Speaking of Merchants of Hate…

Check this out:

Via The Mahatma X Files.

Rachel Corrie: April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003

Kevin Hayden has videos, and a photograph of Rachel immediately after she was killed. It’s a close-up of her face, and it ain’t pretty. Look at it only if you’re feeling strong.

James, at the Mahatma X Files, has an eyewitness account of how she died, as well as many links to information about her life and the events surrounding her death.

In a comment to Kevin’s post, the talking dog notes the odd timing of her death — three days before the U.S. invaded Iraq:

Ms. Corrie’s is one of the saddest stories of someone trying to do the right thing. What was even worse was her abysmal sense of timing, as just days after her death, “shock and awe” blew up the first wave of innocent bystanders in Iraq, to be met by the following five years of nation-un-building at American hands (which, at $3 trillion, 4,000 American lives, and countless Iraqi lives, may help un-build our nation too).

You are remembered and missed, Rachel. Rest in peace.

The Third Rail of American Politics

It’s immigration. It’s Social Security. It’s taxes.

Wrong.

It’s the color line.

Taking the “wrong” position on Social Security, or on taxes, or on immigration might cost you an election, if you’re a politician. It might lead to a heated argument. But no one would say that Social Security, or taxes, or immigration are not real and actual issues. No one would argue that Social Security is not real, that there is no such thing as immigration, that taxes do not exist — and that anyone who suggests otherwise is a “dangerous” and “divisive” provocateur.

Yet that is exactly what happens when anyone — but especially a black person — brings up the color line, either directly or by implication.

Answers.com defines the color line as “a barrier, created by custom, law, or economic differences, separating nonwhite persons from whites.”

Arguably the most well-known mention of the color line was in 1903, when W.E.B. DuBois said, about his book The Souls of Black Folk, “Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.”

But it was Frederick Douglass who first wrote about the color line, in an essay by that title:

… Out of the depths of slavery has come this prejudice and this color line. It is broad enough and black enough to explain all the malign influences which assail the newly emancipated millions to-day. In reply to this argument it will perhaps be said that the negro has no slavery now to contend with, and that having been free during the last sixteen years, he ought by this time to have contradicted the degrading qualities which slavery formerly ascribed to him. All very true as to the letter, but utterly false as to the spirit. Slavery is indeed gone, but its shadow still lingers over the country and poisons more or less the moral atmosphere of all sections of the republic. The money motive for assailing the negro which slavery represented is indeed absent, but love of power and dominion, strengthened by two centuries of irresponsible power, still remains.

And so it still does, up to the present day.

The color line has never been only a physical barrier, like the one that stood between African-Americans and the front of the bus, or the sign on the water fountain that said “Whites Only.” It’s not even just the barrier that lies between a black person and a particular job or career. Such barriers as these are relatively easy to see and to remove. They’re tangible, if not always literally visible.

The color line is also a barrier of the heart and mind. It’s a barrier of perception, of viewpoint, of understanding. Things look very different depending on what side of the line you’re standing on.

Rich Lowry quotes a passage in Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, in which Obama recalls one of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons.

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope.

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill…

The emphasis is Lowry’s — added as evidence for the point of his post, which is that Obama was not being truthful when he said he had only recently heard about the controversial remarks Rev. Wright had made (emphasis mine):

Before he ever thought he would have to deploy Clintonesque spin to try to get himself out of a campaign controversy, Barack Obama wrote (an achingly good) memoir. In the book, Obama makes it clear that Wright when he first got to know him was pretty much the same Wright we’re getting to know now (the one that Obama is at pains to say is on the verge of retirement). Wright was striking some of the same notes, saying racially venomous things and attacking the bombing of Hiroshima. Note this passage about the first sermon Obama heard from Wright, the source ultimately of the title of Obama’s second book and one of the central themes of his presidential campaign[.] …

What Lowry sees as “racially venomous” — most of the world’s wealth and power is in the hands of whites, and most of the people who have nothing are nonwhite — is really rather an unremarkable statement to an audience of African-Americans. For centuries, most of this country’s wealth and power was in the hands of whites, and the people who most consistently had little or no wealth and power and who suffered the most were blacks. But that’s the historical reality on Rev. Wright’s side of the color line, and Rich Lowry, being on the opposite side of that line, does not have to see that reality, acknowledge it, or know anything about it if he chooses not to.

Here’s another example of the same thing, from Paul at Power Line (emphasis mine):

Wright’s statment [sic] span [sic] a full range of issues including (just to mention some that have come to light so far) America’s treatment of its citizens (some are treated as less than human); America’s overall approach to the world (horrible enough to deserve 9/11); Israel and Palestine (Israel commits war crimes with U.S. assistance); World War II (it was criminal for the U.S. to bring the war with Japan to a successful conclusion the way it did); and HIV (he suspects the U.S. government of helping to spread the virus). As ABC News said, its “review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S.” And let’s not forget Wright’s decision to honor Louis Farrakhan.

A full range of issues “that have come to light so far”? That America treats some of its citizens as less than human and has done so from the country’s inception? That Israel violates international law on a daily basis and is assisted in doing that by the U.S. government? That the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes? These are assertions that “have just come to light” for Paul?

If Paul’s historical reality included almost 250 years of brutality and atrocity within the institution of slavery, and then 100 years of being subjugated, terrorized, beaten, murdered, humiliated, and persecuted after slavery ended, and then continuing decades of ongoing discrimination, stereotyping, and generally being made to feel less than human, then he too might be sensitized to the horror of the incineration and irradiation of human beings; might take it as a given that America has always treated and still treats, some of its citizens as less than human; might even identify with Palestinians as a people who have had everything taken away from them and treated as though they don’t belong anywhere or even have a right to be on the planet.

But if Paul did have that perspective, he would be on the other side of the color line, OR, he would be aware that there was such a thing as the color line, and would be capable of grasping the concept that what you have experienced has everything to do with how you see the world. Right or wrong.

But he doesn’t, and he’s not alone.

This is the first of a number of posts I intend to write on this subject. Exactly how many, I don’t know yet. I do know that there is much more I want to say, and that needs to be said, than I am prepared to put into one post. So, stay tuned.

Hoover –> Paulson

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson certainly must have been channeling President Herbert Hoover when he made these statements reported in the WaPo

“You know, how much can government do?” Paulson said on “Fox News Sunday. “But this administration has been focused on this.”

It was difficult for me to sit and watch George Stephanopoulos’ interview with Paulson. I was thinking, “Is Paulson that dumb and does he think that I am believing this nonsense?”

There can be no doubt: Bush and Paulson are a significant part of the problem.

Prof Krugman – The Economy

Right now the big deal with the “right-wing-noise-machine” is the pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright and some of his sermons, of the church Senator Obama has attended for the last twenty years. Racism and its effect on the general election, I’ll leave that to my esteemed colleague, Kathy. I am going to keep focusing on Economic issues. And before summer gets here, I believe, the war in Iraq and racism and all other issues will take a back seat to the crumbling economy.

Here is Professor Krugman’s most recent column in the New York Times and I will leave you with this tidbit from it

I used to think that the major issues facing the next president would be how to get out of Iraq and what to do about health care. At this point, however, I suspect that the biggest problem for the next administration will be figuring out which parts of the financial system to bail out, how to pay the cleanup bills and how to explain what it’s doing to an angry public.

Thought of the Day

Racism – will it ever stop rearing its ugly head in America?

Chief