Grieve, Seethe, Repeat: Will America Heed Mrs. Obama's Advice?

"This is a moral obligation...because ultimately, this city and this community will be judged not just by the beauty of our parks and lakefront or by the vitality of our businesses but by our commitment to our next generation."
 -- Michelle Obama, April 10, 2013, at a business leader's lunch in Chicago.

The current gun safety debate was sparked by the murders of 26 adults and children in suburban Connecticut on December, 14,2012. It is now at the top of President Barack Obama's policy agenda, and from the halls of Congress to local school boards, it seems that everyone is talking about whether we've reached a tipping point in our history of gun ownership in the United States.

This is not the first time, of course, that politicians, community activists and educators have chewed this particular bone: My California Senator, Dianne Feinstein,  a San Francisco Democrat, attempted in the 1990s to pass legislation designed to control access to assault weapons; her recent attempt was thwarted by bipartisan resistance, including from her fellow senator, Harry Reid of Nevada. It has become a boring cliche to say that the topic of gun safety is "fraught" here in the U.S.

Yet it is also true that some of us are quite exhausted by the seemingly-endless cycle of boom and bust of this issue,  as in:

•  A terrible mass shooting takes place in an American community (Aurora, Colorado, Virginia Tech University, Tuscon Arizona).
•  A frenzy of media coverage erupts.
•  Politicians local and national express sympathy for the victims.
•  The National Rifle Association bullies elected officials into watering down any gun safety proposals that make it to the floors of state houses or Congress.
•  Everybody settles down....until the next horrible mass shooting happens. 

Grieve, seethe, and repeat. 

So now, the Obama Administration says it wants to break this terrible cycle. And Michelle Obama, the administration's most effective public relations force, is joining the White House's effort. We will see if the First Lady's intellect, compassion and mesmerizing speaking abilities will gin up public will that is strong enough to carry the day.



I have watched this clip of Mrs. Obama's April 10 talk in Chicago a half-dozen times by now. It it remarkable for several reasons, but mostly for this: Michelle Obama, graduate of Princeton, Harvard Law School and a former executive, is telling the over-class in America that it is failing.

With stunning precision she ties the shooting deaths of poor black and Latino kids on the streets of Chicago to the shooting deaths of white kids from affluent families in Colorado and Virginia, then knots those directly to the "obligations" of all American adults -- including and especially the wealthiest -- to quit dithering and start getting serious about ending easy access to guns AND to invest fully in creating better opportunities for kids nationwide. Obviously, she has kinship (as she noted) with many of the poor and working- or middle-class kids who die every day on American streets from gun violence.  Unless you are a willfully blind conservative or a stubborn racist, you can appreciate the authenticity of Mrs. Obama's concern.

It is not politically cynical for her to emphasize her family's similarity to that of the young Chicago woman, Hadiyah Pendleton, who was gunned down for no reason other than foolishness earlier this year.  That Mrs. Obama has come from those same Chicago streets and similar economic circumstances (modest) as Pendleton is (or should be) a cause of awe and optimism to all Americans, if also reason for bittersweet introspection.

In addition,  the relative silence from the "thought leadership" wing of the press, the dearth  of deep analysis of Mrs. Obama's Chicago address is troubling: it signals that the continuing disappearance from our newsrooms of writers, editors and producers who hail from working-class backgrounds is diminishing coverage of topics that deserve urgent attention. The implications of this are huge yet amidst the crazy proliferation of alleged "media critics" and "experts" that now clogs the Internet, there are very few who are qualified to identify this void and propose solutions. (I have plenty of suggestions and here is the most obvious one: The top editors and hiring editors at what is left of the MSM should figure out how to fund pipelines extending directly from J-schools and departments that still focus on teaching the practice, to PAID internship programs. These pipelines must ultimately feed directly into staff positions at what is left of the Legacy news organizations and the handful of web outlets with aspirations of legitimacy. Resources are tight, yes, but I'd say it is a smart investment in their future economic survival.)

Moreover, if future political historians don't identify this Chicago speech as a seminal moment in postmodern American politics (or at least of the Obama Administration's eight year run), I will rise from my resting place and eat my hat.

And a pro tip: If you venture back and read the relatively few press stories or blog posts on this speech, steel yourself for the Comments: I know better than to get upset by the high level of rank racism and misogyny that many Americans apparently hold toward Mrs. O but at a certain point, you have to wonder if we are becoming a barbaric nation. Mrs. Obama's message here is simple yet profound: Those of us who have benefited from the many opportunities that exist in America are morally obliged to create a safe path for the children who live here, and for their children to come.  Full stop.

That some "Americans" aren't capable of appreciating that point and instead choose to hurl in the wake of this speech hateful comments about FLOTUS' skin-color, gender, and "privileged" life makes me frightened indeed.

State of the Racial Union: Facts, Optics, Fear

 What connects this.....

....to this?

This:

The Persistence of Racial Resentment

[Emphasis added in boldface]

By THOMAS B. EDSALL

Tom Edsall on politics inside and outside of Washington.

Although there was plenty of discussion during the 2012 presidential campaign about the Hispanic vote and how intense black turnout would be, the press was preoccupied with the white vote: the white working class, white women and upscale whites.
Largely missing from daily news stories were references to research on how racial attitudes have changed under Obama, the nation’s first black president. In fact, there has been an interesting exploration of this subject among academics, but before getting to that, let’s look back at some election results.

In the 16 presidential elections between 1952 and 2012, only one Democratic candidate, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, won a majority of the white vote. There have been nine Democratic presidential nominees who received a smaller percentage of the white vote than Obama did in 2008 (43 percent) and four who received less white support than Obama did in 2012 (39 percent).

In 2012, Obama won 39 percent of the white electorate. Four decades earlier, in 1972, George McGovern received a record-setting low of the ballots cast by whites, 31 percent. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey won 36 percent of the white vote; in 1980, Jimmy Carter got 33 percent; in 1984, Walter Mondale took 35 percent of the ballots cast by whites. As far back as 1956, Adlai Stevenson tied Obama’s 39 percent, and in 1952, Stevenson received 40 percent – both times running against Dwight D. Eisenhower. Two Democratic nominees from Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis in 1988 (40 percent) and John Kerry in 2004 (41 percent), got white margins only slightly higher than Obama’s in 2012 — and worse than Obama’s 43 percent in 2008. In other words, Obama’s track record with white voters is not very different from that of other Democratic candidates.

Ballots cast for House candidates provide another measure of white partisanship. These contests have been tracked in exit polls from 1980 onward. Between 1980 and 1992, the white vote for Democratic House candidates averaged 49.6 percent. It dropped sharply in 1994 when Newt Gingrich orchestrated the Republican take-over of the House, averaging just 42.7 percent from 1994 through 2004. White support for Democrats rose to an average of 46.7 percent in 2006 and 2008 as public disapproval of George W. Bush and of Republicans in Congress sharply increased.

How can the percentage of people holding anti-black attitudes have increased from 2006 to 2008 at a time when Obama performed better among white voters than the two previous white Democratic nominees, and then again from 2008 to 2012 when Obama won a second term?

In the aftermath of Obama’s election, white support for Congressional Democrats collapsed to its lowest level in the history of House exit polling, 38 percent in 2010 —  at once driving and driven by the emerging Tea Party. In 2012, white Democratic support for House candidates remained weak at 39 percent.

Despite how controversial it has been to talk about race, researchers have gathered a substantial amount of information on the opinions of white American voters.

The political scientists Michael Tesler of Brown University and David O. Sears of UCLA have published several studies on this theme and they have also written a book, “Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America,” that analyzes changes in racial attitudes since Obama became the Democratic nominee in 2008.

In their  2010 paper, “President Obama and the Growing Polarization of Partisan Attachments by Racial Attitudes and Race,” Tesler and Sears argue that the

evidence strongly suggests that party attachments have become increasingly polarized by both racial attitudes and race as a result of Obama’s rise to prominence within the Democratic Party.

Specifically, Tesler and Sears found that voters high on a racial-resentment scale moved one notch toward intensification of partisanship within the Republican Party on a seven-point scale from strong Democrat through independent to strong Republican. To measure racial resentment, which Tesler and Sears describe as “subtle hostility towards African-Americans,” the authors used data from the American National Election Studies and the General Social Survey, an extensive collection of polling data maintained at the University of Chicago.

In the case of A.N.E.S. data, Tesler and Sears write:

The scale was constructed from how strongly respondents agreed or disagreed with the following assertions: 1) Irish, Italian, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors. 2) Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class. 3) Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve. 4) It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.

The General Social Survey included questions asking respondents to rate competing causes of racial discrimination and inequality:

The scale was constructed from responses to the following 4 items: 1) Irish, Italian, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors. 2) A 3-category variable indicating whether respondents said lack of motivation is or is not a reason for racial inequality. 3) A 3-category variable indicating whether respondents said discrimination is or is not a reason for racial inequality. 4) A three-category variable indicating whether respondents rated whites more, less or equally hardworking than blacks on 7 point stereotype scales.

Supporting the Tesler-Sears findings, Josh Pasek, a professor in the communication studies department at the University of Michigan, Jon A. Krosnick, a political scientist at Stanford, and Trevor Tompson, the director of the Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, use responses from three different surveys in their analysis of “The Impact of Anti-Black Racism on Approval of Barack Obama’s Job Performance and on Voting in the 2012 Presidential Election.”

Pasek and his collaborators found a statistically significant increase from 2008 to 2012 in “explicit anti-black attitudes” – a measure based on questions very similar those used by Tesler and Sears for their racial-resentment scale. The percentage of voters with explicit anti-black attitudes rose from 47.6 in 2008 and 47.3 percent in 2010 to 50.9 percent in 2012. 

Crucially, Pasek found that Republicans drove the change: “People who identified themselves as Republicans in 2012 expressed anti-Black attitudes more often than did Republican identifiers in 2008.”

In 2008, Pasek and his collaborators note, the proportion of people expressing anti-Black attitudes was 31 percent among Democrats, 49 percent among independents, and 71 percent among Republicans. By 2012, the numbers had gone up. “The proportion of people expressing anti-Black attitudes,” they write, “was 32 percent among Democrats, 48 percent among independents, and 79 percent among Republicans.”
At the moment, the population of the United States (314 million) is heading towards a majority-minority status in 2042.
The American electorate, on the other hand (126 million) is currently 72 percent white, based on the voters who cast ballots last November.
Obama’s ascendency to the presidency means that, on race, the Rubicon has been crossed (2008) and re-crossed (2012).
What are we to make of these developments? Is the country more or less racist? How can the percentage of people holding anti-black attitudes have increased from 2006 to 2008 at a time when Obama performed better among white voters than the two previous white Democratic nominees, and then again from 2008 to 2012 when Obama won a second term?
In fact, the shifts described by Tesler and Pasek are an integral aspect of the intensifying conservatism within the right wing of the Republican Party. Many voters voicing stronger anti-black affect were already Republican. Thus, in 2012, shifts in their attitudes, while they contributed to a 4 percentage point reduction in Obama’s white support, did not result in a Romney victory.
Some Republican strategists believe the party’s deepening conservatism is scaring away voters.
“We have a choice: we can become a shrinking regional party of middle-aged and older white men, or we can fight to become a national governing party,” John Weaver, a consultant to the 2008 McCain campaign, said after Obama’s re-election. Mark McKinnon, an adviser to former President George W. Bush, made a similar point: “The party needs more tolerance, more diversity and a deeper appreciation for the concerns of the middle class.”
Not only is the right risking marginalization as its views on race have become more extreme, it is veering out of the mainstream on contraception and abortion, positions that fueled an 11 point gender gap in 2012 and a 13 point gap in 2008.
Given that a majority of the electorate will remain white for a number of years, the hurdle that the Republican Party faces is building the party’s white margins by 2 to 3 points. For Romney to have won, he needed 62 percent of the white vote, not the 59 percent he got.
Working directly against this goal is what Time Magazine recently described as the Republican “brand identity that has emerged from the stars of the conservative media ecosystem: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and others.”
It is not so much Latino and black voters that the Republican Party needs. To win the White House again, it must assuage the social conscience of mainstream, moderate white voters among whom an ethos of tolerance has become normal. These voters are concerned with fairness and diversity, even as they stand to the right of center. It is there that the upcoming political battles — on the gamut of issues from race to rights — will be fought.

Credits:
Op-ed by Tom Byrne Edsall,  New York Times, Feb, 6, 2013
Photo of Christopher Jordan Dorner via ChicagoNow, Feb. 8, 2013
Photo of President Obama skeet shooting, Pete Souza/White House, via the NYTimes, Feb. 2, 2013

On True Radicalism: Talk Softly, Wield Big Ideas, Solid Values

Derrick Bell had a very soft voice.

I first learned this during our phone conversations, which began in 1996. That is when I approached him to contribute to a book I was editing.

He lived in New York City, I was in Cambridge, Mass.

In my early 30s at that time, peripatetic and over-confident, I quickly learned to be calm, thoughtful, and focused whenever we spoke by phone. Derrick Bell, an NYU Law School professor, certainly was.

Why did I ask him to contribute to The Farrakhan Factor, a collection of essays by black writers, economists, academics, journalists and activists?

Two reasons:

I consulted with more than a dozen people as I sought to build a pool of 15 contributors for the book. It works like this: You contact people who probably won't write for the book but who in all likelihood can A) cogently brainstorm with you, and B) recommend or steer you to others who will write for the book. In that process, which took nearly six months, everyone I tapped mentioned Derrick Bell.

Second, I had read Bell's book, Faces at the Bottom of the Well, and enjoyed it immensely.....even if I didn't get all of the allegories and metaphoric imagery bound up in Bell's brand of high-minded Critical Race Theory. I did get its main message, though: African-Americans face a host of big systemic obstacles that no single silver bullet will instantly vanquish.

More than a decade later of course, I know that I was very fortunate to have made Derrick Bell's acquaintance. I am fortunate, too, that he made the time and found the energy to contribute to The Farrakhan Factor.

His essay in that book, published by Grove Press in 1998, is titled, "Farrakhan Fever: Defining the Line Between Blacks and Jews."

Given the contemporary discussion over the question of whether President Barack Hussein Obama can count on votes from Jewish Americans in the 2012 presidential race, I suggest you take a look at Bell's essay on Farrakhan's outsized place in the imagination of some Jewish Americans.....back in the mid-1990s. Characteristically, Bell's delivery in that essay was gentle, the literary version of his soft voice in real time. But the intellectual rigor, forceful logic, and compassionate values -- from anyone else, it would have been called "radical" -- is unmistakable.

Nowadays, of course, high-pitched rhetoric and slick presentation are what rises to the top of search engines and (apparently) the public's consciousness, coming from our "leading" black public intellectuals (many who now crowd the cable TV airwaves daily), and from just about anyone else who carries the mantle of "expert" on the Big Four topics of our social discourse -- politics, race, education, the economy.

Derrick Bell, of course, made television appearances in his time, too. In contrast to what we see now, however, he may as well have been sleeping upright during his infrequent on-camera turns. Not long ago, this understated demeanor was valued and appreciated for conveying a sensibility that read as Serious. I am not trying to sound like the cranky Old Gal on the front porch, railing about the Krazy Kids and their Hippity Hop Music but the high volume of what passes for "intellectual discourse" these days really does drive Americans farther apart, I believe.

Derrick Bell, like a few other of the "Old School" black intellectuals that I've been lucky to work with, would not be booked on the "leading" national political talk programs of today....unless he agreed to boil his complex, thoughtful theories about intra-ethnic tensions (blacks v Jews), and Critical Race Theory down into incendiary buzz-words.

I worked closely with Derrick Bell to shape his essay in that Farrakhan collection, and, when the book published, we finally met in person.

I traveled from Massachusetts to New York City via Amtrak along with another of the book's contributors, Rev. Irene Monroe of Cambridge. We two met up with Derrick Bell, and sat down at WNYC with Leonard Lopate; we spoke with Lopate and his audience for an hour about Minister Farrakhan, the state of black leadership, and the ways that blacks' history of oppression in America has influenced the definition of "black leadership."

After, we three repaired to a local eatery -- it was a blue-sky, crisp late-winter day in New York, and for a couple of hours, we drank hot tea and traded stories about our respective families.

Derrick Bell had been, by that time, widely described as "controversial, "mostly because he had quit a tenured position at Harvard Law School a few years hence in protest of that institution's inability to hire more diverse faculty. That word -- "controversial" -- popped up again in some of the obituaries that published last week, after Bell died at age 80. The usage of that word is flat and rote....to my ears, it fails to capture the quiet confidence, good humor and inner-calm that I picked up from Derrick Bell in my admittedly limited contact with him.

As I encountered Derrick Bell, he was a gentleman and a scholar, a smart black man from a generation that knew first hand what is required to bring about radical change in the US. Bell succeeded in his brand of quiet radicalism without assistance from non-stop exposure on national cable TV programs, or Tweetable soundbites. I do wonder what he'd make of Herman Cain, and the ceaseless carping from TV noisemakers about President Obama's style and his supposed lack of intestinal fortitude, aka "fight."

I wish I'd checked in with Derrick Bell in recent years. But I am very fortunate to have known him and to have learned from him the power of steady, low-pitched strength.

Six Years in DC: Seven Things I Have Learned

For more than two centuries Washington, DC has left footprints across the globe. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, then, that living here during the past six years has changed my life too, if not my core identity.

I came here from Minnesota in early June 2005, not exactly of my own choice but not exactly reluctantly, either. I was a "trailing spouse," aka The Wife (and 2 Kids) who relocated to suburban DC for the Husband's job....a mere two years after we'd left Boston for St. Paul, for the same reason. In the late spring of 2005, when we alighted at Washington's Reagan National Airport -- while our household goods traveled overland in a big Graebel Moving Company truck -- I also was a veteran Journalist.

I recognized the career advantage of relocating to DC from the Upper Midwest, where I had lived -- and shivered and fretted over my withering work prospects -- for two years with my (now former) husband and our two children.

In St. Paul, I had appreciated the low "friction factor" of life in the Twin Cities -- few traffic jams, affordable real estate, good public schools, low crime rates -- not to mention the calm sensibility of the Lutherans and Methodists who are the Establishment in those parts. I wasn't totally enthralled with the idea of living in the Mid-Atlantic but I was pragmatic enough to understand that nearby DC might be a good place to re-enter the workforce fulltime, following a long child-rearing break.

Yes, well.

Timing may not be everything but it does matter.

The news business had began to contract in earnest in 2006, with national and regional news organizations shedding jobs by the thousands. By 2007 in Washington, DC, two outlets where I received semi-regular work starting in the fall of 2005 —NPR and The Washington Post—began eliminating hundreds of jobs.

That development coincided with the end of my 11 year-long marriage. And just when I sought to re-enter the industry where I had worked for 15 years before stepping out in the late 1990s, the once-reliable stream of jobs slowed to a trickle, then dried up altogether by early 2008. At least it did for me.

On to what I have learned in DC.

1) DC Provides...With Conditions

Given what I've recounted above, I am very fortunate to have "landed on my feet," at least financially. Psychologically, and emotionally, however, the reinvention process has been slower.

In the macro, being in DC has been a mostly blessing. Watching the President and First Lady come into their own, having a decent range of news biz-related work options to explore. Yet living here since '05 also has felt sometimes like a curse— witnessing the death of the news biz, an industry in which I'd worked since college; falling prey to the boundless ambition and delusions of power that grips many "professionals" in the District.

Not trying to be a martyr here, or to say that I am without agency in this (I agreed to marry the now ex, after all; and, with his approval, to step out of what was a thriving career). I'm fortunate to have been able to learn from these mistakes, however dearly the learning came. For example, I now know the value of financial literacy, having learned it the hard way.

But I have also felt frustrated when attempting to gain professional traction in the insular, often maddeningly frivolous culture of DC media and political circles. In micro, this has meant that I often felt like a fish out of water two times over: A laissez faire Californian accustomed to superhighways, wide open spaces, and ease of job mobility, stranded in a thick swamp of rigid professional hierarchy and Beltway Insider status quo. And on top of that, in the upper-middle class Maryland suburb where we had moved in '05 -- the kind of place where Competitive Parenting is the order of the day -- I was by the end of '06 a Stay at Home Mom who suddenly had neither a high powered career, or a husband or a stable dwelling to call my own.

2) Inside the Beltway Values are Different From Yours' and Mine

What are "values" in DC? Depends on which precinct you travel in. I can say that hypocrisy, misogyny and showbiz under-gird much of what happens in the media politics-political operative spaces....and that lots of folks around here just seem to accept it.

For example, a “man” can retain a high-level professional position despite knowledge by many and apparent acceptance by a few that he has abandoned his children, refuses to pay their expenses, mentally and spiritually abuses a former wife -- and I do mean ME -- and receive not an ounce of social or professional condemnation. In DC, a "man" can do such a thing, and still turn up on national political television talk programs, experiencing no social or professional stigma whatsoever.

At the same time, I can't help but get it, the way things are in DC: Every week day, I walk past the Mayflower Hotel (pictured above) on Connecticut Avenue in DC ....and therefore have a hard time taking Elliott Spitzer seriously as the host of a CNN weeknight political talk program. I read the reports about how a DC-based International Monetary Fund executive allegedly attempted to rape a hotel worker in New York. And now, in California, I understand that there is a small army of former Arnold Swarzenegger for Governor supporters who are going public about their sense of "betrayal" following the ex-Governor's admission of infidelity. (This too is a DC story, as Arnold has not kept his presidential yearnings a secret; also, in a terrible kind of historic symmetry, his soon-to-be-ex wife, Maria Shriver, happens to come from a DC political family in which marital infidelity has been a long-running motif.) Perhaps it is my problem, I think, as I sometimes sail past the gilded entrance of the Mayflower Hotel, this naivete or whatever it is that allows you to feel betrayed by hypocrites. Clearly, career success -- and by implication overall Worthiness -- of even the rankest philanderer or deadbeat dad is what matters, right?

If you are thinking this last sounds "very," personal, well there it is. Does that make the question less legitimate?

In Washington, there is a long-standing adage for male politicians, appointees, and high-level professionals: Anything goes -- just don’t get caught with live boy or a dead girl!

A horrible joke. Yes. But in the realms of politics, media and business, men have all the power—even when they haven't earned it or don't deserve it. Even when they come right to the edge of that perverse adage. The recent disclosure by Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC that she was paid 14-times less than her co-host, Joe Scarborough, though they are supposedly equal partners on the popular, DC-centric "Morning Joe" weekday national political talk program is disheartening—but not at all surprising. And throughout the glossy media companies, trade groups, law firms, and private political strategy and communications outfits that are the engine of Washington, DC -- apart from government agencies and contractors, which at least have to hew to the pretense of an HR structure -- men routinely receive much higher pay than women, no matter if their women counterparts are better educated, smarter and more emotionally qualified to lead than they. And among elected officials in these parts...? Well, the file marked Senators and Congressmen Behaving Badly is nearly too large to carry these days, isn't it? (And hat-tip to Gawker.com for bringing us the indelible image of Republican Chris Lee, posing in front a bathroom mirror, shirtless in his surreptitious bid to cheat on his wife; as a language freak, I am eternally grateful for the phrase, "Shirtless Congressman," now handy way to describe the actions of some of these winners.)

Further, women in DC carry the double-burden (as is the case elsewhere in corporate America) of having to manage their children's lives and their own careers, if they choose to stay in the working world. This is not new, or unique to DC.

The double standard as it plays out here makes for an acutely thick air of hypocrisy in DC, given the high degree of "messaging" and national coverage emanating from here that argues for equitable treatment of women in the workplace and in society. Sometimes, the hypocrisy is thicker than the summer humidity that chokes the region in August.

3) One Good Thing I Have Learned in DC

There are exceptions, of course but I have been fortunate to learn that women in DC's shrinking news universe RAWK. Without the women I have been honored to know in DC media, including a few Boldface names at The Post and at NPR, I very likely might have been evicted along with my children, back in '06-'07. You ladies know who you are—thank you. Oh, and ditto for other women friends in media coast to coast, too, who helped me in a multitude of ways between 2005-09 with money, job leads, hard-headed advice, their large hearts, spirits, and patient listening. (And yes, in fairness, many men in media, too, have been supportive during that period. You guys know who you are, too, and thanks!)

4) Integrity? A Precious Thing In DC

Now that I have a bit of perspective -- and breathing room -- I can more calmly assess this odd place. I can safely say that sexism infuses just about every aspect of professional life in DC -- to our collective detriment.

For example, in my case, the personal is acutely political. The ex in my life quite adeptly plays up his Political Journalist bona fides (such as they are, and such as they are enhanced by the fact of his being black) to obtain bigger and better jobs, unlimited by the scheduling and energy-draining challenges of having to daily manage two school-aged children. During the months when I was searching for work, I sometimes wondered how I would fare if I had dumped my kids and marriage, and struck out anew. It could have gone either way....perhaps.

There I would be in a job interview. (I envision a meeting with a Big Shot Media Type in a glass-encased aerie at 400 North Capitol Street in DC, a view of the Capitol Dome over his shoulder as he interviews me.) When Prospective Employer asks, "Do you have family here?", I'd reply, "No, my Mom and siblings are on the West Coast. I am divorced. The kids live here, though, with my former husband. I see them frequently. It was tough at first but we make it work."

In my flip-the-script version, were I the Divorced Parent who did NOT have the kids fulltime, how would the male Media Exec react to the news that I had dumped my marriage and walked out on my children?

Would it glance off his shoulder, a Titleist of job candidate info, rolling down the fairway? Or would he give me the side-eye and, however politely, in the way of DC, thank me for visiting and send me along? Would he think, What kind of woman bails out on her kids?

Of course, I do not know if that is what the ex said to his current media employer -- a flashy upstart news company based in Arlington -- during their courtship last year. But I suspect that had I been a Divorced Mom Journalist seeking to re-enter the media workforce in DC, and shared with my prospective employer the news that I am NOT by my own choice the primary caretaker of my children, it would have been received quite differently than the what the ex experienced when his Old Media job ended early last year, and he set out in DC searching for another news media perch.

Meanwhile, the Schott Foundation (pdf), the Council of Great City Schools, and umpteen other big nonprofits, universities and research groups regularly publish studies and reports showing the stubborn link between black children, absentee fathers, broken homes, and the education and employment gap that bedevils the African-American population in the U.S. My ex is aware of such data, and yet continues to reject all entreaties by me to become more involved in his children's development, in school and in the daily process of their social orientation. Apparently, protecting his children on a daily basis, inoculating them against the stings and uncertainties of growing up, as well as being on hand for the little triumphs and accomplishments that also mark their daily experiences, is less important than being a DC Media maven. That does take a lot of energy -- and a good amount of rationalization.

So I am left to wonder -- What defines "credibility" in DC media circles?

5) The Media and Political Classes Here Are Different From Most Americans -- For Better and Worse

I do not subscribe to the sweeping condemnation (usually leveled by Republican candidates or operatives) that "Washington is the problem." I have been fortunate to meet plenty of wonderfully generous, fun, interesting people during the six years I've lived and worked in and around DC -- along with plenty of jerks, climbers, fakers and assholes. I try to focus on those who believe in democracy and who truly are working hard to make our nation a more equitable, compassionate place.

But it also is true that in these environs you will find a high degree of ambition, power-mongering and back-stabbing, particularly in media, political consulting and in lobbying circles. I am confident that this kind of behavior—some of which I have personally witnessed or otherwise been privy to—may be confined to a small slice of those who work in those circles. As ever, I try to give folks the benefit of the doubt and to meet them where they live (or work). Yet the Bad Actors in these spaces tend to suck up all the oxygen, distracting everyone else from the important ground-work that needs to be done.

I have been back- and front-stabbed a time or two, yes. But I am a big girl. And I sleep very well at night, thank you very much, largely because I refuse to become a Stabber. This too is a lesson I've learned here: DC seems to draw a certain type of personality that is easily seduced (and deluded) by a perceived proximity to power and by the supposed affirmation that comes from dealing with national politicians or media "stars" on a regular basis—this I know first-hand, and sadly, so do my children.

6) Another Very Good Lesson: Being on Hand When Barack Hussein Obama Became President

I am mostly happy to have had a "DC experience" during the period in which Barack Obama became president. I do not care if you think it sounds corny: I stop and wave when the POTUS' motorcade steams down Connecticut Avenue. I pore over the White House website -- bypassing the filter of the news orgs, sorry, my colleagues! -- to observe what goes on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (or what gets released, anyway.) The POTUS and The FLOTUS are exceptional leaders, and as recent events in the international arena have demonstrated, President Obama is a masterful diplomat and commander in chief. I do want his Administration to turn the same kind of laser-focus that it showed in taking out Osama bin Laden toward taking down the income inequality, racial injustice and such that drags on American progress. I do not think that the Administration's relative slowness in this, however, is as harmful as the previous Administration's duplicity and uncanny ability to nurture high-level hypocrites.

I've also finally stopped fighting and learned to accept and decipher (if not appreciate!) DC euphemisms like "...[Fill in the Blank] was thrown under the bus," and, "...at the end of the day," and "thought leaders." Oh yes, these phrases are annoying and pretentious yet I recognize them for what they also are—tools of the trade in these parts. Boston and San Francisco, too, have their own lingua franca, and God knows Minnesota does!

It is just that, to those who live outside the Beltway, DC-speak tends to be condemned as linguistic evidence of all that is "wrong with Washington." Perhaps with good reason.

7) In Conclusion: You Know That "Washington is the Problem" Message-point That Politicians Toss Around?

I can assure you that Republican political operatives are not alone in singing that tune. The Georgetown and K Street communications and political strategists who cater to corporate entities, left and right political groups or parties; to foreign governments, and really, to anyone with a checkbook fat enough to pay them, are quite adept at pulling, twisting and turning that idea to fit the client's need. It is, perversely, a magnificent thing to behold, the gamesmanship and reality-bending that occurs in the name of "controlling the narrative."

Poor old professional DC. Its wealth of idealists, corporate climbers, policy wonks, moneychangers, overachieving Do-gooders, strivers and of course world class hypocrites makes it a lovely scapegoat for whatever ails you.

Yet and still....

I have learned that egalitarian spirit and great ideas do exist here, and that they can flourish, at times, and send good things far and wide. All one has to do is look beyond the flashy jockeying, the posing and whatnot. It requires determination and solid values that likely formed before you arrived in the nation's capitol.

But do it.

Ignore the "Gotcha" impulse, squint and you can pick it out, there beyond the filigree that obscures the beauty of our Constitution. It does exist in DC -- substance over style, reality over showbiz.

It is Easy to Casually Fire Black People and Even Easier Not to Hire Them

This is the truth here in post-racial America.

Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report recently delivered a devastating analysis of an urgent topic that pitiably few reporters at big news organizations have bothered to unpack. (Michael Luo at The New York Times is a rare and thankfully well-placed exception.)

In his April 7 piece, Ford looks at the skyrocketing unemployment stats among African-Americans, and lays out a likely trajectory of increasing unemployment. Along the way, he also deftly uncovers some of the soft, difficult to quantify aspects underneath the high black unemployment rate, namely, the probability of whites who are reluctant to hire blacks during this massive contraction of the American workplace. He stops short of saying white gatekeepers and hiring managers are racist....but what else explains it?

At the same time, I don't agree with Ford's rather inelegant Karate chop near the end of the piece -- he accuses President Obama of not caring to address the escalating jobless crisis for blacks.I do worry that President Obama, fresh off the long, grueling battle to pass health care reform, may be a bit reluctant to pivot hard and stride directly into another wrenching economics-related minefield...especially one marked with big ruts of cultural crap. Sure, POTUS could roll out and say, "Black folks are being hit hardest by the economic downturn, so I am going to focus on creating jobs in their communities first."

But not only would such a statement from the President send the Tea Partiers to marching up Pennsylvania Avenue with lit pitchforks and swinging truncheons, it would also push more than a few Democratic elected officials right out of their seats. No, I suspect there is a sub rosa plan taking shape to address the unacceptably high unemployment numbers among blacks....but no one should hold their breath for any Announcement about it any time soon. I do not think that means the President does not care,I think it means he is as pragmatic as he is determined to honor his campaign promises and to serve his own personal values.

Still, I wholeheartedly agree with Ford's call to arms: "We need a movement."

This topic is particularly urgent for me: During the past month, I have had several conversations with black colleagues and friends who are being devastated by the on-going "recession;" they are out of work and stunned by how hard it is to find a new job that is comparable to the job they left. Yes, as the saying has it, White America may have a bad cold (recession) but for us, it is an insidious, lethal case of pneumonia (Depression).

My out-of-work colleagues are doing their best to stay optimistic but it is a tough row to hoe: they are middle-aged, and have worked more than twenty years in their fields; one colleague -- well, you might call him My Former Husband -- is currently seeking work,after being employed continuously for almost 25 years in print media. As much as I am tempted to indulge in a bit of Schadenfreude as he experiences the same shock that I encountered three years ago when I was unexpectedly thrust into the hellishness of seeking work in DC's morphing, shrinking media landscape, I am not going there...at least not whole hog, anyway. It is a scary time for black professionals who have worked hard to become experts at their line of work, only to suddenly face the prospect that all that time in service and knowledge-accumulation is no longer Good Enough. Well, that is some kind of cruel fate. (As it is for anyone in that position, no matter their gender or skin color; I'm simply suggesting that black Americans only began occupying white-collar professions in significant numbers relatively recently, so the losses are more acutely felt.)

For each of my colleagues currently out work in greater DC, the hardest part of the seemingly-endless job searching is this: Once they've cleared all the hurdles to get an interview, including writing tests, phone interviews, questionnaires, should they actually land an interview, they invariably face the amorphous "comfort zone" test. This is a make or break moment, calm on the surface, yet fraught with tension beneath the stiff smiles.

Until recently, I wore those shoes, and I know what it feels like to walk out of the interview knowing that my work experience, my sensibility, my skills at problem-solving, critical thinking, and all that good stuff will not, necessarily, trump any perception that White hiring manager may hold (however incorrectly) of my ability to "fit into the workplace culture." But this "fit in" canard is a big reason why many qualified blacks don't get hired today, especially here in D.C.'s hot-house, white collar workplaces.

So, time after time, qualified black candidates walk away from that interview, only to later receive an email or brief phone message (why are these gatekeepers so cowardly?) indicating that the hiring manager didn't feel they would make "a good fit," or that the hiring manager has decided to "go in another direction." Vague reasons.....but just specific enough to make you hang your head.

It can be soul-crushing. Like Ford at Black Agenda Report observes, the ease with which blacks -- qualified blacks -- are passed over or fired from much-needed jobs is tragic, and maddening.

Until President Obama and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and their respective Jobs Creation czars come up with an effective way to neutralize (if not eliminate) that aspect of the changing economic landscape, I'm afraid the gains that blacks have made during the past three decades will be diminished greatly, perhaps even irrevocably.

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David Mills: Now that was a Giant Negro for you.

Today is the home-going for David Mills, the former Washington Post writer who went on to deliver some of the best television scripts of the past decade. I could not make the service, in College Park, Maryland, but I was there in spirit, and will make a donation to David's family's preferred charity. Last night, I watched the premiere of "Treme" on HBO, the series David was working on when he passed away last month. Yep, great writing, as usual. I will eagerly watch the entire series.... even though I dread the inevitable time ahead, when we will come to deeply miss his singular voice and uncanny insight......

Skip, POTUS, Cops, and the Press: Why the "Teachable Moment" Should Be a Decade

On the evening of the day that Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested at his Cambridge, Massachusetts home, I was at the Hilton New York, on Avenue of the Americas, watching President Barack Obama's address to the 100th Anniversary Convention of the NAACP.


At that time, we had no clue about what had transpired in Cambridge a few hours earlier.


We floated on a cloud of happy anticipation, there at the Hilton: How extraordinary to be at the Centennial anniversary of the nation's oldest civil and human rights organization, the very group that played a significant part of paving the way for Barack Obama's historic election to the US presidency. (I joined the Communications staff of the NAACP on June 10, 2009. The commentary here at Community Forum reflects my own views, not necessarily those of the NAACP.)

President Obama spoke for 33 minutes at the Hilton New York, during a dinner known as the Spingarn Awards. As we'd expected, his address was focused closely on the subject of black progress in America, more than in any previous speech he'd given. And yes, even surpassing his landmark March 2008 "Philadelphia speech." That Jeremiah Wright-inspired address was certainly a model of nuance and historic sweep, on the general topic of race relations. But by design, it was primarily conciliatory in tone, and he diluted the Black Thang by folding in (legitimate) themes of the disenfranchisement and social disconnection of not just blacks but also poor whites and other marginalized Americans.


I covered the March 2008 Philadelphia speech for The Nation, and noted that the only genuine "news" to emerge was that so many of my colleagues in the press seemed surprised by Candidate Obama's views on the complexity of race and class in America.

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The day after the President's July 16 speech at the NAACP, then, I wasn't entirely surprised to see that many of the mainstream journalists who covered it had emphasized one part of his speech over another -- the Black Personal Responsibility note he had sounded in the second half of the address. It was just that, a note, not the entire piece, though you couldn't really get that from much of the next-day coverage.

The first part of President Obama's NAACP speech had been a swift, sharp tutorial on the trajectory of racism and discrimination in America, from the brutalities of lynchings and racial domestic terrorism, through the legalization of discrimination that arrived with Plessy v. Ferguson and Jim Crow segregation; to the subtler, more elusive forms of racism that are currently embedded in our major public and private insitutions. President Obama made it clear at The Hilton that he believes that most African-Americans begin the game at a disadvantage -- and that the nation's history of slavery and racial discrimination is the cause.

He brought it on home with a solutions-oriented disquisition on the need for increased responsibility and accountability, and not just from blacks but also from American government and corporate insitutions. Basically, said the President, everyone needs to sharpen their Values and Responsibility Chops in order to shrink the gaps in black achievement, and to lift up all Americans who struggle. If we do not, "America cannot compete" in the global future, he observed quite appropriately.

And yet...... USA Today, The New York Times, and a few other big print outlets in their live and next-day coverage focused almost exclusively on the portions of his speech in which President Obama urged black Americans to, "...accept our own responsibilities. That means putting away the Xbox, and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour." Nearly every mainstream outlet carried that quote, and wrapped their stories around that thread. (By contrast, Krissah Thompson's and Cheryl W. Thompson's July 17 story in The Washington Post got it right.)

To many of us present at that July 16 speech, the most important line came earlier, as President Obama transitioned between the historic injustices of lynchings and Jim Crow segregation, to the solutions portion (boldface added by me):

Government programs alone won’t get our children to the Promised Land. We need a new mindset, a new set of attitudes – because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way that we have internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little of ourselves.

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I wanted to hear more from President Obama on that last idea, how the long history of racism, brutality and discrimination created a damning image that has been internalized by generation after generation of black Americans. The inability of many blacks to vanquish that internalized racism -- which leads to fatalistic thinking, which in turn opens the door to a variety of high-risk and self-destructive behaviors -- is truly our biggest challenge as we close the first decade of the new century. But it was not to be, not in that talk to the 100th Anniversary gathering of the NAACP.

A small buzz around the mainstream media's lame coverage of the President's speech began in the first day after the Convention. Apparently anticipating some media drama, President Obama had given a handful of journalists from black press outlets a lift to New York and the NAACP Convention aboard Air Force One. (Do I agree with an elected official attempting to run the access to power game, in the run up to a major public event? Hell no. But I am learning alot from the Adminstration's craftiness on this front....)And yet, much of the next day's coverage was dominated by a one-dimensional narrative.



Make that one and a half dimensional, since the other false-note narrative that initially dominanted coverage of President Obama's July 16 speech at the Hilton New York centered on the question, Is the NAACP still relevant?


A lazy approach, considering that two days before the Centennial convention kick off, a few dozen black kids got kicked out of a predominantly white private "swim club" in suburban Montgomery County, Pennsylvania for "changing the atmosphere" of the joint....and considering that more people of color were sold risky mortgage loans than whites, no matter their income level and credit histories....and considering that in mid-spring, a black off-duty New York City policeman was shot dead by a white cop co-worker who didn't realize the Brotha was a Brother in Blue.


Barely a day after his NAACP speech, even the President made note of the shortcomings of that prevailing media narrative, the Black Responsibility tip being emphasized above all else that he'd covered. This is a sure sign that the jig is up for big news outfits that continue to ignore the importance of comprehensive, nuanced race and class coverage. But within two news cycles, that buzz, faint to begin with, was fading.


*********


I returned home to Montgomery County Maryland, in suburban DC, on Friday, July 18. I thought I'd have to wait who knew how long for another POTUS-related "race moment" that would expose the media's historic blindspots of race and class coverage. Or maybe until the "birthers" just come straight out and publicly accuse the President of being a race-relations Manchurian Candidate, lying in stealthy wait for the clandestine signal to allow him to activate a Secret Black Agenda.


Mostly, I wondered what it would take to finally smarten Americans up about the full history and implications of the Black Experience in this country.


*******



On July 20, four days after President Obama spoke at the Hilton New York, The Boston Globe posted a story of how Henry L. Gates, Jr., had been arrested right on his front porch in Cambridge, Massachusetts, apparently by a white cop who mistook him for a black burgular.......on the same day that President Obama had addressed the100th Anniversary gathering of the supposedly no longer relevant NAACP.

I won't rehash the ins and outs of the Gates Situation, or should I say, Confrontation. By now we know the details, and are well and truly queasy at the sight of any more lurid cable news network headlines belching, "The Professor, the Police, and the President."


But I encourage you to read Glenn C. Loury's brilliant analysis published in the Sunday, July 26 edition of The New York Times. He astutely argues that the "teachable moment" that everyone seems to be hoping will come out of the Skip-Gets-Jacked-Up-and-POTUS-Rides-to-the Rescue flap, must last longer than a hot minute.


The crucial topic of how racism, power, and entitelment has done a mind-fuck on uncounted blacks (and whites) in this country can't be answered with a flashy show'n'go...or with a beer'n'go at the White House. A successful search for genuine, stick-to-your-rib solutions requires a major adjustment to our thinking, and to the sputtering engines of our democracy


I agree with Loury's premise, even though he could have sold it equally forcefully without taking the swipes at Skip that he does in the piece.


Having collaborated with Skip on a book about black leadership, and socialized with Skip, and written for his first web venture, Africana.com, and at TheRoot.com, I know that he can be, shall we say, impish. But he is a genius, and quite determined to improve race relations in America. He is also marveously strategic about doing the intellectual shovel-work required to bury lingering white perceptions of black inferiority.


If Charles Ogletree and Alvin F. Poussaint are the Wise Men of Harvard -- towering, casually elegant figures who've spent decades at the methodical, unglamorous work of educating young achievers of every skin color while also shoring up black self-love -- Skip is the precocious gadfly who flits from project to project, spinning out the gold of black achievement... while sometimes knocking over the heirloom vases.

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Loury says what President Obama, perhaps doesn't quite feel he can say, just yet. Loury calls for significant policy and funding changes to directly address the underlying causes of high rates of black incarceration, school drop outs, and unemployment. He observes that the disparities in these categories have always existed, that they have been climbing steadily for decades, and that the rate of increase has accelerated exponentially since the current Recession (Depression for black folks) began, roundabout mid-2007.


In other words, as the President's NAACP speech telegraphed, there needs to be a monumental shift in our national psyche in order to sincerely begin to address the root causes of the symptoms, rather than just the symptoms. And a shift in funding and policy priorities to provide the kind of comprehensive therapy to our criminal justice, education, and social services systems -- as well as to the poor and ethnic minority populations that are historically resistant to The Couch -- that is urgently needed.


Maybe now, thanks in part to what took place on July 16, in New York, and in Cambridge, Mass., President Obama will have the necessary opening to start leading us toward that shift. He will need the help of all Americans, and the strength of a hundred ancestors, stretching back further than a Centennial.

The Obama-Holder-Sotomayor Conspiracy Exposed! (Or, how to make American Institutions Resemble America)

Welcome to Amy Alexander Community Forum, an online meeting place for smart, fun and respectfully free-wheeling conversations about our 21st Century American experience.

If "our 21st Century American experience" sounds broad, it is -- by design: Community Forum takes a Socratic approach to ideas, events and movements. I want to know what you are thinking and feeling because I value your opinion. I'm also curious to know how others are envisioning the future, and what (if any) steps they are taking to nurture themselves and the burgeoning American Renaissance.

Here, we will raise many questions, probably many more than are answerable. Politics, especially of the cultural variety, are the topical meat and potatoes in this space. But appetizers and drinks flavored by stories of faith, history, and family are most welcomed, with the goal of encouraging a healthy flow of solutions-oriented ideas.

This column is Vox Americana, with a weather eye on Pax Americana: a location where discussions will bridge the generational, class and race divides that have nearly undone our republic. Community Forum is inclusive, but distinctly American in its origin, since it springs from the brain of an American woman, living in suburban Washington, D.C. I am a content producer by trade, a black San Franciscan by birth , and an American who feels fortunate to have the White House in her backyard at this time.

With that, let's begin in the nation's capitol, where parallel universes are increasingly evident -- dreamy mountaintops of big policy changes that loom larger than ever on the horizon....and deep valleys of human despair that also stretch far and wide.

These days, here in D.C., there is so much going on that keeping your eyes on your own plate can be a challenge. It helps to believe that the psychic pendulum cannot possibly continue its wild swings between shining optimism and pitch dark, but that is what living in Washington, D.C. requires right now, strong beliefs and values, if not necessarily blind faith. Nearly six months after Inauguration Day, many residents in this region are still in a swoony honeymoon with President Barack Obama and his family. Like many others here, I too have had an up close and personal Sighting -- at a kiddie theatrical performance in Montgomery County, Maryland earlier this month. I am happy to report that POTUS and FLOTUS indeed appear to want to bridge the vast gap between "the two Washingtons." You know, the one occupied primarily by poor, under-employed mostly black and brown-skinned residents, and the one occupied by the Establishment people.

On one front in particular -- the extraordinarily high rate of HIV diagnoses in the District, which is tied to poverty and race -- the void seems so wide that closing it sometimes appears to be impossible. And yet.........

On June 9, the Whitman-Walker Clinic is scheduled to host a big fundraiser. The clinic is a leading provider of educational, preventive and outpatient services on HIV/AIDS in the District. Its honoree will be U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. If you are wondering why the nation's chief law enforcement officer is the right person for such an award, listen to what Donald Blanchon, director of the Whitman-Walker, said earlier this month in announcing the choice:

"For three decades, Eric Holder has been a leading advocate for civil rights and justice for minority communities. He has been a tireless defender of the most basic American values of individual dignity, access to justice and safeguards against unchecked government power. While serving as an inspiring national leader, he has remained deeply involved in the needs of his own city, the District of Columbia, which continues to stagger under the burden of the HIV epidemic.”
In a city where at least 3 percent of residents have the virus, according to a report by the District's own HIV/AIDS office March 16, Holder's appearance at the Whitman-Walker fundraiser has the potential to keep the spotlight on a topic that is adept at staying in the shadows.

Such symbolic efforts from top officials, I believe, can have a positive accumulative impact on individual behaviors on the ground, over time. (And so, clearly, can more substantive efforts -- President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, being the best recent example.) Holder, like President Obama, is a "brother" in the eyes of many of us. The images and sound-bites from his appearance at that June 9 dinner may encourage otherwise apathetic folks to pay attention, maybe even put on a Jimmy hat once in a while, or even get an HIV test. At least, that is what I hope happens, should Holder make the event and get some decent publicity.

Your thoughts?