One Group Forward, Another Group Back

The United States Supreme Court did the right thing, I believe, in striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), clearing the way for members of the LGBT community to get the rights they deserve as American citizens. As more and more states lose their resistance to allowing same-sex marriage, the rights of these couples will finally be treated with dignity and will be entitled to federal benefits that heterosexual married couples now enjoy. Some religious folks are decrying the decision, insisting that the Bible says marriage is supposed to be between one man and one woman but the decision of the Supreme Court really did make justice possible for one group of people who have been too long discriminated against.

But while the LGBT community enjoyed a victory, African-Americans suffered a serious setback. In effectively striking down the guts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court invalidated the work over the years by activists to make sure the right of African-Americans to vote was protected. The high court left the door and the way open for dishonesty and hate-based-on-race to have its way …again. The blood, sweat and tears – literally – of activists, black, white, Christian, Jewish – was dishonored by a court whose chief justice, John Roberts, said, “our country has changed.”

It brought me to tears.

Voting is about power, and from the outset, some people in some states, historically, knew that all too well. To allow the growing population of African-Americans in the South to vote would upset and challenge the balance of the white power structure. To guard against that, ridiculous, immoral, unethical and disingenuous “tests” were set up to weed African-Americans out. People were asked to tell how many jelly beans were in a jar; they were given literacy tests by many who were themselves illiterate. They were given tests on the United States Constitution. Some blacks would stand in line to register to vote for hours only to get to the registration point and either be turned away because they “failed” one of these tests or to find that voting registration was closed for the day.

The court specifically struck down Section 4 of the Act, which required specifically named states to get pre-clearance from the Justice Department before they made changes to requirements and procedures for voting, to change polling places, or redrawing electoral districts. Congress in 2006 renewed the act, extending the preclearance requirement for 25 years. Now, however, the states that were named have been released from the requirement that they be monitored and get preclearance (Section 5). Federal attorneys can go to individual states and see what they are doing, but clearly, states will have more freedom to do as they wish, hoping that they are not “caught.”

Politics is about power, not about people. In spite of our founding documents saying that government is “by the people, of the people and for the people,” the reality is that those words, that stated belief, is not really true. Far too many American people suffer from a democracy and democratic principles that do not extend to them. While the Congress gets up in arms about democracy needing to work and/or be established in foreign countries, democracy in America is in intensive care.

The Supreme Court this week pushed one group, the LGBT community, move forward while simultaneously pushing another group, African-Americans, back. The court showed notable sensitivity to the group, and familiar and painful insensitivity to another.

The struggle continues. It just never ends. Racism, and the inequality it metes out, is America’s cancer. It resists all efforts to get it out of the life-blood of American society.

A candid observation…

Evil Doesn’t Win

Ultimately, evil does not win.

It feels like it does. It gets momentary victories, but in the end, it really does not win. Evil seems to have an amazing capacity to produce good.

Our senators did not approve wider background checks for people purchasing guns. Someone planted bombs at the Boston Marathon. A sick young man murdered children and dedicated adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A misguided young man shot and killed a young girl he did not know in Chicago, just days after she returned from performing at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. So many young people die by violence in urban areas, and nobody really seems to care. The Prison Industrial Complex continues to reap profit off the lives of the unfortunate.

Many young men and women have suffered from sexual abuse from the priests they loved and trusted. Offending priests have been protected, and it stayed quiet for as long as it could. Health care is so expensive that those who must need it cannot afford it. People in this, the wealthiest nation in the world, are hungry; some have to choose between taking the medicine they need and buying food for their children. The elderly – the jewels of any society – are being left alone to fend for themselves, after having lived lives that helped this nation get to where it is. It seems like evil is having its way …but in the end, evil doesn’t win.

A man named Hitler killed millions of Jewish people and the world, for the most part, remained silent. Africans were stolen from their homelands and brought to the Americas by people wanting to use their labor while belittling their lives. Slavery became big business, and the government refused for so long to pass laws to protect these people who built this country. Even the presidents of our nation looked the other way while slavery and discrimination and lynching persisted. The United States Supreme Court did not protect “the least of these,” a group which included women, children, African – Americans, and others. The rights of members of the LGBT community have long been ignored, in spite of the fact that all people are children of God, worthy of dignity.

People rejoice when they carry out evil; people rejoice and hug each other when they have done something evil for their own reasons that will result in the suffering of others. Evil was what allowed even churches to turn away a young boy named Ryan White because he had full-blown AIDS.

Evil seems to have the upper hand in so many instances, but in the end, evil doesn’t win. What people mean for evil, God means for good. It may take a while, but God and good really do trump evil. Good is so often pushed so deeply underground that it takes a while for it to bloom, but it always does bloom, eventually. From the evil called slavery came the Civil Rights movement; from the evil on a Monday afternoon in Boston came an interfaith service; from the evil called gun violence that resulted in children and adults in Newtown suffering unmentionable loss came the resolve of parents and relatives, and a former legislator named Gabby Giffords to fight evil, fight the NRA, and to fight complacency.

Evil only seems to win. In the end, it doesn’t. Even evil comes to justice, by and by.

A candid observation.

Big Government or Not?

Washington DC: United States Supreme Court (Photo credit: wallyg)

It’s confusing sometimes, understanding when government is supposed to step in and when it isn’t.

Conservatives argue against “big government,” but they also vouch for the right of the federal government to step in on some very personal issues. In the current discussion going on about same-sex marriage, the mantra of many Conservatives is that “we don’t need government to step in and redefine marriage.”

Yet, they want government to step in and “define” marriage in a way that fits into their ideology. Right?

Did the United States Supreme Court overstep its authority when it ruled that women have a constitutional right to have abortions? Are abortions, who has them and who does not, within the purview of the duties and decisions of the governments, via the nation’s highest court? (http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_22857283/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage-case-has-echoes)

Many people think the SCOTUS did overstep its authority in the Roe Vs. Wade case, but they are pulling for the high court to settle the current disagreement on same-sex marriage. I am totally confused. When is “big government” all right? Does a court ever have the right to decide what is “right” in such personal issues?

It seems like we are straddling a rail. We want government, big government, but only on the things where there is an ideological dispute, right? We want big government when there is a tragedy, or a natural disaster. We don’t want big government when it is too concerned with helping the poor, spending money on people whose lives seem to many out of control. Big government should stay out of those kinds of things. Of course, had it not been for “big government,” many people would have been swallowed in the nation’s most recent economic debacle. but many people are still very critical of the government’s attempt to help people who were drowning.

So, “big government” is out of line when it comes to dealing with issues of poverty and economic despair, right?

But big government needs to come in and set the records straight when it comes to personal situations involving sexuality and abortion, right? In those cases, the government gives into a responsibility to make moral decisions for the citizens of the United States. Right?

The bottom line is that there is no consistency on when big government is necessary and needed and expected. When Hurricane Sandy came, people were expecting government to step in and help those who had been so severely impacted. Had “big government” not done that, it would have been criticized soundly.

And now, big government is being called upon to decide who gets to get married and who does not…but this is a moral question, right? Is government really allowed to tell people what they can or cannot do as individuals? Is that the purview of government?

The thought of the government having the power to decide who can get married, and thereby be entitled to the legal benefits of marriage, is as distasteful as the idea of the government having the authority to tell women how many children they can have, and whether or not they can get an abortion. I don’t believe that abortion is good, but it doesn’t seem that government has the right to tell a woman if she can or cannot get one. Isn’t that kind of subversive?

It seems like there ought to be a new constitutional convention or something, to define big government and to clarify what the federal government can and cannot do, and what it must and must not do.

At the very least, though, it seems that those who rail against “big government” ought to tailor their criticisms. The argument against “big government” ought to explain that folks are only against big government when it comes to allocating money, especially for the poor and downtrodden, the oppressed and pretty much forgotten citizens of this country. When it comes to defining morality, though, and what personal decisions Americans are allowed to make, big government needs to step in and do…what a good government does.

Do I have it right?

A candid observation …

Insensitivity or Ignorance?

photograph of the justices, cropped to show Ju... — photograph of the justices, cropped to show Justice Scalia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

People sometimes ask, irritably, why black people can’t stop being mad. They point to the progress that has been made in this country, where black people have been “granted” the civil rights they were due by virtue of being American citizens…and only slowly. When someone expresses anger, there is a definite sigh of exacerbation from those who think black people ought to just “get over themselves” and move on.

That is, actually, what black people have been doing since having been brought to America – gotten over themselves and this nation which actually passed laws to keep them in their place. They “got over themselves” even as they fought for dignity and a real chance to partake in the American Dream. There was no time to navel gaze.

But the reason the anger still sits within the souls and spirits of many African-Americans is because every now and then, someone from the “majority” population will say something that shows either insensitivity or ignorance, or both, letting those who have been held back and held up by this government cringe with a familiar pain.

Such was the cringe many felt when Justice Antonin Scalia said this week, in deliberations about whether or not to overturn Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, that the Court had to “rescue Congress from the trap of being afraid to vote against a “racial entitlement.”

Cringe. Sigh. This, from the highest court in the land.

Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, for those who do not know, requires preclearance from the Justice Department in certain states and jurisdictions make changes in voting procedures, things like changing the hours people can vote, or redrawing district lines, or changing the requirements for registering to vote. It happens that these preclearances have been required in Southern states because of their long history of denying the vote to African-Americans, by any means necessary. Some politicians are now complaining the preclearances are not fair, that there is no racism like there used to be in the South, and that states ought to be free to make their own rules vis-a-vis voting with no federal interference. States rights is what they seem to be calling upon.

The Court’s Conservative judges have been particularly hard on those wanting to keep Section Five. They have said that politicians are afraid to change this portion of the law because they don’t want to be seen as racists; therefore, it is the Court’s responsibility to “rescue” Congress from the task.

It’s about racism in this country, this tiff going on in the United States Supreme Court, that subject about which nobody wants to talk, and everybody wants to believe is long gone. It is far from gone; black and brown people can tell anyone who asks that it is not gone. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court justices, at least the Conservative ones, are being coy as they ask questions like Chief Justice John Roberts asked, “Is it the government’s submission that the citizens in the South are more racist than citizens in the North?” No, replied U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, but Roberts undoubtedly knew that when he asked the question. We by now know that the racism in the North was and is as virulent as it was and is in the South. The issue, however, is that states in the South practiced blatant racism , actively working to prevent African-Americans from voting, and had done it virtually without comment since the end of Reconstruction. It was only the intervention of the federal government, under the leadership of President Johnson, combined with persistent protests by Civil Rights workers, that forced a change in Southern states.

R0berts and Scalia and no doubt, all of the Conservative justices know that, and they also know the shenanigans that go on even now when it comes to voting. With the demography of this nation changing, Republicans are worried about the white vote being diluted and some have charged that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is reverse discrimination!

The passing of this act did not give African-Americans an “entitlement,” a word loaded with innuendo and suggestion of something someone does not earn. No, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave African-Americans the RIGHT to vote, as described in the United States Constitution.

For Scalia to say that the issue before the Court is “…attributable to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement…Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes,” smacks of insensitivity at best, and ignorance at worst. Statements like that are a slap in the face of African-Americans and indeed all Americans who have had to fight for their basic rights. How is it possible that in the 21st century, so-called intelligent barristers are making such ignorant and insensitive statements? This society should be way past even discussing how to best give all of its citizens the rights they are entitled to as citizens, and yet, we have Scalia’s statement staring us all in the face.

Racial discrimination is embedded in the fabric of American society. Remove certain protections and it is highly likely that, under the authority granted, “states’ rights” advocates will do what they want to wrangle and manipulate elections to go the way they want. That the justices cannot see that, or will not acknowledge that, is disingenuous and dishonest. We can all see how hot the embers of racial hatred are; we have seen it during the presidency of Barack Obama. There are plenty of people, white people, who still want to “take their country back,” and one of the best ways to do it is to control the vote.

The ignorance and insensitivity shown by the justices thus far has been disheartening. Some political activists have spoken out, but it seems that in this year that we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation that more than the activists would register a complaint about what the justices, the Conservative justices, are saying vis-a-vis this important protection for minority voters. We cannot go backwards. Change is hard, and our country is changing by leaps and bounds, but that is no excuse to allow protections for minorities as they seek to exercise their rights as Americans to be overturned or ignored.

There are a lot of people cringing after hearing Justice Scalia’s remarks. Those remarks showed just how deep are feelings of resentment toward groups of people who are still fighting for the RIGHTS of being American citizens.

A candid observation …

The Arrogance of Racism

As I think about racism, I think what bothers me most is the arrogance of it all, an arrogance spawned and nurtured by governments, both in this country and elsewhere, allowing or perhaps encouraging people to buy into one of the most specious types of human behavior imaginable.

What prompts this post is the story about how some people at the Republican National Convention allegedly threw peanuts at a CNN camerawoman, saying, “this is how we feed the animals.”

Then, I looked at the makeup of the crowd at the RNC, and saw very few non-white faces…but what bothers me, again, is that the Republican Party has not really done anything to draw different ethnic groups. Their arrogance allows them to pander to their base unashamedly, only thinking of other ethnicities as objects to be captured to win elections.

The voter suppression efforts are, again, so arrogant. Americans have the right to vote; because voting is a right, politicians and governments should do all they can to make sure the most people possible can exercise their right…and yet, the laws put in place feel like they were put there to shut certain groups out, in order to make sure the Republican and Tea Party candidates win.

It is so arrogant.

At least the Justice Department shot down the voter ID laws in Texas. (http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/30/politics/texas-voter-id-law/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1) The state attorney general said he will appeal the ruling to the United States Supreme Court, but again, how arrogant is it to think that it is OK to deliberately bar people from the polls?

The government and society-supported racism has historically been supported, in specific rulings, by the United States Supreme Court. The most noted case is the Dred Scott case, where the Chief Justice, writing for the majority, said there were “no rights of a black man that a white man is bound to respect.” Reading that still takes my breath away.

In Pennsylvania, Commonwealth Judge Robert Simpson refused to block a voter ID law (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0815/Why-judge-refused-to-block-Pennsylvania-voter-ID-law) Judge Simpson doesn’t see where the law will impede the ability of poor and minority people to vote. In the spirit of arrogance that this post is about, Pennsylvania GOP House Leader Mike Turzai said publicly that the new voter ID laws will help Romney win the state in the general election. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/mike-turzai-voter-id_n_1625646.html)

This racial arrogance has caused so much pain for others. It has fooled white people into thinking that no matter who they are, they are always better than black or brown people, and it knows that governments, churches and institutions will, or have, for the most part, supported them.

The arrogance makes those who allow racism and racist feelings to abide in them think they are more intelligent, more capable, and absolutely within their rights to spurn anyone who is not …white.

I don’t know how the budget will shake down if Mitt Romney wins the election. It is clear that Paul Ryan’s proposed budget doesn’t seem to care too much for black, brown and poor people. The arrogance of people makes them forget that there are still serious barriers in our society that prevent people from getting work; studies show that black and brown people are still discriminated against in hiring. And Romney, who has never had to worry about where the next meal will come from, or watch his parents worry about that, said in an ad that if kids want to go to college, they should “ask their parents” to help them, give them a loan.

Arrogance. He doesn’t know how many parents are struggling just to keep their heads above water, and that includes everyone, black, brown…and white.

In the wake of Hurricane Isaac, I thought back to Hurricane Katrina, where the arrogance of racism, which spawns fear and uncaring, accounted for the government to send National Guard soldiers into the city of New Orleans, when people, mostly black and poor, were drowning in their homes, or sitting on roofs, desperate to be rescued. I still think of the pictures of old people, sitting out in the hot sun for hours, waiting for someone …to care. Too many died waiting.

The killing thing is that many whites who are racist will not admit it; they will get immediately defensive if such is suggested to them. During the Republican primary, one of my Twitter friends was furious when I said that Newt Gingrich was playing to his base. I was referring to some of his comments on those who are poor and who are on welfare.

My friend…unfriended me.

Gee.

I am holding my breath as this election gets into final gear. I am sure that those who plan the campaign know how to speak to the racist underpinnings of this country’s citizens without saying things that will get them in trouble. But they will say them…and those who are supposed to understand, will. And though I am talking about Republicans today, be clear that there is no way I am saying that some Democrats are not just as racist, and I am not saying that ALL Republicans are racist. But racist or not, the arrogance that supports racism abounds in this world.

It’s sad, this arrogance, and it keeps America from being the greatest she can be.

A candid observation …