The DISH

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Vol. 14 No. 8…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…February 21, 2011

DISHing It Up Hot

On Black Things!

By Dot

February is Black History Month. Between Valentine's Day and President's Day - the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington -- not much time remains in the shortest month of the year to entertain the wealth of contributions and history of black people; information not found in public school textbooks. If not in February, when will we ask the question, what is the state of black America? For any real progress to occur, this long overdue inquiry is necessary. And, so it must be pursued, even if the answer takes us beyond February.

Based on President Obama's state of the Union Address, the black human condition is irrelevant in assessing the state of this nation. As a group, black people were ignored by the first black president, who has apparently relegated the state of black America to the back of the bus where it is unseen and unheard. For one, I know such disregard must definitely change.

In last week's issue, we began our examination of the state of black America with a reiteration of our just demand for reparations with Sekou Sundiata's spoken word piece Come on and Bring on the Reparations. We also provided excerpts of a Democracy Now interview with Harry Belafonte, who addressed Mr. Obama's lack of concern for the state of poor and black Americans.

In the full interview, Belafonte speaks about the absence of young people in the black struggle today. Sadly, most young black folks are ignorant of our history, even the black power movement of the 1960s and early 1970s. Back then, with sheer audacity, young black men and women challenged America to live up to its rhetoric of freedom, equality and democracy. That audacity, vision and understanding of the true state of black America are missing today, in part because, as a psychological study highlighted in this week's issue shows, modern bias is more subtle, even as the consequences of its dehumanization are devastating for the health and welfare of black Americans.

Danny Glover, actor and activist, who was also interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now at the Sundance Film Festival, where the documentary Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 debuted, disagrees with Belafonte's assessment of young black people today; he believes this generation will make its own history and contribution to the struggle as it responds to the crisis, "whether it's the climate crisis or whether it's the financial crisis, the crisis of poverty in the world, the crisis of the inequity in the world."

Glover admits that he is an optimist, so one cannot help but wonder, have young black Americans bought into the notion of a post-racial America without engaging in a serious conversation on the topic? In this week's issue, The Conversation America Won't Have on Race, an article written by Rev. Irene Monroe, skillfully debunks the notion of a post-racial America.

We began this week's issue with abolitionist John Pierpont's poem "The Chain" and a bit of history on US Representative Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868). While President Lincoln is given tremendous credit for his Emancipation Proclamation, his paltry contribution to the advancement of human rights for slaves and former slaves pales in comparison to the measures advocated by Stevens, who should be celebrated as a hero in the black community.

Unfortunately, having provided neither compensation nor conversation to improve the state of black America, some insensitive Americans will be dismissive, requiring black people to just get over the worst crime in human history even as they continue to practice subtle, but devastating, dehumanization. Of those we must ask, when will you relinquish the hate?

February is almost over, so let's begin the conversation!

Intuit's Vibe

The Chain

By John Pierpont (1785 - 1866)

Is it his daily toil, that wrings

From the slave's bosom that deep sigh?

Is it his niggard fare, that brings

The tear into his down-cast eye?

O no; by toil and humble fare,

Earth's sons their health and vigor gain;

It is because the slave must wear

His chain.

Is it the sweat, from every pore

That starts, and glistens in the sun,

As, the young cotton bending o'er,

His naked back it shines upon?

Is it the drops that, from his breast,

Into the thirsty furrow fall,

That scald his soul, deny him rest,

And turn his cup of life to gall?

No; -- for, that man with sweating brow

Shall eat his bread, doth God ordain;

This the slave's spirit doth not bow;

It is his chain.

Is it, that scorching sands and skies

Upon his velvet skin have set

A hue, admired in beauty's eyes,

In Genoa's silks, and polished jet?

No; for this color was his pride,

When roaming o'er his native plain;

Even here, his hue can he abide,

But not his chain.

Nor is it, that his back and limbs

Are scored with many a gory gash,

That his heart bleeds, and his brain swims,

And the MAN dies beneath the lash.

For Baal's priests, on Carmel's slope,

Themselves with knives and lancets scored,

Till the blood spirted, -- in the hope

The god would hear, whom they adored;--

And Christian flagellants their backs,

All naked, to the scourge have given;

And martyrs to their stakes and racks

Have gone, of choice, in hope of heaven;--

For here there was an inward WILL!

Here spake the spirit, upward tending;

And o'er Faith's cloud-girt altar, still,

Hope hung her rainbow, heavenward bending.

But will and hope hath not the slave,

His bleeding spirit to sustain: --

No, -- he must drag on, to the grave,

His chain.

Bit of History

Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868)

"I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited as to race, by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life, equality of man before his Creator." Inscription on Thaddeus Stevens' headstone

Born April 4, 1792 in Danville, Vermont, Thaddeus Stevens suffered many hardships during his childhood, including a club foot. The fate of his father Joshua Stevens, an alcoholic, who was unable to hold a steady job, is uncertain; he may have abandoned his family, or been killed in the War of 1812. Stevens' mother was left in dire poverty to raise four small sons. Sally (Morrill) Stevens, a pious Baptist, wanted her son to become a minister. However, after completing his course of study at Peacham Academy, Stevens entered Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1814. After briefly attending the University of Vermont, Stevens moved to York, Pennsylvania, where he taught school and studied law. He was admitted to the Maryland bar and established a successful law practice, first in Gettysburg in 1816, then in Lancaster in 1842.

Stevens entered politics as an anti-Mason and was elected to his first of seven terms in the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1832; he served from 1833-1841. He was a proponent of public education and vigorous advocate of a protective tariff. After 1836, Stevens switched his political target from Masons to slaveholders. Strongly abolitionist, he defended runaway slaves for free and fought tirelessly for racial equality.

In 1848, Stevens was elected to serve in the House of Representatives. Stevens switched from the Anti-Masonic Party to the Whig Party, and finally to the Republican Party. In his first two terms in Congress (1849 - 1853), Stevens was a Whig but also a forthright abolitionist; he quit in disgust at his party's moderate stand on the slavery issue. A leading organizer of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, he returned to Congress in 1859 and served until his death. As chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, he was a powerful figure throughout the Civil War.

Stevens devoted most of his energy to the destruction of what he considered the Slave Power, the conspiracy of slave owners to seize control of the federal government and block the progress of liberty. He defended and supported Native Americans, Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons, Jews, Chinese, and women. The defense of runaway or fugitive slaves consumed the greatest amount of his time until the abolition of slavery became his primary political and personal focus. He was actively involved in the Underground Railroad, assisting runaway slaves in getting to Canada.

In August, 1861, he supported the first law attacking slavery, the Confiscation Act that said owners would forfeit any slaves they allowed to help the Confederate war effort. By December he was the first Congressional leader pushing for emancipation as a tool to weaken the rebellion. He called for total war on January 22, 1862. Unlike President Abraham Lincoln, a strict constructionist, who believed the Union could best be saved by having the federal government interfere with slavery as little as possible, Stevens believed it could best be saved by vigorously attacking and destroying the institution. Lincoln believed the Negro was unassimilable, a stranger in a strange land, and must eventually emigrate or be deported; Stevens believed that he was an integral part of the American nation and that national policy must be shaped accordingly. Stevens advocated his antislavery measures from conviction; Lincoln adopted them from necessity.

After the Civil War, as a leader of the Radical Republicans, Stevens advocated a plan to divide planters' land among former slaves; he insisted, this would make them "small independent landholders, ... the support and guardians of republican liberty." He helped establish the Freedmen's Bureau, and secured passage of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution

Stevens died August 11, 1868 in Washington, DC. He chose to be buried in the Shreiner-Concord Cemetery because it was the only cemetery that would accept people without regard to race. (Sources: ww7w.answers.com/topic/thaddeus-stevens#ixzz1E3xYFW00, http://en.wikipedia.org, www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org)

Hood Notes

Study: Not Yet Human

The black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect. . . . He may justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery . . . and treated as an ordinary article of traffic and merchandise. -- Chief Justice, Roger Taney (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1856).

The United States has a long history of dehumanizing black people. In the above quote, Chief Justice Taney expressed a belief held by many 19th century Americans. For them, blacks were inherently inferior to whites and could be enslaved; this belief was codified in the first article of the US Constitution. In the mid-19th century, Josiah Nott and George Gliddon's Types of Mankind successfully promoted scientific racism in the US; the book's illustrations ranked blacks between "Greeks" and apes. While grotesque depictions of this sort are no longer part of the mainstream, the "March of Progress," an illustration of evolution published in the Time-Life book Early Man (1970), has evolution beginning with a monkey and ending with a white man, reinforcing the idea that people of African descent are closer to apes than a civilized person, a white man.

In contemporary US society, it is believed that the dehumanization and subjugation of blacks are part of the past. Old-fashioned prejudice no longer exists. This view may have led to the notion that modern bias, to the extent that it exists, is implicit, subtle, and often unintended. However, as recently as the early 1990s, California state police euphemistically referred to cases involving young black men as N.H.I.--No Humans Involved (Wynter, S. (1992) "No humans involved": An open letter to my colleagues. Voices of the African Diaspora, 8, 1-17). One of the officers involved in the Rodney King beating (1991) had just come from another incident in which he referred to a domestic dispute involving a black couple as "something right out of Gorillas in the Mist" (Kennedy, R. (1998). Race, Crime, and the Law; New York: Vintage Books). Assuming that these incidents are not confined to police officers, is it possible, at the same time that contemporary racial bias has become more subtle, that these extreme forms of dehumanization nonetheless remain?

This is the question examined by a group of psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley. In 2008, they published the results of a six-year study titled "Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences" in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Specifically, the series of studies, which involved mostly white male undergraduates, found that many contemporary Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes.

As a consequence of associating blacks with apes, the studies' participants were more likely to condone violence against blacks. For instance, participants who believed the suspect in a police beating was black were more likely to condone the police action. Society's inability to perceive blacks as fully human has dire consequences for black Americans. One study, which examined hundreds of news stories published in the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1979 to 1999, showed that blacks convicted of capital crimes were roughly four times more likely than whites convicted of capital offenses to be described using terms, such as "barbaric," "beast," "brute," "savage" and "wild." And, according to the researchers, "Those who are implicitly portrayed as more ape-like in these articles are more likely to be executed by the state than those who are not."

Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford associate professor of psychology and co-author of the study, was shocked by the results, since the subjects were all born after Jim Crow and the civil rights movement. For Eberhardt, "Despite widespread opposition to racism, bias remains with us. African Americans are still dehumanized; we're still associated with apes in this country. That association can lead people to endorse the beating of black suspects by police officers, and I think it has lots of other consequences that we have yet to uncover."

The US' history of dehumanizing blacks makes it difficult to believe bias completely disappeared, especially since the nation continues to grapple with severe racial inequality, which fuels and maintains negative associations in ways that people are unaware. For Eberhardt, two stories of race exist in the US. "One is about the disappearance of bias--that it's no longer with us. But the other is about the transformation of bias. It's not the egregious bias anymore, but it is modern bias, subtle bias. With both of these stories, there is an understanding that society has moved beyond the historic battles centered around race. We want to argue, with this work, that there is one old race battle that we're still fighting. That is the battle for blacks to be recognized as fully human." (Source: http://psychology.stanford.edu/~mcslab/PublicationPDFs/Not%20yet%20human.pdf)

Venue for an Artist

The Conversation America Won't Have on Race

By Irene Monroe

If we resided in a post-racial society, then William Faulkner's words uttered in the 20th century would not ring true in this century--"The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past."

With the election of Barack Obama as this nation's first African-American president, many of us had hoped we could finally close the door on America's original sin--slavery.

But the vestiges of that institution linger not only in the backwaters of America, but they also linger in the hallow halls of Congress.

When South Carolina Republican House Rep. Joe Wilson's belted out "You lie!" during Obama's televised joint session of Congress address, Wilson jolted us back to Faulkner's words.

If Wilson's act of incivility was merely about Joe the man, and not about a nation still haunted by and grappling with its shameful and unexamined legacy of racism, then the fodder and fuss that followed would not have ensued.

As a mater-of-fact, we could have viewed Joe's outburst as all about him, an impassioned man in opposition to Obama's current political discussions. After all, I too, find Obama's healthcare plan and government spending to be a brow raiser.

But when you see an onslaught of racist images of Obama by those in opposition to him, like placards that read "Afro-Communist," "Obama ribs 'n chicken...plus a nice slice of watermelon for the darkie," and now the recent poster, flooding the Internet, showing Obama wearing a feather headdress and a bone through his nose as a witch doctor, there is unquestionably something deeper going on than merely opposing his policy.

And when you have a Birther Movement promulgating lies that Obama wasn't born in the U.S., Tea Party protests with guns at its rallies, and a vicious right-wing contingent blocking the President of the United States from delivering an innocuous back-to-school speech encouraging America's children to stay in school, we are seeing strong efforts at play to de-legitimize Obama's authority.

And of course the specter of race surfaces. You must ask; how much does race play as a key factor and not a backdrop to Obama's policy decisions?

And, like any unresolved conflict, the warts and boils bubble up, unseeingly, out of nowhere.

"Racism ... still exists and I think it has bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people, not just in the south but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply," former President Jimmy Carter told NBC News.

Whereas Carter thinks race is indeed the underlying issue Obama thinks otherwise.

"Now there are some who are, setting aside the issue of race, actually I think are more passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right," he told ABC News. "And I think that that's probably the biggest driver of some of the vitriol."

But Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder might perceive Obama's rejoinder as cowardice.

In February Holder received scathing criticism for his speech on race. His critics said the tone and tenor of the speech was confrontational and accusatory.

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot," Holder said, "in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."

Obama is part of a new generation of African- American male leaders who came after the 60's. They would argue that they don't flee from race issues, but rather they don't employ the black civil rights movement paradigm, often viewed as confrontational, to enter into mainstream politics. And they are heralded as American's post-racial leaders who successfully navigate through this country's lingering legacy of racism with the intent purpose of disarming whites of their guilt and fears.

Peter Boyer's article in the February 4, 2008 issue of The New Yorker titled "The Color of Politics: A Mayor of the Post-Racial Generation" wrote the following explaining this "post-racial" generation of African Americans that includes Barack Obama, Harold Ford, Cory Booker, and my governor, Deval Patrick:

"Their deeper kinship resides in their identities as breakthrough figures - Africa American politicians whose appeal transcends race. Men reared in the post-Selma era and schooled at elite institutions, developed a political style of conciliation rather than confrontation, which complemented their natural gifts and, as it happens, nicely served their ambitions."

This political style these men employ Shelby Steele depicts it best in his recent book "A BOUND MAN." Steele states that, in the African American community, there are two types of people - the "bargainer" and the "challenger."

What is a "bargainer" or a "challenger?"

According to Shelby Steele, a bargainer strikes a bargain with white America in which they say I will not rub America's ugly history of racism in your face if you will not hold my race against me.

A "challenger," on the other hand, does the opposite of a "bargainer." A "challenger" charges white people with inherent racism and then demands they prove themselves innocent by supporting black friendly polices like affirmative action and diversity.

No matter what kind of shape-shifters or mask-wearers African American leaders are, even our post-racial leaders are finding out that the nagging issue of race is unavoidable.

And our attempt to dodge the issue of race in American public discourse is itself a racial act. And the reason race bubbles up to the surface, unseeingly out of nowhere, is because it is the conversation America won't have.

About Me: Rev. Monroe is a columnist, theologian, public speaker and the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not-So-Everyday Moments. For more on Rev. Monroe and her work, visit www.irenemonroe.com.

News You Use

The Black Power Mixtape

Director Goran Hugo Olsson's "Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975" premiered as part of the Sundance Film Festival's World Cinema Documentary section. The film charts the black power movement from inspiration and activism to disillusionment and inertia employing a treasure trove of archival material about the movement. During the 1960s and '70s, Swedish journalists decided to document the American Black Power movement and compiled an extensive library of film footage of black American activists from that era.

The footage includes clips from Stokely Carmichael's whirlwind European speaking tour, scenes from the Black Panthers' headquarters in Oakland and an interview with Angela Davis conducted while she was in prison.

In one particularly poignant clip, Carmichael addresses the issue of non-violence and declares, "Now, let us begin with the modern period of-I guess we could start with 1956. For our generation, this was the beginning of the rise of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King decided that in Montgomery, Alabama, black people had to pay the same prices on the buses as did white people, but we had to sit in the back. And we could only sit in the back if every available seat was taken by a white person. If a white person was standing, a black person could not sit. So Dr. King and his associates got together and said, "This is inhuman. We will boycott your bus system.

Now, understand what a boycott is. A boycott is a passive act. It is the most passive political act that anyone can commit, a boycott, because what the boycott was doing was simply saying, "We will not ride your buses." No sort of antagonism. It was not even verbally violent. It was peaceful. Dr. King's policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart.

That's very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: in order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none, has none."

Olsson said his main impulse for making the film came after he saw that footage; he realized, "this is not archive footage; this is something really important to bring out." Olsson said he hoped the film would "bring these images from Sweden, from the past" into the present.

For the director, the challenge in bringing this documentary to the public was how to give some shape to footage collected over a wide span of time from various news reports. According to Olsson, "It's a mixtape, but we tried to keep a storyline."

In perhaps his boldest move, Olsson has his interview subjects, which include Davis, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, Talib Kweli and scholar Robin Kelley, talking over the vintage images. At one point, musician Erykah Badu breaks into song.

The Black Power Mixtape brings images from the past into the present. In some respects, this film is a reminder of the importance of historical records.

During an especially lively Q&A after the movie screened, Olsson was peppered with questions about certain choices, including the absence of contemporary black activists' voices. In opting for entertainers and actors, Olsson said he sought performers who would attract a younger audience and engage with the footage emotionally. He admitted he did not know any contemporary activists. See a brief trailer of this documentary at www.republicaupdate.com/2011/02/the-black-power-mixtape-film.html and hone your black history skills by viewing the full documentary when it becomes available.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email www.splcenter.org...Hate Group Numbers Up By 54% Since 2000...The number of hate groups operating in the United States continued to rise in 2008 and has grown by 54 percent since 2000 -- an increase fueled last year by immigration fears, a failing economy and the successful campaign of Barack Obama. The SPLC identified 926 hate groups active in 2008, up more than 4 percent from the 888 groups in 2007 and far above the 602 groups documented in 2000. As in recent years, hate groups were animated by fears of Latino immigration. This rise in hate groups has coincided with a 40 percent growth in hate crimes against Latinos between 2003 and 2007, according to FBI statistics. Two new factors were introduced to the volatile hate movement in 2008: the faltering economy and the Obama campaign. "Barack Obama's election has inflamed racist extremists who see it as another sign that their country is under siege by non-whites," said Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report, a quarterly investigative journal that monitors the radical right. "The idea of a black man in the White House, combined with the deepening economic crisis and continuing high levels of Latino immigration, has given white supremacists a real platform on which to recruit."

Email www.dailykos.com...Shirley Sherrod Sues Andrew Breitbart!...Shirley Sherrod is suing Andrew Breitbart for releasing a deceptively edited video of a speech she gave to local NAACP group. The video was edited so that it appeared that Sherrod discriminated against white farmers. She lost her job with USDA. Breitbart, the owner of several conservative Web sites, was served at the conference on Saturday with a lawsuit filed by Sherrod. In the suit, which was filed in Washington, Sherrod says the video has damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work.

Email www.irishtimes.com...US vetoes UN resolution on Israel...The US has vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory. The other 14 council members voted in favor of the draft resolution. British ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, speaking on behalf of Britain, France and Germany, condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank. "They are illegal under international law," he said. He added that the European Union's three biggest nations hope that an independent state of Palestine will join the UN as a new member state by September 2011.