Black and Coaching in the Ivy League

Most football coaches are brimming with optimism this time of year, but few with as much Tom Williams, the first black head football coach at Yale University. It has little to do with his expectations about the annual grudge match with Harvard later this year. Williams has broken through one of the most insidious glass ceilings in sports. He’s a black man coaching at a well-known school.

There are only four black coaches at the 119 schools that comprise Division 1A, the highest level of competition in the NCAA. The Ivy League is in Division 1-AA, where Williams joins Columbia University’s Norries Wilson, the first black coach in the Ivy League.

The extreme lack of diversity became a major issue shortly before Williams’ hiring in January. Turner Gill, a former standout quarterback on a powerhouse University of Nebraska team in the ‘80s and veteran coach, helped turn around a moribund program at the University of Buffalo. But he was passed over for the head coaching job at Auburn University in favor of Gene Chizik, who coached an Iowa State University team in complete disarray. Chizik’s ISU team went 5-19 during his two seasons there, not exactly the sort of track record that qualifies you for a promotion. NBA Hall of Fame player Charles Barkley, an Auburn alumnus, called his alma mater racist for the decision. Meanwhile James Franklin, a top assistant coach at the University of Maryland was passed over for many openings before opting to take a coach-in-waiting position there. He will succeed current coach Ralph Freidgen whose contract runs until 2012.

The Ivy League has succeeded in diversity in ways that other conferences should envy. In addition to their high marks in football, half of the conference’s basketball coaches are African-American, which compares favorably to the 30 percent average in the NCAA.

“There’s not a win at all costs mentality here,” said Williams of the Ivy’s success. The conference bans athletic scholarships, which means that even a well-run program won’t challenge the success of schools such as Duke and Stanford that combine powerhouse athletics and academics.

A four-year starter, Williams, now 38, played linebacker and was captain of the Stanford football team that went 10-3 and won a share of the Pac-10 title in 1992. After a year on the practice squad of the San Francisco 49ers, he returned to Stanford where he earned his master’s degree in university administration and served as a graduate assistant under legendary head coach Bill Walsh.

He went on to work with Dennis Green, who stressed toughness. Williams worked as an assistant coach at the University of Hawaii, San Jose State University and the University of Washington before spending time in the NFL, where he spent two years as an assistant coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Williams is philosophical about the slow pace of diversity in college football. “It’s an old-boy network,” he said. “The people making the hiring decisions for the most part like to work with people who resemble them demographically. Until those demographics change, we won’t see a rapid change in the hiring practices.”

In the NFL, there are six African-Americans among the 32 head coaches, and the league has adopted what’s called the Rooney Rule, which mandates that teams interview African-American candidates before filling coaching vacancies. Williams doesn’t think that such a rule would have much of an impact on the college game.

“In the NFL there are only a few people in the decision-making process; in college it’s a much larger pool of people in the process,” he said.

As the season approaches, Williams doesn’t expect a difficult transition from football in the AFC South to the Ivy League. “Football is football; people are people,” he said. “It will still take toughness, resilience and excitement to win.”

Martin Johnson is a regular contributor to The Root.

Come Over and Let's Hook Up

So, last night I did a workshop "Come Over and Let's Hook Up" It is somewhat like a skit put on by University Housing, Wellness Center, and other health and professional organizations. Last night was the first night; I suppose you can say it went well. However, listening to some of the comments that were made... I was just a bit embarrassed and a bit upset if I may add.

Nonetheless, the skit was about consensual and non-consensual sex. As this is a topic that is always brought to surface, I am certain we have all discussed this before as it relates to rape, domestic violence, and even death. I personally thought the skit went well, I mean as the moderator I sort of had some expectations on how things may progress.

To get to my reason for blogging this; one of the students, in fact several of the students (Black males) made what I thought was a misogynistic and objectifying statement, "G, I am about to call the 'head doctor'" (for those who don't know what a "head doctor" is, it is a female who goes around giving oral sex; also known in Chicago terms as "bustdown." I gasped at that comment, almost having to exit the room. I said to myself, why would any male who has been brought up by their mother or grandmother fix their mouth to say such derogatory statement? It is disrespect to himself and to other women...I would even go as far to say his entire family of women may have been. As I perpended on that virulent statement, I realized that I should have expected that; their is always going to be one or two guys who would be so valiantly to make such comment.

As a male, who was raised in a single family home (my mother) and a brother of two sisters, I was outraged and disgusted by the statements. As Mark Anthony Neal stated, "The fact is that men are oblivious to the travails of women in American society and often embrace the rudimentary forms of sexism naturally until they are challenged by the women who are close to them." this is to say that, women positive women should step and teach some of these young guys a lesson; we need to point out the preconception of their [males] view of women. As feminist scholar bell hooks so eloquently stated, "Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence." Thus, until Black men disengage the patriarchal norms of society, matters will only worsen in the Black community.


LaCharles Ward
Student, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
Studying Psychology and Speech Communication

'Do the Right Thing': Still a Racial Rorschach at 20

Spike Lee's seminal film Do the Right Thing takes place over the course of twenty-four hours during the hottest day of the summer in Brooklyn's historic Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The story depicts simmering ethnic tensions between a group of African-Americans and the middle-aged, Italian-American patriarch of the local pizza place, "Sal's Famous Pizzeria." As the sweltering summer day draws to a close, an argument erupts between local youths of color led by "Radio" Raheem (his nickname comes from the massive boombox he is never seen without) and Sal. Pushed to the brink by Raheem's radio blasts, Sal erupts into a vitriolic rant replete with racial invective, which culminates with his smashing of Raheem's stereo. A fight breaks out and several other members of the community are drawn into the melee. Amidst ensuing mayhem, Raheem is killed by the NYPD, who strangle him with a nightstick in a scene that is eerily reminiscent of a lynching. The police officers eventually flee the scene with Raheem's remains in tow, leaving members of the community behind to grieve and denounce the injustice of this killing and the many others that preceded it. In an act of defiance, Mookie (played by Lee himself), the pizzeria's lone black employee, hurls a trash can through the pizzeria window, leading to the fiery destruction of Sal's prized establishment.

On the heels of the June 30, 1989, release of the film, twenty years ago this summer, director Spike Lee detected a pattern in how white critics were discussing the film: film was being discussed: "They never talk about the death of Radio Raheem at the hands of the police. They talk about Mookie smashing the window and the pizzeria burning down."

Recalling reactions to the film's violent climax, Lee would later remark, "If in a review, a critic discussed how Sal's Famous was burned down but didn't mention anything about Radio Raheem getting killed, it was pretty obvious that he or she valued white-owned property more than the life of this young black hoodlum." The frankness of Lee's rhetoric and the film's content led the mainstream media to label him an angry, confrontational filmmaker. In her 1989 Time review of Do the Right Thing, titled "He's Got to Have It His Way," Jeanne McDowell observed, "Looking for racism at every turn, [Lee] finds it." An August 1990 cover of US asked, "Spike Lee: Why Is He So Angry?" And in a classic example of ironic racism, an October 1992 Esquire headline declared: "Spike Lee Hates Your Cracker Ass."

Two decades and considerable mainstream success have done little to change the portrayal of the director and his films. In a New Yorker profile of Lee published last year, writer John Colapinto describes--and thereby confirms--Lee's reputation as that of "a filmmaker obsessed with race." For Lee the consistency with which his films' messages regarding race are overshadowed by fear and paranoia is frustrating to say the least. He recently observed, "White people still ask me why Mookie threw the can through the window. No black person ever, in twenty years, no person of color has ever asked me why."

Black and white audiences tend to read race in radically different ways, as evidenced by the bifurcated responses to real-life incidents ranging from the Rodney King verdict down to the recent dustup over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. But even this observation conceals a fundamental asymmetry. The dominant culture's typical response is to deny the centrality of race, a position that continues to dismiss African-American reactions as hypersensitive, race-obsessed, pathological, arrogant or rancorous. The privilege of ignoring racism goes even further than a vigorous denial of its salience; through a strange inversion, and as the example of Rush Limbaugh's recent attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor make clear, people of color who raise the issue--or, in Sotomayor's case, even downplay it--are labeled racist.

As the film reminds us, refusal to accept the legitimacy of nonwhite perspectives has consequences that are all too real. We would do well to recall the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant on New Year's Day by Oakland Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle. As groups such as Human Rights Watch, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement have extensively documented, fatal police shooting victims are disproportionately black regardless of the color of the officer.

Police brutality is but one of many complex issues raised in Do the Right Thing. Community empowerment, gentrification, social mobility, economic opportunity, ethnic competition for space, state authority and racism all figure into the Bed-Stuy matrix. While scholars and activists have long debated the question of racial inequality, with few exceptions, the dominant culture appears steadfast in its blindness to the conditions that necessitate such debates. Just as Lee was frustrated that film critics focused on the loss of white-owned property and not the black man's life, today many are disturbed by the way the media assailed President Obama for claiming that the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" in its handling of Gates's arrest, refusing to contemplate the significance of the president's only half-joking remark that in similar circumstances at the White House he would have been shot.

Lee's film, like most, ultimately offers more complex questions than answers, but its unflinching achievement is its consistent challenge to Americans to grapple with the dynamics of race, class, power, mobility and privilege in ways too few films have done since. Although Do the Right Thing has been frequently criticized for its black nationalist leanings, the film maintains its relevance as a racial Rorschach in which our separate-but-not-equal fears become evident, and points out the contradiction between the rhetoric and tactics of civil rights, the American Dream and the complex reality of black life.

To expand our discussion we invited several scholars, writers and activists to provide their sense of the film's enduring relevance. Here's what they had to say:

Melissa Harris-Lacewell
Princeton University

In 1989, the year Do the Right Thing was released, I was in my final year of high school in the suburban South. I did not know much about cities, but I knew something of race and its divisive, sometimes overt, but often hidden effects on communities. Do the Right Thing gave voice and shape to my sense of racial discomfort and anxiety. Through the visual it made the consequences of racial inequality and misunderstanding concrete. I've spent the last two decades devoted to academic inquiry and organizing efforts around the issue of race in America. I've never before traced my political, racial commitments to that film, but maybe, just maybe the seeds were planted in that theater.

Tim Wise
Author, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama, and White Like Me

That black folks would understand Mookie's actions while many whites would not is no surprise. For whites, the idea that violence might be a rational reaction to oppression makes little sense, or rather, scares us, because we know the direction in which that oppression has run for so long. Mookie in that one moment goes from being the reasonably calm, unthreatening black man, to the embodiment of white anxiety. That his action was actually a response to the murder of Radio Raheem--and that the latter was an instance of systemic and sanctioned state violence--is often ignored. For whites to roundly condemn Mookie's actions, while remaining largely silent about the murder of Radio Raheem, suggests that at a deep and disturbing level--perhaps so deep as to be subconscious--many white folks consider a white man's property as equal in value to a black man's life.

Interestingly, I remember when I saw the film, thinking that Mookie, by redirecting the crowd's anger toward the pizzeria, may well have saved Sal's life. To me, his actions were a reminder that the problem is more systemic than merely personal. Sal's became a symbol of black disempowerment, but Sal himself, in the end, was not the principal enemy, however much his own prejudices manifested throughout the film.

Jared A. Ball
Morgan State University

Do the Right Thing still relevant? Well, none of Spike's characters likely still live on that block. "Larry Bird" hasn't just stepped on Buggin' Out's new Jordans. He has taken the entire neighborhood. The same killer cops patrol the newly displaced in their now-suburban colonies in precisely the same manner, mildly harassing Harvard professor "Mookies" while killing the everyday Oscar and Sean Raheems. Today, Mookie still bends to pick up the scraps thrown to the ground by his white benefactors; but Love-Daddy can no longer tell us "the truth, Ruth" because he is syndicated by Sal's nobles, assuring that that either a Hot 97 or a hot 50 kills Radios everywhere, in vestibules, cars or while awaiting trains. And worst of all, throughout black America radical change is simply individual, disorganized, stammering signifiers of defeat. Relevant? It is so relevant that nothing of its kind will again grace a mainstream screen.

Ed Guerrero
New York University

Regarding the chemistry of the cinematic and the social, the most interesting "thing" about Do the Right Thing is both how little and (perhaps) how much "things" have changed since '89. As I have argued elsewhere, the "new black film wave" started to plateau at the end of the '90s with about twenty or so black-focused or -directed features of varied scale and quality released yearly by the mainstream film industry. Here, nothing has really changed. Accordingly, Do the Right Thing's social themes--police profiling and brutality; urban, ethnic conflict; the crisis in black families and relationships--all endure, if they haven't intensified. Conversely, the "Age of Obama" suggests some remedy to these issues. Yet the rhetorical jujitsu of "race" continues. Note some senators accusing Judge Sotomayor of "racism" during her confirmation hearings, or the "Skip Gates police affair" blowing up and sustained in the national media. Tellingly, we now need many more filmmakers with the cultural, aesthetic creativity and social focus of Spike Lee, as evinced in Do the Right Thing.

by: Viveca Greene & Chris Tinson (The Nation contributors)

Public Option

By: LaCharles Ward

Greetings,


I am sure you all have been scrupulously watching the media, that is, the debate surrounding health care reform. Lately, there has been speculation that the "public option" that is outlined in the health care reform bill may potentially be dropped. According to some of the news outlets; I have to be frank, I am a Democrat so I choose not to watch "right-winged" news especially lately, all the lies, and the fear that the "other" party is trying to embed in the public's eye.

Nonetheless, I think that we as civilized and true citizens of the United States of America need to write our senators and congressman/woman, urging them and the Obama staff not to drop the proposed public option. As, Dr. Melissa Harris Lacewell stated, "we must educate those buying the lies but let's also activate those who know the truth." Personally, I think that is a very powerful statement and holds true... Thus, take time to educate those who aren't already, and those who are, reinforce what they know (of course, the truth; we don't need anymore LIES).

Again, I urge you all to write to your congressman/woman demanding that they not drop the public option in the health care reform. It is imperative that we support Obama, and for those who can't or won't be respectful and of course, KNOW why you are "truly" against health care reform.

Send it to: whitehouse.gov/contact

Obama: ‘The Status Quo is Not Working for You’

All you needed to hear was “New Hampshire” to know the White House’s game plan. If you want to stage a big political moment, to tie yourself and your message to democracy and revolution and good government—you go to New Hampshire. And so it was that President Obama mounted his retort to the GOP’s town hall disruptions in Portsmouth.

Throngs of protestors railed outdoors (one with a—legal—gun; not the first firearm to turn up at these events). They didn’t take Obama’s bait and give him a chance to face them down directly, but he took his swings—and largely connected—nonetheless. The take home: “This is what they always do. We can’t let them do it again. Not this time, not now.” Sound familiar? That’s ’cause it was straight up 2008, when candidate Obama turned every effort to scare voters away from him back on itself. And it’s part of the wise effort to bring this conversation back to the point.

The White House’s second goal was to remind everybody they were more scared of the status quo six months ago than they were of change. “What is truly scary,” Obama declared, “what is truly risky, is if we do nothing.”

The scare of the moment—and to be sure, there will be many new ones—is the lie that the House bill includes “death panels.” Obama pounced on it after a schoolgirl asked how to separate fact from fiction (like, say, the notion no one put her up to the question). He wasn’t half as good as Claire McCaskill, but he used the moment to acknowledge “legitimate” fears of rationing and, once again, turn that fear back on the private sector. “Right now,” he said, “the insurance companies are rationing care.”

The real rhetorical juice here, however, is in the battle for the hearts and minds of seniors. That’s where support is eroding as fears Medicare will get gored increase. It’s one of the great ironies of this debate: the people who have and largely love the biggest government-run health program in America are scared the government will screw it up. The reality is that, for both political and fiscal reasons, the final bill will have to cut Medicare. So between now and then, Obama will surely keep repeating what he hammered today: The goal is to make Medicare more efficient by cutting “give aways” to providers and private insurers, not by cutting subscriber benefits.

What Obama didn’t do was address any critique of his plan from the left. There remain real and meaningful questions about what, exactly, the White House has promised all of these industry groups that it’s met with behind closed doors. As the president himself noted this afternoon, a key tool for reducing costs for both consumers and taxpayers is the ability to negotiate a “better deal” through a large pool. Has the drug industry in particular blocked such negotiating power in exchange for its support? Obama must answer that question clearly.

—KAI WRIGHT---Frequent blogger to the Root

Obama Is A Racist? Look Who’s Talking. Side Note: Glenn Beck Give Me A Break!

Recently, the notoriously inaccurate Fox News host Glenn Beck, who uses rage the way artists use oils or acrylics, made what was undoubtedly his most shocking proclamation to date. While discussing the Henry Louis Gates Jr. controversy on morning chat show Fox and Friends, Beck turned to his colleagues and said quite certainly, "[Barack Obama] has exposed himself as a guy ... who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." He then added, "This guy is ... a racist."

Fox News, which rarely expresses remorse for its staff's frequent bigoted transgressions, immediately issued a statement saying Beck's comments were "not those of the Fox News Channel." It wasn't necessarily an apology, but it was about as close as Fox gets, which says something about the grave recklessness of Beck's words. What the Fox brass didn't address was Beck's hypocrisy.

Let's pretend President Obama's mother wasn't white. Let's pretend he wasn't raised by his white grandparents, and let's pretend he didn't only months ago sit diligently by his white grandmother's deathbed. Let's pretend he didn't outfit his cabinet with a whole host of white people. And let's pretend that "white culture" actually means something (as opposed to "Irish culture" or "Polish culture"). Beck's condemnation of the president as a bigot who "hates" white people rings hollow considering the company he’s kept for about a decade now.

When he was 35, Beck, an admitted alcoholic and former cocaine addict, became a devout Mormon. Like many born-again Christians before him, Beck credits the conversion for saving him from his vices and boosting his career. He says that, within Mormonism, "there are so many examples that are lighthouses to [my family]." It's actually a touching story.

But let’s take a closer look at Beck's "lighthouses." Four days before Beck called Obama a racist, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released data that showed Mormonism to be the most conservative religious group in America today, with nearly 70 percent of the religion's followers saying that homosexuality should be "discouraged." And last year, despite making up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, Mormon donations accounted for an estimated 77 percent of the $25.5 million raised in support of Prop. 8. Some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints even admit to blackmailing companies for support of their anti-gay cause.

Gordon B. Hinckley, the late former president of the Mormon church and one of Glenn Beck's idols, wasn't alive to see Prop. 8 pass, but he would have approved, having famously told Larry King that gays "have a problem" that Mormons "want to help them solve."

But how do you "solve" homosexuality? According to Hinckley's friend, Boyd K. Packer, currently the president of the church's second most powerful governing body, violence is sometimes the solution. In a speech to young Mormon men in 1976, Packer relayed an anecdote about a Mormon boy who had admitted that he beat up a male friend who he had claimed made a pass at him. Packer's response to the attacker was that of a true chickenhawk: "Somebody had to do it."

Of course, gays aren't the only minority group targeted by the Mormon church. Packer has also publicly advised against interracial marriage, probably due in part to the fact that, until 1978, the Mormon Church preached that people of color were dark due to the "mark of Cain," of whom they were all cursed descendants. Brigham Young, the late Mormon leader who insisted his words were as good as scripture, derided blacks as "uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild and seemingly deprived of ... intelligence."

With over a century of that sort of malicious nonsense being doled out as gospel, it's little wonder racism continues to thrive in the Latter-day Saints movement. (Mormon leaders claim, by the way, th

at only God knows why it took so long to accept blacks as equals—though it probably had something to do with the success the church was having converting souls in Africa.) In 2004, a black woman in Utah recalled an incident at her Latter-day Saints church in which a man remarked that his only problem with the congregation was "the nigger girl." A year later, Darron Smith, another black Mormon and a sociology professor at Brigham Young University, also attested to the continued vigor of the church’s racism: "Why do Mormons persist in believing that black people were cursed? Many of them do and stubbornly defend racist white sentiment."

It should go without saying that not all Mormons are racists or homophobes, just as all Muslims aren't terrorists. But if Glenn Beck continues to accuse others of "deep-seated hatred," it's important to consider where his guidance—and the history behind it—is coming from.

To borrow Beck's analogy, if he's a ship lost at sea, I wish his lighthouses were brighter.

Cord Jefferson is a regular contributor to The Root.

Teabagger caught on camera with a gun

Frankly, this is just outrageous I can't believe people are acting obnoxious like this towards something half of our Americans need. It is getting out of hand, we have Limbaugh comparing the Obama administration to Nazis, thus upsetting individuals who have lost family during that period. Then, we have Fox news, in fact, they don't deserve the right to be called "News" because they are disgraceful and horrible attacking "legit" news reporters of what they call "strong liberals" about their meticulous coverage of all this HCR madness.

As Americans, the "right wingers" need to accept the fact that we need health care reform, whether they like it or not. What I find very funny is that half the people who are showing up at these town hall meetings [protesting] are the very individuals who don't have health care benefits. So, I don't understand why they are deluging and these horrendous acts of violence, carrying weapons...that is shameful and terrifying.

Conservatives, please grow up; it seems to me that you all have lost it again, just as what happen during the presidential campaign. You guys are realizing that the Obama administration and Democrats are moving in FULL FORCE to get this health care plan passed, and you guys [Republicans] are afraid because you have been feeding the Americans "bullshit" for the last 8 years. Didn't your mother tell you, "one day, you will just have to accept change" so, with that being said grow the hell up!!


By LaCharles Ward, student at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale studying Speech Communication and Psychology. Emphasis on pop culture, masculinity and gender studies; also, race and politics.

Obama: Health critics creating ‘boogeymen’

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - Braced for a fight he never got, President Barack Obama went on the offensive in support of his health care plan Tuesday, urging a town hall audience not to listen to those who seek to "scare and mislead the American people."

"For all the scare tactics out there, what is truly scary is if we do nothing," Obama told a friendly crowd of about 1,800 in a high school auditorium and a nationwide audience watching on cable television.

The White House had been ready for an unruly reception from opponents of overhauling health care. There was no sign of that, perhaps because of the makeup of the day's crowd or out of traditional deference for the president.

Obama's push came amid a string of disruptive health care town halls nationwide that have overshadowed his message and threatened to derail support in Congress. Indeed, Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter faced hostile questions, taunts and jeers earlier Tuesday as he tried to explain his positions at a town hall in Lebanon, Pa. Voter fears of a government takeover of health care were on stark display.

Some lawmakers, holding forums during Congress' August recess, have gone so far as to replace public forums with teleconferences or step up security to keep protesters at bay.

But the Democratic president faced no outbursts.

The encounter was so friendly, in fact, that by the end Obama was even asking for skeptical questioners to come forward — to no avail.

He told his audience reassuringly, "For all the chatter and the yelling and the shouting and the noise, what you need to know is this ... if you do have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need."

Retooling his message amid sliding support, he addressed some of his remarks to a vital and skeptical audience: the tens of millions of people who already have health insurance and are generally satisfied with the care they get.

He said the overhaul is essential to them, too, contending it is the way to keep control in their hands. Obama said while government bureaucrats should not meddle with people's care, bureaucrats at insurance companies should not, either.

The president accused critics of creating "boogeymen."

"Spread the facts. Let's get this done," Obama implored the crowd.
he tone was set as soon as Obama arrived. He came in to applause and told one person who shouted support, "I love you back."

One man identified himself as a Republican and said, "I don't know what I'm doing here." The Democratic president said he was happy to have him in attendance.

Toward the end of the session, Obama went so far as to ask people to give him skeptical questions. The best he got were queries about why he doesn't chastise Congress more and where the nation would find the additional doctors and nurses it needs.
Heading toward a pivotal fall debate before congressional action, Obama is scrambling to get lawmakers and the public behind what would be the most ambitious and costly changes to the health care system in decades.

He reiterated his determination that the plan be paid for without adding to the nation's soaring deficit.

He took on what he described as erroneous claims that have risen as the debate in Washington and the nation has developed.

He singled out the charge that the Democratic health care legislation would create "death panels" to deny care to frail seniors. Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has said the Democrats' legislation includes "death panels" that could deny care.

Obama declared that a provision that he said had caused the uproar would only authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, living wills, hospice care and other issues, if the patients wanted it. It would not "basically pull the plug on grandma because we decided that it's too expensive to let her live anymore," as Obama put it.

The people Obama called on for questions asked him largely about their personal medical concerns and how any new law would affect them. "We're not talking about cutting Medicare benefits," he said, trying to reassure one questioner.

Obama sought to dispel talk that his ultimate goal is a single-payer federal health care system, like that in countries such as Canada.

He also disputed the notion that adding a government-run insurance plan into a menu of options from which people could pick would drive private insurers out of business, in effect making the system single-payer by default.

As long as they have a good product and the government plan has to sustain itself through premiums and other non-tax revenue, private insurers should be able to compete with the government plan, Obama said.

"They do it all the time," he said. "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. ... It's the Post Office that's always having problems."

Credits: Associated Press, MSNBC

Limbaugh Yells "Nazi" (And The Press Yawns)

Despite the fact that Limbaugh has not apologized for his comments and is continuing to compare the Obama White House and the Democratic Party with Nazis, many in the media don't consider it newsworthy and haven't condemned it. And more important, journalists don't show any signs of believing that the episode tells us anything about the radically unhinged nature of the right-wing media in this country today. That story's just a non-starter. Period.

It's just Rush being Rush, right?

If I could play assignment editor for a moment here: The political story of the year continues to be the unhinged radical-right response to Obama's inauguration and the naked attempt to dehumanize and delegitimize him through a nonstop smear campaign sponsored by the GOP Noise Machine. The misguided movement breaks all kinds of taboos in American politics, as well as in the press, and is redefining our political culture -- for the worse. Yet the press continues to play dumb.

So spooked are journalists by decades' worth of "liberal media bias" attacks that they refuse to connect the glaringly obvious dots on display. They refuse to drill down into the rancid undercurrent that's behind the Obama-is-a-Nazi dementia, the town hall mini-mobs that are wreaking havoc across the country, and the bizarre birther conspiracy theory. The three right-wing phenomena are all related, and they all revolve around a runaway hatred of Obama (as well as the federal government), and they're all being fueled by the Noise Machine, especially Fox News and Limbaugh, both of which no longer recognize common decency, let alone journalistic standards.

Yet instead of putting Limbaugh on the receiving end of well-deserved scrutiny and scorn for his outlandish Nazi rhetoric, rather than turning his comments into a political firestorm, the press plays dumb and actually goes out of its way to legitimize the worst offenders of the GOP's hate brigade.


Credits: Eric Boehlert of The Huffington Post

Young, Black and Gay Politician Makes Run for Congress

A two-tour veteran of the Iraq War and graduate of West Point and Harvard University, Anthony Woods, 29, enjoys a solid resume that would make him a good candidate for public office.

But if you have heard of Woods, who is seeking election to Congress from California's 10th House District, it likely has little to do with his impressive credentials.

Woods has gained notoriety because he is the first openly gay black man to run for Congress.

His run for office has drawn parallels to the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to a public office in California. In 1978, Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back.

Woods informed military commanders that he was gay and received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army on the grounds of "moral and professional dereliction" under the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Woods opposes the policy, created by the Clinton White House in 1993.

While Woods makes little to no mention of his sexual orientation on his campaign Web site, he has support from the gay community. Both the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund have endorsed him, calling him a potential advocate for gay, lesbian and transgender issues in the Congress.

It would be a shame if Woods' sexual preference overshadows his political stance on important topics facing the nation, such as balancing the federal budget and health care and immigration reform.

Ultimately, what will mark Woods as a success will have far more to do with his political savvy, maturity and ability to serve constituents than who he sleeps with.

At this point, he is considered a long shot in the high-profiled contest, which includes California's Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, state Sen. Mark James DeSaulnier and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan.

The election will replace Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who is leaving Congress to become undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the Obama administration.

A multiparty primary election is scheduled for Sept. 1. If no candidate receives at least 51 percent of the vote, a run-off general election will be held Nov. 3 to decide the winner.

US Urges Justice for Congolese Women

From Al Jazeera:

The US secretary of state has said that young people in the Democratic Republic of Congo must press the government to take action against corruption and sexual violence in the war-torn east of the country.

"You are the ones who have to speak out," Hillary Clinton told university students in Kinshasa, the capital, on Monday.

"Speak out to end the corruption, the violence, the conflict that for too long has eroded the opportunities across this country. Together, you can write a new chapter in Congolese history."

Clinton has focused on women's rights during her seven-nation tour of Africa, which has so far taken her to Kenya, South Africa and Angola.

The number of reported rapes in the east of the country has risen dramatically since January, when the government launched a joint operation with Rwanda against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

Clinton said Laurent Kabila, DR Congo's president, must take action to protect women from violence, while noting that some members of the Congolese military were responsible for sexual assault.

"We are now in the 21st century. It is no longer acceptable for there to be violence against women in the home or in the community," she told the students.

"I hope that here in the DRC there will be a concerted effort to demand justice for women who are violently attacked and to make sure that their attackers are punished."

Read the rest of the article here.

Black Professors, Black Scholars and Intellectual Suicide

If you've ever tried to go to college, you've interacted with a professor at some point in your life. If you were lucky, you might have run into a black professor. Chances are, you probably never had a black professor in college. Personally, I'd never taken a class from a black professor until I actually became one, since many universities don't hire black scholars very much. When universities hire black scholars, they enjoy getting rid of them after concluding that they are not as qualified as the white people on the faculty. Like my respected colleague Dr. Cornel West, I've had battles on this issue with my own school, Syracuse University, which has a horrible history when it comes to hiring black people who don't dribble a basketball. Even Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) have this problem. Have you ever counted how many black professors there are in the sciences and business schools of HBCUs? The numbers might surprise you - your kids are not being taught by black professors as much as they might lead you to believe.

What is saddest, however, is not the racism of academia. Even more shocking is the manner by which many intellectuals (black and non-black) are "dumbed down" by the way scholars and professors are trained to think. Rather than exploring the world and engaging in high action scholarship, we are trained like monkeys to sit inside our man-made bubbles within the ivory tower, focusing on miniscule, insignificant problems. Once these problems are solved, we are told to publish the work in academic journals that are read by a very small number of people in our tiny little niche. We become like some Baptist ministers who are so caught up with the collection plate that they no longer care about God - professors are here to share knowledge, and we've lost the desire to educate anyone other than ourselves.

The academic bubble for black scholars is even more comfortable and inviting, and as destructive as a crackhouse next to daycare. All throughout history, the best way to conquer a people was to murder the scholars and intellectual leaders. African American scholars have not been killed in body, but in mind and spirit. We are lulled into a sense that "you've made it....you are the chosen negro," which means that you can then leave behind all the problems of blackness in exchange for your comfortable seat in the ivory tower. If you are well-behaved and perpetuate the white power structure, you get to keep your position. When a black man gets shot by police - that's not your problem. When Hurricane Katrina leaves dead bodies in the street - that's not your problem. When significant black organizations are going bankrupt and you have the expertise to save them - that's not your problem. Your focus is on writing that research paper for the academic journal that only 30 people are ever going to read. After that, you take your vacations to Martha's Vineyard and sip iced-tea on the front porch of your summer home. That becomes your mission in life. The same way Chinese citizens were controlled by Opium exported by the British during the 19th century, the spirit of the African American scholar has been neutralized by the comforts of the academic bubble.

Most black scholars don't come to academia pre-trained to have such a meaningless existence: you must be fully brainwashed in order to accept your new and impotent reality. Your first two years of doctoral study are spent asking your professors why they are discouraging you from doing meaningful work. They then explain to you that in "the academy, we only do things that are scholarly." Keeping it scholarly becomes the rule of the day, the same way some brothers in the hood choose to "keep it gangsta." This means keeping a firm distance from those people in the "real world" whose opinions don't matter nearly as much as your own because you are educated and they are not. If you'll notice, most of the members of black academia do not engage in much professional association with people outside the Ivory Tower, the same way that some churches don't want their members speaking to people with a different perception of God. Interacting with those who think differently becomes a threat to the psychological incubator you've created for yourself, making your ideas vulnerable to alternative points of view. I even recall hearing a prominent black management scholar tell me that my ideas were "dangerous" for young black scholars to hear because it would lead them to think about other career paths. When the suppression of ideas becomes the answer to your problems, that usually means that you yourself have become the problem.

In much academic research, whether your theory actually works in the real world is far less important than whether the so-called leading experts in your field have signed off on it. I would even dare to say that it was the reliance on many of these flawed theories which led to the collapse of our global financial system: people thought that because professors teach Finance at Harvard, they actually know how financial markets work. Believe me, I've spent a great deal of time with black scholars in business and management, and I honestly wouldn't trust them to manage a Burger King, let alone the world's financial system. This is not to say that they are not well-trained; rather, the lack of real-world experience makes their work incapable of having effective practical implications.

The only logical way to rationalize the decision of black scholars to ignore the masses in exchange for journal outlets that only a few people read is to conclude that they've somehow been convinced that the second audience is of higher quality than the first. Speaking to 10,000 people without a PhD is not considered as important to many black scholars as speaking to 20 people who have a doctoral degree. What is most tragic about such thinking is that it not only disrespects the humanity of other African Americans, it also reflects the same kind of elitism that has always served to oppress the black community. Many of our most brilliant citizens have been taught to think small, selfishly and with great delusion. Our book smarts go through the roof, while our common sense has been left at the door. We live and die and no one knows or cares that we were here. That's the tragedy of black America, and the most glaring reflection of Carter G. Woodson's "Miseducation of the Negro." The only thing worse than being fed psychological poison is to be given an overdose of that poison, which makes us as black scholars among the most intellectually handicapped citizens in our nation. Yes, I am part of that group too and I am working to outgrow my handicaps every single day.

So, if you went to college and wondered why your professor taught you a bunch of things that you never used in your career, it's because they probably don't even understand what you do on a day-to-day basis. The truth is that they don't need to understand what you do and many of them don't really care. If you've ever wondered why black scholars are never on the forefront of the most significant debates of the day, it's because they would be punished by their superiors for speaking out on black issues. We've had a bubble built for us, our own little heaven. In this heaven, there is no crime, no poverty and no black struggle. There is only wine, cheese, bow ties and ivy. Our most powerful minds are enslaved, and I am not sure what it will take to free them. The intellectual suicide of the black American scholar has become one of the great tragedies of the 21st century.

Dr Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University. He does regular commentary in national media, including CNN, MSNBC, BET and more.

Leave the AKA’s Alone!

In the past two weeks, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. has been the subject of intense media scrutiny as a result of a damaging civil lawsuit that was filed by some members who call themselves “Friends of the Weeping Ivy.” The news was picked up by the mass media and all hell has rained down on dear old AKA, my beloved sorority, ever since.

We have been called “Criminal girls with 20 pearls,” “She say she say,” “AKA’s money gone funny,” “Sorority girls gone rogue” and worse. To be candid, it has been embarrassing for all of us to endure the negative publicity surrounding the lawsuit filed against our international president, Barbara A. McKenzie, just one year after our centennial celebration in Washington, D.C., last July. And it has been downright heart wrenching to watch our sisters fight each other publicly with lawsuits and harsh indictments instead of finding a way to talk to one another directly and allowing our bylaws and internal oversight processes to deal with this matter privately.

As a sorority member, I can’t comment publicly on pending litigation. But as a loyal AKA, I want to set the record straight about the very meaningful legacy, enduring sisterhood and continuing relevance of Alpha Kappa Alpha despite this latest brouhaha.

Partly as a result of this mess, there has been much speculation about whether Greek-lettered organizations and other traditional black organizations such as the NAACP have any relevance in a country that elected a black man president.

After all, we live in a “post-racial” America, right?

Wrong.

If we have learned anything over the past few weeks with the Gates/Crowley/Obama White House summit, the Sotomayor nomination and general discussions about race, and culture, in America, it is that black and white Americans often see the same issues quite differently. We come to the table with different life experiences and backgrounds that shape our opinions and worldview.

I have been asked many times by my non-black friends why I joined a sorority exclusively for black women, or, better still, why I founded an organization (iask, Inc.) for professional black women back in 2004. My answer is always the same—these organizations are still necessary even in the 21st century—and they serve a very useful purpose in the collective cultural tapestry of America.

I joined AKA for many reasons, but mainly, I wanted to belong to a group of like-minded women who could relate to and share my values and my unique life experiences as a black woman in America. It can be hard on a black woman, both in academia and in the corporate world. It’s hard to ignore those pervasive feelings of invisibility and isolation. Having a group of sisters, my “sorors,” to help get through it all has had a big, and positive, impact on my life. I’m part of an international sisterhood of more than 245,000 women. I can go to any American city—not to mention most countries—and instantly find a network of sisters to bond with, both personally and professionally.

It’s easy for outsiders to dismiss the legacy of Alpha Kappa Alpha, to use this latest dust-up as proof of its irrelevancy. But we are heirs to an historic legacy—a legacy that can’t be diminished by all the recent drama and naysaying.

We were founded in 1908 by college-aged black women, just one generation removed from slavery—at a time when American women had no rights. And for most of its existence, Alpha Kappa Alpha has helped to improve social and economic conditions for all Americans (not just black Americans) through our award-winning social programs. My favorite example: the Mississippi Health Project, which brought primary medical care to the rural populations across the state for six summers in the 1930s. It was the first mobile health clinic in the United States and assisted approximately 15,000 people in the Mississippi Delta.

In 1938, we were the first organization to lobby Congress for minority civil rights. We were the first sorority to gain observer rights status at the United Nations—way back in 1946. In 1965, with a $4 million grant, AKA became the first sorority to operate a federal job training center: the Cleveland Job Corps. We’re continuing that legacy today.

I bring all this up to say that AKA has overcome far greater challenges than this current lawsuit. A strong organization does not grow to be 101 years old without having endured great successes and great adversities.

I think about our founders—nine black collegiate women in the early 1900s—brave enough and gifted enough to see the needs of their time, and of ours, 100 years later. Alpha Kappa Alpha has survived Jim Crow, sexism, racism, a Great Depression, two world wars, and witnessed the civil rights movement. It is time for us to return to our mission and values. It is not about the colors or the letters we wear. It is about our legacy. We need to remember that, this, too, shall pass. When the dust settles, our hearts and dear Alpha Kappa Alpha will be stronger, more loyal and more true.

Sophia A. Nelson is a regular contributor to The Root and an active member of a Washington, D.C. graduate chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Inc. The opinions expressed here are her own and not those of her chapter or the leadership of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

Welcome Justice Sotomayor!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who rose from the housing projects of the Bronx to the top of the legal profession, made history Thursday when the Senate confirmed her to become the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
Sotomayor was easily confirmed in a 68-31 vote. Nine Republicans joined a unanimous Democratic caucus in supporting her nomination.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, supported Sotomayor but was not present for the vote because of illness.

Sotomayor, a 55-year-old federal appeals court judge, will be the 111th person to sit on the high court and the third female justice.

She will be sworn in at the Supreme Court by Chief Justice John Roberts on Saturday. Sotomayor was confirmed after senators spent a final day of debate rehashing the main arguments for and against her.

President Obama, who selected Sotomayor on May 26, said he was "deeply gratified" by the Senate vote.

"This is a wonderful day for Judge Sotomayor and her family, but I also think it's a wonderful day for America," Obama said at the White House.

Democrats continued to praise Sotomayor as a fair and impartial jurist with an extraordinary life story. Many Republicans continued to portray her as a judicial activist intent on reinterpreting the law to conform with her own liberal political beliefs.

Among other things, Republican opponents emphasized concerns over her statements and rulings on hot-button issues such as gun control, affirmative action and property rights. See how Sotomayor measures up with her new colleagues »

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, helped close the debate by stressing the historic nature of the nomination.
"It is distinctively American to continually refine our union, moving us closer to our ideals. Our union is not yet perfected, but with this confirmation, we will be making progress," Leahy said on the Senate floor.

"Years from now, we will remember this time, when we crossed paths with the quintessentially American journey of Sonia Sotomayor, and when our nation took another step forward through this historic confirmation process."

Leahy also took a swipe at Sotomayor's critics for choosing "to ignore [her] extensive record of judicial modesty and restraint, a record made over 17 years on the federal bench."

Instead, he said, "they focused on and mischaracterized her rulings in just a handful of her more than 3,600 cases."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, took aim at what he claimed was Sotomayor's inability to refrain from bringing her personal political opinions to bear on her rulings.

"In America, everyone should receive equal justice under the law," McConnell said.

"This is the most fundamental test for any judge and all the more so for those who would sit on our nation's highest court, where a judge's impulses and preferences are not subject to review. Because I'm not convinced that Judge Sotomayor would keep this commitment, I cannot support her nomination."
Several Republicans, however, bucked party leadership by voting in favor of Sotomayor.

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, announced Thursday morning that he had decided to back Sotomayor after weighing a range of factors, including her education, experience and temperament.

"Judge Sotomayor is not the nominee I would have selected if I were president, but making a nomination is not my role here today," Voinovich said in a written statement.

"My role is to examine her qualifications to determine if she is fit to serve. ... Based on my review of her record, and using these factors, I have determined that Judge Sotomayor meets the criteria to become a justice on the Supreme Court."

Voinovich was joined by Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, New Hampshire's Judd Gregg, Indiana's Richard Lugar, Missouri's Kit Bond, Florida's Mel Martinez, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham and Tennessee's Lamar Alexander. Video Watch the Senate vote »

In a telling political sign, none of the Republicans who voted for Sotomayor is seeking re-election in 2010. Conservative activists, including the powerful National Rifle Association, mounted a concerted effort to rally GOP opposition to Sotomayor.

Sotomayor's confirmation capped an extraordinary rise from humble beginnings. Her parents came to New York from Puerto Rico during World War II. Her father worked in a factory and didn't speak English.

She was born in the Bronx and grew up in a public housing project, not far from the stadium of her favorite team, the New York Yankees. Her father died when she was 9, leaving her mother to raise her and her younger brother.

Her mother, whom Sotomayor has described as her biggest inspiration, worked six days a week to care for her and her brother, and instilled in them the value of an education.

Sotomayor later graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and went on to attend Yale Law School, where she was editor of the Yale Law Journal.

She worked at nearly every level of the judicial system over a three-decade career before being chosen by President Obama to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court.

Accepting the nomination, Sotomayor thanked Obama for "the most humbling honor of my life."
After the selection, Sotomayor was touted by her supporters as a justice with bipartisan favor and historic appeal. She has served as a judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since 1998. She was named a district judge by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and was elevated to her current seat by President Clinton.

Sotomayor presided over about 450 cases while on the district court. Before her judicial appointments, she was a partner at a private law firm and spent time as an assistant district attorney prosecuting violent crimes

Preserving the arts may save our kids

I spent last Friday night at a 4th grade poetry slam.

I wasn't sure I wanted to go. As the mother of a first grader I know that sometimes parents and teachers simply have to smile widely and clap loudly so that our kids will feel supported even when their skills make us want to cover our ears and look for aspirin. But the teacher, Eric Thomas, had been asking me for months to come to Trenton, NJ and check out the students at Stokes Elementary School. His enthusiasm convinced me I should attend. I was not disappointed.

The Stokes students did not recite the lofty words of other writers; instead they composed their own verse. In language that was precise, compelling, inspiring, and sometimes heartbreaking these 9 and 10-year-old children presented a surprisingly mature critique of our nation. They employed not only poetry but also drumming and dance to craft a unique and coherent vision of the world from the perspective of working class black children living and learning in an American city.

I was struck that the students had both far-ranging global analysis - much of the verse focused on global warming and environmental degradation - and a perspective on more immediate concerns about violence, poverty, and drugs in their own communities.

These students spoke about historic black political leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and they spent time reflecting on how inspired they felt by President Barack Obama. They called their elders to task for setting poor examples, and held themselves accountable for sticking to schoolwork and staying out of trouble.

At the end of their performance my applause were genuine. I was impressed. But beyond my appreciation for these extraordinary students, the performance reinforced several lessons about education.

I was reminded of how important it is to listen to young people. I know many adults who want to contribute to our communities and think the best thing they can do is go into schools and talk to young people. While role modeling and inspiring lectures are important, Friday night's poetry slam reinforced my belief that what young people need most is to have someone listen to them rather than talk to them. I appear on television, write editorials, and give dozens of public lectures, but this teacher did not invite me to talk to his kids; he invited me to listen to his kids.

I think it is particularly important to listen to young people who, because of race, poverty, or language, are often marginalized in public discourse. We have a tendency to make policy on behalf of these youth without asking them what they think or what ideas they have about their needs or the solutions to the problems they face. Often times we silence children "for their own good" rather than giving them a chance to creatively and openly explore their own ideas.

I believe we need more opportunities for youth to be the experts, more chances for young people to set the agenda, and more opportunities for students to be the teachers. The pride and sense of accomplishment in these students was palpable because they had taken ownership of the performance. Students learn as much from having a voice as by listening to the voices of others.

The event also reinforced my commitment to arts education. Our national economic meltdown means school districts across the country are facing budget crises. In this atmosphere it is seductive to cut the arts first. Kids don't need performing and visual arts, the argument goes, they need math and reading. This argument is especially likely to affect urban schools that serve poorer populations. It is seductive to sacrifice creative opportunities for basic skills training, but it is a mistake to do so.

Our country and our world need the arts more than ever. We need a generation of young people capable of non-violent self-expression who are sensitive to difference and capable of innovation and creative problem solving. I found the fourth graders at Stokes Elementary were more challenging, relevant, analytic, and careful than most cable news pundits.

Many of these students may have been unable to write a perfect five paragraph essay, but each of them was able to express important ideas through free verse, music, and dance.

The program at Stokes Elementary is not part of the school's regular curriculum. It is a project endowed by Young Audiences, a New Jersey foundation supporting arts education in the schools. The work they do is phenomenal, but it cannot fill all the gaps and reach all the children who need it. Parents, educators, and communities will have to mobilize to save and restore the arts in our schools.

The challenges that these students face are real and daunting. Despite their glorious hearts and gifted minds many of these young people will be targeted by gangs, by police, and by premature sexual pressure. They live in neighborhoods with few jobs and plenty of drugs.

Many of their families have inadequate housing, insufficient health care, and few chances for economic advancement. It is easy to dismiss the necessity of arts education for kids facing such tough circumstances, but these are precisely the students in most urgent need of the arts.

Through the arts young people learn to imagine new possibilities for themselves and their communities. They learn to engage as full members of these communities with something positive to contribute, right now, in this moment, not waiting until after years of professional training.
In short, arts education is a training ground for participatory democracy.

By: Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell

SOCIALISM is the tag line of a bizarre new campaign against President Obama. The word "Socialism" appears across an image portraying President Obama as Heath Ledger's Joker in last year's The Dark Knight. The Obama/Joker mash-ups have appeared on posters in Los Angeles, have gone viral on the Internet, and are available as t-shirts, mugs, and other political swag.

It seems that some elements of America's fringe Right have become embarrassingly Freudian. This is a clear cut case of projection. The Right is the Joker, not President Obama.

Heath Ledger's edgy, dark portrayal of the Joker was remarkable and disturbing precisely because it was rooted in irresistible chaos, not in tight control. If Obama's critics are trying to claim he is a big-government loving, bureaucracy building, state-control planning mastermind then they could not have chosen a worse image than Ledger's Joker.

Joker's evil is banal, random, gleeful and almost effortless. "Do I really look like a guy with a plan?" he asks.

If the current political moment were mapped onto The Dark Knight script, it would be the right wing fringe of the GOP cast as the chaos-inducing Joker.

Conservative tactics of social divisiveness feel distinctly Joker-like. Elected Republicans and conservative talk show personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck used the Sotomayor hearings and President Obama's response to the Dr. Henry Louis Gates' arrest to claim reverse racism, stoke racial anxiety, and suggest that some citizens are more worthy than others.

In the film Joker rigs two ferries with bombs. One carrying ordinary citizens, the other carrying convicted criminals. Joker offers a terrible choice,

"Each of you has a remote... to blow up the other boat. At midnight, I blow you all up. If, however, one of you presses the button, I'll let that boat live. So, who's it going to be: Harvey Dent's most wanted scumbag collection, or the sweet and innocent civilians? You choose... oh, and you might want to decide quickly, because the people on the other boat might not be so noble."

By encouraging Americans to nurture fears of racial and ethnic competition, the Right similarly asks us to blow up one another. They ask citizens to see themselves as more worthy than their neighbor and to destroy others for the sake of self-preservation.

The Birther movement of the right wing is distinctly Joker-like in its sheer madness. By repeating their baseless claims, the Birther movement has managed to convince a sizeable portion of Southern, white Americans that President Obama may not have been born in the United States. As the bizarre strategy makes inroads into Americans' consciousness one can almost see some Birther leaders clapping their hands with the child-like mania of Ledger's Joker.

Nothing has been more reminiscent of Ledger's Joker than the current strategy of massive disruption at health care reform town hall meetings. The Joker blew up a hospital. The GOP is hoping to explode the effort for health care reform.

Our nation faces a crisis in health care. The massive economic downturn and rising unemployment make the limitations of employer provided health insurance clearer than ever. There is legitimate and reasonable disagreement on how we should address this problem. As legislators return home for the August break, town hall meetings are one forum for airing these disagreements and discussing alternatives.

Rather than organize Republican citizens to engage in thoughtful debate about an important political issue, GOP elected officials are supporting tactics of disruption and disturbance promoted by the insurance lobby. Their goal is to shut down conversation, confuse voters, and rattle members of Congress. To quote the Joker, "Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos."

The Dark Knight metaphor is completed by Blue Dog Democrats. Like the film's young politico Harvey Dent, they are turned by the Joker's chaos tactics into two-faced madmen wiling to leave the nation's future to chance.

Here the comic book ends. Unlike the Joker, the Right has goals beyond simple destruction. The GOP wants to win back Congressional seats and retake the White House. Rather than offer substantive alternatives, they are willing to flirt with the destructive forces of reckless chaos.

Americans cannot simply hope that a super hero is waiting to respond to the nation's distress signal. We will have to save ourselves. We can and must embrace the messy work of democracy and disagreement without descending into the destruction of meaningless chaos.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University.

If We Want Health Care We Have to Fight For It

I come from a family of organizers (my dad and my brother), so I'm intimately familiar with just how much work good organizing is. I also have a lot of guilt about the fact I'm not one. As hard as writing can sometimes be, it's orders of magnitudes easier (not to mention confers a lot more recognition and praise) than the unglamorous job of calling through lists, finding suitable meeting places, negotiating personalities, motivating busy and harried volunteers, etc...

For that reason, I'm always reluctant to use my writing platform to urge other people to organize. It feels cheap and easy. But with that disclaimed out of the way, I have to echo what Josh Marshall says here.

If you want health care, then do something about it. We are now in the middle of a fight. Fights are good. Democracy is fundamentally about the non-violent resolution of conflict, and we've got conflict. There is a small but very mobilized constituency of people and interests that want to kill health care reform. They have the advantage of being on the attack, or tearing down and criticizing and expressing their outrage. The job of advocates of reform is trickier, but unless there is a mobilization and concerted organized attempt to push elected representatives in a progressive direction they will succumb to the braying and bullying of tea-baggers. Find out if your congressman is having a town hall, and go. Find others to go with you. Let them know you will punish them if they don't support real reform. Call their offices. Show up at their offices.

It's on.

By: Christopher Hayes

Whose 'Teachable Moment' Is This?

We’ve heard President Barack Obama say that the Gates incident is a “teachable moment.” As an attorney and educator, I love teachable moments. However, as a black mother of 24- and 19-year-old sons, I’m confused about what it is that we’re learning. In particular, what lessons will the Cambridge police—and police officers across the nation—learn from this whole experience?

For over 15 years, my family and I have been the only black people in our upper middle-class neighborhood. On at least three occasions, our home alarm system has falsely summoned the police. I am eternally grateful for the alacrity and courtesy of the police officers who arrive immediately to the scene.

Each time, the officers either waited outside my residence or in the foyer of my home as I retrieved my photo ID to prove that I was not an intruder. And every time, the police left after seeing my ID. Had I been followed in my home by the police, I might have felt disrespected. I might have requested a name and badge number, too.

Would I have been arrested for disorderly conduct? One conceivable lesson from the Gates case is that an officer can determine that nearly anything said is disrespectful if the officer doesn’t appreciate a person’s tone. Throughout their lives, I have taught my sons the importance of being respectful to authority figures and to cooperate with police. I have also taught them to report police misconduct should they ever witness it.

Now, as a result of the Gates case, I fear that our home alarm might trip again while I’m away. And I’m afraid that the lessons I have taught my sons over the years may conflict with what officers across America have learned from this national debate on racial profiling.

What if a police officer, having learned from the Gates incident, decides that it is now OK to follow my sons around our home while they get their IDs rather than wait at the front door as they have always done in the past? What if one of my sons can’t find his ID or takes offense to being criminally implicated in our home? If they forget the lessons I have taught them, what if one of my sons is arrested because he is deemed “disrespectful”?

I fear for them and other black and Hispanic youth who may now be victimized more frequently by police—police who have learned from this case that they can arrest anyone who questions police behavior.

And what exactly is the example that we are setting now? Are we teaching others that people must waive their constitutional right to freedom of speech when a police officer is in their home? Or are we going to insist on some finite lessons for police on what constitutes “disorderly”?

Now that President Obama has backed away from his initial reaction to Professor Gates’ unfounded arrest, will some other “rogue” officer assume that they can get away with similar actions? Something positive must come out of this mess. The only lessons here cannot be for minorities to learn to waive their constitutional rights, to accept the fact that requesting a name and badge number may be perceived as disrespectful.

Maybe Obama, Crowley and Gates will emerge from their meeting with requisite clarity on how to proceed from here on out. Perhaps all my fears are nothing more than the irrational worries of a mother with two black sons in a country so concerned with race. But in “teachable moments” like these, I believe that lesson should go both ways. Shouldn’t all of us learn lessons in mutual respect and fairness?

Or is the real lesson here that the police can simply do whatever they want?

Crystal Arlene Kuykendall is president and general counsel for Kreative and Innovative Resources for Kids, Inc. (K.I.R.K.).

Making School Cool: America needs a new way to sell education to young, black men.

It was the sort of conversation writers dream of stumbling upon. Walking my clothes back home from the laundromat, I ended up behind two young men from Brooklyn -- both of them black, male and no older than 19. They were engaged in a discussion about higher education, the best part of which went like this:

Boy 1: "I'm tellin' you, son, you gotta get that master's degree."

Boy 2: "Oh, yeah? Why?"

Boy 1: "Because once a nigga get his master's, a nigga be bangin' women he thought he could never bang."

As a 20-something raised on the bawdy comedy of Eddie Murphy and George Carlin, my first instinct was to laugh—that conversation was the stuff Def Comedy Jam bits are made of. But as a writer keenly interested in African-American culture, my next instinct was to think, "Know what? Maybe he's onto something."

On July 14, President Barack Obama announced his American Graduation Initiative. By investing in the nation's community colleges and increasing financial aid for college students, the president hopes that America will have the world's highest proportion of college graduates by the year 2020 (both Russia and Canada currently beat our rates). Though not impossible, it's an ambitious goal by any measure, and reaching it is going to be considerably more strenuous if the black community continues struggling with education the way it has in the past.

By now, it's an age-old problem: How to keep African-American students interested in academics? More than that, how to get young black men—who continually underperform at school compared to black women—not just going through the motions in their classrooms until they're 18, but thriving in the educational environment? It's one of the hardest questions facing America today, and its difficulty is augmented by the question preceding it: Why don't many black men want to thrive in school?

One of the most compelling answers to that latter query—Why?—comes from Orlando Patterson, a Harvard sociology professor who's spent a large part of his career studying the habits of young African Americans. In a 2006 New York Times op-ed piece, Dr. Patterson discussed what his resarch told him about the academic failures of black male students. His conclusion was equally enlightening, frightening and pathetic:

So why were they flunking out? Their candid answer was that what sociologists call the "cool-pose culture" of young black men was simply too gratifying to give up. For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture, the fact that almost all the superstar athletes and a great many of the nation's best entertainers were black.

In short, to many young men in the inner city, a life full of material things is more attractive than a life of learning. Or, as the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. put it, "Money, hos and clothes—all a brother knows."

Later in his essay, Dr. Patterson suggests that academia take a "new approach" to understanding African-American men. I couldn’t agree more. But what exactly is the best “new approach” to take?

According to the United Negro College Fund, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." Succinct and true, this is the sort of cute sloganeering that's effective only if your audience is completely aware of what it can accomplish with its brain (if you don't understand the value of a $100 bill, why should you care if you lose it?). In the same vein, "Education is the greatest weapon," Mandela’s famous assertion, must be a laughable sentiment to a child whose neighborhood has been ravaged by drive-by shootings.

To at-risk African-American youths, gauzy, intangible catchphrases about the value of learning amount to nothing more than the ultimate instance of bringing a knife to a gunfight, almost literally. When President Barack Obama says, "The future belongs to the nation that best educates its people," kids in New Orleans who hear murders taking place outside their windows at night respond, "What future?"

In the wake of decades of failure, perhaps it's time to start taking our cues on how to sell education in the inner cities from the research of Dr. Patterson, or, better still, those two young men ambling down the sidewalk in Brooklyn that afternoon.

In 2008, seven states adopted a new plan to attract low-income and minority students to college-prep courses, the gist of which was simple: pay kids $100 for every advanced placement exam they pass. The states latched on to the idea after a similar program in Texas produced a 30 percent rise in the number of students with high SAT scores. The proof is there—money talks.

With that in mind, what's wrong with telling a 16-year-old boy, "You wanna meet exotic women? Go to school, work hard, get an international business degree and go start a company in Paris." What's wrong with saying to a kid who wants to be an iced-out rapper that the real money in music doesn't go to the performers, but to the record executives? "So instead of wasting time on a rap career that odds say will never materialize," you can tell him, "Why not go to college, study music and business, graduate and then work your way up at a label? And, if that's not glamorous enough, start a label!"

Knowing what we know about how deeply many of America's inner-city children value "cool," it's foolish to insist on trying to appeal to them with traditional, impractical platitudes about education. It shows a disconnect with reality and, almost certainly, it's a disconnect that exists because these marketing gimmicks are dreamed up by learned people who have come to know the inherent value of their brain.

Is it tacky to attract kids to education with material wealth? Absolutely. In fact, it’s practically the antithesis of much of what proper schooling should impart. But wouldn't you rather have another tacky plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills than another dead black kid in Compton?

Cord Jefferson is a writer living in Brooklyn. Some of his other work has appeared in National Geographic, The Daily Beast and on MTV.