate very long and his minster is some kind of black radical. Isn't that weird? And by the way, did you notice that Obama is black? No? Because I totally didn't notice because I'm the mainstream media and I don't see color except when Farrakhan is involved."

Other than that, the press has been all Hillary all the time. She sniffles once and it's news. She complains about bias and it's a headline in 50 point type. She's a media vacuum, she sucks the air and all the common sense out of any room she enters. It's amazing any candidate, Democratic or Republican, gets any airtime at all. Thank God Bill Clinton rescinded to the shadows otherwise all we'd be hearing is about "BubbaWatch 2008!" What kind of barbecue is he eating? Did he just fart? Someone record that fart, we need to get it to Wolf Blizter to run at the top of the hour of the Situation Room!

But back to you, Saturday Night Live, Amy Poehler and Fred Armisen, Seth Myers and Lorne Michaels.

You have a problem. An Obama problem.

That dude isn't going away. Accept it. So you need to either start turning Darrell Hammond into John McCain or come up with some better material for Armisen's craptacular Obama. And that cartoon? This "Saturday TV Funhouse" you most recently ran called "The Obama Files?" That was totally not funny. I realize some white people see Jesse n' Al as racial agitators and attention whores. Heck, a lot of black people have some of the same. But the whole premise was just unseemly and the way Jackson and Sharpton were presented was, quite frankly, racist. The cartoon seemed to tangentially suggest that to win the White House Obama is going to have to distance himself from the black community, our race being the albatross around his neck.

The cartoon would have been funnier if Jesse n' Al were aware of their toxicity (which in real life they are) and were covertly working with black people yet allowing Obama to still be all things to everyone irregardless of race. But I suppose that would play too heavily to the fears some whites have about a black candidate, that he's secretly colluding with "extremists" and is going to get up in there, literally, paint the White House black and start deducting half of their paychecks for reparations, a la that Dave Chappelle skit.

So seriously, SNL, you're going to have to start stepping up your game. I know you've been kind of phoning it in for years now and have ceded a good portion of the political comedy ground to the Jon Stewarts and Stephen Colberts of the world, but you're the granddaddy show so I think it's time you elevated your game.

Is it really THAT hard to make fun of Obama in a way that's based on his actually personality, not a bunch of facial ticks and stuttering? Because last time I checked he's pretty charismatic and does, in fact, smile. A lot. If anything they would have been better playing him as Mr. Too Smooth Can Do No Wrong guy. That's what was missing in both sketches they've done so far. You'd think the media fawning was a fabrication. That they're responding that way for no particular reason at all.

COME ON! The guy's a nerd who's been turned into a motivational speaker/folk hero. He's Hurricane Carter but without the prison time and Bob Dylan is warbling about hope. Is it that hard? Personality, people! He has a personality! Is Armisten that limited that he can only do two Obama facial expressions then have him appear to be, in fact, a moron? That doesn't make sense. No one thinks Obama is a moron. George W., now that's a guy people think is a moron. Hillary's a megalomaniacal Margaret Thatcher-esque technocrat who wants to dominate the world, Barack Obama is the unflappable, cooler than cool young guy with all the brains but little experience. Follow the meme, people! The meme leads to the funny!

Of course, SNL might not actually care about making Obama funny because they think they can covertly save Hillary's campaign through moldy n' trite comedy sketches that make Obama appear the opposite of how he actually is.

MmmKay ... Let's see how that goes. Pray he doesn't become president, Lorne Michaels. You may never have a funny episode again.

CBS gives it the FOX touch

I don't know if it's the low ratings or the fact that they laid off some folks awhile back, but ... um, CBS News? Your bias is showing.

Wow. No one will mistake these people for "Dan Rather" liberals. I only say this though because of how Hillary Clinton's "Fact Check" piece went.

Gee? Notice a difference. Hmm ... maybe CBS felt guilty because of all the attention, negative or otherwise, they'd given Sen. Clinton, but methinks that's not it.

Recently CBS took an amazingly right wing slant on a FISA update story.

The reporter, Bob Orr, chalked everything up to "partisan" caterwauling. He didn't go into any depths about how this was all being held up by the Republicans who are refusing to acquiesce immunity for AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and the rest of the telecom giants. That this "endangering" of America is all so the telecoms can't be sued. Of course if they haven't broken the law why would anyone be suing? Unless the government, by process of elimination, is saying, "Yeah, we broke the law."

The story also flubbed all over the fact that the White House's threats were one big mulligan by failing to report that only the Protect America Act, which caused this telecom nightmare, would be affected and that FISA is still in effect. That existing wiretaps are still being monitored and that the original version of FISA worked fine from 2002 (after 9/11) until 2006, so say several former and current Bush Administration officials.

So basically George W. and Co. are asking us to just "trust them" when they say that they'll only look at the "terrorist" data, ignoring the fact that the telecoms don't give them solely the terrorist data.

They give them everything.

But none of that really came up in CBS's report. No civil liberties issues. No really pissed of Libertarians. No people with legitimate concerns, just Katie Couric n' the gang chalkin' it all up to "partisan bickering" instead of partisan cock blocking to protect the president, the White House, the NSA and the Telecom's from having to admit that, "hey, we might have done something illegal" and "hey, we might have to go to jail for this."

No BIG, CBS!

But the Obama thing is pretty alarming considering for months it's been nothing but kid gloves at CBA with the man, and the minute Hillary looks like she's about to go down for the count the preemptive knives come out. No warning. No nothing, just a lot of "look at that shady black guy with the shady church and the shady dealings with the shady Rezko and what's Farrakhan doing there? Hey, that looks sinister. And look at these pictures of Barack in creepy apparal from Islmo-fascists R Us." I half expected them to drain the screen of its color and show Barack walking in slo-mo while that "To Catch A Predator" music under the footage.

I hate being right.

I don't say out-loud how the press out of sheer boredom will begin to spin rumors and innuendos into truths and out right lies into grand spectacles of entertainment presenting the art of character assassination as theater, I don't say this because I want these things to come true. I just care so much, far more than I cared during during the Clinton years when eight years of lies and character assassination went on and that was with white people, not with cruel sting of racism overt and covert. It's not going to get better. I've seen this movie before. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose but the agents of intolerance will be satisfied with nothing short of unmitigated surrender and suppression and the press will happily film it all, live at 11 for the ratings.

I know that none of this is new. But I never enjoy it. I know what is coming and it rhymes with a "T" and ends in an "e" and it's being bankrolled by the friends of the Republican National Committee.

Well, if it were easy to get there we'd all be president.

Harrassing old people does not help the "Obama supporters are a loony cult" meme

Georgia Rep. John Lewis recently switched his super delegate vote from Sen. Hillary Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama, but now some are saying Lewis was pressured by threats and harassments by pro-Obama supporters.

I understand that people want their representatives who are super delegates to support Barack Obama but threatening them, harassing their families and generally making an ass of yourself goes against everything the Obama campaign purports it stands for.

Like "a new kind of politics" or fostering "hope." Not terrorizing your elders!

From Politico.com:

“African-American superdelegates are being targeted, harassed and threatened,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), a superdelegate who has supported Clinton since August. Cleaver said black superdelegates are receiving “nasty letters, phone calls, threats they’ll get an opponent, being called an Uncle Tom.

“This is the politics of the 1950s,” he complained. “A lot of members are experiencing a lot of ugly stuff. They’re not going to talk about it, but it’s happening.”

After civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) switched his support from Clinton to Obama earlier this week, other black superdelegates have come under renewed pressure to do a similar about-face. A handful have bowed to the entreaties in recent weeks, including Georgia Rep. David Scott, but many say they are steadfast in their support for Clinton and resent strong-arm tactics to make them change.

Rep. Diane E. Watson (D-Calif.), a black lawmaker and Clinton backer, said the intense lobbying for Obama would not alter her vote.

“I’ve gotten threatening mail,” Watson said. “They say, ‘Your district went 61-29 Obama and you need to change.’ But I don’t intimidate. I can hold the ground. … I would lose my seat over my principles.”

Um ... not helping! This will really kill those "Obama followers are a cult" stories or the "Obama is being backed by scary, threatening black folk" rumors.

I know I'm in the minority here but I'm just not mad at people for supporting Hillary Clinton. I'm not. If Obama is good enough to win the nomination, which he is, he can get it with or without the support of certain members of the Congressional Black Caucus. But at the end of the day because these officials are Democrats, if Obama is the nominee they will back him. So seriously? Why do this? What does this achieve but bad blood and scarred emotions?

If someone thinks Hillary Clinton is the better woman for the job then let them go support Hillary Clinton in peace. Obama has plenty of support. He will be fine. Black people fought and died so we could have a choice, not to blindly follow each other out of skin tone alone. It is simply divisive and counter-productive to do this to people who have dedicated their lives to the black people they represent.

To accuse people of being "Uncle Toms" when none of these people were Uncle Toms a year ago is asinine. No one had a problem with these people when they were demanding hearings on Hurricane Katrina, fighting for the black vote that was disenfranchised in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 and getting money for their rural and urban districts in the means of scholarship funds and development grants.

They backed Hillary and not Obama. I mean, get over it. That isn't a sin. That's just them being loyal to someone they already know while practicing CYA at the same time. This idiocy in the from of intimidation is the matter racists point to when they argue that we can not lead. Actions like this demonstrates that we're petty, immature and foster violence. That we will reduce ourselves to the lowest common denominator turning into a political version of the Bloods and Crips. That we are headless, mindless monolith that can be manipulated and pushed to brink of our own moral and physical destruction.

I find it difficult to fathom that Sen. Obama would want to be associated with such foolishness even if it did net them John Lewis at the end, because what did they gain? A bullied old man, cowed and intimidated by those he served for years? This wasn't needed because in politics as in Civil Rights it is the ending that matters. At the end of the day all of these people supporting the Clintons will work together for the betterment of blacks and the Democratic Party.

These irruptions of idiocy remind me of that old joke about how people love Jesus but can't stand his followers. I'm for Obama but I have a problem with the uncouth, recalcitrant behavior of a motley few in his good name.

I'm not fond of authoritarian hierarchies or monarchies. I don't see our black US Representatives and Civil Rights leaders as an ecclesiastical papacy who dictates to the masses when to stand up and when to kneal, but I do have respect for those who stood up for me for the last 29 years of my life and short of a conversion to satanism or a membership the Klan, I am not going to throw dirt on their graves at my year 30 because they backed Hillary Clinton. One Clinton isn't enough to break up my family. And that's how I view this. This is a generational family fight. These individuals, whether we agree with them or not, are our family. If they don't want to be with us on Obama, let them loose. Obama is will get where he is going just fine and I've said it before and I'll say it again, but at the end of the day they are ALL going to back the Democratic nominee.

It literally hurts my heart to hear black people harm one another when we are in the midst of something so historical and exciting. I too balked at the insults and slights of individuals like Rep. Charles Rangel and Andrew Young who argued it wasn't Obama's time. But I don't get calling those same people sellouts because they're backing some Democrats we all voted for twice in the 1990s.

I'd get all the outrage if they were backing George W. or John McCain, but Hillary and Barack have virtually identical political platforms. In the last two debates they were arguing over percentage points in their health care proposals. And the necessity of this brutish behavior would be more plausible if Obama was being treated unfairly within the party or was at a disadvantage, but he's winning. He's successful, surpassing his opponent in delegates and soon to smother her in pledged/super delegates.

And perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't believe in calling people Uncle Toms. In Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Uncle Tom dies at the hands of cruel slave owner Simon Legree because he wouldn't sell-out runaway slaves. It's a perversion of the abolitionist novel, taking Uncle Tom, a genial old man who loved him some kindly white folks, a labeling racial sycophant with a "House Negro" mind, but when it came to the bloody end, where he's an innocent Christ figure getting bludgeoned to death with a cane, he would not give those other slaves up.

My elders are not hurting me by backing Hillary Clinton. Clinton and Obama play for the same time. But you are hurting me though if you launch into crazy Muslim flavored attack ads against Obama perpetuating falsehoods and engaging in dirty politics. Or if black people fall into the "crabs in a bucket" paradigm where we fall into the violent lust of destroying one another, adopting the jaundiced views bigots spun to Whites to foster distrust in black politicians and Civil Rights leaders.

I am bothered (and exhausted) by this black-on-black folk, racial jerk violence. I wish I had megaphone to black America to chill out before we bury ourselves in our own hubris and vanity.

Fight Together

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., walks across the Edmund Pettus Bridge with Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2007. At the far left is Sen. Barack Obama. They were there to mark the crossing of the bridge to Selma, Ala., a seminal moment in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

See? This is why you don't throw your grandparents under the bus. Grandpa can learn to adapt. Grandpa isn't going to stand on the "wrong side of history."

Especially when Grandpa Lewis' district had spoken. US Representative and Civil Rights leader John Lewis said over 75 percent of his district in Atlanta, Ga. voted for Obama. The old man, accused of being "out of touch," decided he could not subvert the will of his electorate for the sake of an old friendship.

From the Associated Press:

Lewis came under intense pressure to get behind Obama after his constituents supported the Illinois senator roughly 3-to-1 in Georgia's Feb. 5 primary, and about 90 percent of black voters statewide voted for Obama, according to exit polls. The support among black voters nationwide to Obama's candidacy mirrors Lewis' Georgia district.

His change of heart follows a similar move by Rep. David Scott, a black Democrat who represents a neighboring district. It also comes a week after the Rev. Markel Hutchins, a young Atlanta minister, announced he would challenge Lewis in the Democratic congressional primary this summer.

Hutchins, 30, has seized on Lewis' waffling in the presidential contest as evidence that the 68-year-old congressman is out of touch.

"Today's announcement by Representative Lewis was clearly prompted by political expediency," Hutchins said Wednesday. "It is time for a change. It is time to send somebody to Congress who is actually willing to represent the district."

In an interview Wednesday on MSNBC, Rep. Lewis said the decision to switch from promising his super delegate vote to Hillary Clinton to Obama was harder than his decision to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge on March 7, 1965 where he and 600 other Civil Rights protesters were beaten with billy clubs and sprayed with tear gas while trying to cross the bridge in a march to Selma, Ala.

Lewis, infamously, get his head bloodied and bashed.

I found this interview very fascinating because Lewis appears to be truly conflicted about the issue, and while the interviewer expressed surprise that deciding to switch delegate support was harder than deciding to catch a beat down for history, I could see where he was coming from.

During the Civil Rights Movement, for those who decided to answer the call to fight for the rights of black Americans, that call was about life and death. It was about righting an injustice that was part of America since its inception. It was easy to pick a side.

Fight together or perish separately as fools.

The enemy was clear. His name was Jim Crow. Open and overt racism was rampant and acceptable in most parts of the United States. Various southern politicians did not tarry to refer to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as "Rev. Martin Luther Coon" on national television.

This was a classic battle of good versus evil. This battle is slightly different. The Clintons, despite their disastrous attempts to beat Obama, including a "scorched earth" policy that came back to burn them via the black vote, are still friends with many of the blacks in the Congressional Black Caucus who worked with both Bill and Hillary throughout the 1990s and later in the Senate with the former First Lady. The CBC has never had this particular problem before - having to chose between friends and the thing Lewis got his skull cracked open for.

Your friends or history, that was John Lewis' choice. It is the same choice of every Civil Rights Era "freedom fighter." The Democratic Party became the party of inclusion and that inclusion has lead to the first ever viable black candidate running for president.

I know a lot of black people my age and younger (and older) are pretty pissed off that this would be a hard decision for the people we have long admired. You'd think that someone who was willing to die so a day would come when an "Obama" could feasibly be the next president of the United States would be able to come to this decision with ease. But it isn't easy when the political is wrapped up in the personal.

Therefore, I don't get out of whack because the likes of Reps. Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters and others hooked themselves up to the Clinton bandwagon early on, because at the end of the day, if Obama is the nominee I know that they will support him. They will defend him and they will fight to make him the next president of the United States.

Because they will have no other choice, just like they didn't have one in 1965.

Fear of the outcome can not dictate the nobility and the righteousness of this cause. Fear of the repercussions, of the racism that may come our way can not sway us. Ego and vanity, pride and cowardice can not cloud our judgment. Just as it was in 1965 it still remains today, we as black people must choose to either fight together or perish separately as fools. Jim Crow may not be alive today, but his ghost still lingers.

It's time to vanquish that demon in all his many forms.

The Wrath of the Farrakhan Question

Video from Talking Points Memo. The Root also has an article about the Farrakhan Question.

I watched some of the debate last night on MSNBC and was pretty disgusted with the gall of Tim Russert's "Farrakhan" question. Mostly because it made absolutely no sense and seemed to only serve the purpose of reinforcing the giant crazy black Muslim meme the Right and some in the press want to wrap Obama.

I don't get Tim Russert. Farrakhan? Seriously? Are you going to track down every person with a specious past who vaguely notes that Obama seems like a nice guy and whack Obama over the head with them? This would be different if Obama was cozying up to Farrakhan, calling him up all the time, and taking pictures with him eating bean pies, plastered on the front of the Final Call. But, um, he isn't! And no one asks any Republican candidates to dump their resident loony toons. They only get in trouble when they get too close to them, like that Cunningham guy who blew up in John McCain's face Tuesday.

But last time I checked, Farrakhan wasn't opening up an event for Obama. Farrakhan is not on the stump with Obama. He's not one of Obama's advisers. They don't even know each other. So why was this question brought up if only for a "gotcha" television moment? This question wasn't about Obama, it was about Russert and his ego.

And about racism.

This is just a glimmer, a portent, of what's to come. Farrakhan is a divisive, even hated figure among most American whites and Jews. Black people either like him or don't really think that much of him at all. (Often it depends on your views of Islam or if you think the Nation of Islam was behind Malcolm X's assassination.) But picking fights with Obama over points like these are part of a larger effort to get Obama to distance himself from black people while prejudicing the white people against him at the same time.

It's started with the "not black enough" garbage, then warmed up to the Muslim boondoggle, that lead to "Obama's church is lead by a crazy black nationalist", followed by "State of the Black Union-gate" which bumped up to the "denounce and repudiate Farrahkan" question.

They will try to paint the most mainstream of men in the colors of a "scary," black radical Muslim until Obama is covered in a red, black and green "Kill Whitey" flag. And they are going to make him denounce everything about black people that is deemed imprudent or bad. By the time this is done they'll be calling for him to account for and denounce Jesse n' Al, Dick Gregory, Kanye West, "gangster rappers", Black History Month, the NAACP Image Awards, the NAACP, the Black Congressional Caucus, Chuck D., Nat Turner, Kwanzaa, BET, black Greek letter organizations, Dave Chappelle, pastors who claim Jesus was a black man and your grandparents who still toss around the slur "peckerwood" a lot.

The goal is to weaken Obama. It's to make him blacker than black to scare off whites. To get black people to reject him as he's forced to reject the people and organizations, the culture black people value.

Well, I'm assuming all this effort must be for the white people because black people have seen this before. It happens whenever a black person runs for office locally and nationally. The black candidate is forced to run the gauntlet of throwing other blacks and black organizations under the bus while trying to get them to still limp to the polls for them afterwards. Black people know this and are prepared for the variety of litmus tests and repudiations of old anti-semitic men and "scary" black nationalist groups. Unlike Cunningham and McCain, I doubt Farrakhan will say anything at all. Obama wants to get elected. Black people want to see him get elected, therefore black folks are not going to get in the way. That's why people jumped all over Tavis, he didn't get the "get out of the way" memo. No one wants to hurt Barack's campaign. We know Barack is a black man. We know he loves and supports his people. We'd love it if he came to the event, but everyone but Tavis seemed to understand why he really couldn't be there.

So while it annoys my mother every time Barack has to "denounce" some marginal figure in the African American diaspora, I don't really care. Throw Farrakhan under the bus if it means you'll get elected. Just don't forget about the rest of us black folk once you get there.

Goodness. How many more months do we have of this?

Obama smears bogus; mainstream media lame as ever and Keith Olbermann pisses me off

Ditto everything Air America's Rachel Maddow said. I almost never disagree with her. And way to check that whole news story about the RNC holding focus groups to see how close they could get to RACIST! without being called out as a racist on Obama.

Countdown was good last night save for the story then did on SNL's lack of a person of color to play the first black man to run for president.

They kind of brushed it off as this display being a sign of progress, that a non-black man could play a black man. Look we've advanced! Right back to 1910 when vaudeville was filled with white people in black face, the role of "Othello" was traditionally played in black face (no Negroes allowed in Shakespeare. Heaven forbid!) Then we have the 30s, 40s and 50s, where white actresses would play tragic mulattoes with "Egyptian" shade pancake make up to make them "darker."

Um, what the fark, Keith, paragon of "White Liberal Guilt?? SNL has been shoddy for DECADES when it comes to minorities in their cast. They have a two black person quota (which is normally a one black person quota), no Asians (Sorry John Cho and Margaret Cho - not related), a handful of Latinos in the last twenty or so years and dear God, never any Indians or Arabs (Sorry Kal Penn!). Heaven forbid!

Having a white man play a black man is not progress when racism STILL exists in show business and you can't believably claim there are no black men in New York, Hollywood or the places inbetween who can do an effective Barack Obama. But we auditioned a lot of people, Lorne Michaels cries. Yeah, bullshit. You auditioned a ton of people just to pick a guy in-house. Wow, black folks haven't heard THAT one before.

Don't you know how all this looks to us Negroes, Keith? SNL is a cultural icon. When you have this kind of legitimacy and this checkered past with black talent folks are going to fucking notice when Barack Obama, first black candidate with a viable chance at the presidency in the history of our racist country, isn't played by a minority. Why not cast the part of Martin Luther King Jr. with Bill Murray? Have Nicole Kidman play Billie Holiday? Give Jesus blond hair and blue eyes? Oh wait. They already did that. There are SO few parts in Hollywood for minorities so you want to take what should have been a gimmie (black president = broke black comic gets to eat this month), to just do what has been in done in Hollywood since there was a Hollywood?

If Lena Horne weren't old and resigned from the limelight I would send her down to your studio with a handful of "Egyptian" pancake and slap you and Lorne Michaels across the face with it. I know MSNBC doesn't want to diss NBC's comic darling, but dude, as the most guilty white liberal on television I expect better than the brush off of every black person who's had a part, a job, a script magically turn into all white folks because no one wants to watch us ... except when they do.