Community Checkup

I’m one of Al’s biggest critics, but I have to give him props for his letter to the DNC urging them to not seat the Michigan and Florida delegates. He stood tall on this one, bucking the efforts of NAACP chairman Julian Bond to play foul politics. From Al:

I write this letter as a former Democratic candidate for President of the United States and a civil rights leader who has fought his entire life for fairness and justice for all people regardless of the color of their skin. [Read more →]

In his NYT op-ed, a chief consultant for Al Gore’s presidential campaign, Ted Devine, summed up my sentiments about superdelegates exactly:

If the superdelegates determine the party’s nominee before primary and caucus voters have rendered a clear verdict, Democrats risk losing the trust that we are building with voters today. The perception that the votes of ordinary people don’t count as much as those of the political insiders, who get to pick the nominee in some mythical back room, could hurt our party for decades to come. [Read more →]

L’s comment on the sellout post about how racism/prejudice instructs how we view others reminded me of this South Park clip. Hilarious.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell wrote an interesting piece about the issue of race vs. gender in voting decisions for black women. She nicely breaks down why the popular notion in the media that black women have chosen race over gender in their support of Barack is a flawed one. She explains that…

It is not that simple. A lot of people have tried to gently explain the divide, so I’m just going to put this out there: Sister voters have a beef with white women like Clinton that is both racial and gendered. It is not about choosing race; it is about rejecting Hillary’s Scarlett O’Hara act. [Read more →]

A sellout, or Uncle Tom, is one of the worst insults that can be levied towards a black person by another black person. I’ve been called a lot of things in my day, but being called a sellout was one the times that angered me the most. I remember thinking, “Who does he think he is to call me that and on what basis is he making this judgment?” Probably the thing that bothered me the most was the act of this cat playing the gatekeeper for black authenticity. Who is he to decide who is in with us or not? [Read more →]

Last night, before the Super Tuesday numbers started rolling in, I was watching CNN when I heard Lou Dobbs griping about how numerous states have voting machines without paper trails. I was reflecting on how ridiculous it is that we can’t create and implement technology across the board that ensures every vote is counted accurately and has a fail-safe backup system (paper or not). I mean, we’ve made numerous trips to the moon, created phones smaller than a deck of cards and we can’t figure out a reliable system for counting ballots?

This isn’t rocket science. You have to come away thinking that there must be little to no political will to make this happen. [Read more →]

A great comment from a Washington Post article yesterday about fear and Obama’s campaign:

The point of Obama’s candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy. [Source: WaPo]

Well said. The quote speaks to the voters’ responsibility for the current condition of the country as well as its future. [Read more →]

Today’s the big day. Just as everyone else, I can’t wait to see what happens with Super Tuesday. By now, especially since Edwards has dropped out, most people have picked between Obama and Hillary. I have too–I’m all in for Obama.

But, ironically, among a race involving members of two underrepresented groups, I find myself missing the white guy, Edwards. No, I’m not experiencing an Uncle Ruckus moment, so please don’t send me emails telling me about some latent self-hate I possess. [Read more →]

What appears to be an interesting online magazine by Henry Louis Gates Jr. on black culture, was just launched this past Monday. There looks to be plenty of interesting contributors including William Julius Wilson, Lawrence Bobo, John McWhorter and more. Check it out. You can also check out this NYT article about it.

*A shoutout to Darren for putting me on to this*

It’s no secret that the Clintons have been playing dirty. Smart, but dirty. The question remains as to whether their tactics will be able to stem the gigantic tidal wave of support behind Obama. I don’t think they will.

Plenty of folk, such as Ron Walters of the University of Maryland, have pointed out how the tactics of the Clintons have been to “blacken” Obama to the point that he loses white support.

The objective of the Clinton campaign is to make [Obama] blacker. Which is to say to call out his blackness and therefor to complicate his constituency which is majority white. [Source: NPR]

As Walters later points out, this strategy, “plays on the divisiveness of the racial factor.” An ironic approach for the “first black president” to take. [Read more →]