The resolution passed today in the U.S. House of Representatives, condemning Trump’s racist comments directed at Members of Congress is an amazing piece of writing. Its primary author is U.S. Congressman Thomasz Malinowski [D-NJ], who is, himself, an immigrant and, judging from the inspiring language of his resolution, a damn fine writer, thinker and believer in the ideals that Americans love to tout [but not always live by]. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could disagree with the sentiments expressed in this eloquent document. He quotes Ronald Reagan, for goodness sake, implicitly asking Republicans to choose the optimistic views of their erstwhile patron saint over the carnage of Trump. And yet, only four Republicans had the courage to buck Trump and vote for the measure. Really, though, it shouldn’t take very much courage at all to agree with the basic principles set out in this resolution, or to at least voice concern about the continuous river of hate speech spewing from the highest office in the land. When only four Republicans and one Independent tiptoe over the line to side with decency, we are living in a dangerous world. I applaud Democrats for taking this stand, even if it won’t change a single mind.

Here’s the full text of the resolution. Kudos to Malinowski. We need to hear more from him.

RESOLUTION

Condemning President Trump’s racist comments directed at Members of Congress.

Whereas the Founders conceived America as a haven of refuge for people fleeing from religious and political persecution, and Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison all emphasized that the Nation gained as it attracted new people in search of freedom and livelihood for their families;

Whereas the Declaration of Independence defined America as a covenant based on equality, the unalienable Rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and government by the consent of the people;

Whereas Benjamin Franklin said at the Constitutional convention, “When foreigners after looking about for some other Country in which they can obtain more happiness, give a preference to ours, it is a proof of attachment which ought to excite our confidence and affection”;

Whereas President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists”;

Whereas immigration of people from all over the Earth has defined every stage of American history and propelled our social, economic, political, scientific, cultural, artistic, and technological progress as a people, and all Americans, except for the descendants of Native people and enslaved African-Americans, are immigrants or descendants of immigrants;

Whereas the commitment to immigration and asylum has been not a partisan cause but a powerful national value that has infused the work of many Presidents;

Whereas American patriotism is defined not by race or ethnicity but by devotion to the Constitutional ideals of equality, liberty, inclusion, and democracy and by service to our communities and struggle for the common good;

Whereas President John F. Kennedy, whose family came to the United States from Ireland, stated in his 1958 book “A Nation of Immigrants” that “The contribution of immigrants can be seen in every aspect of our national life. We see it in religion, in politics, in business, in the arts, in education, even in athletics and entertainment. There is no part of our nation that has not been touched by our immigrant background. Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life.”;

Whereas President Ronald Reagan in his last speech as President conveyed “An observation about a country which I love”;

Whereas as President Reagan observed, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, our grandparents, and our ancestors, and it is the Statue of Liberty and its values that give us our great and special place in the world;

Whereas other countries may seek to compete with us, but in one vital area, as “a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close”;

Whereas it is the great life force of “each generation of new Americans that guarantees that America’s triumph shall continue unsurpassed” through the 21st century and beyond and is part of the “magical, intoxicating power of America”;

Whereas this is “one of the most important sources of America’s greatness: we lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world, and by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation”;

Whereas “thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge”, always leading the world to the next frontier;

Whereas this openness is vital to our future as a Nation, and “if we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost”; and

Whereas President Trump’s racist comments have legitimized fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color: Now, therefore, be it resolved, That the House of Representatives —

(1) believes that immigrants and their descendants have made America stronger, and that those who take the oath of citizenship are every bit as American as those whose families have lived in the United States for many generations;

(2) is committed to keeping America open to those lawfully seeking refuge and asylum from violence and oppression, and those who are willing to work hard to live the American Dream, no matter their race, ethnicity, faith, or country of origin; and

(3) condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color by saying that our fellow Americans who are immigrants, and those who may look to the President like immigrants, should “go back” to other countries, by referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as “invaders,” and by saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants (or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants) do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.

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At a ceremony honoring Native American code-talkers, Donald Trump managed to work in one of his favorite slurs—calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.”  I don’t think he planned to say it. It just came out—like all of his mindless blurts—possibly because standing next to Native Americans triggered a Trumpian synapse in his wandering mind—causing a Homer-Simpson-like internal dialogue: “Hmmm. Native Americans. Elizabeth Warren. Pocahontas. That’s a good one.”

What he actually said was incongruous and rather incoherent, as always—more a tweet than a statement. “You were here long before any of us were here,” he said, standing—ironically—in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson, who was notorious as a killer of Native Americans. “Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her ‘Pocahontas.’”

But, although it was an egregious and seemingly nonsensical non-sequitur, the Native Americans on stage, and many who saw it on the news, took his remark for what it was: a racial slur. In response, the National Congress of American Indians [NCAI] issued a letter condemning Trump for his remark. The Navajo Nation weighed in, too. Here are their responses:

“We regret that the President’s use of the name Pocahontas as a slur to insult a political adversary is overshadowing the true purpose of today’s White House ceremony,” stated NCAI President Jefferson Keel, “Today was about recognizing the remarkable courage and invaluable contributions of our Native code talkers. That’s who we honor and everyday — the three code talkers present at the White House representing the 10 other elderly living code talkers who were unable to join them, and the hundreds of other code talkers from the Cherokee, Choctaw, Comanche, Lakota, Meskwaki, Mohawk, Navajo, Tlingit, and other tribes who served during World Wars I and II.”

Trump’s unthinking remark also indicates that he has no idea—nor does he care—that there are dozens of Native American tribes, that all Native Americans are not alike, and that his use of the name Pocahontas to represent all Native Americans is insulting.

The Navajo Nation saw ignorance at play, too. In a statement, Navajo Nation Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty said:

“Trump’s careless comment is the latest example of systemic, deep-seated ignorance of Native Americans and our intrinsic right to exist and practice our ways of life…The Navajo Code Talkers are not pawns to advance a personal grudge, or promote false narratives. Such pandering dishonors the sacrifice of our national heroes.

Crotty also called Trump’s remarks a “display of immaturity and short-sightedness,” and his use of the name Pocahontas to refer to a political adversary as “antics.”

Other Native American groups and individuals agreed that Trump intentionally uses “Pocahontas” as a slur.

“I think [the comment] revealed his deep racism toward Native people,” said Andrew Curley, with the Bordertown [AZ] Justice Coalition. “I grew up being insulted by white people who threw around terms like ‘Pocahontas’ and ‘Trail of Tears’ to make fun of you,” he said.

“It’s very frustrating that Donald Trump does not see Native people through any other lens other than stereotypes,” said Amanda Blackhorse,  a Navajo social worker and Native-issues advocate.

To put this latest racial slur against Native Americans in context, it should be noted that Trump has a long history of bad behavior regarding Native Americans.

Donald Trump claimed that Indian reservations had fallen under mob control. He secretly paid for more than $1 million in ads that portrayed members of a tribe in Upstate New York as cocaine traffickers and career criminals. And he suggested in testimony and in media appearances that dark-skinned Native Americans in Connecticut were faking their ancestry.

“I think I might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians that are trying to open up the reservations,” Trump said during a 1993 radio interview with shock jock Don Imus.

Trump’s harsh rhetoric on Native Americans was part of his aggressive war on the expanding Native American casino industry during the 1990s, which posed a threat to his gambling empire. The racially tinged remarks and broad-brush characterizations that Trump employed against Indian tribes for over a decade provided an early glimpse of the kind of incendiary language that he would use about racial and ethnic groups in the 2016 presidential campaign.

It’s very frustrating, too, that Donald Trump continues to get away with these kinds of behaviors, does not feel a need to apologize or to educate himself, feels empowered to say whatever he wants whenever he wants to, and continues to have the support of a scary base of voters and the leadership of the Republican party.

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Hillary Clinton, I hate to break it to you, but we do have to make America great (again).

Now, before Donald Trump makes me his new Brown Muslim friend and tries to seat me behind him at a rally within camera-frame, let me reiterate that I find him despicable and think his plans would make America worse.

But he’s marginally right in the idea that we do need to work America great, although I’m still questioning the “again” bit. I believe that America has a lot of potential to be great, but I think as a country we make a lot of poor decisions and that in order to be a great country, we need to make a whole lot fewer poor decisions. Like a whole lot fewer.

Number one on that list, of course, would be not electing Donald Trump. Or, actually, any of the other GOP presidential candidates who are, in essence, espousing the same thing as him in a slightly less abrasive manner.

In fact Donald Trump represents, in many ways, everything that is wrong with America. As many have pointed out, Trump is racist, sexist, xenophobic, ableist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and on and on. Trump’s America has no room for anyone, really, other than old, White, Christian, cis, straight, wealthy men. And to far too great an extent, the nation already looks like that.

Think institutionalized racism, discriminatory housing policies, racial profiling, police brutality.Think being banned from being married, fired from your job for who you love, killed for the way you identify. Think restrictive immigrant policies, mass deportations, labor trafficking, less than minimum wage jobs. Think being shamed and mocked for a disability, being physically denied access to buildings, being told to “just get over” mental illness. Think being banned from the country for the religion you practice, being spied on, suspected as terrorists on every street corner, stopped at every airport, killed for your (perceived) faith. Think slashing welfare that allows you to eat, homelessness, mass unemployment, being called a social loafer, crippling student debt. Think rape culture, catcalling, gender pay gap, victim-blaming, luxury taxes on tampons, rape test backlogs.

These are institutional injustices built into the fundamental systems of the United States because of the history of our country. They’re why I hesitate to say “great again” and why I absolutely can’t say that America is already perfectly great.

There are plenty of ways to make America great, but adding to that list is not any of them. We have to get rid of the flaws in the system that leave people out, that hurt them, that oppress them. Not exacerbate those flaws.

The first step to which means that we must recognize they exist. So, sorry Hillary Clinton, I can’t believe you when you say “America is already great.” You’re almost as wrong as Donald Trump.

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When a person is arrested for probable cause, a prosecutor convenes a grand jury in order to bring an indictment. But, St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCullough used the grand jury not to indict, but to exonerate Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown. In doing so, he stood the judicial process on its head.

In McCullough’s statement to the press he made sure to undermine the credibility of witnesses who testified against Wilson. He described how they misrepresented the facts, had faulty memories,  withdrew previous statements, and/or contradicted themselves in their testimony. Evidently, in an effort to counter these unreliable witnesses, McCulloch invited Wilson to appear before the grand jury to testify in his own defense. Shaun King at Daily Kos characterized Wilson’s testimony:

After a thorough examination of Darren Wilson’s four-hour long open testimony before the grand jury, it’s clear that he was well-prepared to paint the narrative of a cordial, helpless, respectable community servant who shockingly found himself up against the biggest, blackest, strongest, demonic super monster he’s ever seen in his life.

Wilson told the same story in his interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC news. His story may be true, yet many witnesses tell a different story of the events surrounding Wilson’s killing of Michael Brown. Even the police reports have changed since the time of the shooting. There were enough inconsistencies in the grand jury testimony that Wilson should have been indicted for something and gone to trial, and McCulloch should have done his job and led the jurors to that conclusion.  But, as Paul Rosenberg says “the fix was in from the moment Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown.”

Paul Rosenberg: “Everything the Darren Wilson grand jury got wrong: The lies, errors and mistruths that let Michael Brown’s killer off the hook”

Data is sketchy and incomplete, but police shoot scores of unarmed blacks every year, and rarely face significant consequences, so why shouldn’t Wilson get away with murder? Still, at least giving the appearance of justice for all, and requiring Wilson to stand trial hardly seemed too much to ask—unless, of course, you were St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, who defended Wilson and attacked his accusers, the media and social media in a night-time press conference Monday that seemed perfectly timed and perfectly toned to elicit the most angry, unfocused and uncontrolled response possible.

As part of his theatre of openness and impartiality, however, McCulloch included a document dump which may have been intended to be overwhelming, and therefore ignored, but which has already proven sufficient to undermine McCulloch’s ludicrous posture of legal rectitude.

Jeffrey Toobin: “How Not to Use a Grand Jury”

In Jeffrey Toobin’s recent article in the New Yorker, “How Not To Use A Grand Jury,” he reminds us that grand juries are tools used by prosecutors for the purpose of bringing indictments. They are very good at getting what they want. He repeats the famous quote by former New York judge Sol Wachter, “a good prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.” In McCulloch’s case, he misused the judicial process and skewed the information presented to the jurors so as to make it difficult, if not impossible for them to indict. He helped spare Wilson a trial, where he would be subject to cross-examination. Further, he protected the all-white Ferguson Police Department from having their racism and aggressive behavior toward the mostly black citizens of Ferguson exposed.

In sending Wilson’s case to the grand jury, McCulloch technically turned over to them the decision about whether to prosecute. By submitting all the evidence to the grand jury, he added to the perception that this process represented an independent evaluation of the evidence. But there is little doubt that he remained largely in control of the process; aggressive advocacy by prosecutors could have persuaded the grand jurors to vote for some kind of indictment. The standard for such charges—probable cause, or more probable than not—is generally a very easy hurdle. If McCulloch’s lawyers had simply pared down the evidence to that which incriminated Wilson, they would have easily obtained an indictment.

The grand jury chose not to indict Wilson for any crimes in connection with Brown’s death. In a news conference following the decision, McCulloch laid out the evidence that he believed supported the grand jury’s finding. In making the case for Wilson’s innocence, McCulloch cherry-picked the most exculpatory information from what was assembled before the grand jury.

 

The family of Michael Brown, the citizens of Ferguson and of st. Louis County deserve a fair and impartial prosecutor. They don’t have one.

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The Ferguson incident: A young unarmed black man, Michael Brown, was shot several times by a white police officer, Darren Wilson. Several witnesses have publicly stated that Brown had his hands up and was facing Wilson, who continued to shoot him. There was an explosive reaction to this event on the part of black residents of the city, leading to a military-style police overreaction. Most of this is now accepted as true.

In the aftermath, there’s been some official effort to understand and explain why one shooting among so many shooting deaths generated such a reaction. There’s also been plenty of backlash towards those efforts to understand and deal with the anger among Ferguson residents in any way other than denial and suppression. The instinctive reaction of many in the area seems to be to “support” the police no matter what they do, as long as they’re doing it to “those people.” Consider the following when you hear anyone telling you that the Ferguson events are exceptional and folks mostly get along in St. Louis:

— An online fundraiser to cover “expenses” for the police shooter. Among the comments left by donors:

“Ofc. Wilson did his duty. Michael Brown was just a common street thug.””Waste of good ammo. It’s my privilege to buy you a replacement box.”

“Black people can be their own enemy and I am not white…He was shot 6 times cause the giant wouldn’t stop or die. Evil people don’t die quick”

“All self-respecting whites have a moral responsibility to support our growing number of martyrs to the failed experiment called diversity.”

“I am so sick of the blacks using every excuse in the book to loot and riot.”

“I support officer Wilson and he did a great job removing an unnecessary thing from the public!”

The fundraiser was shut down when it seemed that there might be legal, tax-related issues about how the money could be used – but not until it had raised $400,000 dollars from sympathizers for the shooter. Did you know you could shoot an unarmed boy and collect a big reward for doing it?

— Until the U.S. Justice Department stepped in, some law enforcement officers working to contain the protests in Ferguson thought it was helpful to express their opinion of the shooting by obscuring their name badges and wearing “I am Darren Wilson” bracelets.

— Residents of Wildwood and other West County locations made it their priority  to organize a food and water drive for the policemen who were moving all their heavy military surplus equipment into Ferguson to put down the protests. According to a police spokesperson, this effort to express appreciation for police efforts to shut down the turmoil as forcibly as possible rendered the police “ecstatic.”

— St. Louis Cardinals fans really showed their colors when they responded to peaceful protesters at Monday night’s game:

At one point, an older white man starts yelling at the protesters, shouting, “That’s right! If they’d be working, we wouldn’t have this problem!” Then, the Cardinals fans begin chanting “Let’s go Cardinals!” which morphs into “Let’s go Darren!” referring to Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot Brown.Later on in the video, a woman shouts, “We’re the ones who gave all y’all the freedoms that you have!” which is a tidy way of identifying with slavers and Abraham Lincoln at the same time, covered in a thick layer of modern racism.

— There have also been more refined expressions of distaste for activists’ efforts to keep the issues surrounding Michael Brown’s death alive. SMP’s Michael Bersin wrote about the events at the St. Louis symphony Saturday night when a group of symphony goers inserted a “Requiem for Mike Brown” before the beginning of the second act of the Brahms Requiem. According to Bersin, “they pulled this off perfectly,” and the audience was mostly sympathetic. No doubt. However, nothing is perfect and in this morning’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Letters” section, genteel disapprobation of what the letter writer evidently deemed an unseemly disruption reared its head:

Is Powell Hall a proper venue for a protest? I assume the protesters bought tickets for this opportunity to have their voices heard. What comes next? Can we expect such events to happen at the art museum? At Circus Flora? At a school graduation? The experience saddened me profoundly. Just like the Ferguson situation, I was left tensely unresolved.

Imagine. A man was murdered, his shooter is very unlikely to be punished, and this individual is horrified that he/she had to sit “rigidly for what felt like an eternity” during the brief protest. If he/she was left “tensely unresolved,” as opposed to as blandly indifferent as his letter implies he wishes to be, then it’s high time that the protest has invaded this refuge for well-off St. Louisians.

You want to know what is behind the events in Ferguson, read the list above and think about what it implies about the St. Louis zeitgeist. While folks do mostly get along, I suppose, it’s also true that things are not always just what they seem to be at the surface. The water can get mighty dirty when we start fishing in the depths.

[This post first appeared on Show Me Progress.]

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America continues to make international headlines as the world watches racial tensions repeatedly reaching the breaking point after the killing of an unarmed African-American:

• Sean Bell, 2006: shot at 50 times by a team of NYPD officers, hours before his wedding. Officers forced to retire (all but one with pensions intact), but face no other legal consequence

• Oscar Grant, 2009: shot in the back at train platform by a police officer who “meant to grab his taser” in California. Officer convicted of involuntary manslaughter and serves one year in jail.

• Trayvon Martin, 2012: shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer claiming self-defense under Florida’s stand-your-ground laws. Shooter found not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

• Renisha McBride, 2013: shot by a Michigan man to whom she, shell-shocked after a car accident, appealed to for help by knocking on his door (who claimed, after changing his story several times, to mistake her for a thief).  Shooter found guilty of second-degree murder and may face life in prison.

• Jordan Baker, 2014: shot by off-duty Houston, Texas police officer when riding a bike and allegedly looking into stores at strip mall, because the officer was looking for black hoodie-wearing armed robbery suspects, and Baker happened to be wearing a black hoodie. Officer put on administrative leave pending further investigation.

• Eric Garner, 2014: dies when NYPD officer’s chokehold triggers an asthmatic attack during an arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes. Officer’s gun and badge have been taken away, but he has not faced any legal ramifications yet. (Witnesses who filmed the death have been arrested).

• John Crawford III, 2014: shot by Ohio police in Walmart while he talked on a cell phone and took down a BB-gun from the shelf, (Witnesses say he informed police that it was a toy). State (and potentially federal) investigations still pending.

• Michael Brown, 2014: shot by Ferguson, Missouri police officer- details still emerging through federal and state investigations. This shooting comes 4 days after the Crawford shooting and 2 days after the conviction of Theodore Wafer for McBride’s murder.

Many of these incidents have been followed by massive protests–sometimes even rioting that results in further violence–calling for justice for the responsible parties and societal change to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. Each horror has been followed by calls for institutional change, inspiring hope in the communities that perhaps,we are on the cusp of reform. The message is that black lives are NOT expendable, after all. Looks like it hasn’t happened yet. But I hope it happens soon. We need another massive revolution to reiterate the  the 15th amendment and Civil Rights Acts.

In hope that the deaths have not been in vain, I envision the events to be the slowly growing base that will culminate in a wave of change to turn into a social reality the legal equality promised to every individual, regardless of race, so many years ago.

In the discussion, we need to keep in mind how mass incarceration is disproportionately affecting the black population and is being called “The New Jim Crow.”  We also need to consider the recent outrage over Donald Sterling’s bigoted comments. Each of these events is a signal that the supposedly color-blind state of our society may be more of a myth than we would like to believe. When everything is being analyzed for racist and prejudiced undertones, why do we continue to dole out little slaps on the wrist for heinous crimes? Why do we continue to hesitate to openly mark something as racist, no matter what we find in that undertone analysis, for fear of being called racist ourselves? Why do we continue to silence the people trying to talk openly about race as if they are the ones perpetuating racism?

Researching the case of Michael Brown, I stumbled upon  similarities to the other cases. I saw one similar case only to find another and then another and then another, before I finally had to stop pulling on the  lengthy string of horrors. Of the eight deaths outlined above, only one resulted in the conviction of the perpetrators for murder. One.

America: you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Either make change–real change, not rioting and violence– and bring justice, or openly condone the idea that white life is worth more. We need to destroy the idea that we are a color-blind society and admit that there are major flaws in the system that set us up to be less a “post-racial” society and more an “innocent until proven racist” society. But we also need to keep in mind that those flaws can be fixed, and that it is our personal responsibility to make sure they are. We need to stop ignoring prejudice until tragedy strikes and then pretending we never hid it in the first place. Something has to give for the horrors to stop, and I hope we can make it happen soon. I really do.

The post Are we on the brink of a social revolution? I hope so. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I recently saw a revival of the great line that came out of the movie, Forest Gump. “Stupid is as stupid does.” The phrase can be a bit of a word game, but however one interprets it, the meaning certainly applies to the choice words about race uttered by Los Angeles Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling.

Among Sterling’s pearls was what he said in an authenticated recording with his one-time girlfriend, V. Stiviano:

“It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?”

“You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want.  The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.”

Don’t put him [Johnson] on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me.  And don’t bring him to my games.”

The term “piling on” is one that is normally associated with football. It’s illegal, and in the minds of many, immoral, for one or several football players to keep piling on a downed player after the whistle has been blown.

In the case of Sterling, the basketball owner of notoriety, the piling on has come from virtually everyone who has an opinion, and that is just about everyone. Sterling has repeatedly been called a racist. Well in the words of the great philosopher, Fats Domino, “ain’t that a shame.” I mean, really, how much guts does it take to call a doddering old man who is clearly confused about the world in which he is living a name? Suddenly it seems that everyone in the world other than Sterling is “holier than thou.” It’s as if Sterling was the only person in the world to express a racial prejudice.

One of the other twenty-nine NBA owners who will vote on taking the franchise away from Sterling had the temerity to say, “wait a minute.” Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban proffered the thought that Sterling may not be the only racially prejudiced man in the world. In fact, Cuban went so far as to say that none of us, including himself, can honestly say that we are not a racist. He graphically described his perspective:

“If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street,” he said in a video interview for Inc.’s GrowCo Conference in Nashville. “And if on that side of the street, there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face — white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere — I’m walking back to the other side of the street.”

“I know that I’m not perfect,” Cuban also said Wednesday. “While we all have our prejudices and bigotries, we have to learn that it’s an issue that we have to control, that it’s part of my responsibility as an entrepreneur to try to solve it, not just to kick the problem down the road.

It would have been easy for Cuban to just fall in line with the owners, and virtually all other observers. He could have denounced Sterling as a racist and pretended to be it above it all. Instead, he said what he was really thinking; in NBA parlance he “manned up” and shared his inner thoughts.

Some African-Americans have criticized him for saying “a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night;” it sounds too much like Trayvon Martin. Cuban has apologized for the resemblance, but he stands by the conviction that we should treat race as a delicate issue and none of us should enter a conversation with the presumption that he or she is not racist.

Cuban’s perspective is one that can liberate us to have a more open national discussion on race. None of needs to defend ourselves as being pure. Instead, we can look at the issue of one that involves shades of grey.

By doing so, we can have a more meaningful discussion on why there are so many people in the United States have a visceral dislike, even hatred of President Obama. Why is he so vilified, particularly by those on the extreme right?

If we look at the situation from the simple “Sterling is a racist” perspective, we have are left with the dilemma of either calling the opponents of President Obama as racist, or as saying that they are not racists. Painting them with a broad brush as racist is fraught with all of the dangers of any generalization. Dismissing them as being pure at heart when it comes to race is equally inaccurate and disingenuous.

From Cuban’s perspective, we are all somewhat racist. There are gradations among us. When it comes to those who really demean our president, it would be unfair to call them racist. But to say that race may well be a key issue in their disdain for him is likely true.

It is only outliers who are “Sterling-esque” and call the president racial epithets. Most critics are civil enough to speak in code when there are criticizing the president (“he doesn’t care about us”). It would wise during the remainder of President Obama’s administration and as we move forward into the next political cycle to (1) examine ourselves for any underlying racial reasons that we may have for criticizing (or defending) the president, and (2) to make it fair game in the political dialogue to acknowledge that much criticism of the president comes from race. I nominate Mark Cuban to facilitate upcoming presidential debates in both parties.

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In Memphis, they’ve turned the hotel where Martin Luther King was murdered into a museum honoring the Civil Rights Movement. Across the South, “Civil Rights tourism” is on the rise. Though not without ambiguities and controversy, this development at its best may represent an attempt to acknowledge the sins of the past, the courage of those who resisted evil, and the pernicious effects of racism on everyone.

St. Louis, as I discussed in an Occasional Planet piece a few months ago, has a foggy memory of its role in slavery, Jim Crow, and other forms of systemic racism. But sometimes we do try.

The other day I came across this in my Facebook news feed.

“St. Louis Freedom Suits in the Era of Henry Shaw” with Dr. Kenneth Winn, Librarian of the Missouri Supreme Court. Part of the Friends of Tower Grove Park Lecture series. FREE Today, 4/1 at Stupp Center, 3P.

I knew I had to go.

Dr. Kenneth Winn, former archivist for the State of Missouri, got a grant to archive St. Louis circuit court records. Combing through jumbled documents, each tri-folded, tied with a red ribbon, and covered with a fine layer of black dust from the original coal-fired heating system in the Old Courthouse, Winn gradually realized that he and his team were finding something remarkable. Between 1824 and 1845, scores of enslaved people sued in the St. Louis court, arguing that they should be free. Winn’s archivists have found more than three hundred such lawsuits over the past eight years.

Though freedom suits were also frequent in other border states like Kentucky and Maryland, as well as in Louisiana, the St. Louis collection of freedom suits is now the largest in the United States. St. Louis, it seems, is ground zero for important court cases in the African American freedom struggle. Consider Shelley v. Kraemer and Jones v. Mayer, groundbreaking cases that addressed restrictive covenants and racial discrimination in private real estate deals; or United States v. The City of Black Jack, another important decision against housing practices that had a discriminatory effect. All three of these cases originated in the St. Louis area.

In these nineteenth-century freedom suits, however, the issues were even more stark and personal: individuals bringing suit against slave masters, asserting that they were unfairly enslaved. Their arguments typically took one of three approaches:

1) A claim of maternal Indian descent: Native Americans at this time were not legally subject to enslavement (though in practice many were), and one’s legal status depended the legal status of one’s mother.

2) A claim of established residence in a free state or territory: This was the claim made by Dred and Harriet Scott, who had lived in free states for extended periods of time with their master, a military surgeon.

3) A claim that one (or one’s parent) had been a victim of kidnapping: Stealing people was a lucrative source of illicit income at this time. Such was the case with St. Louisan Lucy Delaney, whose 1891 narrative From the Darkness Cometh the Light is still read today as a remarkably detailed and accurate account of the author’s journey from slavery to freedom.

 Why St. Louis? 

At Tower Grove Park that Sunday afternoon, Winn explained that St. Louis attracted a lot of slave freedom suits because as a city that bordered a free state, it offered both a supportive community of free blacks as well as the chance of gaining the support of sympathetic whites.

Also, in 1824, shortly after Missouri’s controversial entry into the Union as a slave state, the state legislature amended its slave codes to allow slaves to sue for their freedom. In a remarkable move, the new codes also provided for taxpayer-funded legal counsel for slaves who brought these suits. Merely providing the right to sue was fairly meaningless, after all, since few slaves had the resources to mount successful legal cases.

Despite this remarkably liberal policy, slavery was entrenched in St. Louis. The city was founded in 1764 by Pierre Laclede and his stepson Auguste Chouteau, along with their slaves. When Auguste died, he owned some fifty slaves, ranging from elderly men to newborn babies. Auguste and his brother Pierre were ruthless slave masters who tried to disrupt the transfer of the Louisiana Territory to U.S. control because they feared that Thomas Jefferson would forbid slavery in the newly-acquired lands. Later, Pierre Chouteau, Jr., known as “Cadet,” would help to make sure that Missouri’s constitution permitted slavery—and later still he would help to fund the Sanford family’s legal work in Dred Scott v. Sanford. Though today the Chouteaus’ name carries the ring of St. Louis royalty, they were actually something like the Koch brothers: wealthy power brokers who worked behind the scenes to extend oppressive laws and promote inequality.

Dr. Winn presented a fascinating account of the way freedom suits worked on the ground. More women than men filed these suits; men were more apt to take to their feet to escape slavery, while women often had children to think about. If a slave sued for freedom, the master was forbidden to sell the slave away or beat him or her in retaliation. If the slave feared that such retribution was going to occur regardless of the law, he or she would be removed to the city jail and possibly hired out to someone else. The wages paid would be held until after the case was settled. If the slave won freedom, the money was given to the newly emancipated winner. If not, the money went to the slave master, who would often then sell the slave away as revenge.

Some of the lawyers who represented slaves were scorned in the same way that some lawyers today are considered “ambulance chasers”—seen as sucking public funds to defend a despised class of people. On the other hand, some very prominent attorneys took on these freedom suits, not because they believed slavery was wrong, but because they believed it was right—but only if done legally. Edward Bates, for instance, a slave-owner who later became Lincoln’s attorney general, was Lucy Delaney’s attorney and made an impassioned argument on her behalf.

In 1845, the “Golden Age of Freedom Suits” in St. Louis came to an end when the flow of public funding for them was abruptly shut off. Dred and Harriet Scott’s case, filed shortly before the cessation of this funding, was seemingly a routine case, for they clearly had established residence in a free state.

The Scotts lost on a technicality in the St. Louis circuit court, but as their case was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, according to Dr. Winn, a lot of white people decided to throw a lot of money into making it a test case to bring down the “once free, always free” rule. Indeed, the state court explicitly broke with precedent, declaring that revolutionary times demanded a new approach. “Once free, always free” was no more: it didn’t matter where the Scotts had resided.

With powerful people like the Chouteaus arrayed against Dred and Harriet Scott, the case made its way to the Supreme Court, and in 1857 Chief Justice Roger Taney authored the devastating majority opinion that African Americans had no rights a white man was bound to respect and that, in fact, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional. Congress, attempting to legislate a compromise to the issue of slavery, had exceeded its powers, the Court decided. (This decision sounds eerily familiar today as the Supreme Court considers the fate of the Affordable Care Act.)

The last freedom suit in St. Louis was filed in 1860, and in five years’ time such suits would be moot.

How should a city reckon with its past?

Surely Dr. Winn’s talk—and the research it was based on—represents one way of doing so. The story he told was complex, as was the picture of St. Louis that emerged. Here was a place whose very founder and his descendents were major forces in the perpetuation of chattel slavery. Yet it was also a place that offered a relatively hospitable climate for enslaved people who risked everything to seek justice and freedom through the law. It was a place where a slave-owning lawyer could make an impassioned speech in order to free a brave African American girl who had been illegally enslaved.

In order to reckon with our complex past, we St. Louisans need to hear these types of stories and to share them with each other. In our classrooms, Black History Month needs to be a time of searching for new understandings. We may know about the March on Washington or the bridge at Selma, but how much do we know about all the important struggles that took place in our own city? If we don’t understand the complex history of race in St. Louis, do we have any hope of understanding the complex present?

The post When slaves sued for freedom: A city reckons with its past appeared first on Occasional Planet.

American Indians and Alaska Natives die at higher rates than other Americans from tuberculosis (500% higher), alcoholism (514% higher), diabetes (177% higher), unintentional injuries (140% higher), homicide (92% higher) and suicide (82% higher). Those statistics, supplied by the U.S. Indian Health Service [IHS], are troubling. But they’re not new, and, given the shameful history of health care for America’s first residents, they’re certainly not surprising.

Beginnings

When European explorers first encountered the native tribes of America, they brought along many things the Indians had never seen before—including smallpox, trachoma, measles, influenza, cholera, typhoid and venereal diseases. As a result, Indian populations experienced continuing waves of devastating epidemics, and the health of America’s first residents began a downward spiral.

For a while in early U.S. history, the policy of maintaining a separate Indian Country was generally accepted. But by the 1840s, to make way for westward expansion, that notion gave way to the idea of creating reservations.

“Government policy became aimed at ‘civilizing’ the tribes by destroying native culture and replacing it with the values and practices of white America,” wrote Robert Trennert, in White Man’s Medicine: Government Doctors and the Navajo, 1868-1955.

The effect was further deterioration of Indian health. In the confined, alien environment of the reservation, old methods of nutrition and sanitation disappeared. Traditional means of food production, such as the buffalo hunt, vanished, because Indians were expected to adopt farming. But reservation agriculture seldom produced enough food, leaving the residents vulnerable to starvation and disease.

A national disgrace

Under these circumstances, the government had no choice but to introduce some form of basic health care. Responsibility fell to the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs [OIA]. Originally a part of the War Department, it moved in 1849 to the newly created Department of the Interior.

Meanwhile, Indians continued to acquire white-men’s diseases. Well-meaning military units and missionaries often added to the natives’ health problems, wrote Trennert.

“They gave them bacon, coffee and unfamiliar types of beans. The Indians didn’t know how to prepare these foods, so many died from stomach disorders.

By the late 1800s, while health care for other Americans was benefiting from many advancements, reservation Indians still had no hospitals or facilities for treating acute illnesses, accidents or contagious diseases.  “These services ought to be furnished them in the name of humanity,” then-Indian Commissioner Thomas J. Morgan wrote. “I have been powerless to remedy a great evil, which in my view amounts to a national disgrace.”

In 1873, the humanitarian advocacy of Morgan and a number of missionaries paid off. The Office of Indian Affairs established a division to supervise health efforts on reservations and began a field-nurse program. The first federal Indian hospital was built in the 1880s in Oklahoma.

A slow and painful period of catching up

But both Indian health services and health status took many years to catch up to contemporary standards. In the 1920s, an Indian facility in New Mexico lacked the money to buy a sterilizer, so its staff made do with a pressure cooker owned by the doctor’s wife. As recently as 1953, the incidence of tuberculosis among Indians was five times that of the general population.

One hero in this otherwise dismal saga was John Collier, who served as commissioner of Indian Affairs in the 1930s. Collier’s reformist program created unprecedented research and prevention programs, and construction of more hospitals, with the total reaching 93 by 1935.

A major turning point came in 1955, when the U.S. Public Health Service took over responsibility for Indian health. In the 1950s, there was pressure to eliminate the Bureau of Indian Affairs completely. The move to the U.S. Public Health Service essentially saved health care for the community.

Today, the Indian Health Service [IHS] is the primary source of health care for approximately 1.9 million American Indian and Alaska Native people. Along with tribal authorities, it operates more than 500 healthcare facilities of varying sizes and has more than 15,000 employees, 70 percent of whom are Native Americans and Alaska Natives.

Progress, but still a long way to go

Under the IHS, health status among the nation’s more than 566 Indian tribes, bands and villages has increased significantly. Since 1973, infant mortality has decreased by 54 percent, maternal mortality by 65 percent and tuberculosis mortality by 74 percent.

In 1997, IHS opened the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage—but only after a 30-year political battle to get it funded. The center offers contemporary care in a setting sensitive to native traditions. It includes an igloo-like meditation room, and its windows can be unlocked for special ceremonies—to let the spirit escape after a death, for example.

Still, health status among America’s natives is not on a par with the general U.S. population. According to HIS statistics:

• Diseases of the heart, malignant neoplasm, unintentional injuries, diabetes mellitus, and cerebro-vascular disease are the five leading causes of American Indian and Alaska Native deaths (2004-2006).

• American Indians and Alaska Natives born today have a life expectancy that is 5.2 years less than the U.S. all races population (72.6 years to 77.8 years, respectively; 2003-2005 rates)

Funding for Indian Health Services is a continuing problem. IHS says that the federal government spends more per-capita on health care for prisoners than for Native Americans who get their care from the Indian Health Service. President Obama’s Indian Health Service (IHS) budget request for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 totaled $4.624 billion. This figure represented a 14.1% increase over the FY 2010 appropriated level and 4.9% increase over the President’s budget request for FY 2011. But Congress’ obsession with budget-cutting could change that picture, and IHS could lose 2 percent of its budget if Congress implements across-the-board cuts.

The future of health care for Native Americans is also entangled in the future of the Affordable Care Act. The healthcare reform act includes a range of Indian-specific provisions, and tribal organizations are concerned that, if the Supreme Court strikes down the law, critical, Indian-specific services would disappear. According to the National Indian Health Board, a lobbying group, the reforms include:

… enhanced authorities to recruit/retain health care professionals to overcome high vacancy rates, comprehensive behavioral health initiatives, and…authority to operate modern methods of health care delivery such as long-term care and home- and community-based care, among others.

It would be nice to be able to say that America has, at long last, made peace with its native population. But given the gap between health services offered to Native Americans and Alaska Natives and that available to the general population, and the continuing disparities in health status, there’s clearly still a lot of work to be done.

[The historical narrative included in this post has been adapted, with permission of the American Hospital Association,  from an original article written by Gloria Bilchik and published in 100 Faces of Healthcare.]

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