Why African-Americans and Latinos Can't Vote

During the hundred years of Jim Crow, people of color were blocked from voting in a hundred different ways. From time to time leaders like President Grant would attempt to enfranchise non-whites by passing laws and amendments. For racist reasons, the laws and amendments ended up warped, ignored, circumvented or blocked in many places.

Something similar is going on today. Republican voter suppression and gerrymandering looks like racism, and no doubt that's the case in some instances, but most Republicans are not blocking black or brown voters because of their skin color. Most Republicans are not particularly racist. The Republican goal is to suppress Democrats. We--and our courts--ought to face that. It's an attack on democracy itself.

The Ballad of Oney Judge

Everyone liked Martha Washington, even Abigail Adams. Martha was kind, and she was kind to the more than one hundred human slaves she held in trust for the descendants of her first marriage. Oney Judge was her main maidservant and decidely Martha's favorite enslaved individual. You can imagine Oney's shock when Martha decided to give her as a wedding present to Martha's granddaughter, Eliza Custis, who was not a nice person to work for. Oney packed her clothes and slipped away, headed north. The Washingtons regarded this flight as an act of disloyalty, which was unforgivable.

If Oney had been one of George Washington's slaves, he might not have tried hard to recapture her. George owned many slaves, more than were useful in running his tobacco farms etc.  That was bad for his bottom line, and George was a bottom line guy. He actually wanted to get rid of some slaves, but he did not like to break up families, so he  couldn't sell them. George was also aware that slavery did not make sense in a nation devoted to liberty. He planned to free his slaves in his will (and did so). But Oney was not his disloyal slave. In a sense he had had her on loan. If he didn't recover her, he would owe the Custis estate her value, a lot of money. And he was a bottom line guy. 

Oney made it to New Hampshire, where she married and settled down, but Washington's contacts found her. Plans were laid to seize her and return her to slavery, but with the help of some decent people, Oney managed to flee in time and spent the rest of her life hiding, I guess. Washington never gave up. 

According to federal law, Washington had every right to demand the return of his wife's property. Some of the northern states, though, insisted that they reserved the right under the Constitution to defy federal law. That was before the Civil War, and if there was one thing the South detested more than abolitionists like Benjamin Franklyn, it was the satanic New England theory called states rights.
 

Hamilton's Corollary

If you teach at a college, one thing you notice is that the economics professors aren't rich. That's because they don't understand how the economy works or what will happen next.

This should not lead me to dismiss all economists. Adam Smith, the first capitalist economist, warned us that capitalism better be well regulated or greed would destroy the world. We should have listened to him.

Alexander Hamilton added a corollary important to democracies. If you let people vote, they will ask for food to sustain their lives. The government will borrow money to pay for food, going into debt. Chances are that it will never be able to repay the debt, but that won't matter, Hamilton realized, as long as the voters and the rest of the world don't notice. In short, it doesn't matter if you can repay the debt as long as people believe--mistakenly--that you will eventually pay it off. As long as people have faith in you, you can continue to borrow new money. And that is how government debt works--I'm  suggesting Germany and Greece read Alexander Hamilton.

Marco Rubio's Dog Whistle

When Donald T. Rump claimed that Barack Obama was not an American citizen, he was blowing a dog whistle, not directly calling the President an N-word in a way that every fool could hear but doing it indirectly in a way that racists could figure out and enjoy. He's doing something similar now to millions of undocumented Mexican workers in the United States, calling them rapists and so forth.

T. Rump is a loser, a mean clown from the world of dubious entertainments, but Sen. Marco Rubio may end up squatting someplace on the Republican national ticket. His recent comments that President Obama has "no class" are his racist dog whistles. As an observation "no class" is as absurd as T. Rump's claim that Obama is not American. It serves the same purpose--it's a silent N-word sent out to win support from right-wing Republican racist populists.

In general the history of Latin countries is less racist than the history of the United States.  Mexico freed its slaves about 35 years before we did. Los Angeles was founded, in large part, by mulato families like the Picos. But the Latino countries founded by Spain began with a Spanish caste system in which black people were at the bottom as slaves. Social prejudices that work against black people linger and can still be used by political manipulators in Florida to their own advantage. 

Toad in the Hole

I know little about English cooking or toad in the hole, which is sometimes sausages in Yorkshire pudding.  My cousin Dan introduced Susan and me to a cafe called Toad in the Hole in Railroad Square in Santa Rosa. The address is 116 Fifth St.  Anyway, I ate a pasty, a kind of meat pie, with a lot of pleasure. You can buy Irish beer, Dry Creek wines, etc. The phone is 707 544 8623 if you have questions. It's informal, a kind of pub, not expensive, a good place to go watch a soccer match on TV.  We intend to return.

A Critique of the Iran Deal

The Republicon Party, before reading the document, has developed a critique of the current Iran nuclear power agreement that deserves our close attention. What Republicons are telling us is that they want a better deal, and a new deal might be better. There's no denying that. A better deal would be an improvement on a deal that is less than better. The better deal would be, in at least some areas, superior. The logic of this argument in favor of an improved deal is unassailable. The deal we have today with Russia, China, Germany, France, Great Britain and Iran could be revised, refined and beautified. The benefits of an enhanced and polished deal are obvious. So we should reject the current deal and also reject President Obama who, as Sen. Marco Rubio pointed out yesterday, has "no class."

Rick Perry

Lizz Winstead, one of the founders of The Daily Show, said on TV last night that Rick Perry's new glasses are half empty.

The Worst Nation Ever

About 50 years ago it occurred to me that all large dominant nations tended to behave the same way, whether they were Hittites, Rome, China, Great Britain or Russia. That is, they bullied smaller countries, advanced their own interests, tortured prisoners, spied on weaker states, lied to themselves, etc. Each of these empires considered itself exceptional, unique in history. Americans think the USA is exceptional. The Right considers us exceptionally good and the Left, exceptionally bad. That's American exceptionalism--we are probably average as empires go.

Jim Crow and Press Democrat

Last Wednesday the Press Democrat, our county newspaper, printed a comment by its editorial board that defended the naming of two California schools for Gen. Robert E. Lee. They argued that Lee had "opposed the Civil War and rejected slavery but agreed to lead the Confederate army primarily out of devotion to his beloved Virginia." None of that is true, as any current historian would tell you. The Press Democrat, often a kind of middling centrist progressive paper, just repeated the Jim Crow history that was taught in our schools for about 100 years after the South lost the war but won the peace.

To start with, Lee never led the Confederate army. He commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, a subtle way of opposing the Civil War. Lee supported slavery, which he considered the will of God. He did believe that in the future God might change his mind. Lee was the sort of slave master who had insolent slaves whipped, including at least one black woman. When Lee's overseer refused to whip the woman, Lee sent for a public official who gave her 20 lashes. Lee was a traitor who was glorified by the South as a symbol of Confederate gentility after he'd gotten most of his soldiers killed and then surrendered and went home weeping. Naming public buildings for Lee insults the troops, white and black, who died fighting the last remaining slave nation in Western Civilization. 

What on earth went wrong at the Press Democrat? 

Complicity and Diction

It's worth looking at the assertion that every white American is "complicit" with racism. Being complicit calls for a deliberate choice. Being complicit is choosing to be involved in an illegal or immoral act, especially with others. If you tell the white girls in the fifth grade that they are complicit with racism, you are telling them that they all have made deliberate choices to be racists. That's probably not what you intend to claim.

Down Memory Lane: American Pie

This is a clip that puts together the song "American Pie" with the pictures and film clips that explain the references.

http://youtu.be/VhX3b1h7GQw

 

The Slaves of Robert E. Lee

There is a movement in California to remove the name of Robert E. Lee from several public buildings. Lee has defenders, of course, who support Lee with imaginary facts culled from misinformation they've been taught about the Civil War. One of their claims is that Lee freed his slaves. 

The truth is that Lee was wishy-washy about the institution of slavery, which he believed had been authorized by God. In time, Lee held, God would free the slaves but on his own schedule.

The slaves Lee freed were not his own. He had inherited them from his father-in-law, a better man than Lee. A descendant of Martha Washington's family, the father-in-law stated in his will that his slaves were to be freed over a five-year period. George Washington had done something similar in his will. The five year period gave the enslaved human beings time to learn trades and make plans.

Lee did, slowly, free the slaves as ordered, but apparently some of them grew impatient and were failing to follow orders with alacrity during the five years. Finding them insolent, Lee ordered three of them (two men and one woman) whipped. After the Civil War, five or six people who had been present (or whipped) wrote about the incident. Lee's overseer gave 50 lashes to each of the men but refused to whip the woman. Lee sent for county official who gave the woman twenty stripes as Lee supervised.

We should keep in mind that Lee got a lot of his own men killed in mindless charges against fortified American positions. Statistics show that it was more dangerous to be a private in Lee's army than in Grant's army. Lee was defeated in battle by Gen. Meade, a sound but second-rate leader, and then was beaten like a drum by Grant, an innovative military genius. Lee was a traitor to the United States, which had educated him at no cost to himself and then employed him until 1860. It makes no more sense to name state buildings for Lee than for Benedict Arnold or Braxton Bragg. 
    

The White Latinos

Not too long ago we learned that in Hawaii citizens of Asian descent outnumber white-skinned folks. New Mexico has a Latino plurality (Latinos are the largest group but not a majority). This week demographers informed us that Latinos outnumber whites in California. They reached that conclusion by counting white Latinos with Spanish names as Latinos and not counting them as whites. That's a little weird. But racial categories are flawed at their base.

Dividing people by the color of their skin is like dividing people into groups based on the shapes of their little toes. We are one species.

In Mexico about 5% of the population has a genetic background that is entirely European. Of course not all California Latinos came from Mexico.  Some have come from Argentina, where roughly 85% of the Latino population is of European descent.  Some immigrants have come from Spain.

Many Latinos from Argentina have Italian names. Maybe they weren't counted. 

In other  words, demographers have made a deliberate category mistake. They have contrasted people with Latino names, many of whom are genetically European or part-European, with people who are also genetically European or part-European but do not speak fluent Spanish.  Heck, I have known Latinos who don't speak Spanish but have Latino last names, which seems to be what matters to demographers. If I changed my name to Jaime Gonzales, I would be counted as Latino.

Why did demographers do this?

In assigning motives to people I don't know, I'd do well to be positive. I don't believe that demographers make their pronouncements in an attempt to encourage racism or Donald Trumpery.  By saying that Latinos outnumber whites, demographers are probably hoping to reinforce the respect Latinos deserve. I'm of Irish descent and Peruvians invented the potato. You know where I stand.

 

Fort Slavery, CA

Yesterday Susan and I returned from a visit with friends in Fort Bragg, about ten miles north of Mendocino. I had commented to our friends on the absurdity of naming a California town for Braxton Bragg.  Bragg was a famous traitor,  a famously vile personality, a famously failed Confederate general and the owner of 105 enslaved human beings he worked like robots on his plantation. 

Today I opened my newspaper to see a headline stating that a state senator has authored a bill that would strip the names of civil war traitors from state public property. Unfortunately it will leave the names of political entities like towns untouched.

Fort Bragg was founded and named before the Civil War. Bragg had been a minor hero of the Mexican War, in which the future generals of the Civil War took California from Mexico at gun point. President Polk wanted good ports on the Pacific. In the later Civil War, California supported the Union, but that support came mostly from the southern end of the state, where many Latinos, including the last Mexican governor, Pio Pico, were partly black.  Pico managed  Lincoln's re-election campaign in the state. The northern half of California housed a great many traitors, and their descendants, many of them meth heads, are likely to cling to the name of the nasty-tempered slave-owner known for fruitless head-on charges into fortified American positions. Innovative military leaders like General Grant were grimly pleased to hear that on the field of battle their opponent would be Bragg. Victory was at hand.

My suggestion is that Fort Bragg be renamed Fort Arnold. That's a compromise. Benedict Arnold fought half the Revolutionary War on our side and half for the British. He wasn't all bad.  

If Taylor Swift Were Shakespeare

 Eric Didriksen, not someone I know, has a web site called Pop Sonnets (I think)  on which pop lyrics get translated into Shakespearean terms. This illustrates that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Consider:

My reputation’s sown with rumors’ threads:
it’s said that I carouse, am void of wit,
and have amassed more beaus than Hydra’s heads
yet cannot make a single one commit.

For just as bakers must their loaves create
and thespians put on their fictive acts,
the ones who live in scorn shall always hate
I’ll from my shoulders shake their vile attacks.

(shake it off)