Let's Hear It for Vermont

. . . the first state to make slavery illegal:

That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent, and unalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. Therefore, no male person, born to this country, or brought from overseas, ought to be holden by laws to serve any person as servant, slave, or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one years, nor female in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years, unless they are bound by their own consent after they arrive to such age, or bound by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.

The Headline that Wasn't

Mississippi's plan to divert $600 million in hurricane housing relief funds to a port expansion project won federal approval Friday, despite opposition from those who say the housing needs of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina have not been met.
. . .The port expansion plan--which will use the last of the housing recovery money allocated by Congress--has been a subject of contention on the Mississippi coast, where more than 30,000 residents still live in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers and mobile homes.

Here's a little background information on the money:

The money in question is part of $5.5 billion in HUD Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that Congress authorized for Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. Administered by the Mississippi Development Authority, about $3.4 billion was allocated to replace and repair some of the nearly 170,000 owner-occupied homes destroyed or damaged by the storm. Another $600 million was set aside for programs to replace public housing, help small landlords fix their units and foster construction of new low- and moderate-income housing.

Mississippi is not a state of great wealth. Poverty rates in Mississippi have increased since 2000, and the poorest people are Black:

When compared to other States across the United States, the State of Mississippi can be considered to have a very high poverty rate amongst the population, with a poverty rate of 19.9 percent with a family income under the 1999 poverty level. The Black or African American race/ethnicity population category, holds the highest rate of poverty with 34.9 percent of the population in 2000 living in poverty. Individuals aged Under 5 years are experiencing most percent people in poverty in Mississippi, reporting 28.7 percent of this age cohort living in poverty.

So the poorest people, the ones who lost the most in Hurricane Katrina and the ones with the fewest resources to get themselves back under a roof are the ones whose pockets are being picked. Yet again.

The Headline Says It All

When you read a headline like

Danny Glover convicted of trespassing

what are your first thoughts?

My first thoughts are: there go the media, vilifying the Black man yet again. How many people are going to read the whole article and discover that Glover was arrested during a union rally for hotel workers?

NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario - Danny Glover has been convicted in Niagara Falls, Ontario, for trespassing in a hotel during a union rally in 2006. Glover, who wasn't in court, was convicted Thursday along with UNITE HERE union representative Alex Dagg and Ontario Federation of Labour President Wayne Samuelson.

Canadian Niagara Hotels charged the three with trespassing at their Sheraton on the Falls property during a Sept. 16, 2006, protest. The 60-year-old actor took part in the protest as part of a larger campaign that aims to increase salaries and improve working conditions for hotel workers in the U.S. and Canada.

I can think of other, more accurate headlines, headlines that would not create false impressions in the minds of readers (and nonreaders).

File Under: It's About Time

Florida indicates that it might have plans to consider hauling itself into the 20th 21st century with the announcement that the state song, an unlikely nostalgic paean by a fictional former slave to his beloved plantation, may soon be retired:

The Swanee River (Old Folks at Home)
Way down upon de Swanee Ribber,
Far, far away,
Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber,
Dere's wha de old folks stay.
All up and down de whole creation
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home.
All de world am sad and dreary,
Eb-rywhere I roam;
Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!
All round de little farm I wandered
When I was young,
Den many happy days I squandered,
Many de songs I sung.
When I was playing wid my brudder
Happy was I;
Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!
Dere let me live and die.
One little hut among de bushes,
One dat I love
Still sadly to my memory rushes,
No matter where I rove.
When will I see de bees a-humming
All round de comb?
When will I hear de banjo strumming,
Down in my good old home?

I would like to note some inconsistencies with reality. How extremely unlikely it was that this former slave squandered happy days on the old plantation. Far more likely that his body still bore the scars of chains and beatings, and that during the whole of his tenure on the plantation, he had most likely been half-naked, half-starved, and definitely separated from his "mudder" and "brudder" at a very young age. It does not stretch the imagination to speculate that he may have been tortured.

Even if he had escaped the most extreme brutality to which most slaves were subject, the "little hut" was probably not a source of pleasant memories, as it was squalid and drafty, lacking in the barest of comforts, with straw or moss serving as a bed:

Such of these dwellings as I visited today were filthy and wretched in the extreme, and exhibited that most deplorable consequence of ignorance and an abject condition, the inability of the inhabitants to secure and improve even such pitiful comfort as might yet be achieved by them. . . . The moss with which the chinks and crannies of their ill-protecting dwelling might have been stuffed was trailing in dirt and dust about the ground, while the back door of the huts, opening upon a most unsightly ditch, was left wide open for the fowls and ducks, which they are allowed to raise, to travel in and out, increasing the filth of the cabin by what they brought and left in every direction.

Maybe he missed hearing the banjo. Maybe. I doubt it. He probably took his with him, or made a new one, or traveled with people who had theirs.

. . . the banjo — the proverbial “white-man” mountain instrument — was developed centuries ago by enslaved Africans in the North American and Caribbean colonies. The earliest banjos were played exclusively by the enslaved at least 200 years before whites ever considered laying hands on what was, to the slaveholding culture, a “primitive” instrument. By the beginning of the 19th century, this negative perception began to change, and by mid-century white musicians had adopted the banjo in minstrel shows, catapulting it into mass production in the last half of the century. The banjo is now mostly known for its role in bluegrass music, overshadowing its historical origin and its place of prominence as an African American contribution to American music.

(Elvis and the Rolling Stones weren't the first whiteys to co-opt Black culture and music.)

Maybe by this time he could return to that most African of instruments, the drum, which slaves were prohibited by law from having. Didn't want the slaves getting themselves and each other all stirred up with those African beats. But what enrages every tyrant is that you can take away the drum, but you can't take away the music:

Denied their most prevalent, and indeed sacred means of expression, the slaves substituted the forbidden drums with bone clappers, tambourines, and most importantly, hand and body slaps, and foot beats. The most primitive of all instruments, the human body, became the main source of rhythm and communication.

What about a song to celebrate the force of the human spirit of the slaves who had the courage to keep on drumming?

Integration: Good for All of Us

I just read Can We Talk about Race: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation by Beverly Daniel Tatum. Phd.

What is the significance of continuing residential and increasing school segregation? One possible outcome is that while interracial contact and more-tolerant racial attitudes increased during the last half of the twentieth century, the same may not be true in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, particularly in our public schools. For example, when high school students were asked . . . how often they interacted with people of other races--engaging in activities such as having a conversation, eating together, or playing sports--the percentage of white students who said they did this "a lot" increased significantly over the time between 1976 and 2000, doubling from approximately 15 percent to 30 percent. While conversely this statistic suggests that 70 percent of white youth do not have such experiences with great frequency, the increase in interaction reported in this study can be seen as a positive result of improving race relations in America. What will the answers be in 2010? In 2020?
. . . The progress that has been made in the reduction of racial prejudice that can be associated with shared school experiences is at risk of stalling.

Racist or Bumbler?

You may have heard about Department of Justice voting rights honcho John Tanner's ill-advised remarks back on October 4 and 5, during meetings with the NAACP and the National Latino Congreso:

• ". . . minorities are slightly more likely" than whites to have photo IDs, speculating that this was due to "vestiges of racism still at work in the United States" ("vestiges"? "vestiges"?)
• ". . . our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first."

At the time, there was a bit of outrage about what Tanner said. From Barack Obama:

Such comments are patently erroneous, offensive, and dangerous, and they are especially troubling coming from the federal official charged with protecting voting rights in this country.

Mr. Tanner has already demonstrated questionable judgment in overruling the decision of Justice Department lawyers that the Georgia photo ID requirement would disproportionately discriminate against African Americans. For Mr. Tanner to now suggest, in an effort to defend his erroneous decision, that photo identification are not necessary for minority voters because "they die first" shows just how far the Justice Department has fallen. This is a disgrace and yet another reason why the next Attorney General must demonstrate a strong commitment to civil rights.

Tanner did apologize later:

"My explanation of the data came across in a hurtful way, which I deeply regret."

And then requested a move. Now he has been assigned to the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices, where he will probably find some way to chew his toenails. Stay tuned.

It seems to me Tanner just as guilty of Not Making Sense as of racism, in that he seems to first argue that requiring IDs for voting cannot disenfranchise minorities because minorities are more likely to be harassed by the police and asked for IDs and therefore are more likely to have IDs already, but then he says that it really doesn't matter if elderly minority folk have IDs because they're too dead to vote, anyway.

To Sir, with Love

. . . in the immortal words of Lulu.

This tempest in a teapot from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, via Negrophile:

[School board member] Elliott has drawn heat for an opinion piece that ran Dec. 4 on the Speaking Out page of the Democrat and Chronicle, which in part said:

The reason it is important to have more teachers of color to teach students of color has more to do with 'universality of experience' which, in the case of African Americans, is based on race.

African Americans continue to fight to overcome the ill effects of slavery and segregation, Elliott wrote, and as a result, non-black teachers could be less likely to understand, communicate with or be sensitive to how students of color engage in learning as a result of that experience.

How could anyone disagree? I'm down with Ms. Elliott (I would add that Black children need to see Black leadership everywhere, not just at school--yes, there need to be Black teachers and Black principals at school, but Black children also need to see Black doctors at the hospital; Black lawyers and judges in the court room; and Black city council members and mayors and governors and legislators in city, state, and federal government). Racism is so pervasive, so insidious, so institutionalized, so much a part of white American life that it is so very difficult for many white people to even begin to have any kind of understanding of the Black American experience.

Did anyone protest when a white woman said something similar about six months ago?

Over 40 percent of public school children are members of “minority groups;” only about 17 percent of their teachers are black, Hispanic, or Asian. This imbalance in ethnicity and gender compromises the role model that teachers can offer to poor children of color, particularly black and Hispanic males.

Remember this:

Black students are suspended far more frequently than white students ("No other ethnic group is disciplined at such a high rate, the federal data show. . . Yet black students are no more likely to misbehave than other students from the same social and economic environments, research studies have found") even though they do not misbehave more frequently.

Who is suspending the Black children? Teachers who do not understand them, teachers who bring their own mistaken (racist) perceptions into the classroom, teachers who in all likelihood would bristle in outrage if accused of racism, and yet, and yet. . . .it takes so much to scrub that culturally inherited filth from one's soul. How many have the courage to face themselves and their privilege and acknowledge that the privilege and wealth of the some were bought with the suffering of others.

P.S. The whiteys across the Big Pond are facing the same challenge:

In London, [MP Diane Abbott] added, just 12 per cent of teachers were black while in some areas half the children were. On Saturday a black teachers' network will be launched to provide support to teachers but also encourage them to explain cultural differences to their non-black colleagues.

According to Abbott, some white teachers misunderstand the way that black boys behave, seeing them as aggressive because of a 'culture gap', while others stereotype pupils.

P.P.S. One other great thing Tavis Smiley said (he also said he stole it from Cornel West): In order to lead, you have to love.