Heidi Li's Potpourri

Read the latest from a 51 Percent friend - letter to Attorney General Eric Holder

Please go to 51 Percent.

Barack Obama Martin Luther King Jr.; and the rest of us

I was asked today if I did not think I should be happy about President-elect Obama's election because he will be our first black president. My questioner was somebody who clearly is happy about President-elect Obama's presidency for precisely this reason. According to him Martin Luther King, Jr. would be similarly pleased.

Furthermore, according to my questioner, it is insulting to Dr. King's memory that I regard Dr. King as a teacher in my own quest to resist peer pressure, mobocracy, and authoritarianism in my own small, nascent efforts to seriously fight for the full civic and social standing of women in America and elsewhere.

In my conversation, I explained that I am extremely happy for those people of color, particularly black Americans, who feel more fully validated as Americans by living in a country led by a black person. (This post - just like the conversation - does not present an occasion to debate who counts as black or a person of color; such distinctions were out of order in the conversation. They would have been insulting to my questioner, who is black and would rightly point out that in most of this country most people have no problem saying who counts as such, despite the complex ways that individuals come to be seen as black or brown or white or whatever. I mean that: please do not use this post as an occasion to debate what it means to be black.) I then explained that beyond this very great happiness, the color of Mr. Obama's skin has nothing to do with whether the prospect of his presidency pleases me or dismays me. That was all that time permitted in this brief interlude of discussion during the day. But I have thought further on the matter.

With regard to Martin Luther King, Jr. I would not presume to surmise how he would have reacted to Mr. Obama. Dr. King was sometimes critical of other black leaders and nothing in his writings suggests that all black people are superior to all white people. Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of a type of equality, a society in which the color of one's skin was neither cause for shame or pride and where people, including his own children, were judged by the content of their character. As Dr. King so famously noted this dream is an American dream, not a black dream or a white dream.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

To the extent that Barack Obama's election represents the realization of Dr. King's dream, his election is an awesome, mighty event.

Yet Dr. King was, as we all are, a person of his time. So in this speech, given in 1963, he does not single out women as group separate from men who need to be included in the new age of equality that he envisioned. He refers over and over to men, not to people, but that again was the language of his time. Confusing language, but the language of the time. King knew of hatred between black men and white men, between Jews and Gentiles, and between Protestants and Catholics, knew all too well how this hatred was so often used to justify inegalitarian treatment by one group toward the other. King rejected the hatred that drove such inegalitarianism.

I share with King a delight in the idea of a day when people will be judged by the content of their characters. I dream of a day that may come as more people come to realize that nobody has championed the cause of full civic and social standing for women in the face of hatred against them, a day when people are judged by the content of their character rather than the kind of genitalia they possess.

In 2008, I saw a man stand idly by en route to his winning the White House while his supporters called women who ran against him or on a ticket against him, "ho" and "c*nt". He stood idly by while members of the press intimated that the adult daughter of one his opponents was prostituting herself by campaigning for her mother. That he stood by so idly had nothing to with the color of his skin. Plenty of white men in positions of political power or prestige also stood idly by while this went on. Some women of all colors stood idly by as well.

I have gone on to see the man who won the White House include in his inauguration another man, one who preaches hatred of gay people, the doctrine of wifely submission, and the comparison of the exercise of a woman's Constitutional right to an abortion to an act of Nazism. I have seen him refuse to disassociate himself from a speechwriter who, however stupidly, evidently had a great time pretending to cop a feel of the future Secretary of State - something he would not have done, I suspect, were she a man whose cardboard cutout just happened to be at the party he was attending. Both the preacher and the speechwriter are men, white men, so skin color does not come into the hatred and disrespect of women indicated by either man's words or gestures.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was, as we all are, a person of his time. So I do not presume to know what he would make of a man who stood idly by while women who ran against him or his ticket were exposed to hate speech; or what he would make of the inclusion of a woman-bashing preacher in a Presidential inauguration; or the retention of a sophomorically sexist speechwriter on a President's staff. But I find nothing in King's life or writing that suggests I as a woman am in any way disrespecting him when I take him as a model of a person who staunchly refused to accept arbitrary inegalitarianism and saw it as an obstacle to liberty, particularly liberty as understood in the American tradition. So far, I have not seen from Barack Obama a commitment to the elimination of the arbitrary inegalitarianism in the way men and women, boys and girls, are treated in America or indeed the world today. Unlike Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama has not made the cornerstone of his life or his political career the elimination of arbitrary inegalitarianism of the sort that makes the legitimate pursuit of liberty impossible. So Barack Obama does not provide me with a model for how to fight the fights I think need fighting: the overcoming of hatred of women, the effort to have people see women as people deserving of their full and rightful place in American society and around the world.

Martin Luther King, Jr. does.

Against the subjugation of women? Resist both infighting and selling out

Disagreements about how to end injustice, and specific injustices, are as old as injustice itself. Whether one is considering the injustices of colonialism, racist domination, oppression of women...in each and every one of these areas, those who can agree in broad general principle have often found themselves disagreeing over specifics, including some major ones. To make common cause does not magically bring about harmony.

When Gandhi fought to escape the injustices of British rule, he was opposed by people who resisted his ideas about throwing over caste distinctions. When Mandela picked up arms to fight apartheid, many withdrew their support from his movement. When King sought to expand his conception of civil rights to include equal access to economic opportunities, former and potential allies turned against him.

None of these examples of fights for justice achieved perfect justice, no more than the Civil War achieved a perfect Union. But I do believe that the U.S. Civil War achieved a more perfect union. Likewise, I believe the India of today is a far more equitable place than the India of one hundred years ago, that the South Africa of today, like the U.S. of today, has achieved within the past fifty years enormous strides toward racial justice.

My own dream is that within my lifetime, I see the progress toward the good of justice for women that Gandhi, Mandela, and King got to see the toward the goods of justice they pursued in their lifetimes. They managed to see results in their pursuits even though each had to learn when to resist pressures from people who genuinely shared their vision and when to resist the lure of becoming subservient to those who offered only short term funding and enrichment rather than truly shared commitment.

Now, even as I write this, millions of men and women are freshly galvanized to make it a reality that all the world comes to see women's rights as human rights, to see woman as just as much the paradigm representative of humanity as man, and therefore to see a woman's rights as indistinguishable from any human's rights. With all that energy comes passion and motivation. But with it comes too friction and infighting. With it too comes the willingness by some to give up the chance to speak truth to power, in order perhaps, to gain power, but nevertheless at the sacrifice of a chance to speak without fear of offending.

I believe that at the end of every day, and at the start of every morning, a person needs to be able to reflect upon herself or himself, and address these questions to herself or himself: if I am fighting for justice, am I making choices that do not compromise my integrity? What can I tolerate in allies even if I cannot join wholeheartedly in every step they take? Can I broaden my toleration without selling out my convictions?

Especially in the fight against the subjugation of women, men and women must ask themselves these questions, because one of the hardest obstacles to achieving progress toward the good of justice for women is the tendency toward infighting on the one hand and selling out on the other. Fighters for the empowerment of women tend to care about all sorts of injustice and obviously have some very basic differences, including differences in sex, race, and class. These differences can lead to fissures and cracks that can render the fight for justice for women, for justice for people, very tough going. But the common interest in justice for all must be used to resist the fissures and to repair them, when possible. What cannot be repaired is selling out. Certainly, one person's "sell-out" may be another person's "reasonable compromise". Personally, I believe in the necessity to question one's own choices in such matters very closely, because it is very tempting to see oneself as the reasonable compromiser, the unifier, the one who moves beyond "unnecessary" partisanship rather than to recognize in oneself the more natural tendency in human nature toward selling out.

For my own part, I prefer to err on the side of sticking to my convictions rather than losing them in a process of mollification and conciliation. If enough other people join me in those convictions, then they and I will not have to mollify and appease: we will ultimately have coming to us those who would now have us coming to them. We will be numerous enough and bonded together strongly enough in the fight for women's rights - the fight for human rights - to the point where will we have the upper hand, both ethically and tactically.

For my own part, I would rather take ten million baby steps toward the good without losing my footing in conscience than take a great leap and risk losing my moral compass. I will march with as wide a cohort as I can - even when we disagree on some things - in the name of reaching my goals. But I will not join ranks with those who are able to take heady leaps that gain them a seat at the local powerbroker's table or a grant of some of that powerbroker's money at the price of their integrity.

If ten million or twenty million or fifty-one million people choose to baby step along with me and I with them, we will, together, make the same rate of progress as those who choose to go it more or less alone. In the fight to beat misogyny and sexism, in the fight to achieve proper representation and empowerment for women, I expect great changes. I demand great changes. I will work toward great changes. But I know the greatest shifts toward justice take years to accomplish. To stick it out, every step forward must be appreciated and celebrated (e.g. Senator Clinton's name placed in nomination even at the admitted charade of a free and open Democratic Party convention) and every step backward must be condemned and resisted (e.g. the retention of a speechwriter for the President of the United States of America who participates in boorish, distasteful and sexist party shenanigans.) Time is on the side of those who fight for justice, so long as those who fight for justice do so with patience and tenacity, and resist the parallel temptations toward selling out or excessive infighting.

If you think images do not matter, would you welcome these into your child's library?

Ferris State University, in Big Rapids, Michigan is a historically black university. It is also home to one of the most interesting museums in the United States of America: The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. One on-line exhibit is devoted to The Picaninny Caricature.

From the museum's website:

The picaninny was the dominant racial caricature of Black children for most of this country's history. They were "child coons," miniature versions of Stepin Fetchit (see the section on the coon caricature). Picaninnies had bulging eyes, unkempt hair, red lips, and wide mouths into which they stuffed huge slices of watermelon. They were themselves tasty morsels for alligators. They were routinely shown on postcards, posters, and other ephemera being chased or eaten. Picaninnies were portrayed as nameless, shiftless natural buffoons running from alligators and toward fried chicken. [footnote omitted]

Some of the images presented as examples of hateful imagery:

 

The museum also has online exhibits dedicated to depictions at the intersection of misogyny and race hatred. Two of these are here and here. From The Mammy Caricature:

• Is this funny?
• Is this cute?

If one of President-elect Obama's staff members had posed in the lap of a cardboard cut out with this mask photoshopped as the head, would that person still have a job?

A slogan from the Museum:

"THESE IMAGES FORCE A PERSON TO TAKE A STAND FOR OR AGAINST THE EQUALITY OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS."

Historical precedent for a new wave of empowerment for those left hungry for it by this election season

Often as I have written about next political steps after November 4 - regardless of what happens on November 4 - in terms of remedying the misogyny run rampant this election season. But I do not mean to suggest that it has been only women who were disregarded or disrespected this political season. On the Democratic side of things over 18 million people found themselves with a Party leadership that decided that regardless of how people voted an indeterminate result was for that leadership to decide the candidate. Millions of those 18 million were men, and not all were even Democrats - some were Independents or Republicans. (I cannot speak with any authority about the Republican side of things - a better source might be found here.) After the election and post-election frenzy subsides we will need to come together to find a way to make our political parties, the legislature, and the executive more responsive to more of the electorate. To prepare myself, I am studying a number of leaders and historical movements that achieved more democratic, more responsive government, without resorting to civil war. I have discussed the  black civil rights movement of the latter part of the twentieth century; the noncooperation movement led by M.K. Gandhi; Franklin Roosevelt's implementation of a New Deal between government and governed, business and labor; and have begun now to examine more closely the American suffragist movement. I will continue to gather and share information and ideas from a variety of democratic struggles.

Each of the photographs below comes from the Women of Protest collection in The Library of Congress. This collection is a treasure trove for those men and women considering precedents for organizing the expansion of political opportunity not just for women but for all those whose votes were ignored this political season and who will be seeking Democratic Party reform or, in the alternative, the formation of a new party (still in my opinion the harder route, but not one I would rule out). There are further photographs and background notes on the National Women's Party's lobbyists and national organizers, among other notable NWP members. Consider starting with the excellent online historical overview of the NWP, and downloading full essay on the topic. Then delve throughout the site - there's more there than I can highlight here.

Iris Calderhead, daughter of former Representative Calderhead and wife of John Brisben Walker, of Colorado. Miss Calderhead is a graduate of the university of Kansas, and Vermont. Gave up teaching literature in Wichita (Kansas) High School to organize for the National Woman's Party, and was one of the group arrested for picketing the White House with suffrage banners.

Ernestine Hara, New York City, young Romanian, arrested for picketing Sept., 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.

Nell Mercer of Norfolk, Virg., was a member of the Norfolk branch of the NWP. She was a business woman. In February 1919, she was arrested for participation in the final watchfire demonstration and sentenced to five days in the District Jail.

Elizabeth Stuyvesant, State Organizer, National Woman's Party, her great-grandfather died in the Revolution, her grandfather in the Civil War, and her brother is fighting in France. Five years of social work in New York City brought her to the determination to join the fight for woman's political liberty--Suffrage. Stuyvesant was a professional dancer. She was active in settlement work and in the campaign for birth control. On July 4, 1917, she was arrested while picketing the White House for suffrage and sentenced to three days in District Jail.

Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk, Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."  Helena Hill Weed of Norwalk, Conn., was a graduate of Vassar College and Montana School of Mines. She was a geologist, a daughter of a member of Congress, and a vice-president of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). She was a prominent member of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the NWP. She was one of the first pickets arrested, July 4, 1917, and served three days in District Jail. In January 1918, she was arrested for applauding in court and sentenced to 24 hours, and in August 1918 she was arrested for participation in Lafayette Square meeting, and sentenced to 15 days.

A song for this political season

WOMAN IS THE NIGGER OF THE WORLD
Album : Sometime in New York City
John Lennon - 1972


Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is... think about it
Woman is the nigger of the world
Think about it... do something about it

We make her paint her face and dance
If she won't be a slave, we say that she don't love us
If she's real, we say she's trying to be a man
While putting her down we pretend that she's above us

Woman is the nigger of the world.. yes she is
If you don't believe me, take a look at the one you're with
Woman is the slave of the slaves
Ah, yeh... better scream about it

We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother hen
We tell her home is the only place she should be
Then we complain that she's too unworldly to be our friend

Woman is the nigger of the world... yes she is
If you don't believe me, take a look at the one you're with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Yeh (think about it)

We insult her every day on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she's young, we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart
We put her down for being so dumb

Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is...
If you don't believe me, take a look at the one you're with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Yes, she is...
If you believe me, you better scream about it

We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance

John McCain and Barack Obama have a once in a lifetime opportunity

"Effigies of Barack Obama were hung on the University of Kentucky campus and outside a home in Indiana after authorities said an effigy of Sarah Palin in California was offensive, but not a hate crime."

--FoxNews.com

I do not believe that the best way for political leaders to deal with unacceptable hate speech is to call for it to be legally defined as such or demand that it be prosecuted. By the time the legal issues in this contentious area are decided in any particular case the moment for political leadership is past.

I do believe that that those who claim to be political leaders,especially in times of turmoil, must prove their mettle. The rash of so-called Halloween displays depicting lynchings of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin is symptomatic of one part of the turmoil our country is currently undergoing. It is no less grave than the economic turmoil, nor any of the other ills we will expect a new administration and Congress to to take on (the spread of terrorism and overall rise in political violence abroad, the underprotection of civil liberties in the U.S., global warming, universal health care, to name just a few.)

The social ill that these effigies represent is bigotry. As the Presidential campaign comes down to the wire, both candidates are busy attacking and questioning one another as much as, if not more than, specifically detailing what they plan to do about anything if and when inaugurated. And thus, both candidates are not only failing to address the social ill of bigotry, they are contributing to an atmosphere in which public displays of bigotry are acceptable.

If John McCain and Barack Obama each cared about the country as much as each man claims to, they would announce a joint press conference, surround themselves and issue a joint statement objecting to racism and misogyny, both in general and as these forms of bigotry have manifested themselves this election cycle. For the issue of bigotry in political discourse transcends policy differences. In a country riven by racism and misogyny, too many politicians play to those factors rather than pay attention to the policy matters. By doing so they contribute to a sick political environment, one that cannot foster good programs related to economic welfare, world peace, civil liberties, or environmental preservation.

John McCain and Barack Obama have a once in a lifetime opportunity. Two presidential candidates fighting one another hard to lead this country on the basis of different policies could join together to address an issue that transcends and in some ways is more fundamental than policy differences or even the policy matters at stake. In a genuine democracy in a diverse society, the mission of true political leaders (not all of whom are elected politicians) must be to create a political and civil environment in which participants of every color and each gender feel free to participate. Nothing would go so far as to demonstrate both Senator McCain's and Senator Obama's commitment to such an environment than for them to join together and speak as one on this topic.

Many people will read this piece and think to themselves, "She's dreaming. Politicians in the final days of a presidential election are not going to do this sort of thing." To which, I say: yes, I am dreaming - but also demanding - that both Senator Obama and Senator McCain prove themselves to be something more than mere politicians, that they take this opportunity to prove that they are genuine political leaders. As for whether my dream is unrealistic, that depends on the actual character of the two men fighting to become our nation's next president. Other presidents and other Americans have proven their ability to rise to an occasion, to transcend normal politics, and show real leadership. Let us see whether the current aspirants to the presidency have the same ability.

UPDATE: Look, ordinary citizens can show the Senators the way.

Racism is vile. Misogyny is vile. And election tampering does not redress either.

Unfortunately, in the new era of the Democratic Party, brought to us by Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi, when one objects to misogyny people assume that one condones racism. I have been writing in recent posts about the misogyny that has surfaced in this political season. In various places and in comments left for me, some have complained that I have not objected to racism directed at Senator Obama.

Racism is vile. To demean, degrade, threaten, or disrespect anybody because of the color of her or his skin is unequivocally unacceptable and reprehensible. To refuse to vote for somebody simply because of the color of his or her skin is unacceptable.

I believe the same holds with regard to gender. To revile misogyny is not to accept racial bigotry. Bigotry, in all its forms, is a pervasive problem in American life. That this must be spelled out in the year 2008, among Democrats, is a sorry reflection upon the state of the Democratic Party and the state of the union.

I lay the blame for the need to state that my objections to misogyny are no excuse for racism squarely at the feet of Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi.

When confronted with the end of a primary season where the two leading contenders for the Democratic Party nomination happened to be a black male and a white female, Chairman  Dean and Speaker Pelosi choked. Instead of leaving the nomination to a free and noncoerced floor vote - or votes, if balloting took more than one round - Dean and Pelosi chose to rig the eventual nomination, risking the legitimacy of the outcome. This has opened the door to suspicions that those who object to the outcome base their objection on something other than the fact the Democratic Party, the self-proclaimed party protector of voting rights since the mid-1960s, tampered with its own election.  I do not know why Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi chose to rig the Democratic nomination; I do not know why they chose to rig the nomination in favor of Barack Obama, a black man, rather than Hillary Clinton, a white woman. Doing this has damaged both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton. Senator Obama appears to have profited from a corrupt process at the expense of Senator Clinton. Senator Clinton seems to have had to do back flips to demonstrate her commitment to the Democratic Party, thereby costing her credibility with many primary voters who shared her primary season objections to Senator Obama's qualifications and substantive positions.

As for the rest of us, the Dean-Pelosi decision means that we must state the obvious, at the risk of being boring.

At that risk, here's the obvious:

Objecting to corrupt electioneering practices or corrupt elections (within a political party or in general elections) is an entirely separate issue from condemning racism or misogyny. And condemning misogyny, and those politicians who will not step up and object to it, is an entirely separate issue from condemning racism and those politicians who will not step up and object to it. Election corruption and bigotry are bad and bad for America. Bigotry in all forms is bad and bad for America. Election tampering is bad in any democratic venture, bad for democracy and bad for America.