Vision Circle

Browsing through Amazon

I came across Timothy Tyson's newest. Tyson's first bookRadio Free Dixie was a revised version of his dissertation, and was written about Robert Williams, literally an American hero. I'd heard about Tyson when he was working on the diss....and I wondered what exactly caused Tyson (a white historian) to tackle Williams' life. I know now.

Recent Research on Race and Politics

A couple of abstracts in the most recent American Journal of Political Science caught my eye. I'll quote the abstracts, then give a "common sense" translation.

Race, Bureaucratic Discretion, and the Implementation of Welfare Reform

This article explores the impact of the race of individual clients and of the local racial context on the implementation of sanctions for recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in a Midwestern state. We find that although nonwhites are sanctioned at lower rates than whites overall, nonwhites are sanctioned more compared to whites in each local area. This paradox occurs because nonwhites tend to live in areas with lower sanction rates. Consistent with the literature on race and policy, we find that sanction rates increase as the nonwhite population increases until a threshold is reached where nonwhites gain political power.

TANF is best loosely thought of as the thing that replaced AFDC. Strict time limits, and largely state-based (with some federal assistance). If you don't follow the rules you get sliced and diced. What these researchers are looking at is "slice and dice rates." Do non-whites get jacked more than whites? Looking at the entire state and averaging, the answer is no. But looking within each county, the answer is yes. And this rate increases until nonwhites attain political power.

Cut Throat Politics

I remember reading an interview with Albert Murray. Murray was going off on the victim approach to black politics, and he said something to the effect that if someone wronged him or his folks...if somehow someone tried to oppress or subjugate him...he wouldn't make much hay about it. No marches, protests, or boycotts. He'd just round up his people...and take care of it.

About a month or so ago it was revealed that Jack Ryan, Illinois senatorial candidate, paid a staffer to follow Barak Obama (his democratic competitor for the seat) 24 hours a day. Obama pisses...the kid is there with a videocamera. Obama goes to get a bite to eat...the kid is there in his rear view mirror. Obama picks up a Ludacris CD from Tower Records...you get the picture.

Drylongso sponsored a contest. Who could come up with most innovative response to Ryan's tactics.

I don't know who won that contest, but given recent revelations about Ryan, I'm thinking that someone's been reading Murray.

The Harlem Project

The one thing I haven't heard many candidates speak on is urban poverty. The proverbial elephant in the closet. I'm willing to bet that I can predict what the candidates would say if they DID say something. Bush would talk about individual initiative and empowering people to help themselves through faith-based initiatives. Kerry would talk about public/private partnerships and tax incentives, along with raising the minimum wage.

After welfare reform passed in 1996, the national debate on poverty seemed simply to shut down. Most conservatives explain poverty by looking to culture and behavior: bad parenting, high out-of-wedlock birth rates, teenagers who don't know the value of an honest day's work. To most liberals, the real problems are economic: underfinanced public schools and a dearth of well-paying semiskilled jobs, which make it nearly impossible for families to pull themselves out of poverty. Canada says he believes that both assumptions are true. He agrees that the economy is stacked against poor people no matter how hard they work, but he also thinks that poor parents aren't doing a good enough job of rearing their children. What makes Canada's project unique is that it addresses both problems at once. He keeps the liberals happy by pouring money into schools and day-care centers and after-school programs, and he satisfies the conservatives by directly taking on the problems of inadequate parenting and the cultural disadvantages of a ghetto home life. It's not just that he's trying to work both sides of the ideological street. It's that Canada has concluded that neither approach has a chance of working alone. Fix the schools without fixing the families and the community, and children will fail; but they will also fail if you improve the surrounding community without fixing the schools.

The article. While no one wants to say it, this idea--which I think we can all agree is worth trying--smacks of The Great Society. Definitely in a good way. I think I know what the data is going to show in a few years, when that first group comes out.

The HipHop Vote

I've been cruising the usenet ghetto and pit of despair SCAA hoping to rescue misguided souls and countering the occasional rabid propaganda when I came across the name Yvonne Bynoe.

She has been around the block with the Urban Think Tank, whose website looks dead, or perhaps static is a better term. There is this feature about UTT at BlackElectorate.com, which appears to be a good target for some of my political activities.

Another look at this crew comes from this NRO piece by Dan LeRoy

More to come...

Good News for Democracy

I didn't think I'd see this. For understandable reasons, the GOP has been against restoring voting rights to felons. The DNC has (also for understandable reasons) not really stepped up to the plate to fight for them. But no matter how understandable the reasons are, they are wrong. This is good news.

For the GOP to win black votes...

Ok. So my man Cobb weighs in on the black vote issue.

Here's the real deal.

Black political behavior has been shown to be tied closely to the "fate of the race." When African Americans enter the voting booth, what they're thinking to themselves is "Hm. Which of these candidates is best for black PEOPLE?" This being an effective shortcut (often anyway) to getting at which candidate is best for that INDIVIDUAL black person.

Assuming that there is significant support for vouchers among working class black folk in particular, we have a long road to hoe if we are to take this factoid and then cast it as an opportunity the GOP as it is now constituted can take advantage of.

There are a whole host of policy issues that blacks support that the GOP doesn't seem to. Whether we're talking about affirmative action, a minimum wage, getting out of Iraq...on average blacks support very liberal policy preferences. Remember that there are a long list of social policies the GOP supports that conservative blacks do as well (the death penalty for example), but this hasn't led to an appreciable shift.

There has been talk about a "generation shift." In as much as the country has moved to the right it shouldn't suprise anyone that blacks have moved also. But remember, African Americans are the furthest to the left of any identifiable voting constituency. Moving to the right to them means they give on an issue like vouchers, but that is about IT.

For the GOP to move black voters, the change has to come from the GOP...the GOP has to moderate its views.

(Folks tend to forget Florida, and their treatment by the GOP in places like Saint Louis. This suprises me...there is no way in hell black folk will forget. And while an argument could be made that the GOP wasn't to blame, I'm thinking this argument has as much likelihood being accepted as the argument that creationism is bunk has of being accepted at the Southern Baptist Convention.)

As an important aside, remember that we're talking about support for the GOP at the NATIONAL LEVEL. There has ALWAYS been a signicant amount of support (greater than 20%) for the GOP at the local level.

Upcoming Elections and Afrocentricity

La Shawn Barber links to an article by conservative Juan Williams telling the Democratic Party not to take the black vote for granted. As Kerry really hasn't given us a taste of what his domestic policies would be like it might be a bit early to make this critique. But on the other hand, given the DNC's history of igging the black vote it is never too early.

(as an aside, just because the dems shouldn't take the black vote for granted, doesn't mean the republicans have a shot in hell. unless they listen to my advice they can give that idea up!)

....

While checking out Barber's site I run into this article on Afrocentrism.

First things first. Mary Lefkowitz and D'Nesh D'Souza wouldn't know an argument from a hole in the wall. As far as I can tell D'Souza barely has a bachelor's degree, and I've never seen Lefkowtiz' name in any peer-reviewed journal. In comparison Asante (who has his own issues to be sure) has published more peer-reviewed articles than a little bit, and Martin Bernal's tomes were also peer-reviewed. Granted, this is an elitist stance, but I've defended it before.

Secondly, let's get rid of the red herrings. Here is the central Afrocentric argument, taken from Asante's own words:

On these facts we stand:�

*Ancient Egyptians were black people.�

*Egyptian civilization precedes Greece by several thousand years�

*The pyramids are completed (2500 BC) long before Homer appears (800 BC)�

*Philosophy originates in Africa and the first Greek philosophers (Thales, Isocrates) studied in Egypt�

* A discussion of the wise, wisdom, (sb) appears on tomb of Antef in 2052 BC�

*Thales of Miletus is not a philosopher until 600 BC�

Among Greek historians and others who wrote about what the Greeks learned from Egypt are Homer, Herodotus, Iamblicus, Aetius, Diodorous Siculus, Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, and Plato. Who were some of the Greek students of Africans, according to the ancient records? They were Plato, Solon, Lycurgus, Democritus, Anaxamander, Anaxagoras, Herodotus, Homer, Thales, Pythagoras, Eudoxus, and Isocrates and many others. Some of these students even wrote of their studies in Egypt as well.�

Barber is right to question whether an Afrocentric curriculum works. Social science will tell the tale, and I'm not familiar with the literature enough to even give anecdotes. I'm thinking we're better off going this route though than either the Creationist route, or the voucher route.

Clearer thinking is needed.

And again, while I'm not all that smart, it looks like Professor Kim came to the same conclusion. Maybe a Clear Thinker's Society would be in order.

Detroit Basketball

I'm a professor. I'm a parent of four. I'm a husband. Why the hell does Detroit's championship matter, above and beyond the fact that I'm from Detroit?

I've been reading ESPN's Page 2 while working on a paper about The Green Mile...trying to conjure Ralph Wiley up. And I run across a column by The Sports Guy.

While Wiley was my MAN (it still hurts like a bitch that he's gone, and I suspect it will for sometime), I don't really like Simmons that much for one reason--he can't stand Isiah Thomas. And if I'm a fan (short for fanatic) about any sports figure it's Zeke. But check it. While figuring out exactly why he missed the boat on the '04 Pistons, Simmons goes back to an interview Thomas had with Dan Patrick while checking out the '88 Lakers/Pistons series...the series Thomas put up 25 on a bum ankle, only to lose the series on a phantom call against Laimbeer. Thomas had never seen the game on tape, and while watching it damn near ten years later he starts to cry. Patrick gives him a second, then asks him what seeing thet tape brings up. This is a part of Thomas' response as written by Simmons:

"You know, like you said, to see Dennis, the way Dennis was, to see Vinny, to see Joe, to see Bill, to see Chuck, and to know what we all went through and what we were fighting for ... I mean, we weren't the Lakers, we weren't the Celtics, we were just, we were nobody. We were the Detroit Pistons, trying to make our way through the league, trying to fight and earn some turf, you know, and make people realize that we were a good team. We just weren't the thing that they had made us."

Patrick steps in: "You weren't Showtime, you weren't the Celts, you were the team that nobody gave credit to."

"Yeah," Isiah says, nodding. Now he knows. He knows what to say.

"And seeing that, and feeling that, and going through all that emotion, I mean, as a player, that's what you play for. That's the feeling you want to have. When 12 men come together like that, you know...

I think Simmons is channelling Wiley now because he's never written anything this poignant.

That feeling of being alone against the world, with only a few good men to stand against the hordes, is one of the things that drives me to do what I do. And to look for likeminded individuals. Often I turn back to my grandfather's example, my father's example, the example of my fraternity brothers. But often I turn back to Isiah...and to the Pistons. They represent the modern day spirit of Invictus. Detroit...WHAT!

That's why I care.

Norman Kelley's HNIC

I wrote earlier about The Head Negro In Charge Syndrome by Norman Kelley. I just picked it up from Borders. It's a bit pricey at 13.95, but fits within a much larger ouevre (including but not limited to The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, The Omni American, Class Notes, and We Have No Leaders, quite nicely. A snippet:

Essentially at this point in time and history black America is leaderless, drifting. This would not be an entirely unfortunate circumstance if it weren't for the development of a pernicious syndrome, the Head Negro in Charge (HNIC) Syndrome. This is a condition in which self-appointed 'leaders' hijack the political process by somehow appealing to blacks' sense of collectivity, while having an agenda that is mostly about themselves, making themselves the leader. This syndrome and black political demobilization have been aided, as I have suggested, by a black intelligentsia that has become more obsessed with pop culture and celebrity...

Hm. Suffice it to say that while homeboy is decidedly left of center, there is something in here for those on the left and the right sides of the aisle.