Charley James: The current draft of Jackson’s proposed law seems to take advantage of a little-noticed and seldom mentioned part of Bush v. Gore requiring state voter franchise laws apply equally to all.
Yankee Republicans Big Jim Eastland Could Have Loved
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Berry Craig: Even in the Empire State and elsewhere up north and out west, the GOP is largely what the Eastland wing of the Democratic party used to be: the white peoples’ party.
Voting Rights and Wrongs
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Tom Degan: What the right-wing extremists who control the Republican party have in mind for this November the sixth is nothing less than an electoral coup d’etat.
Trayvon Martin: When Fear and Hostility Drive Public Policy
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Sharon Kyle: At a minimum, let’s hope the Trayvon Martin tragedy — like the Emmett Till tragedy years ago — puts a spotlight on the danger of allowing fear and hostility to drive social policy.
Occupy Birmingham
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Jim Rhodes: The mainstream press has been critical of Occupy’s “failure” to provide alternative solutions, but I assure you they are being developed in spite of the built in mechanisms that guarantee failure.
Let’s Stop Blaming Immigrants
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Alvaro Huerta: Whether it’s Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., blaming the wildfires in the Southwest on immigrants coming across the border or whether it’s the state of Alabama passing the harshest anti-immigrant law in the country, it’s clear that brown-skinned immigrants have become the targets of the day.
Saying ‘I’m Not a Racist’ — Honestly
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Steve Hochstadt: I was born into this American racist consensus and I have lived to see its demise. The greatest proof that we are nearing the end of this idea is the constantly repeated claim, “I am not a racist.”
Americans Would Doom an American Reconstruction Effort
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David Love: I’m betting on Japan to win this, with their ganbatte spirit, highly educated workforce, long-term strategy and dedication to technological advancement.
Still Fighting the Civil War in South Carolina
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Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, History News Service: At a gala celebration Monday in Charleston to mark the sesquicentennial of South Carolina’s secession from the Union in 1860, the chief cause of secession—slavery—will be ignored. Historians Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts see this as yet another episode in a 150-year struggle over public memory in South Carolina and America.
Andrew Breitbart and Post Racial America
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Mario Solis-Marich: The swift reaction of the Obama administration in the notorious incident of Shirley Sherrod is an indication that the fear of the accusation of racism against white Americans has spread into official Washington.
Let Us Expand the Definition of Terrorism
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David A. Love: The terrorist-as-enemy-of-America is like the bogeyman of Red Scare fame, ubiquitous yet elusive, and you can’t quite put your finger on them because they’re tricky. The definition of terrorism itself can serve as a political weapon—a form of terrorism itself, dare I say. Call someone a terrorist, or a communist or socialist or supporter thereof, and you delegitimize everything that person has to say. You marginalize everything that person represents.
What in the Sam Hill Is Wrong with Arizona?
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David A. Love: I don’t know what it is exactly about Arizona, but I do know that the state needs to be boycotted like a Montgomery bus. That state must realize that you cannot treat any group of people as lesser than the rest, nor can you disrespect the country’s largest minority group and expect to emerge unscathed. There must be a price to pay this time, and what better place to start than with the Arizona economy? When an Arizona lawmaker wants to boycott his own state, you know how bad it is.
The Usual Suspects: Arizona and the Black/Latino Divide
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Homegrown black support for or ambivalence about the Arizona law is symptomatic of a deep vein of frustration, anger, cultural resentment and xenophobia. Study after study indicates that African Americans are the most residentially segregated, suffer the greatest discrimination in job application and employment, and are amongst the biggest recipients of predatory mortgage loans.
Where’s the Religious Left?
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Perhaps the only figure with national stature on the “religious left” who has been consistently vocal in his opposition to fundamentalist Christian orthodoxy has been Jimmy Carter. Clearly, if a comparable coalition existed on the Left the Religious Right’s moral and political influence on such issues as abortion, same sex marriage, stem cell research and intelligent design would be balanced by dissenting forces. That such a coalition does not exist underscores the bankruptcy of organized religion’s monopoly on morality and moral principle.
Prop 8, Jim Crow, Nuremberg, and Other Unjust Laws
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Forty years ago, in many states, my marriage to my wife would have been illegal. In fact, we would have been regarded as criminals and locked up for miscegenation, or “race-mixing” as they called it. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, which found that [...]
Obama: Historical Immortality at 47
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The moment when Hillary Rodham Clinton suspended the state-by-state roll call vote she had demanded, moving for the 2008 Democratic Convention to nominate Senator Barack Obama by acclamation, was extraordinary. Network cameras, inevitably, zeroed in on African-Americans, young and old, beaming, as tears poured down their cheeks.
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